Circumstances of Revelation
Place: Medina, as its content shows.
Order: Imam al-Bāqir said Sūrah al-Nūr was revealed after Sūrah al-Nisāʾ: the way that promised for women guilty of indecency was opened by the ruling on adultery in verse 2 of this sūrah. → Narrations
Verse 3 (the adulterer shall not marry except an adulteress…): Muqātil reports that poor Emigrants in Medina asked the Prophet whether they could marry the prostitutes of the town to share their income; Ibn ʿUmar names a woman called Umm Mahzūl. The Imams al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq explain the prohibition as concerning men and women known for adultery who have not repented. → Narrations
Verses 6–9, mutual cursing (liʿān): Narrations say they were revealed when a husband accused his wife without witnesses; the reports name ʿUwaymir, and Hilāl b. Umayyah. → Narrations
Verses 11–26, the slander (ifk): From the verses themselves, a member of the Prophet's household was accused of indecency by a group of Muslims; the hypocrites and the weak in faith spread the story, and God revealed these verses and vindicated His Prophet. Sunni narrations say the accused was ʿĀʾishah, on the return from the expedition against the Banū al-Muṣṭaliq; Shia narrations (Tafsīr al-Qummī) say it was Māriyah the Copt, accused by ʿĀʾishah.
Al-Mizan's view: both accounts have problems. The Sunni account has the Prophet suspecting his wife for a month, although verse 12 rebukes the believers for not thinking well of one another; and in neither account was the penalty for false accusation applied at once. The ʿAllāmah concludes that these verses were revealed before verse 4, which sets the penalty of eighty lashes for false accusation. → Commentary · Narrations · Key Debate
Verse 22: Revealed about Abū Bakr, who swore to stop supporting his poor relative Misṭaḥ b. Athāthah for taking part in the slander, and resumed it when the verse came down. Imam al-Bāqir explains the near of kin as the kindred of the Messenger. → Narrations
Verse 30: Imam al-Bāqir reports that it came down after a young man of the Anṣār, turning to stare at a woman in a Medina alley, cut his face on the wall and came to the Prophet bleeding. → Narrations
Verse 33 (do not compel your slave girls to prostitution): Tafsīr al-Qummī says the Arabs and Quraysh used to make their slave girls earn by prostitution; some reports name ʿAbd-Allāh b. Ubayy's slave girls. Al-Mizan: the reports that make the prohibition of adultery the occasion are weak, since adultery had been forbidden in Mecca from the beginning of Islam. → Narrations
Verses 47–52: Said to have been revealed about a hypocrite who, in a dispute with a Jew, refused to take the case to the Prophet; al-Balkhī, and a narration from Imam al-Bāqir, connect them with a land dispute between ʿAlī and ʿUthmān. → Narrations
Verse 55: Ubayy b. Kaʿb reports that after the Hijrah, when all the Arabs united against the Muslims and they had to stay armed day and night, they longed for a day of safety, and this promise was revealed. → Narrations · Key Debate
Verses 61–62: Reports connect verse 61 with the people of Medina who would not let the blind, the lame and the sick eat with them, and with a man who would not eat from the house of a Companion away on campaign, left in his care; Tafsīr al-Qummī connects verse 62 with Ḥanẓalah b. Abī ʿAyyāsh, who asked leave to stay with his bride on the night before Uḥud. → Narrations
A summary prepared from Tafsīr al-Mīzān: where and when the sūrah was revealed, and the occasions reported for its verses, with the ʿAllāmah's view of them. Each point links to the full discussion.