Synthesis: Sūrat al-Aḥzāb 35–40

Triangulated from Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], al-Qummī [qummi], al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) [tusi_al_tibyan], al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) [bahrani_al_burhan], and al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) [tabatabai_al_mizan]; with the published Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary]. All five Arabic sources speak to this passage; none is silent.

Human-review flags: Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān are flagged needs_human_review. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī are span units whose 32–35 / 31–35 portions overlap P3, so only the v35-relevant tail was translated and the earlier material elided with bracketed notes. al-Mīzān is COARSE here (units 28–35 and 36–40); the long 28–34 takhyīr/Taṭhīr exposition and its 40-plus Kisāʾ narrations were left to P3, and the 36–40 polemic was condensed. No content was added in any case.

What the passage says. Verse 35 enumerates ten paired virtues of believing men and women — submission, faith, devotion, truthfulness, patience, humility, almsgiving, fasting, chastity, and abundant remembrance — closing with forgiveness and a great reward. Verse 36 removes the believer's "choice" once God and His Messenger have decreed. Verses 37–39 narrate the Zayd–Zaynab episode and the abrogation of the adoption-prohibition in marriage, vindicating the Prophet against blame. Verse 40 is the Seal of the Prophets.

The sabab for v35. Ṭabarsī and al-Mīzān both carry Muqātil b. Ḥayyān's report that Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays, returning from Abyssinia, complained that women were not mentioned with good as men were — al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] adding "in other reports the speaker is Umm Salama." Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] gives the Umm Salama version directly. (Web cross-check confirms Umm Salama as the most-reported version, with Asmāʾ and Umm ʿUmāra as parallels.) On the Islām/īmān distinction, Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān agree the two terms differ — Islam being outward submission by the limbs, faith the heart's binding assent (citing Q 49:14) — so that "every believer is a Muslim, but not vice versa" (al-Mīzān).

The sabab for v36. Ṭabarsī's al-nuzūl, al-Qummī, and al-Burhān converge on Zaynab bint Jaḥsh: the Prophet proposed her for his client Zayd, and she (with her brother ʿAbd Allāh) at first resisted on lineage grounds, until the verse stripped the believer of any "choice" against the decree. Al-Qummī [qummi] and al-Burhān [bahrani_al_burhan] share the identical Abū al-Jārūd ← al-Bāqir isnād. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī also record the alternative (Ibn Zayd) that it concerned Umm Kulthūm bint ʿUqba — reported as-attributed.

The ʿiṣma question (v37). This is the flashpoint, and the present sources uniformly defend the Prophet's infallibility and reject the lurid reading. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān read "what you concealed" as God's prior disclosure to the Prophet that Zaynab would become his wife (via ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn) — Ṭabarsī calling this "conformable to the recitation." al-Burhān preserves the decisive Imām al-Riḍā / al-Maʾmūn dialogue, in which al-Riḍā rebukes the questioner — "do not impute indecencies to the prophets" — and explains that the Prophet hid Zaynab's name only to forestall the hypocrites. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] argues at length that the concealed matter was the divine ordinance to marry her, not passion, since otherwise "there would be no sense to the reproach" and "no warrant in Islam to make amatory verse about [other men's] wives." Each source records the marginal al-Balkhī view (a permissible innate wish) only as-attributed. All read zawwajnākahā and li-kay lā yakūna ʿalā l-muʾminīna ḥaraj as God Himself contracting the marriage to abolish the adoption taboo — al-Qummī uniquely adding "God married her to him from above His Throne."

The qirāʾa of v40. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī both record that ʿĀṣim reads khātam (fatḥa on the tāʾ = "the last / the seal") while the rest read khātim (kasra = "the one who sealed"); Ṭūsī judges khātim "the stronger" as derived from khatama, and notes the shādhdh forms khātām / khitām. Strikingly, al-Mīzān's traditions section carries ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib's own instruction to recite khātam with a fatḥa — independently corroborating the reading. (Web cross-check confirms ʿĀṣim alone reads khātam among the ten; both forms mean finality.) All sources gloss khātam al-nabiyyīn as "the last of the prophets, no prophet after him" (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Qummī), al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī [tabatabai_al_mizan] adding that sealing prophethood entails sealing messengership, since risāla is among the tidings of the unseen. All note that min rijālikum is a creative, not legislative, denial of fatherhood — the Prophet's infant sons (al-Qāsim, al-Ṭayyib, Ibrāhīm) and the still-young al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn not being adult "men" who would contradict it. The shared Bukhārī/Muslim "place of the brick" ḥadīth (Ṭabarsī, al-Mīzān) seals the theme.

Sources present: tabarsi_majma_al_bayan, qummi, tusi_al_tibyan, bahrani_al_burhan, tabatabai_al_mizan, enlightening_commentary; silent: none.