Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 72 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:72

حُورٌ مَّقْصُورَٰتٌ فِى ٱلْخِيَامِ

“Fair ones reserved in pavilions -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Fair ones, kept in tents: not confined but honoured, sheltered in a dwelling the Prophet ﷺ described as a single hollow pearl.

A reflection

Kept, not confined

A modern reader meets the word maqṣūrāt in translation, 'restrained' or 'reserved', and flinches. It sounds like women shut away. Kept indoors. A picture this ayah is sometimes mocked for.

The commentaries saw the problem coming and answered it.

One commentary says plainly that they were not restrained as a ban placed on them. The word points to tents pitched for them, and curtains lowered over them. In the world of the first hearers, it explains, a woman with no honourable guardians was exposed and of little account. A woman whose people valued her had her tent raised and her privacy guarded. So maqṣūrāt is a word of honour, not of confinement. And here, it adds, their guardian is Allah.

Another early authority read it as they themselves restricting their gaze and their hearts to their husbands, wanting no one in their place.

A third commentary compares this ayah with its mirror in the higher gardens. There, the companions were 'those who restrain their gaze' (55:56), by their own choice. Here they are 'kept'. The one who restrains herself, it says, is finer than the one who is kept, though both are screened and honoured.

So the word is not what the mockers think. It describes being sheltered by someone who values you, the way the most precious things are kept.

Think of how a family treats its most treasured heirloom: a grandmother's wedding ring, a letter from a dead father. It is not locked away as punishment. It is kept because it matters.

The ayah describes people kept like that, by the One who made them.

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.