Makkan, on the sounder view
The first years in Makkah — it is as old as the prayer itself
Ibn ʿAbbās, Qatādah and Abū al-ʿĀliyah held that it came down in Makkah. Abū Hurayrah, Mujāhid, ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār and al-Zuhrī held that it came down in Madinah, and it was also said that it came down twice. Ibn Kathīr and al-Qurṭubī both judge the first view the stronger, for a reason that is hard to answer: Sūrat al-Ḥijr is Makkan by agreement, and it already speaks of “seven of the oft-repeated” as something given (15:87). The prayer, too, was made obligatory in Makkah, and no prayer in Islam is known to have been prayed without these ayat. It has seven ayat without disagreement; the reciters differ only over whether the basmalah is the first of them.
وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ، قَالَهُ ابْنُ عَبَّاسٍ وَقَتَادَةُ وَأَبُو الْعَالِيَةِ، وَقِيلَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ، قَالَهُ أَبُو هُرَيْرَةَ وَمُجَاهِدٌ وَعَطَاءُ بْنُ يَسَارٍ وَالزُّهْرِيُّ. وَيُقَالُ: نَزَلَتْ مَرَّتَيْنِ: مَرَّةً بِمَكَّةَ، وَمَرَّةً بِالْمَدِينَةِ، وَالْأَوَّلُ أَشْبَهُوَالْحِجْرُ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإِجْمَاعٍ. وَلَا خِلَافَ أَنَّ فَرْضَ الصَّلَاةِ كَانَ بِمَكَّةَ. وَمَا حُفِظَ أَنَّهُ كَانَ فِي الْإِسْلَامِ قَطُّ صَلَاةٌ بِغَيْرِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعالَمِينَThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan, in the saying of most; Mujāhid said: Madinan.
وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ عَلَى قَوْلِ الْأَكْثَرِينَ. وَقَالَ مُجَاهِدٌ: مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
ʿAlī: the Opening of the Book came down in Makkah. Recorded by al-Wāḥidī and al-Thaʿlabī.
أخْرَجَ الواحِدِيُّ في أسْبابِ النُّزُولِ والثَّعْلَبِيُّ في تَفْسِيرِهِ عَنْ عَلِيٍّ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ فاتِحَةُ الكِتابِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
It has been said to be Makkan, and said to be Madinan.
قِيلَ هي مَكِّيَّةٌ، وقِيلَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No single event is transmitted as the occasion of al-Fātiḥah. It belongs to the first years in Makkah, when the believers were a handful and prayed where they would not be seen, and its story is the story of the prayer: wherever the prayer was, this was in it.
That is the setting worth holding on to. The first Muslims had no law yet, no city, no qiblah of their own. What they had was a way of standing before Allah — praising Him, saying that He alone is worshipped and He alone is asked, and asking Him for the road. Everything that came down over the next twenty-three years came down to people who were already saying these words many times a day.
It was not the first revelation: that was the opening of al-ʿAlaq, in the cave of Ḥirāʾ. But it was placed first in the muṣḥaf, by the Prophet’s ﷺ own arrangement, and it has been the first thing a Muslim learns of the Qurʾan ever since.
تحقيق التوجه لله تعالى بكمال العبودية له وحده.
To turn a person wholly towards Allah, in complete servitude to Him alone.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Praise
- Tawḥīd
- Worship
- Seeking help
- Guidance
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
الثاني: أنها تشتمل محتوياتها على أنواع مقاصد القرآن وهي ثلاثة أنواع: الثناء على الله ثناء جامعا لوصفه بجميع المحامد وتنزيهه عن جميع النقائص، ولإثبات تفرده بالإلهية وإثبات البعث والجزاء وذلك من قوله: الحمد لله إلى قوله: ملك يوم الدين، والأوامر والنواهي من قوله: إياك نعبد، والوعد والوعيد من قوله:
From its first ayah to its last
- 11 ayah · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
In the name of Allah
The basmalah, counted as the first ayah of the surah in the Kufan numbering this muṣḥaf follows. The servant begins by Allah’s name and by nothing of his own.
- 2–43 ayat · 31% of the surahRead from ayah 2 →
Praise
All praise belongs to Allah: Lord of all the worlds, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful, Master of the Day of Recompense. Lordship, mercy and judgement — who He is, before anything is asked of Him. In the ḥadīth qudsī, this half is His.
- 51 ayah · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 5 →
The covenant
“You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.” The hinge of the surah, and of the religion: worship is for none but Him, and it is not achieved except by His help. Of this ayah Allah says, “This is between Me and My servant.”
- 6–72 ayat · 41% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
The request
“Guide us to the straight path” — the path of those He has favoured, not of those who earned anger, nor of those who went astray. The Prophet ﷺ named the first as the Jews and the second as the Christians (al-Tirmidhī 2954): knowing the truth and leaving it, and worshipping without knowledge.
The division into passages is a reading aid, written for this page; it is not part of the muṣḥaf. Each passage is drawn as long as its words are.
The sound each ayah closes on
Read aloud, every ayah closes on a sound — its fāṣilah — and the closes answer one another for a stretch, then turn. Each sound this surah closes on is a line of the staff below, and the surah is the gold line stepping along them, an ayah at a time: where it steps to another line, the rhyme turns. The dotted lines are where its passages begin.
All 7 of its ayat close on one sound.
Move along the staff to see what each ayah closes on.
Computed from the text, each ayah as it is said when the reciter stops on it: the last vowel falls away, tanwīn on alif is said as a long ā, and tāʾ marbūṭah as h. Closes the ear hears as one rhyme share a line — -ūn, -īn and -īm; -ān and -ām — and an ayah that is only the opening letters closes on the name of its last letter.
From the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions
لأُعَلِّمَنَّكَ سُورَةً هِيَ أَعْظَمُ السُّوَرِ فِي الْقُرْآنِ
The Prophet ﷺ said to Abū Saʿīd ibn al-Muʿallā: “I will teach you a surah that is the greatest surah in the Qurʾan before you leave the mosque.” Then he said: “‘Al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīn’ — it is the seven oft-repeated, and the mighty Qurʾan that I have been given.”قَسَمْتُ الصَّلاَةَ بَيْنِي وَبَيْنَ عَبْدِي نِصْفَيْنِ وَلِعَبْدِي مَا سَأَلَ
Allah said: “I have divided the prayer between Myself and My servant in two halves, and My servant shall have what he asks. When the servant says, ‘All praise is for Allah, Lord of the worlds,’ Allah says: My servant has praised Me…” — and so on through the surah, until: “This is for My servant, and My servant shall have what he asked.”While Jibrīl was sitting with the Prophet ﷺ he heard a sound above him and raised his head. An angel had come down who had never come down before, and he said: “Rejoice in two lights that you have been given and that no prophet before you was given: Fātiḥat al-Kitāb, and the closing ayat of Sūrat al-Baqarah. You will not recite a letter of them without being given it.”لاَ صَلاَةَ لِمَنْ لَمْ يَقْرَأْ بِفَاتِحَةِ الْكِتَابِ
“There is no prayer for one who does not recite the Opening of the Book.”The names it is known by
In full, Fātiḥat al-Kitāb, the Opening of the Book: the muṣḥaf is opened with it in writing and the prayer is opened with it in recitation. The Prophet ﷺ used the name himself: “There is no prayer for one who does not recite Fātiḥat al-Kitāb” (al-Bukhārī 756, Muslim 394).
Also Umm al-Kitāb. The mother of a thing is its source and what the rest returns to. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Umm al-Qurʾān is the seven oft-repeated and the mighty Qurʾan” (al-Bukhārī 4704).
Seven ayat, returned to in every unit of every prayer. It is the name Allah gives it in Sūrat al-Ḥijr (15:87), as the Prophet ﷺ explained to Abū Saʿīd ibn al-Muʿallā (al-Bukhārī 4474).
In the ḥadīth qudsī Allah calls the surah itself “the prayer”: “I have divided the prayer between Myself and My servant in two halves” (Muslim 395) — because the prayer is not valid without it.
A Companion recited it over a man who had been stung and he recovered; the Prophet ﷺ asked him, “And how did you know that it is a ruqyah?” (al-Bukhārī 2276, Muslim 2201).
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
Where this comes from
The figures at the head of the page are counted from the text. The Arabic quotations are taken letter for letter from the copies of the classical works held on this site, and each links to the passage it stands in. The rest was written for Mishkāt from the works below. It is an introduction, not a tafsir: where it matters, read the scholars themselves.
Works quoted on this page
- تفسير البغويMaʿālim al-tanzīlal-Ḥusayn al-Baghawī (d. 516 AH)
- تفسير القرطبيal-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-QurʾānShams al-Dīn al-Qurṭubī (d. 671 AH)
- تفسير ابن كثيرTafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīmIsmāʿīl ibn Kathīr (d. 774 AH)
- الدر المنثورal-Durr al-manthūrJalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911 AH)
- فتح القدير للشوكانيFatḥ al-qadīrMuḥammad al-Shawkānī (d. 1250 AH)
- التحرير والتنويرal-Taḥrīr wa-l-tanwīrMuḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1393 AH)
- المختصر في التفسيرal-Mukhtaṣar fī al-tafsīrMarkaz Tafsīr, a committee of scholars
Beside each scholar quoted stand his creed and his school of fiqh, so that he can be read with discernment. The site’s library holds other commentaries as well; the introductions do not draw on them.
al-Qurṭubī is quoted on these pages only for what he transmits: who said a surah is Makkan or Madinan, and what it has been called. On the attributes of Allah his commentary interprets, in places, in the way of the Ashʿarīs rather than the way of the Salaf, and nothing of that is taken from him here.
al-Rāzī and Abū al-Suʿūd are quoted on these pages only for where a surah came down, and Ibn ʿĀshūr only for the aims of the surah. Nothing on the attributes of Allah is taken from them, and no report comes by way of them. Ibn ʿĀshūr’s statement of the aims is not in the site’s copy of his book: it is read from the Shamela typing as OpenITI holds it, with reports and al-Zamakhsharī’s words left out, and it links to its page there.
Every hadith here says where it is recorded and how it is graded. What is in al-Bukhārī or Muslim is marked ṣaḥīḥ. Outside the two, the grading followed is al-Albānī’s; where none of his was found, the scholar who graded it is named. A report known to be weak or fabricated is not given here at all. A report that is ḥasan, or a Companion’s own saying, or related by the commentators without a graded chain, says so beside it. In the account of what was happening, a small sign after a sentence says the same of the report that sentence tells, and a question mark stands where a date or a figure is not certain, or beside a grading — underlined — that has something to say about its own source: rest on it, or touch it, and it gives the reason. What is drawn from the sīrah — the campaigns, the dates, who was present — is history as its scholars transmit it, and is not graded here.
Also drawn on
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim
The order of revelation is the one printed at the head of each surah in the Egyptian muṣḥaf, which rests on lists transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās and Jābir ibn Zayd. It places a surah by where it began. Many surahs came down in parts, over years, and the scholars treat the list as a guide, not a certainty.