An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 57 of 176

An-Nisa 4:57

وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ سَنُدْخِلُهُمْ جَنَّـٰتٍ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهَا ٱلْأَنْهَـٰرُ خَـٰلِدِينَ فِيهَآ أَبَدًا ۖ لَّهُمْ فِيهَآ أَزْوَٰجٌ مُّطَهَّرَةٌ ۖ وَنُدْخِلُهُمْ ظِلًّا ظَلِيلًا

“But those who believe and do righteous deeds - We will admit them to gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they abide forever. For them therein are purified spouses, and We will admit them to deepening shade.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Faith joined to good deeds leads to gardens with flowing rivers, purified companions and a deep shade that no sun ever breaks, for ever.

A reflection

Shade, promised to people who knew the sun

The ayah ends with a phrase that sounds like an echo: ẓillan ẓalīlā. Shade, shady shade.

One classical theologian explains the doubling. Ẓalīl is not a separate idea; it intensifies the word it comes from. The Arabs did the same when they spoke of laylun alyal, a night darker than night. This is shade at its fullest.

Another classical commentator describes it: dense, with no gaps in it, lasting, never erased by the sun, mild, neither hot nor cold.

The root ẓ-l-l means one thing screening another. A cloud that first covers the sun is a ẓulla. To say a man covered you with his shade meant he gave you his protection.

Now hear it as the first listeners did. The same theologian reminds us that their land was fiercely hot. Shade was the greatest relief they knew, so it became their word for rest itself. They had walked for days under a white sky. They had tied their camels in the narrow strip of shadow beside a rock. To them, 'deep shade' meant everything.

Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ describing a tree in Paradise. A rider can travel in its shade for a hundred years and not reach its end.

Picture a roadworker on the hottest afternoon of a summer heatwave. At lunchtime the whole crew crowds into the shade of one plane tree beside the road. No one speaks for the first five minutes. Someone passes round a bottle of water. It is the best ten minutes of the day.

Now picture that shade without an end, without the call back to work, without the sun moving.

That is the image the ayah offers to everyone worn out by their own heat. You are not asked to imagine luxury first. You are offered rest.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.