Makkan, by agreement
The early years in Makkah
Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī both record agreement that it is Makkan, and nothing is reported to the contrary. The traditional order places it thirtieth, among the surahs of the first years.
سُورَةُ القارِعَةِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْتَفْسِيرُ سُورَةِ الْقَارِعَةِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإِجْمَاعٍThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْقَارِعَةِ 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 سُورَةُ القارِعَةِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِلا خِلافٍ
- 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.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها إحْدى عَشْرَةَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. It is one of a run of short Makkan surahs — al-Zalzalah, al-ʿĀdiyāt, this one, al-Takāthur — that leave argument aside and simply put the Last Day in front of people who denied it.
Its method is the one the Qurʾan uses when it wants a thing to land: it names it, asks what it is, and then asks what could ever make you know what it is. Only then does it answer, and the answer is two images taken from what the Arabs saw every day. Moths, thick around a fire at night, flying into one another with no direction. And wool, pulled apart and carded until it floats — that is what will become of the mountains they thought were the most fixed things in the world.
After that there is no more description. There are only two outcomes, and they turn on a scale.
قرع القلوب لاستحضار هول القيامة.
To strike the hearts, so that the terror of the Resurrection is felt as present.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Last Day
- The scales
- Paradise and the Fire
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
ذكر فيها إثبات وقوع البعث وما يسبق ذلك من الأهوال.
وإثبات الجزاء على الأعمال وأن أهل الأعمال الصالحة المعتبرة عند الله في نعيم، وأهل الأعمال السيئة التي لا وزن لها عند الله في قعر الجحيم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–33 ayat · 19% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The name
The Striking Calamity. What is the Striking Calamity? And what will make you know what the Striking Calamity is?
- 4–52 ayat · 25% of the surahRead from ayah 4 →
The Day
The Day when people will be like moths, scattered, and the mountains like wool, carded.
- 6–116 ayat · 56% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
The scales
The one whose scales are heavy will be in a life of contentment. The one whose scales are light — his home is the Pit. And what will make you know what that is? A fire, blazing.
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 82% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 3 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
One of the names of the Day of Resurrection: that which strikes — the ears with its sound, the hearts with its terror. The surah opens with it.
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 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.