Houri
'maiden')[Note 1] or hoor al ayn in plural form, refers to maiden women with beautiful eyes who live alongside the Muslim faithful in paradise.
[2] Muslim scholars differ as to whether they refer to the believing women of this world or a separate creation, with the majority opting for the latter.
[40]In hadith, Houris have been described as "transparent to the marrow of their bones",[41][42] "eternally young",[43] "hairless except the eyebrows and the head",[43] "pure"[42] and "beautiful".
[42] Sunni hadith scholars also relate a number of sayings of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in which the houris are mentioned.
"[55][Note 2] However, M. A. S. Abdel Haleem and others point out that the description here refers in classical usage to the young age rather than emphasizing the women's physical features.
[58][59] Others, such as Abdullah Yusuf Ali, translate ka'ib as "companions",[60] with Muhammad Asad interpreting the term as being allegorical.
[61] The Sunni hadith scholar Al-Tirmidhi quotes Muhammad as having said: The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy-two houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a.
On the other hand, the houris were created "without the process of birth", according to a classical Sunni interpretation of Q.56:35 in Tafsir al-Jalalayn,[Note 3] so that the heavenly virgins have no birthday or age in the earthly sense.
[79] Sunni sources mention that like all men and women of Paradise, the houris do not experience urination, defecation or menstruation.
[81] According to Smith and Haddad, if there is any generalization that can be made of "contemporary attitudes" toward the nature of the hereafter, including Houri, it is that it is "beyond human comprehension ... beyond time", that the Quran only "alluded to analogously".
[90][91][92] [Note 4] In The Message of The Qur'an, Muhammad Asad describes the usage of the term ḥūr in the verses 44:54 and 56:22, arguing that "the noun ḥūr—rendered by me as 'companions pure'—is a plural of both aḥwār (masc.)
"[93][94] Annemarie Schimmel says that the Quranic description of the houris should be viewed in a context of love: "every pious man who lives according to God's order will enter Paradise where rivers of milk and honey flow in cool, fragrant gardens and virgin beloveds await home".
[5] Sunni theologian Aḥmad al-Ṣāwī (d. 1825), in his commentary on Ahmad al-Dardir's work, states, "The sound position is that the women of this world will be seventy thousand times better than the dark-eyed maidens (ḥūr ʿīn).
"[96] Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar Baḥraq (d.1524) mentions in his didactic primer for children that "Adamic women are better than the dark-eyed maidens due to their prayer, fasting, and devotions.
[98][99] Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari mentions that all righteous women, however old and decayed they may have been on earth, will be resurrected as virginal maidens and will, like their male counterparts, remain eternally young in paradise.
