Circumstances of Revelation
Place: Medina, as the tone of its verses indicates. The sūrah recounts the Battle of Khandaq (the Trench) and refers to the Jewish tribe of Banū Qurayẓah. → Introduction
Verse 1: Majmaʿ al-Bayān reports that it was revealed after the Battle of Uḥud, when Abū Sufyān, ʿIkrimah b. Abī Jahl and Abū al-Aʿwar al-Sulamī came to Medina under a promise of safety and, with ʿAbd Allāh b. Ubayy and other hypocrites, asked the Prophet to stop repudiating al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā and Manāt: the faithless are the Meccans and the hypocrites the Medinans. Al-Mizan: other occasions reported for the verse do not fit its tone and content. → Narrations
Verse 4, adopted sons: Tafsīr al-Qummī, from Imam al-Ṣādiq, says the Prophet freed Zayd and declared him his son, and after the migration married him to Zaynab bint Jaḥsh; when the Prophet later married her, the hypocrites objected that he had married his son's wife, and God revealed nor has He made your adopted sons your sons. The report also says Zaynab came to occupy a place in the Prophet's heart after he saw her at her home. Al-Mizan's view (on verse 37): what the Prophet concealed was God's decree that he marry Zaynab, not a personal desire or love for her while she was married, as some exegetes claim. → Narrations · Commentary on verse 37
Verses 9–27, the Trench and Banū Qurayẓah: The verses deal with the Battle of Khandaq and what followed it with Banū Qurayẓah. The narrations, from Majmaʿ al-Bayān and others, give a long account: Jews of the banished Banū Naḍīr roused Quraysh and Ghaṭafān against the Prophet; the trench was dug on the advice of Salmān al-Fārisī; Banū Qurayẓah broke their pact; ʿAlī fought ʿAmr b. ʿAbd Wadd; and the confederates withdrew in Shawwāl of the fifth year after the Hijrah. Tafsīr al-Qummī connects verses 26–27 with the siege and fate of Banū Qurayẓah. → Introduction to verses 9–27 · Narrations
Verse 23: ʿAlī is reported as saying that Men who fulfill what they have pledged to Allah was revealed about "us." → Narrations
Verses 28–29, the choice given to the wives: Tafsīr al-Qummī says they were revealed after the Prophet returned from Khaybar and his wives demanded a share of the booty; he kept away from them for twenty-nine days, then God offered them the choice, and Umm Salamah was the first to choose God and His Messenger (some Sunni reports say ʿĀʾishah). Ibn ʿAbbās reports instead a quarrel with Ḥafṣah, after which the Prophet withdrew from his wives for a month. → Narrations
Verse 33, the verse of purification: More than seventy narrations, more of them Sunni than Shia (from Umm Salamah, ʿĀʾishah, Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, Ibn ʿAbbās and others), say that Allah wills to remove any impurity from you, O People of the House was revealed about the Prophet, ʿAlī, Fāṭimah, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, many of them in Umm Salamah's house, where he gathered them under a cloak and told her, "You are upon goodness." Al-Mizan's view: the narrations all present this sentence as revealed on its own, not with the address to the wives around it; it was placed among those verses either at the Prophet's command or at the compilation of the Qur'an. → Commentary on verse 33 · Narrations · Key Debate
Verse 35: Muqātil b. Ḥayyān reports that when Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays returned from al-Ḥabashah with Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib, she complained to the Prophet that women were not mentioned in the Qur'an in the good way men were, and the verse was revealed. Al-Mizan: in other narrations it is Umm Salamah who said this. → Narrations
Verse 36: Ibn ʿAbbās reports that it was revealed when Zaynab bint Jaḥsh refused the Prophet's proposal that she marry Zayd b. Ḥārithah; Ibn Zayd says it concerned Umm Kulthūm bint ʿUqbah b. Abī Muʿayṭ, whom the Prophet married to Zayd. Al-Mizan: both reports read more as applications of the verse than as the actual occasion. → Narrations
Verse 37: Imam al-Riḍā and Imam al-Sajjād explain that what the Prophet concealed was God's word that Zaynab, then married to Zayd, would be one of his wives; he feared what the hypocrites would say. Anas reports that the verse came down when Zayd complained of Zaynab and the Prophet told him to keep his wife. Al-Mizan: there are doubts about most of these many reports. The verse shows that God ordained the marriage, so that believers might marry the former wives of their adopted sons. → Commentary on verse 37 · Narrations
Verse 50: Reports say the verse on a woman who gifts herself to the Prophet was revealed about a woman of the Anṣār who offered herself to him; others name Umm Shurayk al-Azdiyyah, Khawlah bint Ḥakīm, Laylā bint al-Khaṭīm or Maymūnah. Al-Mizan: it appears that several women gifted themselves to the Prophet. → Narrations
Verse 53: Tafsīr al-Qummī says it was revealed after the Prophet's wedding banquet for Zaynab bint Jaḥsh, when the guests stayed on chatting; a more detailed account is related from Anas. Ṣāliḥ b. Kaysān reports that the curtain (ḥijāb) was set before his wives in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the fifth year after the migration. Al-Suddī reports having heard that it does not behoove you to trouble the Messenger of Allah was revealed when Ṭalḥah b. ʿUbayd Allāh, objecting to the curtain, said that they should marry the Prophet's wives after him. → Narrations
Verses 59–60: Tafsīr al-Qummī says verse 59 was revealed because young men harassed women on their way to the evening and night prayers at the mosque, and verse 60 about hypocrites in Medina who spread rumors that the Prophet had been killed whenever he went out to battle. → 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.