Preferring Others Over Themselves

Al-Hashr praises the Ansar, the Medinan believers who hosted the Meccan emigrants, in terms later Islamic ethics treated as its highest single statement of generosity: they love those who emigrated to them, feel no want in their hearts for what the emigrants were given, and prefer them over themselves 'even though they were in privation' (59:9). Classical commentators single out this verse as the scriptural origin of the technical term ithar, preferring another's need over one's own even at real personal cost, distinguished from ordinary charity by requiring the giver's own genuine want.

The verse is cited across later Islamic ethical and Sufi literature as describing the outer limit of generosity rather than its ordinary expected form, and biographical accounts of individual Ansari companions, some reported to have given away a meal or a night's lodging to a guest while going hungry themselves, are traditionally read as illustrations rather than exaggerations of the quality this verse names. The praise is notable for singling out a specific historical community, the Ansar of Medina, by their communal conduct rather than describing an abstract or universal virtue disconnected from any named group.