Surah Maryam: the only surah named after a woman
Surah Maryam in 98 verses, from Zechariah's prayer to a promise of affection - and its hardest places read in Tafsir al-Muyassar and in al-Safi and al-Mizan: Kaf Ha Ya Ayn Sad, the high station, coming to the Fire, and the covenant.
What Surah Maryam is
Surah Maryam is the nineteenth surah of the Quran, Meccan, 98 verses long. It sits in the sixteenth juz, between Al-Kahf and Taha.
It is the only surah in the Quran named after a woman. Mary is also the only woman named outright in the Quran — her name appears in 31 verses across twelve surahs, most densely in this surah and in Aal Imran. Other women appear in the text by their relation: the wife of Pharaoh, the Queen of Sheba, the wife of Abraham.
The biographical literature records that the opening of this surah was among what Ja'far ibn Abi Talib recited before the king of Abyssinia when the first Muslims migrated there. That comes from the sira writers, not from the Quran itself.
How it opens: Kaf Ha Ya 'Ayn Sad
Kaf, Ha, Ya, 'Ayn, Sad.
Sahih International renders these as the names of the letters themselves, because that is what they are.
Al-Muyassar does not stop here at all. It refers the reader back to its own discussion at the head of Al-Baqarah. We have set out what the commentators said about the disconnected letters separately.
Al-Safi narrates two readings. The first takes them as names. From al-Sadiq:
Its meaning is: I am the Sufficient, the Guide, the Guardian, the Knowing, the True to the promise.
And in another report the same five are turned toward his followers:
Sufficient for our Shia, a guide for them, a guardian to them, knowing the people of our obedience, true to them in His promise, until He brings them to the station He promised them in the inner meaning of the Quran.
The second reading is a long report that takes the letters as a notice of the unseen that God disclosed to Zechariah: kaf for Karbala, ha for the destruction of the Prophet's family, ya for Yazid, 'ayn for his thirst, sad for his patience. In it, Zechariah asks for a son in order to be bereaved of him as the Prophet would be bereaved of his own — and is given John. It is among the most distinctively Shia readings anywhere in this surah.
Zechariah's prayer
The first narrative in the surah is an old man asking for a child. His wife is barren and he fears what comes after him:
And indeed, I fear the successors after me, and my wife has been barren, so give me from Yourself an heir
The answer names the child before he exists:
[He was told], "O Zechariah, indeed We give you good tidings of a boy whose name will be John. We have not assigned to any before [this] name."
Mary, and the birth
The surah then turns to Mary. She withdraws from her family, the angel is sent to her, she is given news of a son, and then she goes into labour alone in a distant place:
And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, "Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten."
What follows is the quietest relief in the surah. Help comes from the palm trunk she is already leaning on:
And shake toward you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you ripe, fresh dates.
And the first words the child speaks are a statement of servanthood, before anything else:
[Jesus] said, "Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet.
Abraham, and the prophets named one by one
After Jesus comes Abraham's conversation with his father — among the gentlest arguments a son makes to a father anywhere in the Quran. Then the surah lists prophets in sequence: Moses and Aaron, Ishmael, Enoch. Then it gathers them in the verse at which a reciter prostrates (Maryam 58). Immediately after the people who were given favour comes their opposite:
But there came after them successors who neglected prayer and pursued desires; so they are going to meet evil -
This is one of the verses most often cited on the subject of neglected prayer.
"A high station": rank, or an ascent?
Of Enoch the surah says:
And We raised him to a high station.
Al-Muyassar reads it as raised renown and rank: We raised his mention among the worlds and his standing among those brought near, so he was high in mention and high in rank.
Al-Safi begins from the same reading — "it is said: the honour of prophethood, and nearness to God" — and then adds a report in al-Kafi from al-Baqir that takes the raising bodily. An angel was sent down from heaven, asked Enoch to intercede for him, and, when the request was granted, offered to repay him:
"So ask something of me." He said: show me the angel of death, that I may perhaps be at ease with him, for nothing is pleasant to me while I remember him. So he spread his wing and said: mount. He ascended with him and sought the angel of death in the nearest heaven, and was told: ascend. He met him between the fourth heaven and the fifth. The angel said: O angel of death, why do I see you frowning? He said: it is strange — I am beneath the shade of the Throne, and I have been ordered to take the soul of a man between the fourth heaven and the fifth. Enoch heard, and fell from the angel's wing, and his soul was taken there. God said: "And We raised him to a high station."
So the verse is rank for al-Muyassar, and for this report a place — the point between the fourth and fifth heaven where Enoch died. The two need not contradict; but the second adds a narrative al-Muyassar does not carry.
"There is none of you except he will come to it": entering, or arriving?
This is the hardest verse in the surah for a reader:
And there is none of you except he will come to it. This is upon your Lord an inevitability decreed.
Al-Muyassar reads it as a crossing: there is none of you who does not come to the Fire by passing over the bridge set across Hell, each according to his deeds; a decreed matter that must happen.
Al-Safi narrates from al-Sadiq a different reading, built on how Arabic is actually used:
Do you not hear a man say, "we came to the water of the tribe of so-and-so"? That is wurud — and he did not go in.
So wurud is reaching the water, not getting into it: a man who says he came to a well is not saying he climbed into it.
Al-Mizan grounds the same reading in the lexicons, quoting al-Raghib's Mufradat: wurud is the opposite of sudur, and its root sense is making for water. The Quran uses it of water — Moses "came to the well of Madyan" (Al-Qasas 23) — and al-warid is the one who goes ahead of a party to draw for them, as in the caravan that "sent their water drawer" (Yusuf 19). On that basis, al-Mizan notes, some commentators held that people are present at the Fire rather than put into it.
The English translation this site serves shows the same thing from the other side. Here it has "he will come to it", with no word for entering; and at Al-Anbiya 98, where entering is meant, the translator has to supply it in brackets — "You will be coming to [enter] it".
Al-Mizan also settles who is addressed: the whole of humanity, believers among them, not the disbelievers of the preceding verses — because the verse that follows speaks of saving those who feared God:
Then We will save those who feared Allah and leave the wrongdoers within it, on their knees.
Both readings lean on that verse: a rescue after the coming.
Intercession, and the covenant
None will have [power of] intercession except he who had taken from the Most Merciful a covenant.
Al-Muyassar makes the covenant faith itself: these disbelievers hold no intercession for anyone; it belongs to whoever has taken a covenant with the Most Merciful to that effect, and they are those who believe in God and His messengers.
Al-Safi narrates two senses of the covenant. The first is what the school holds as its own:
In al-Kafi, from al-Sadiq: except one who holds to God by the guardianship of the Commander of the Faithful and the Imams after him — that is the covenant with God.
The second is closer to something every Muslim does. He narrates from the Prophet a testament a person says as he is dying — the testimony of faith, an affirmation of the resurrection, the reckoning and the balance, and then "and appoint for me a covenant on the day I meet You, unrolled" — and then states plainly that this verse is its warrant:
And the confirmation of this testament is in Surah Maryam, in His words: "None will have intercession except he who had taken from the Most Merciful a covenant." So this is the covenant of the dying.
On that second reading the covenant is something the servant contracts at death, and this verse is its basis. The two sit side by side in al-Safi; neither cancels the other.
"Ar-Rahman" runs through it
A reader notices the name quickly, and counting it against the mushaf bears the impression out: "the Most Merciful" occurs in 12 verses of this surah — more than in any other. In the whole Quran it appears in forty-eight verses, and the next highest is five, in Az-Zukhruf.
That weight is not accidental. The surah closes by answering those who attribute a son to God:
And they say, "The Most Merciful has taken [for Himself] a son."
You have done an atrocious thing.
The name they objected to is the name the surah is built on.
How it closes
Indeed, those who have believed and done righteous deeds - the Most Merciful will appoint for them affection.
The surah opens with a man who has no child and closes with affection placed in people's hearts. Both are gifts nobody can arrange for themselves.
Where they agree
- That the surah is Meccan and 98 verses long.
- That the first thing Jesus said was a statement of servanthood: "Indeed, I am the servant of Allah."
- That "a high station" carries honour of rank — stated by al-Muyassar, and the reading al-Safi opens with.
- That the coming to the Fire is decreed, and that a rescue follows it for those who feared God.
- That no intercession is held without a covenant with the Most Merciful; the difference is over what the covenant is, not over whether one is required.
- That the name ar-Rahman is central to the surah, and that its closing passage answers those who attributed a son to Him.
What each commentary adds
- Al-Muyassar refers the disconnected letters back to Al-Baqarah, reads "a high station" as rank, "come to it" as passing over the bridge, and the covenant as faith in God and His messengers.
- Al-Safi gives two readings of Kaf Ha Ya 'Ayn Sad — the names of God, and a reading that makes them a notice of what befalls the Prophet's family; adds a report of Enoch raised bodily; reads the coming as arriving rather than entering; makes the covenant the guardianship, and then sets beside it the testament of the dying, with this verse as its warrant.
- Al-Mizan works wurud out of the lexicons by way of al-Raghib, and establishes from the following verse that the address is to people in general rather than to the disbelievers alone.
Counted against the mushaf
- The name Mary appears in 31 verses across twelve surahs, and she is the only woman named in the Quran.
- The name ar-Rahman appears in forty-eight verses, twelve of them in this surah alone — a quarter of its occurrences in one surah.
- The surah contains one verse of prostration, at verse 58.
- The root of wurud is used in the Quran of water as well as of the Fire, which is the whole hinge of verse 71: "came to the well of Madyan" of water, and "You will be coming to [enter] it" (Al-Anbiya 98) of the Fire.
Reading it in QuranEye
The full text, with tafsir on any verse, recitation, and your place kept:
Sources
- The Quran text — the Madinah mushaf, Hafs from 'Asim, King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran. English renderings of verses are the Sahih International translation this site serves.
- Tafsir al-Muyassar — a panel of commentators, King Fahd Complex.
- Tafsir al-Safi — al-Fayd al-Kashani.
- Al-Mizan fi Tafsir al-Quran — Sayyid Muhammad Husayn al-Tabatabai.
The Arabic of every quotation is on the Arabic version of this page and on the page of each verse. The English renderings of the commentaries are ours.