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An-Nisaa النساء

In plain wordsEditorial

An editorial summary of the translations. Not a translation or tafsir.

One hundred and seventy-six verses, most of them law addressed to a community: orphans and their property, marriage, and how the estate of someone who has died is divided — taking its name from the women who are its recurring subject, and closing on a ruling about what a man's sister receives if he dies childless. It is the second longest surah by word count.

AALAMIN Editor · signed 25 August 2026

not a scholar — what this signature means

I am not a scholar, and nothing here asks you to treat me as one. The plain words on this site are my restatement of what the five translations shown above say, together with counts derived from the text itself — nothing more. I sign them so that a named person is accountable for every sentence, not so you'll take my word for anything. The authority on this page is the text and its translators. If my words don't match theirs, mine are the ones that are wrong.

Read the surah Go to a verse

Every verse as a number; tap one to open it. Shaded numbers mark verses where the translations differ most.

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worded differently

Where the translators differDerived

The verses of this surah whose wording differs most, most differently worded first. Under each, the two renderings that share the fewest words are quoted in full under their translators' names; every rendering is on the verse's own page. This measures wording, not meaning.

4:117
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.79. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.89.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

Verily, they call not beside Him on aught save females; and they do not call on aught save a rebellious devil

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

They invoke in His stead only females; they pray to none else than Satan, a rebel
4:116
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.78. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.84.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Lo! Allah pardoneth not that partners should be ascribed unto Him. He pardoneth all save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners unto Allah hath wandered far astray

George Sale · 1734

Verily God will not pardon the giving Him a companion, but He will pardon any crime besides that, unto whom He pleaseth: And he who giveth a companion unto God, is surely led aside into a wide mistake
Show all verses the translators word differently
4:148
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.76. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.84.

Talal Itani · 2012

God does not like the public uttering of bad language, unless someone was wronged. God is Hearing and Knowing.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Allah loveth not the utterance of harsh speech save by one who hath been wronged. Allah is ever Hearer, Knower
4:138
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.75. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.90.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

Give to the hypocrites the glad tidings that for them is grievous woe

George Sale · 1734

Declare unto the ungodly that they shall suffer a painful punishment
4:48
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.74. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.85.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Lo! Allah forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto Him. He forgiveth (all) save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners to Allah, he hath indeed invented a tremendous sin

John Medows Rodwell · 1861

Verily, God will not forgive the union of other gods with Himself! But other than this will forgive to whom He pleaseth. And He who uniteth gods with God hath devised a great wickedness
More about this surahDerived
Verses
176
Words
3,747
Place
Medinan
Revelation position
92th of 114 in an ordering its source does not name
Opening letters
None
Bismillah
Carried by the surah, unnumbered
Word-by-word breakdown
58.1% of 3,747 words carry an analysis
  1. 96
  2. 68
  3. 73
  4. 74
  5. 1
  6. 111
  7. 81
  8. 87
  9. 92
  10. 89
  11. 93
  12. 94
  13. 103
  14. 100
  15. 108
  16. 102
  17. 107
  18. 109
  19. 105
  20. 113
  21. 114
  22. 112
  23. 53
  24. 80
  25. 97
  26. 91
  27. 85
  28. 95
  29. 106
  30. 101
  31. 75
  32. 104
  33. 77
  34. 50
  35. 90
  36. 86
  37. 54
  38. 38
  39. 7
  40. 72
  41. 36
  42. 25
  43. 35
  44. 19
  45. 20
  46. 56
  47. 26
  48. 27
  49. 28
  50. 17
  51. 10
  52. 11
  53. 12
  54. 15
  55. 6
  56. 37
  57. 31
  58. 34
  59. 39
  60. 40
  61. 41
  62. 42
  63. 43
  64. 44
  65. 45
  66. 46
  67. 51
  68. 88
  69. 18
  70. 16
  71. 71
  72. 14
  73. 21
  74. 23
  75. 32
  76. 52
  77. 67
  78. 69
  79. 70
  80. 78
  81. 79
  82. 82
  83. 84
  84. 30
  85. 29
  86. 83
  87. 2
  88. 8
  89. 3
  90. 33
  91. 60
  92. 4
  93. 99
  94. 57
  95. 47
  96. 13
  97. 55
  98. 76
  99. 65
  100. 98
  101. 59
  102. 24
  103. 22
  104. 63
  105. 58
  106. 49
  107. 66
  108. 64
  109. 61
  110. 62
  111. 48
  112. 5
  113. 9
  114. 110

Meccan Medinan

Counted from the text and the spine at build time, not written into the page. Opening letters are derived from the edition's orthography: an opening token of at most five letters carrying none of its vocalisation marks. The revelation position is reproduced from Revelation order as encoded by the Tanzil metadata, which does not name whose ordering it is.

Analysis detailsDerived

These figures count the words the translations share. They measure wording, not meaning, and they do not say which translation is right.

Mean score across this surah
0.62 across 176 scored verses

The page says a verse is worded differently only above the cut below. The cut is a stated convention, not a property of the text, and it can be changed.

The cut
0.644
Share of measured verses above it
33%
Verses above it
2,079
Verses measured
6,236
Method Wording differences — derived 13 September 2026
Method
Mean pairwise Jaccard distance over the lowercased word sets of the cleared translations of each verse. A verse is marked as worded differently when its score falls in the top third of the corpus — the cut set out in Analysis details.
Scored
6,236 verses
As at
13 September 2026, 10:56 UTC
Sources for this page

Surah metadataTanzil Qur'an metadata ·quran-data.xml v1.0·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution — version not specified by the source·retrieved 24 Aug 2026

Surah metadata from Tanzil Qur'an metadata (quran-data.xml, version 1.0), Tanzil Project, tanzil.net. (C) 2008-2009 Tanzil.info. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution; the source does not state a version. Values are reproduced unchanged; this site selects and arranges them, and derives verse ranges from the division start points. https://tanzil.net/res/text/metadata/quran-data.xml