قرآن کریم میں احسان

Gabriel (peace be upon him) asked the Prophet ﷺ, in the form of an unrecognized man, about Islam and he answered him, then about faith (īmān) and he answered him, then he asked him about the highest of the three ranks: "Inform me about excellence (iḥsān)," and he ﷺ said: "That you worship God as though you see Him, and if you do not see Him, then indeed He sees you"^[1]. The Prophet ﷺ did not answer about iḥsān by mentioning an additional act to be done, but with a state of summoning [God's presence] that accompanies every act. And this alone discloses that iḥsān in the balance of revelation is not an item added to the list of obligations, but a quality by which all acts are raised above their minimum limit.

Delimiting the word and the count

The root "ḥ-s-n" occurs in the Qurʾan one hundred and ninety-four times, in twelve forms. But this large number is distributed over two distinct semantic fields: the field of "ḥusn" as beauty or good in a thing or a recompense — including "ḥasuna" (3 times), "aḥsan" in the sense of the best and most beautiful (36 times), "ḥusn" (13 times), "ḥasan" (21 times), "ḥasanāt" (3 times), "ḥusnā" (17 times), and "ḥasanah" (28 times) — all of which describe the quality of beauty or good in an existing thing, not the act of iḥsān in its active sense. As for the field that concerns us here specifically, it is the forms of the form-IV verb "aḥsana," which indicates the willed, transitive act: the producing of goodness in an act the agent performs toward another. This field includes: twenty-one times the verb "aḥsana," twelve times the noun "iḥsān," and thirty-nine times the active participle "muḥsin/muḥsinūn/muḥsināt" — that is, seventy-two places that are the direct verbal witness for the concept of "iḥsān" as an active act, out of a total of one hundred and ninety-four places for the root in general.

The linguistic root: from description to act

In the origin of the language, "ḥasuna" is an intransitive verb describing the presence of beauty in the thing itself: the face was beautiful, the character was good. But "aḥsana" — its hamzah is the hamzah of transitivity that transforms the intransitive verb into a transitive one: from "the thing was beautiful in itself" to "the agent made the act good," that is, he made it good by his own action. This precise morphological transition — from static description to transitive act — is the key to understanding the difference between "al-ḥasan" (the beautiful thing in itself) and "al-iḥsān" (the act by which the agent does good to another or in his work), and it is the difference that makes this article concerned with the second field rather than the first.

The central structure: beyond the obligatory due

The Qurʾan defines iḥsān implicitly when it pairs it with justice (ʿadl) in a single verse considered among the most comprehensive verses of the Qurʾan: "Indeed, God commands justice, excellence (iḥsān), and giving to relatives" [16:90]. An earlier article of this series detailed the difference between qisṭ and ʿadl as an outer and an inner balance; and iḥsān here adds a third layer above both of them: for justice, in the definition of most scholars, is reciprocation with the like — that you give every possessor of a right his right, no more and no less; but iḥsān is the graciousness that exceeds the obligatory right, that you give more than is obligatory upon you or take less than is your due. So if justice is the minimum below which it is not permissible to descend, then iḥsān is the horizon that has no upper limit. And this is why iḥsān always comes in the Qurʾan paired with a place in which the agent exceeds what would have sufficed him to do had he contented himself with justice alone.

A recurrent model: iḥsān directly after the right of God

Among the most wondrous things that the tracing of the word discloses is that the command to excellence toward parents recurs in the Qurʾan five times in a nearly verbatim form, and always in the same place: directly after the command to affirm the oneness of God, with no interval: "And worship God and associate nothing with Him, and [show] to parents good treatment (iḥsānan)" [4:36, and in nearly the same form 2:83, 6:151, 17:23, 46:15]. The Qurʾan did not say "then to parents good treatment" with a temporal or ranked interval, but conjoined excellence toward parents to the right of God with the direct conjunction "and," as though it grants this human right the second place after the right of the Creator without intermediary. And this verbatim recurrence five times in five different suras is not a stylistic coincidence, but a deliberate emphasis that excellence toward parents is not a secondary door of the doors of righteousness, but the direct extension of the affirmation of God's oneness into the arena of human relationships.

Another model: the condition of sound submission

The Qurʾan links iḥsān to the soundness of submission to God in three places in a close form: "Yes, whoever submits his face to God while being a doer of good (muḥsin) — he will have his reward with his Lord" [2:112, and in the same meaning 4:125, 31:22]. So the verse does not content itself with the condition "submits his face to God," but appends to it a qualification: "while being a doer of good" — as though bare submission, devoid of iḥsān in the performance, does not reach its required perfection. This accords entirely with what came in the hadith of Gabriel: for Islam is pillars performed, and faith is creeds assented to, but iḥsān is the spirit that flows through the performance of the pillars and the assent to the creeds together, making worship a summoning [of God's presence], not a mere repetition.

A third model: a way recurring across the prophets

The Qurʾan seals in Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt five consecutive prophetic stories — Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, and Elias — with the same refrain verbatim: "Indeed, thus do We reward the doers of good (al-muḥsinīn)" [37:80, 105, 110, 121, 131]. Five stories entirely different in their details — a flood, a sacrifice, the parting of a sea — gathered by a single unchanging seal: that the reward of iḥsān is a fixed divine way across all the prophets, not a treatment particular to a specific prophet. And in this is an indication that iḥsān is not a station particular to the elite of the elite, but a fixed criterion by which everyone who reaches it is rewarded, from a prophet to the last of people in standing.

A fourth model: is the reward for good other than good?

And in Sūrat al-Raḥmān, after the succession of blessings the sura enumerated, a short verse comes to summarize the whole logic of recompense: "Is the reward for good (iḥsān) other than good (iḥsān)?" [55:60]. And the context in which this verse came is an otherworldly context: the reward of one who did good in this world is a Paradise in which he is treated well. But the scholars did not stop at this meaning alone; rather, they extracted from it a general ethical rule valid for every human dealing: that one who does good to you deserves from you a good that exceeds mere reciprocation with the like. And this adds a layer to the central structure this article has established: for if iḥsān in its essence is a graciousness that exceeds the obligatory, then reciprocating it with iḥsān is another graciousness that exceeds the obligatory as well; so the one done good to does not content himself with a thanks that equals what he received, but exceeds it, so that the movement of graciousness continues without stopping at the limit of the equation.

The Prophetic witness

The hadith of Gabriel with which this article opened was narrated by ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may God be pleased with him), and recorded by Muslim in his Ṣaḥīḥ (no. 8)^[1]. And the commentators on the hadith add that iḥsān in it has two degrees: the first is the summoning of the heart's vision of God, by which the sincerity of the deed and its precision increase, and the second is the summoning of God's knowledge of His seeing the servant, which impels him to self-watchfulness and modesty before Him. And both degrees pour into the very meaning the linguistic analysis disclosed: that iḥsān is not an additional act to be done, but a quality by which the acts that already exist are raised above their minimum limit.

An objective-based (maqāṣidī) reading

A number of scholars hold, in treating verse [16:90], that the ordering of the three virtues in it — justice, then iḥsān, then giving to relatives — is a deliberate ascending order: justice is an obligatory minimum whose abandoner is not excused, iḥsān is a graciousness whose doer is rewarded and whose abandoner is not punished, and giving to relatives — which is maintaining the ties of kinship with kindness without recompense — is the highest of the three because it is a giving that awaits neither reward nor even praise. And on this order, iḥsān is an intermediate door between what every legally responsible person is obligated to and the highest ranks of graciousness, which is what explains the frequency of its occurrence in varied contexts: excellence toward parents, and toward relatives, orphans, and the needy [4:36], and toward one who wronged you ("and those who pardon people," [3:134]), and even in the most precise procedural details like divorce ("so retention with kindness or release with excellence (iḥsān)," [2:229]). So iḥsān, in the Qurʾanic system, is not a single arena but a criterion of performance applied to every arena in which an obligatory minimum and a higher possible horizon can be conceived.

The contemporary applied dimension

Many today confuse "performing the obligation" with "excellence in it," supposing that fulfilling the minimum of their responsibilities — toward their parents, or their work, or those under their care — is enough to clear the conscience. But the five verses that pair iḥsān with parents directly after the affirmation of God's oneness remind us that there is a real difference between one who visits his parents by virtue of the social obligation and one who does good to them beyond what is asked of him; the first is just within the limits of obligation, and the second is a doer of good in a horizon with no ceiling. And in the work environment, the definition of iḥsān as "beyond what is due" serves as a practical criterion for distinguishing between an employee who performs what is required of him literally and another who does his performance well beyond the text of the job description. And the hadith of Gabriel adds a dimension that outward performance alone does not dispense with: that in every act — whether obligatory or gracious — it be summoned that God sees it, for that is the spirit that makes iḥsān iḥsān and not mere technical precision without a summoning of the heart.

And in daily human relationships, the verse "is the reward for good other than good" offers a balance different from the common balance of "returning the favor," which often contents itself with equating the act with its like. For one who did you a kindness, it suffices in the logic of justice that you return to him a kindness that equals it; but the logic of iḥsān calls for exceeding it, not merely balancing it. And this explains why iḥsān is mentioned in the Qurʾan only in contexts in which the agent is expected to content himself with the minimum: those who pardon people, instead of retaliating against them in kind; and the one who retains with kindness or releases with excellence, instead of divorcing with the fewest possible rights; and parents to whom the son has performed their basic rights, so he is asked to exceed them.

Conclusion

From Gabriel's question about the highest of the three ranks, to a verse recurring five times appending parents to the right of God directly, to a single refrain sealing five different prophetic stories, the Qurʾan draws for iḥsān a single unchanging meaning: a performance that exceeds the obligatory limit, with a heart that summons that the one to whom the act is done sees it before anyone else sees it. And God, the Exalted, knows best; He is the Guardian of success.