Tazkiyah in the Qurʾan

In the Qurʾan, tazkiyah is not mere cleansing but purification that is also growth: the soul flourishes only as it is purified, and is purified only as it grows; and while striving belongs to the servant, the final verdict on its fruit belongs to God alone.

By Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali Abouseif, President of the American Imams Academy (AIA)

Sūrat al-Shams opens with a chain of oaths unmatched in the whole Qurʾan: by the sun and its brightness, by the moon when it follows it, by the day when it reveals it, by the night when it veils it, by the heaven and Him who built it, by the earth and Him who spread it out. Seven successive cosmic oaths, portraying the universe in its grandest aspects: light following light, darkness following darkness, the edifice raised over the expanse. Then, after this vast assembly of creation's majesty, the passage descends suddenly to the smallest point imaginable: the soul of a single human being.

﴿وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا، فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا، قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا، وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ دَسَّاهَا﴾ (91:7-10)

"And by the soul and Him who fashioned it, and inspired it with its wickedness and its righteousness: he who purifies it has truly prospered, and he who buries it has truly failed."

The whole universe is called to witness one case alone: that this small soul bears within itself two opposing possibilities, and that its success hinges on one particular act, that it be purified (tuzakkā).

This act, tazkiyah, is the subject of this article in the series on Qurʾanic concepts, and its very linguistic root holds a surprise: it does not distinguish between purification and growth, but makes them one meaning.

The Root and Its Occurrences

The root z-k-w occurs in the Qurʾan fifty-nine times, in seven forms: once as the triliteral verb zakā (24:21); twelve times as the verb of the second form, zakkā (among them 2:129, 2:151, 3:164, 4:49, 9:103, 91:9); eight times as the verb of the fifth form, tazakkā (20:76; 35:18, twice; 79:18; 80:3; 80:7; 87:14; 92:18); four times as the elative azkā (2:232, 18:19, 24:28, 24:30); thirty-two times as the noun zakāh, which alone accounts for more than half the occurrences of the whole root; once as the adjective zakiyy (19:19, describing Yaḥyā, peace be upon him); and once as the noun zakiyyah (18:74, in the story of al-Khiḍr).^[2]

This distribution is itself significant for method. Thirty-two of the fifty-nine occurrences turn to zakāh in its specific juristic sense (the obligatory almsgiving, most often paired with prayer), while the remaining twenty-seven are spread over verbal forms that describe the process of tazkiyah as an act that concerns the soul and not property. This article treats both branches together, because the single root that joins them is the key to understanding, as will become clear.

The Linguistic Root: When Purification Joins Growth

In the origin of the language, zakā points to two meanings that seem at first glance distinct: purity and cleanness on the one hand, and growth and increase on the other. One says zakā al-zarʿ when the crop grew and flourished, and zakat al-nafs when the soul became pure and sound. Yet the early lexicographers did not count these as two meanings but as one. A crop does not truly grow unless it is free of blight, and a soul is not truly purified unless it is in a state of growth and increase. Purification, in this original sense, is not a loss torn from a thing; it is the very condition that allows the thing to grow.

This union of the two meanings explains the most remarkable feature of the root's distribution. The very word that denotes giving out a portion of one's wealth, which looks outwardly like a material loss, is zakāh, and the Qurʾan describes it as ﴿تُطَهِّرُهُمْ وَتُزَكِّيهِمْ﴾ (9:103), "purifying them and causing them to grow," while it describes what exceeds it with the word azkā (2:232, 18:19, 24:28, 24:30), that is, "more fruitful and more blessed." The giving away of wealth, which seems an arithmetical loss, is itself the act of true growth, just as the pruning of a tree, a cutting that outwardly looks like diminishment, is what makes it more abundant in fruit.

The Central Structure: He Who Purifies It Has Prospered, and He Who Buries It Has Failed

In a single verse of Sūrat al-Shams, the Qurʾan sets out a contrasting image that sums up the central structure of the whole concept: ﴿قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا، وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ دَسَّاهَا﴾ (91:9-10). Over against zakkāhā, "caused it to grow and purified it," stands the verb dassāhā, from dass: to conceal, to bury. It is as though whoever does not purify his soul has not simply left it as it was, but has buried it and hidden it beneath layers of heedlessness and desire, and so kept it from the growth it had been inspired with in the first place (﴿فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا﴾). Tazkiyah is therefore not a neutral process but a contest between growth set free and burial practiced, and the outcome is either success or failure, with no third station.

The Qurʾan adds to this duality a further tension of importance: who holds the right of tazkiyah? Eight times the fifth-form verb tazakkā occurs in a construction that attributes the act to the human being himself (﴿وَمَنْ تَزَكَّىٰ فَإِنَّمَا يَتَزَكَّىٰ لِنَفْسِهِ﴾, 35:18, "whoever purifies himself purifies himself only for his own good"), as though the door of personal striving in self-purification stood open to everyone.

Yet the Qurʾan warns in explicit terms against anyone's claiming this purity for himself as a self-testimony:

﴿أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى الَّذِينَ يُزَكُّونَ أَنْفُسَهُمْ، بَلِ اللَّهُ يُزَكِّي مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَلَا يُظْلَمُونَ فَتِيلًا﴾ (4:49)

"Have you not seen those who claim purity for themselves? Rather, it is God who purifies whom He wills, and they will not be wronged by so much as a thread."

Striving for tazkiyah is thus a duty laid upon the servant (tazakkā is an act required of him), but the final testimony that this striving has borne fruit is not his to give. It is a verdict that none can pronounce but God alone. Whoever purifies himself by himself, bearing witness to his own purity independently, falls into the very rejected claim against which the Qurʾan warns in another verse:

﴿فَلَا تُزَكُّوا أَنْفُسَكُمْ هُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِمَنِ اتَّقَىٰ﴾ (53:32)

"So do not claim purity for yourselves; He knows best who is mindful of Him."

Two Further Models: A Name and a Soul

This root carries two other indications that deserve a pause. The first is in the story of Yaḥyā (peace be upon him), in the account of the glad tidings given to Zakariyyā of a boy whom God describes with a single attribute: ﴿إِنَّا نُبَشِّرُكَ بِغُلَامٍ اسْمُهُ يَحْيَىٰ﴾ (19:7), and then, elsewhere and on the tongue of Gabriel, ﴿لِأَهَبَ لَكِ غُلَامًا زَكِيًّا﴾ (19:19), "that I may grant you a pure boy."

The attribute chosen, while he is still only a promise, before he is born or comes of age or is tried, is therefore zakiyy, "pure." Here tazkiyah appears to precede all human action, an initial gift from God to a servant He has chosen to bear prophethood, and not the product of accumulated effort alone. This does not contradict what we drew from tazkiyah being required of the servant (tazakkā); it adds a further dimension: some servants are granted the root of purity as an advance gift, so that their striving afterward is a building upon a foundation and not a founding out of nothing.

The second is in the story of Moses and al-Khiḍr, when al-Khiḍr kills a boy and Moses cries out in protest:

﴿أَقَتَلْتَ نَفْسًا زَكِيَّةً بِغَيْرِ نَفْسٍ﴾ (18:74)

"Have you killed an innocent soul, who had killed no one?"

Here Moses calls the soul zakiyyah by a purely outward standard: that it had committed no known crime. This solitary occurrence is a reminder that the word zakā, in the language, may also be used as a provisional description of outward innocence, and not as an unseen testimony to the inward state; and that God alone, as al-Khiḍr was afterward shown, knows of the realities of souls what even the most upright of prophets cannot know from outward appearances.

A Qurʾanic Model: The Order of the Prophetic Mission

A threefold description of the Messenger's ﷺ mission recurs in the Qurʾan in almost identical form in four places:

﴿يَتْلُو عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ﴾ (2:129; and similarly 2:151, 3:164, 62:2)

"He recites His verses to them, purifies them, and teaches them the Book and the wisdom."

Three missions in order: recitation, then purification, then teaching. The order is striking. Purification is not mentioned after teaching, as its late fruit, but stands in the middle of the prophetic mission, between the recitation of the text and the teaching of its detailed content. It is as though the Qurʾan establishes that the purification and readying of the heart is not the final product of knowledge but a condition that accompanies it from the first moment the revelation is recited; for an unpurified heart may hear the verses and memorize the Book and the wisdom, and benefit from neither.

The frequent pairing of zakāh with ṣalāh, prayer (in more than twenty of the thirty-two places), points to a further dimension of the concept: tazkiyah in its juristic form is not a solitary, individual matter like the psychological purification described in the verses of Sūrat al-Shams, but its social extension. Just as the heart needs an inward purification, in which its owner is inspired and for which he strives, the whole society needs a parallel purification, embodied in the regular flow of wealth from the rich to the poor, so that riches do not pile up in one place and become, as other verses put it, ﴿دُولَةً بَيْنَ الْأَغْنِيَاءِ﴾, "a circulation among the wealthy only." One word thus joins the two dimensions: a purity in the breast of the individual, and a purity in the body of the community; and in the Qurʾanic scheme neither is severed from the other.

The Prophetic Witness

The Prophet ﷺ himself, though by the Qurʾan's own text the purifier of his community, used to pray that God would take upon Himself the purification of his own soul:

«اللَّهُمَّ آتِ نَفْسِي تَقْوَاهَا وَزَكِّهَا أَنْتَ خَيْرُ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا، أَنْتَ وَلِيُّهَا وَمَوْلَاهَا»^[1]

"O God, grant my soul its piety and purify it, for You are the best of those who purify it; You are its Protector and its Master."

This supplication embodies exactly the tension that the verses disclosed. The Prophet ﷺ does not say, "I have purified my soul," but asks God outright for its purification, and calls Him "the best of those who purify it," meaning that no one else, however great his righteousness and standing, is either its first source or its final witness. If this is the prayer of the best of creation, those beneath him have still more reason not to purify themselves independently of the judgment of their Lord.

A Reading in Light of the Higher Objectives

A number of exegetes, in treating the threefold order of recitation, purification, and teaching, have observed that putting purification before detailed teaching points to a truth: the aim of sending the messengers is not to heap up information in the mind but first to reform the seat of will and intention in the heart, so that the knowledge acquired afterward may be fruitful and not a burden.

This accords with the Qurʾan's warning against knowledge that does not profit, from which the Prophet ﷺ sought refuge in the very supplication in which he asked for purification: «اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنْ عِلْمٍ لَا يَنْفَعُ، وَمِنْ قَلْبٍ لَا يَخْشَعُ», "O God, I seek refuge in You from knowledge that does not profit, and from a heart that does not humble itself." For knowledge without prior or accompanying purification may become an instrument of the inspired wickedness rather than of the inspired piety, since the very verse that established the concept declared that the soul was inspired with both together: ﴿فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا﴾, "its wickedness and its righteousness."

The Contemporary Application

Whoever strives today to improve or refine himself will find in this concept a correction of two common misunderstandings. The first is that to purify oneself of a fault means merely to remove it. The Qurʾan teaches that true purification is accompanied by a growth that takes the place of what has been removed: whoever has given up a bad habit without putting a righteous act in its place has not yet purified his soul in the full Qurʾanic sense, but has stopped halfway.

The second is that a person may suppose his own testimony to his righteousness to be sufficient. The verses warn against making oneself the judge of the purity of one's own heart. The need for outside appraisal, and for continued supplication and dependence, is no sign of weakness on the way of tazkiyah but an essential part of it, as the Prophet ﷺ showed when he asked it of his Lord in spite of his own station.

There is a message here as well for everyone who spends money or time that he counts a loss: zakāh, by its very root, teaches that the giving that seems a diminishment is often the hidden condition of true growth, in wealth as in the soul.

And the scene of Yaḥyā (peace be upon him) serves as a reminder to whoever raises children or has others in his charge: some readiness for purity is granted early, as a gift rather than an acquisition, and the educator's task is less to plant purity from nothing than to protect what has been given and not to bury it, which is the very meaning against which the verse ﴿وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ دَسَّاهَا﴾ warns. How many a sound, innate readiness has been buried, not because it did not exist, but because those around it treated it with neglect or harshness until it was entombed.

Conclusion

From a cosmic oath by the sun and the moon to a quiet Prophetic supplication in the depth of the night, the Qurʾan draws the concept of tazkiyah as a growth that is realized only through purification, and a purification that is completed only through growth. "He who purifies it has prospered" is not a promise to one who has merely cleansed his soul of a fault, but to one who has released within it a new life. This is what the concepts of this Qurʾanic series, from ḥanīfiyyah to tazkiyah and beyond, seek to describe: a heart established upon its innate origin, so that it stands firm, widens, and grows, until it meets its Lord pure. And God, the Exalted, knows best; from Him alone comes all success.