Verse. 495

٤ - ٱلنِّسَاء

4 - An-Nisa

وَاٰتُوا الْيَــتٰمٰۗى اَمْوَالَھُمْ وَلَا تَتَبَدَّلُوا الْخَبِيْثَ بِالطَّيِّبِ۝۰۠ وَلَا تَاْكُلُوْۗا اَمْوَالَھُمْ اِلٰۗى اَمْوَالِكُمْ۝۰ۭ اِنَّہٗ كَانَ حُوْبًا كَبِيْرًا۝۲
Waatoo alyatama amwalahum wala tatabaddaloo alkhabeetha bialttayyibi wala takuloo amwalahum ila amwalikum innahu kana hooban kabeeran

English

Ahmed Ali

Give to the orphans their possessions, and do not replace things of your own which are bad with things which are good among theirs, and do not intermix their goods with your own and make use of them, for this is a grievous crime.

2

Tafseer

'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī

تفسير : (give unto orphans their wealth) which is with you when they reach the legal age. (exchange not the good for the bad (in your management)) do not consume their wealth which is prohibited for you while leaving your own wealth which is lawful for you (nor absorb their wealth into your own wealth) by mixing them. (lo! that) wrongfully consuming the wealth of the orphan (would be a great sin) which will be met by allah's punishment. this was revealed about a man from ghatafan who had in his possession a great amount of wealth that belonged to his orphaned nephew. when this verse was revealed he decided to separate the wealth of his nephew from his own for fear of committing a sin. allah then revealed the following:

Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī

تفسير : the following was revealed regarding an orphan who demanded his property from his guardian but was refused it: give the orphans, the under-age ones that have no father, their property, when they have reached maturity, and do not exchange the evil, the unlawful, for the good, the lawful, that is, taking the one in place of the other, as you do when you take what is good from the orphan’s property, and leave him your faulty property instead; and absorb not their property, [by] adding it, into your property; surely that, the absorbing of it, is a great crime, a serious sin. when this was revealed they found it difficult to maintain guardianship over orphans, and some of them had ten or eight wives under their care, and did not treat them all equally, and so the following was revealed:

Ali ibn Ahmad al-Wahidi

تفسير : (give unto orphans their wealth…) [4:2]. muqatil and al-kalbi said: “this was revealed about a man from ghatafan who had in his possession an abundant fortune which belonged to his orphaned nephew. when this orphan reached the age of puberty he claimed this fortune but his uncle refused to give it to him. as a result they took their dispute to the messenger of allah, allah bless him and give him peace, and then this verse was revealed. when the uncle heard this verse he said: ‘we obey allah and we obey his messenger; we seek refuge in allah from the great peril’, and he handed the wealth over to his nephew. the messenger of allah, allah bless him and give him peace, said: ‘whoever is saved from the stinginess of his ego and turn it over like thus will abide in allah’s garden’. when the youth received his fortune, he spent it in the way of allah, exalted is he, which prompted the prophet, allah bless him and give him peace, to say: ‘the reward is confirmed but the sin still persists’. some asked: ‘o messenger of allah! we know that the reward is confirmed, but how is it that the sin still persists when he is spending his wealth in the way of allah?’ he said: ‘the reward is confirmed for the youth while the sin persists for his father’ ”.