884 – Jābir ibn ʿAbd-Allāh (may Allah be pleased with him) said:

“The Jews used to say, ‘If a man comes to his wife from her rear while still in her front, the child will be born cross-eyed.’ Thereupon the verse was revealed: ‘Your wives are a tilth for you, so approach your tilth as you wish’ (Q 2:223).” Agreed upon; the wording is that of Muslim (1).

Vocabulary of the ḥadith
• atā ar-rajul imraʾatahu – he had marital intercourse with her.
• min duburihā – from the direction of her buttocks.
• fī qubulihā – al-qubul is the front of a thing; here it means the woman’s anterior private part.
• aḥwal – one whose eye is afflicted with ḥawal (strabismus, cross-eyedness).
– Al-Mawsūʿa al-Muyassara: ḥawal (with an open wāw) is a general term for every condition in which the visual axes of the two eyes deviate from their normal alignment.
– Al-Maghrib: ḥawal is when one pupil turns toward the nose and the other toward the temple.
– Physicians state that its causes include disorders in the nerves of the ocular muscles, weakness in those muscles, errors in the refraction of light entering the eye, and other factors.
• ḥarth – ḥaratha al-arḍa ḥarthan: he tilled the land for cultivation; hence His saying, Exalted is He, “Your wives are a tilth for you….”