To emphasize that the phrase “Ahlul Bayt” in this verse...

To emphasize that the phrase “Ahlul Bayt” in this verse refers only to five people—, ‘Ali, Lady Fatima, Hassan, and Husayn—narrators say that whenever the Prophet used to pass by his daughter, Lady Fatima’s house on the way to the masjid for the dawn prayers he would stop there and proclaim, “Come to prayer, O Ahlul Bayt, to prayer.

Allah desires to keep away un-cleanliness from you, O Ahlul Bayt, and to make you as pure as possible.”[^5] Imam Anas ibn Malik adds that the Prophet did this for six months every day on his way for his morning prayers at the masjid.[^6] The Verse of Affection (Muwaddah) Say, I do not ask from you any reward for it (preaching the message) but love for my relatives (qurba which here refers to the Ahlul Bayt [^7] ).

[^8] When explaining this verse, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi says, “Without doubt, no one was as near to the Prophet as Lady Fatima, ‘Ali, Hassan, and Husayn. This is a well-known fact for all the chains of narration, that these were his ‘ al ’.” Thus, ‘ al ’ or ‘ ahl ’ refers only to the immediate family of the Prophet—namely: Lady Fatima, ‘Ali, Hassan, and Husayn. Some argue that Hassan and Husayn were not the sons of the Prophet because they were the sons of Imam ‘Ali.

According to old Arab custom, the mother was considered as only a means to deliver a child, but nonetheless, their direct lineage to the Prophet is through their mother, Lady Fatima al-Zahra. It has been narrated that the ‘Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid asked the seventh Imam of the school of Ahlul Bayt, Imam Musa ibn Ja‘far how he could attribute himself to the Prophet while he was the child of ‘Ali and Lady Fatima – thus, how could he be related to the Prophet?

The Imam then cited to him a verse that refers to the descendants of Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim), “And from his progeny were David (Dawud), Solomon (Sulayman), Job (Ayyub), Joseph (Yusuf), Moses (Musa), and Aaron (Harun)—thus do We reward the good-doers—and Zachariah (Zakariyya), and John (Yahya), and Jesus (Isaa), and Elias (Ilyas)—each one of them was of the righteous.” [^9] The Imam then asked the caliph who the father of Isaa (Jesus) was. Harun answered that he was fatherless.

The Imam replied, “Then you can see that Allah linked him to Ibrahim through his mother, Mary and Allah did the same for us, linking us to through our mother Lady Fatima al-Zahra.”[^10] In many instances, the Prophet refers to Lady Fatima with intense love and affection, such as when he says, “Fatima is a part of me.