Surah An-Nur, The Light

Surah 24 · 64 verses · revealed at Medina

An-Nur is named after a single verse describing God's light as a lamp in a niche, and the surah is otherwise concerned with something very different: the protection of reputations.

Its occasion is the accusation made against the Prophet's wife A'ishah, which went unanswered for about a month while the community talked. The surah's response is severe with the talkers rather than with the accused: it sets the penalty for an unproven accusation of unchastity, rules that the accuser's testimony be rejected thereafter, and asks why those who heard it did not think well of their own people and say plainly that this was a clear lie.

From there it becomes a chapter about how people should behave in one another's houses and in one another's sight. It instructs that permission be sought before entering a home, that greetings be given, that believing men lower their gaze and guard themselves, and then says the same to believing women, adding what they should cover and before whom.

It also deals with slander generally, with the freeing of slaves who ask for it, with helping the poor to marry, and with the times of day when children and servants should knock.

The light verse sits in the middle of all this. Commentators have written more about it than about almost any other verse — the niche, the glass like a brilliant star, the oil of a blessed tree neither of the east nor the west that would almost give light without fire. It is one of the few places where the Qur'an is content to leave an image unexplained.

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