and His words: “So make peace between your brothers” (Qur’an 49:10), and the statement of the Messenger of God—peace and blessings be upon him—“Visit the sick, feed the hungry, and free the captive.” Such instances are plentiful and well-known.
Thus, whenever the very action that is commanded is itself derived from a meaning broader than that action, the demand and obligation are attached to that broader, underlying meaning; hence it is required all the more emphatically.
Second Aspect:
All verbs are derivatives, whether the verb is derived from the verbal noun, the verbal noun from the verb, or each from the other. What matters is that they share a correspondence in wording and meaning, not that one is the root while the other is merely an offshoot—much like correlative notions such as fatherhood and sonship, or the mutual brotherhood that exists on both sides, and the like.
(1) The phrase “wa qawluhu” (“and His words”) is absent from manuscript Ṭ.
(2) Qurʾan, Surah al-Hujurat, verse 10.
(3) Al-Bukhari relates this hadith in his Sahih on the authority of Abu Musa al-Ashʿari: “Set the captive free—that is, the prisoner—feed the hungry, and visit the sick.” See Fath al-Bari, Book of Jihad, “Chapter on Ransoming the Prisoner,” no. 3046 (6/167). Al-Bukhari also records it in several other places. Abu Dawud transmits it in his Sunan with the wording, “Set the captive free and feed the hungry,” in the Book of Military Expeditions, “Chapter on Ransoming the Prisoner” (2/223); Ahmad includes it in his Musnad (4/394, 406).
(4) Manuscripts J and D read: fa-in (“so if”).
(5) The printed edition reads: kanat hiya (“it itself was”).
(6) The printed edition has: kull wahid (“each one”).
(7) Manuscript B reads: minha (“of them”).
(8) That is: nouns mutually ascribed to one another, such as attributing a son (ibn) to his father, the son being a branch and the father the root. This differs from deriving a verb from its root or vice-versa, where their relationship does not entail that either is the origin of the other; it is merely a semantic correspondence.