Sūrah An-Nūr The Light
سورة النور
Al-Qurṭubī treats An-Nūr as the most legally dense surah for sexual morality law, extracting from 24:2–9 the complete ḥadd (fixed penalty) for zinā, the evidentiary standard (four witnesses), the liʿān procedure for spousal accusations, and the four-school positions on the ḥadd for the unmarried and married.
Surah Overview
Key Themes from Al-Qurṭubī
Al-Qurṭubī opens An-Nūr with one of his most detailed legal analyses in the entire Tafsīr. On 24:2 "The fornicatress and the fornicator flog each of them one hundred lashes" he notes several procedural conditions extracted from the verse and sunnah: (1) the hundred lashes apply to the unmarried (ghayr muhṣan); (2) the married person (muhṣan) receives stoning per sunnah the Quran's verse is read as establishing the base punishment with the sunnah adding the married-person differentiation; (3) "and do not be taken by compassion for them in the religion of Allah" (24:2) means the ḥadd must be executed fully without reduction out of sympathy; (4) "a party of the believers must witness their punishment" means public execution of the ḥadd is required.
Al-Qurṭubī then addresses the liʿān procedure (24:6–9) for a husband who accuses his wife of zinā but lacks four witnesses. He extracts the full procedure: the husband swears four times that he is truthful + a fifth oath of divine curse on himself if he is lying; the wife swears four times that he is lying + a fifth oath of divine wrath on herself if he is truthful. The result: the ḥadd is averted for both; the marriage is dissolved; the woman's child is attributed to her; the couple can never remarry. Al-Qurṭubī maps the four-school positions on whether liʿān dissolves the marriage automatically or requires a judge's decree.
- Ḥadd averted by doubt: Al-Qurṭubī's application of "ḥudūd tudrāʾ bi-l-shubuhāt" to the four-witness requirement establishes that any doubt not just proven false accusation averts the ḥadd. The standard is deliberately extremely high.
- Qadhf applies to accusation: The qadhf ḥadd applies to the act of public accusation without four witnesses not only to proven false accusation. This makes unsubstantiated zinā accusations themselves criminal.
- Liʿān procedure: Al-Qurṭubī documents the complete five-oath liʿān procedure and maps the school disagreement on whether it automatically dissolves marriage or requires judicial decree.
- No-compassion command: "Lā taʾkhudhkum raʾfah" is read as an obligation the judge must not reduce the ḥadd; compassion that leads to incomplete punishment is itself a violation of the divine command.
- Married vs. unmarried ḥadd: Al-Qurṭubī maps the complete four-school position on the muhṣan/ghayr-muhṣan distinction stoning for married, lashes for unmarried (with or without exile per school).