The Verse of Purification (Āyat al-Taṭhīr)
وَقَرْنَ فِى بُيُوتِكُنَّ وَلَا تَبَرَّجْنَ تَبَرُّجَ ٱلْجَـٰهِلِيَّةِ ٱلْأُولَىٰ ۖ وَأَقِمْنَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتِينَ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَأَطِعْنَ ٱللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُۥٓ ۚ إِنَّمَا يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ لِيُذْهِبَ عَنكُمُ ٱلرِّجْسَ أَهْلَ ٱلْبَيْتِ وَيُطَهِّرَكُمْ تَطْهِيرًا
(33:33) Stay in your houses and do not flaunt your finery like the former [days of pagan] ignorance. Maintain the prayer and pay the zakat, and obey Allah and His Apostle. Indeed Allah desires to repel all impurity from you, O People of the Household, and purify you with a thorough purification.
The question
Who are the “People of the House” whom God wills to purify fully in 33:33 — the Prophet's wives, his wider family, or the five of the Cloak — and what does that purification mean?
Views answered: the people of the Kaʿbah or of the Prophet's Mosque, the Prophet's household, including his wives and kin, the Prophet and his wives, strict piety urged on the wives, purification simply for being his household, Zayd ibn Arqam's report: the clans forbidden charity
Al-Mizan's argument
Al-Mizan argues from the wording first: “innamā” restricts God's will to this one purpose and to these people, and the masculine plural “ʿankum” rather than the feminine “ʿankunna” shows the wives are not the ones addressed. It then sets out the other readings — the people of the Kaʿbah or the Mosque, the household with wives and kin, the Prophet and his wives, strict piety urged on the wives, or a purification earned simply by being his household — and shows why none fits. More than seventy narrations, more of them Sunni than Shiʿi, name the Prophet, ʿAlī, Fāṭimah, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, and the reports from Umm Salamah exclude her in her own house. Against the objection from context, he answers that the sentence was revealed on its own and placed among the verses on the wives, as with “today the disbelievers despair” in 5:3. “Ahl al-Bayt” is therefore a technical term for these five, and the removal of all impurity is their protection from sin (ʿiṣmah). The narrations follow: Umm Salamah and the cloak, ʿĀʾishah's report in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, the Prophet greeting them at their door for prayer, and Zayd ibn Arqam's reports with the author's reply.
Reading guide
Each part opens the commentary at that point.
- The restriction in “innamā”
- “ʿankum”, not “ʿankunna”: not the wives
- Rejected views (1): the Kaʿbah, the Mosque, the household, the kin
- Rejected views (2): strict piety for the wives
- Why the Prophet is not addressed with his wives
- Rejected views (3): purified simply as his household
- The author's view: the Prophet, ʿAlī, Fāṭimah, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn
- More than 70 narrations, mostly Sunni
- Objection: the wives could still be included
- Objection: the narrations go against the verse's context
- A technical term for five people
- Impurity (rijs) and purification mean sinlessness
- Umm Salamah and the cloak
- ʿĀʾishah's report in the two Ṣaḥīḥs
- Greeting the Ahl al-Bayt at the door for prayer
- Zayd ibn Arqam: are his wives his Ahl al-Bayt?
- “House” as lineage — and why the cloak narrations decide it