The beginning of Surat Al-Mumtahanah, in a 15th-century Qur'anic manuscript from Northern India.
Al-Mumtaḥanah (Arabic: الممتحنة, translated "She That Is To Be Examined", "Examining Her") is the 60th chapter (sura) of the Quran, a Medinan sura with 13 verses.
Summary
The first verse warns Muslims not to make alliance with the enemies of God.[1] Verses 4–6 provide Abraham as a model for this, as he distanced himself from the pagans of his own tribe, including his own father.[1][2] Verses 7 to 9 declare the possibility that Muslims and their erstwhile enemy might have better relations ("It may be that God will forge affection between you and those of them with whom you are in enmity")[3] if the former enemy stops fighting the Muslims.[1] These verses provide basis for the relations of Muslims and non-Muslims according to the Quran: the basic relation is peace unless the Muslims are attacked, or when war is justified to stop injustice or protect the religion.[4]
The next following verses (10–12) address some matters of Islamic law.[1] They declare marriages between Muslims and polytheists to be no longer valid,[1] and instruct Muslims on how to resolve the question of mahr when dissolving such marriages.[5] The status of inter-religious marriages was very relevant at the time of the revelation of these verses, a time when multiple women from Mecca converted to Islam while their husbands did not, or vice versa.[1]
Verses
1-3 Muslims forbidden to make friends with the enemies of God
4-6 This precept enforced by the example of Abraham[6][7]
7 Enemies of God may become friends of Muslims by conversion
8-9 Distinction between enemies and mere unbelievers
10 Female refugees, being true believers, are to be regarded as divorced from their heathen husbands
11 How to recover dowers of Muslim women who apostatise
Quranic commentators Mahmud al-Alusi (d. 1854) and Abu 'Abdullah Al-Qurtubi (d. 1273) mentioned that this refers to Umm Kulthum bint Uqbah who was the subject of several of its verses.[1] The chapter is also called al-Imtihan ("The Examining"): according to Al-Qurtubi, this is because the chapter examines the fault of mankind. It is also called al-Mawaddah ("The Affection"), because the first verse includes the phrase "you offer them affection", and the seventh includes "God will forge affection", and because affection of the Muslims is one of the themes in the chapter.[1] In the 1730s, George Sale opines in his translation footnotes "this chapter bears this title because it directs the women who desert and come over from the infidels to the Moslems to be examined, and tried whether they be sincere in their profession of the faith."[11]
^ abWherry, Elwood Morris (1896). A Complete Index to Sale's Text, Preliminary Discourse, and Notes. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
