Sūrat al-Raḥmān · Āyāt 56–78

What the passage says

This passage completes Sūrat al-Raḥmān's portrait of Paradise — describing the spouses, the second pair of gardens, and the closing praise of God.

Maidens of restrained glances, untouched by any (v.56). The two gardens hold chaste spouses who keep their eyes only for their husbands and desire no one else. "Restrained glances" (qāṣirāt al-ṭarf) — ṭarf literally means the eyelid — pictures a fidelity that looks nowhere else; the Enlightening Commentary recalls the saying from Abū Dharr al-Ghaffārī that the Paradise-wife tells her husband, "By the might of my Lord, I see nothing in Paradise more beautiful than you." That "none has touched them before, neither human nor jinn" means they are virgin, never approached by anyone.

"Then which of your Lord's bounties will you both deny?" (v.57). The sura's refrain, addressed to both humankind and jinn, returns after every blessing named (and again at vv.59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77).

Like rubies and corals (v.58). The spouses are likened to gemstones — the clarity and rosiness of ruby joined to the whiteness of coral.

Goodness repaid only with goodness (v.60). A rhetorical question: the reward for those who did good can only be good in return. It frames the whole vision of the gardens as God's recompense for those who feared standing before Him.

A second pair of gardens (v.62). Besides the first two, there are two more gardens — most read this as a second, lower pair, set aside for believers of a lesser rank.

Dark green (v.64). So deep is the green of their foliage that it verges on black, a sign of utmost lushness.

Two gushing springs (v.66). In these gardens two springs well up and gush forth copiously.

Fruit, date-palms and pomegranates (v.68). Every kind of fruit, with dates and pomegranates singled out by name for their special honour.

Good and lovely maidens (v.70). Women good in character and beautiful in form — khayr pointing to inner goodness, ḥusn to outward beauty.

Houris secluded in pavilions (v.72). Wide-eyed maidens (ḥūr), kept and guarded within pavilions (khiyām) of Paradise, reserved for their partners alone.

Untouched by any (v.74). Like the spouses of v.56, these houris too have been approached by neither human nor jinn — the repetition draws the two descriptions together.

Reclining on green cushions and lovely carpets (v.76). The dwellers recline at ease on green couches or fabrics (rafraf) and fine, exquisite carpets (ʿabqarī).

"Blessed is the Name of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Honour" (v.78). The sura closes by exalting God — jalāl (majesty, greatness) and ikrām (honour, generosity) — the final word answering the opening name, al-Raḥmān.

Convergence — where the six agree

• All six read "restrained glances" (v.56) as chaste fidelity — the spouses look at and desire none but their husbands; Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary both cite the Abū Dharr tradition, while al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī add that the gaze is also restrained toward the houris "by the radiance of their light."
• All agree that "none has touched them" (vv.56, 74) means the women were never deflowered or approached, hence virgin; the lexical sources (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī) note the root ṭ-m-th relates to the blood of menstruation or defloration. They also note the repetition at v.74 equates the houris of the pavilions with the maidens of v.56.
• On "rubies and corals" (v.58) every source giving a gloss agrees on purity, clarity and colour, with Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī citing al-Ḥasan that coral is the whitest kind of pearl.
• On "is the reward of goodness anything but goodness?" (v.60) all agree the base meaning is that good is repaid with good. Several converge on two traditions: the Prophetic saying via Anas that the reward of those granted divine unity (tawḥīd) is Paradise, and the "registered verse" (āya musajjala) report from Imam al-Ṣādiq — carried in Ṭabarsī, al-Baḥrānī and al-Mīzān — that the verse "runs in believer and disbeliever alike: whoever has a kindness done must repay it, and true repayment exceeds the original."
• On the second pair of gardens (v.62) the dominant reading across all sources is that they are below the first pair in rank. The Imāmī sources converge on al-Ṣādiq's instruction (via Abū Baṣīr) that one must not say "Paradise is one" or "there is one degree," since God names gardens and graded degrees — "people are ranked only by deeds."
• On the closing verse (v.78) all agree God is exalted, jalāl meaning greatness and ikrām honour; al-Ḥasan's gloss that ikrām includes God's honouring "the people of His religion and His allegiance" is shared. All four Imāmī sources carry Imam al-Bāqir's report that the Majesty and Honour are the Imams themselves, "by which God honoured the servants through obedience to us."

Divergence — where they differ

• Identity of the "good and lovely maidens" (v.70). This is the sharpest split. Are they created houris, or righteous women of this world returning to Paradise "fairer than the houris" (a view in al-Mīzān and the Enlightening Commentary), or — uniquely in al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī — maidens who "sprout like plants on the bank of al-Kawthar," replaced whenever one is plucked? al-Mīzān is candid that the traditions making them worldly women are hard to reconcile with the verse's context, so it leaves the question open.
• Wording of the v.60 reward-tradition. Most sources have "those We blessed with tawḥīd (divine unity)"; al-Qummī alone has "those I blessed with maʿrifa (knowledge)." al-Mīzān notes the difference and harmonises it: every version keeps the phrase "those We have blessed," showing the servant's good is really God's good done for him.
• Grammar and theology of v.78. Only the two philological tafsīrs (Ṭūsī, Ṭabarsī) engage the variant readings of "Possessor of Majesty" — genitive (an attribute of "your Lord") versus nominative (an attribute of "the Name"). Ṭūsī presses the point that the genitive reading "indicates the Name of God is other than God." al-Mīzān instead argues the "Name" here is specifically al-Raḥmān, the name that opened the sura, and reads the verse as pointing to all of God's Beautiful Names.
• A this-worldly reading of "dark green" (v.64). al-Baḥrānī and al-Qummī uniquely carry a tradition (via Yūnus b. Ẓibyān from al-Ṣādiq) that the deep green denotes "palm-trees connecting what is between Mecca and Medina" — a geographic sense absent from the other four.
• Whether the four gardens belong to one class or two. Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī report the dispute — all four for the God-fearing (Ibn ʿAbbās) versus the first pair for the Foremost and the second for the Followers (al-Ḥasan) — and lead with a spatial "nearness for variety" reading. al-Mīzān, the Enlightening Commentary and al-Baḥrānī instead structure it firmly as Those Brought Near (al-muqarrabūn) for the first pair and the Companions of the Right (aṣḥāb al-yamīn) for the second.
• Unique additions. al-Baḥrānī alone preserves the long Jābir al-Juʿfī description of an encircling wall of silver, gold, pearl and ruby with eight gates; Ṭabarsī alone carries the ʿĀʾisha tradition in which the believing women out-boast the houris ("We are the praying ones and you did not pray"); and the Enlightening Commentary alone adds the nutritional notes on dates and pomegranates (the pomegranate as "master of fruits").

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.