Differed over
On the view that it is Makkan: among the earliest surahs
Ibn al-Jawzī gives two views without choosing between them. That it is Makkan is the saying of Ibn Masʿūd, ʿAṭāʾ, ʿIkrimah and Jābir; that it is Madinan, of Ibn ʿAbbās, Qatādah and Muqātil. The difference runs alongside another: what the “chargers” are. Most, with Ibn ʿAbbās, say they are horses ridden out to battle. ʿAlī and Ibn Masʿūd said they are the camels of the pilgrims, running from ʿArafah to Muzdalifah and from Muzdalifah to Minā. The muṣḥaf heads it Makkan, and the traditional order places it fourteenth.
وَفِيها قَوْلانِ: أحَدُهُما: أنَّها مَكِّيَّةٌ، قالَهُ ابْنُ مَسْعُودٍ، وعَطاءٌ، وعِكْرِمَةُ، وجابِرٌ. والثّانِي: مَدَنِيَّةٌ، قالَهُ ابْنُ عَبّاسٍ، وقَتادَةُ، ومُقاتِلٌأنَّها الإبِلُ في الحَجِّ، قالَهُ عَلِيٌّ، وابْنُ مَسْعُودٍThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْعَادِيَاتِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ والعادِياتِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan in the saying of Ibn Masʿūd, Jābir, al-Ḥasan, ʿIkrimah and ʿAṭāʾ; Madinan in the saying of Ibn ʿAbbās, Anas ibn Mālik and Qatādah.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ ابْنِ مَسْعُودٍ، وجابِرٍ، والحَسَنِ، وعِكْرِمَةَ، وعَطاءٍ، ومَدَنِيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ، وأنَسِ بْنِ مالِكٍ، وقَتادَةَ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
إحْدى عَشْرَةَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan, with a difference over it.
مَكِّيَّةٌ مُخْتَلَفٌ فِيها، وآياتُها إحْدى عَشْرَةَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
The Arabs to whom this was first recited knew the dawn raid as they knew their own names. It was how wealth changed hands in the desert, and nothing in their poetry was praised more than the horse that carried a man into one: panting, striking fire from the stones, in among the enemy before the sun was up.
The surah gives them that picture in five ayat, as vividly as any of their poets — and then turns it on them. The horse does all of that for a master who feeds it. And the human being, who has been given everything by his Lord, is kanūd: ungrateful, counting his misfortunes and forgetting his blessings. He is himself a witness to it, and he is fierce in his love of wealth.
It ends where a raid cannot reach: what is in the graves is turned out, what is in the hearts is brought to light, and their Lord, that Day, knows them through and through.
بيان صفات الإنسان في اهتماماته الدنيوية، تذكيرًا له بمآله، وبعثًا له على تصحيح مساره.
To set out the human being’s traits when the world is all he cares for — reminding him where he is headed, and moving him to correct his course.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Ingratitude
- Love of wealth
- The Resurrection
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
ذم خصال تفضي بأصحابها إلى الخسران في الآخرة، وهي خصال غالية على المشركين والمنافقين، ويراد تحذير المسلمين منها.
ووعظ الناس بأن وراءهم حسابا على أعمالهم بعد الموت ليتذكره المؤمن ويهدد به الجاحد. وأكد ذلك كله بأن افتتح بالقسم، وأدمج في القسم التنويه بخيل الغزاة أو رواحل الحجيج.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–55 ayat · 30% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oath
By the chargers, panting; striking sparks; raiding at dawn; raising a trail of dust; and plunging with it into the midst of the host.
- 6–83 ayat · 30% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
What is sworn to
The human being is ungrateful to his Lord — and he is a witness to that himself — and in his love of wealth he is intense.
- 9–113 ayat · 40% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
What he forgets
Does he not know that when what is in the graves is overturned, and what is in the breasts is brought out, their Lord on that Day is fully aware of them?
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.
Its commonest close carries 45% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 2 times. 2 of those turns come just where a new passage begins, as this page divides the surah.
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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The name it is known by
After the creatures it swears by, those that run. Al-Qurṭubī heads it wa-l-ʿĀdiyāt, with the oath as it is recited.
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 الطبريJāmiʿ al-bayānMuḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310 AH)
- تفسير البغويMaʿālim al-tanzīlal-Ḥusayn al-Baghawī (d. 516 AH)
- تفسير ابن الجوزيZād al-masīrAbū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597 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)
- تفسير الرازيMafātīḥ al-ghaybFakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606 AH)
- تفسير أبي السعودIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmAbū al-Suʿūd al-ʿImādī (d. 982 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.
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.