Sūrah 24 · Āyāt 1–10

What the passage says. Sūrat al-Nūr opens by announcing itself as a sūra God has "sent down and made obligatory" (v.1), then legislates the sexual-honour code of the Medinan community: a hundred lashes for the un-married fornicator and fornicatress, publicly witnessed, with no pity staying the ḥadd (v.2); a warning that the notorious fornicator "marries only a fornicatress or an idolatress" (v.3); eighty lashes and permanent disqualification as a witness for whoever accuses a chaste woman without four witnesses, save the one who repents (vv.4–5); and, for a husband who accuses his own wife with no witness but himself, the fourfold sworn testimony of liʿān that averts the ḥadd and dissolves the marriage (vv.6–9). It closes: were it not for God's bounty and relenting, ruin would follow (v.10).

How the present sources read it. All six sources are present. On v.2, Ṭabarsī [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], al-Ṭūsī [tusi_al_tibyan] and al-Mīzān [tabatabai_al_mizan] agree the hundred lashes bind the free, adult, non-muḥṣan couple, stoning applying to the muḥṣan and half-ḥadd to slaves; al-Ṭūsī records the distinctively Imāmī ruling that the muḥṣan "is flogged a hundred first, then stoned," and cites ʿAlī to that effect. On the size of the witnessing ṭāʾifa, all note the spread of opinions (one, two, three, four), and al-Qummī [qummi], al-Baḥrānī [bahrani_al_burhan] and al-Mīzān converge on the report from al-Bāqir and the Commander of the Faithful that "the ṭāʾifa is one." Al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī frame v.2 as the promised "way" that abrogates the confinement-penalty of 4:15 — a chronology al-Mīzān grounds in al-Kāfī (al-Nūr revealed after al-Nisāʾ).

On v.3, al-Qummī names the Meccan women (Sāra, Ḥantama, al-Rabāb) and reads the verse as a refutation of those who would licence mutʿa or marriage with notorious prostitutes; the ḥadīth-chains in al-Baḥrānī (Zurāra, Abū al-Ṣabāḥ, Muḥammad b. Muslim, Ḥakam b. Ḥukaym) and al-Mīzān's distillation restrict the prohibition to the notorious fornicator on whom the ḥadd has fallen and whose repentance is not yet known — "if a person fornicated then repented, he may marry whom he wishes." Ṭabarsī lays out all four classical readings (contract / intercourse / abrogated / standing ruling) and, with al-Ṭūsī, preserves the Umm Mahzūl occasion. On vv.4–5, Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān all debate whether the exception "save those who repent" restores the slanderer's testimony; all three report the Imāmī–Shāfiʿī position that it does, against the Iraqi/Ḥanafī view, and al-Ṭūsī and Ṭabarsī note the Imāmī ruling of eighty lashes for free and slave alike (against forty). Al-Qummī and al-Baḥrānī supply ʿAlī's arresting handling of the six fornicators (six different sentences in one sitting) and of the self-confessing man purified by stoning, closing with the counsel that secret repentance is better than self-exposure.

On vv.6–9, all five non-English sources give the liʿān procedure in convergent detail; al-Qummī, al-Baḥrānī and al-Mīzān narrate the occasion (ʿUwaymir al-ʿAjlānī, and the Hilāl b. Umayya / Saʿd b. ʿUbāda reports), while al-Baḥrānī adds the fiqh of the child's inheritance and the imam's positioning of the couple. Uniquely, al-Baḥrānī on v.10 transmits the taʾwīl that "God's bounty" is the Messenger and "His mercy" the walāya of the Imams (variously ʿAlī or Fāṭima) — rendered strictly as that source's interpretation. The published Enlightening Commentary [enlightening_commentary] supplies the framing English exposition of the ḥudūd and their social wisdom.

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