At the beginning of Safar in the year 61 AH, the captives from Karbala arrived in Sham. They were halted at the door, left standing to wait, and paraded before the crowd. Among them was Ali ibn al-Husain a.s., who at that point had borne the imamah for three weeks.

An elderly man of Sham came forward. He praised Allah that, as he saw it, Allah had destroyed them and cut off the horn of sedition. Then he began to insult them, and went on until he had finished.

What is striking is not only the insult but the answer it received. The Imam a.s. did not reply with argument, still less with anger. He asked only: have you read the Qur’an? The man answered yes. So the Imam a.s. recited three verses.

Those three verses are the subject of this article. Not because only three verses of the Qur’an speak of the Ahlul Bayt a.s. — there are far more — but because out of all of them, these are the three he chose to recite to a man who had just finished insulting him.

1. The Verse of Mawaddah — QS Ash-Shura (42):23

ذَٰلِكَ ٱلَّذِي يُبَشِّرُ ٱللَّهُ عِبَادَهُ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَعَمِلُواْ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَٰتِۗ قُل لَّآ أَسۡـَٔلُكُمۡ عَلَيۡهِ أَجۡرًا إِلَّا ٱلۡمَوَدَّةَ فِي ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰۗ وَمَن يَقۡتَرِفۡ حَسَنَةٗ نَّزِدۡ لَهُۥ فِيهَا حُسۡنًاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٞ شَكُورٌ

“... Say: I ask of you no reward for it except love for the near of kin.”

Note who is speaking. The word qul — say — shows that the sentence is not the Messenger of Allah SAAW’s own composition but a command from Allah SWT to be conveyed. This matters: were a man to ask that his own family be loved, the request would rightly invite suspicion. Here the one asking is Allah, and the Messenger SAAW only delivers it.

Note too what is asked. Every prophet before him, when asked about payment, answered that his reward lay with Allah. The Messenger of Allah SAAW likewise asks no reward — illa, except for one thing: al mawaddah fil qurba. Not wealth, not standing, not followers. One matter only.

The word used is mawaddah, not simply hubb. Mawaddah is love that shows, love that must take shape in conduct — the same word the Qur’an uses of the bond between husband and wife. What is asked for, then, is not a feeling kept in the chest but an affection made real in what one does.

This is also the verse whose meaning has been redirected most often. Some read al qurba as the relatives of whoever is being addressed, so that the sense becomes: love your own family. Such a reading collapses on its own once we ask whether revelation was needed to instruct a man to love his own children. Others read al qurba as the Quraysh, the Messenger of Allah SAAW’s kin at large. That cannot stand either, since among the Quraysh were those who raised swords against Amirul Mu’minin a.s. Allah cannot have commanded unqualified love for a group some of whom fought His wali.

2. The Verse of the Kinsman’s Right — QS Al-Isra (17):26

وَءَاتِ ذَا ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ حَقَّهُۥ وَٱلۡمِسۡكِينَ وَٱبۡنَ ٱلسَّبِيلِ وَلَا تُبَذِّرۡ تَبۡذِيرًا

“And give the near of kin his right, and the poor and the traveller; and do not squander wastefully.”

The first verse speaks of the disposition of the heart; the second speaks of a right that must be discharged. They belong together: an acknowledgement without the discharging of the right is an acknowledgement left unfinished.

A number of commentators hold that this verse came down concerning Fadak. The people of Fadak handed their land to the Messenger of Allah SAAW without a battle, which put it on a different footing from Khaibar: not ghanimah to be divided into fifths, but fai belonging to him personally. In that report, when the verse came down the Messenger of Allah SAAW gave Fadak to Fatimah az-Zahra a.s. as her right — the right later taken from her after her father’s passing.

So when Imam Zainal Abidin a.s. recited this verse in Sham, he was showing that the dispossession of his family did not begin at Karbala. It began long before, with a right that went undischarged.

3. The Verse of Tathir — QS Al-Ahzab (33):33

وَقَرۡنَ فِي بُيُوتِكُنَّ وَلَا تَبَرَّجۡنَ تَبَرُّجَ ٱلۡجَٰهِلِيَّةِ ٱلۡأُولَىٰۖ وَأَقِمۡنَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتِينَ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَأَطِعۡنَ ٱللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُۥٓۚ إِنَّمَا يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ لِيُذۡهِبَ عَنكُمُ ٱلرِّجۡسَ أَهۡلَ ٱلۡبَيۡتِ وَيُطَهِّرَكُمۡ تَطۡهِيرٗا

“... Allah only wishes to remove impurity from you, O people of the house, and to purify you with a thorough purification.”

This third verse is the most decisive. It speaks neither of affection nor of rights, but of Allah’s own will concerning one family.

It should be noted that this sentence closes a verse whose opening is indeed addressed to the wives of the Prophet. In the closing clause, however, the pronoun changes: no longer the feminine form (kunna) but the form that takes in the masculine (kum) — ’ankum, yutahhirakum. That shift of pronoun is one of the proofs that the Ahlul Bayt meant at the close of the verse are not the wives of the Prophet.

Who is meant was settled by the Messenger of Allah SAAW himself, in the event known as the hadith of the Kisa, related in both Sunni and Shia sources: he gathered Ali, Fatimah, Hasan and Husain a.s. beneath a single cloak, and this verse was recited. He did not leave his community to guess.

Note also that Allah does not say “the occupants of a house” in the sense of a building, but ahlal bayt — and no other group in the Qur’an is said to be purified by Allah with a purification of this kind.

What the man answered

The report states that once the three verses had been recited, the old man raised his hands. He did not merely profess love for the Ahlul Bayt a.s.; he also disowned those who were their enemies. For love in earnest cannot stand alongside taking the side of those who wound the one loved.

Consider how hard that step was. He stood in the city of Sham, before a crowd, under a power that had cultivated that enmity for decades. Yet the door of repentance has never been closed to anyone who finds the Ahlul Bayt a.s., just as it was not closed to Hurr ibn Yazid ar-Riyahi, who crossed from one line to the other on the morning of Ashura.

Why these three

The Imam a.s. faced a man who had read the Qur’an all his life and yet did not recognise the family of the Prophet within it. So he did not answer insult with insult, nor did he argue from hadith — hadith can be waved away by someone who does not accept it. He opened the Qur’an, the book his interlocutor acknowledged himself.

Here lies the lesson for us. A person may memorise all thirty juz of the Qur’an and still not know the standing of the Ahlul Bayt a.s. within it. That memorisation is meritorious, but memorisation is no guarantee. Some of those present at Karbala on the opposing side knew the Qur’an well.

These three verses are short and easily committed to memory. If one day someone asks why we are so earnest in following the Ahlul Bayt a.s., three references are answer enough: QS 42:23, QS 17:26, and QS 33:33.

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(1) This article was developed from a talk by Dr. Sayed Ammar Nakshawani at the Arbaeen 1447/2025 majlis, “Three Verses Every Muslim Must Know” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJLe7g5luMg). The arrangement, wording and conclusions here are the author’s own; the talk is the source of the theme and of the events recounted.
(2) The pronouns in QS 33:33 are discussed at greater length in How, and With Whom, the Qur’an elsewhere in this archive.