Makkan, by the commentators
The early years in Makkah, among a people who counted their worth by their numbers
Al-Qurṭubī says it is Makkan in the saying of all the commentators, and adds that al-Bukhārī narrated what indicates it is Madinan — a report from Ubayy ibn Kaʿb about a saying they had taken for Qurʾan until “Alhākumu l-takāthur” came down. Ibn al-Jawzī gives two accounts of its occasion and they point in the same two directions: one about clans of Quraysh, the other about Jews in Madinah.
وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ جَمِيعِ الْمُفَسِّرِينَ. وَرَوَى الْبُخَارِيُّ أَنَّهَا مَدَنِيَّةٌ. وَهِيَ ثمان آياتThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ التَّكَاثُرِ 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 بِمَكَّةَ سُورَةُ ﴿ألْهاكُمُ التَّكاثُرُ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ عِنْدَ الجَمِيعِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
ثَمانِ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan, with a difference over it.
مَكِّيَّةٌ مُخْتَلَفٌ فِيها، وآيُها ثَمانٍ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Quraysh were merchants, and their society ran on standing: whose clan was larger, whose caravans richer, whose dead more famous. Ibn al-Jawzī relates that two clans — Banū ʿAbd Manāf and Banū Sahm — fell to arguing over which of them had more chiefs and more men, counted their living, and when that did not settle it went out to the graveyard to count their dead.◇
Whether or not that was the very occasion, it is the habit the surah names. Alhākum: it has distracted you — taken you away from what mattered. And it will go on doing so until you visit the graves. The Arabic word is visit, and the early Muslims heard what it implies: a visitor does not stay.
Then the tone changes. No — you will come to know. Again, no — you will come to know. If you knew now, with certain knowledge, you would not be as you are. You will see the Fire with your own eyes. And then you will be asked about every comfort you were given.
- Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
What came down about what
Counting the dead
Two reports are given. In one, from Qatādah, some of the Jews said, “We are more than the sons of so-and-so,” and were kept busy with that until they died astray. In the other, two clans of Quraysh, Banū ʿAbd Manāf and Banū Sahm, quarrelled over which had more chiefs and greater numbers, until they went to count those in their graves.
Ibn al-Jawzī, at the head of the surah.
Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
وَفِي سَبَبِ نُزُولِها قَوْلانِ. أحَدُهُما: أنَّ اليَهُودَ قالُوا: نَحْنُ أكْثَرُ مِن بَنِي فُلانٍ، وبَنُو فُلانٍ أكْثَرُ مَن بَنِي فُلانٍ، فَألْهاهم ذَلِكَ حَتّى ماتُوا ضُلّالًا، فَنَزَلَتْ هَذِهِ فِيهِمْ، قالَهُ قَتادَةُتذكير المنشغلين بالدنيا بالموت والحساب.
To remind those taken up with this world of death, and of the Reckoning.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Worldliness
- Death
- Certainty
- Being questioned about blessings
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
اشتملت على التوبيخ على اللهو عن النظر في دلائل القرآن ودعوة الإسلام بإيثار المال والتكاثر به والتفاخر بالأسلاف وعدم الإقلاع عن ذلك إلى أن يصيروا في القبور كما صار من كان قبلهم وعلى الوعيد على ذلك.
وحثهم على التدبر فيما ينجيهم من الجحيم.
وأنهم مبعوثون ومسؤولون عن إهمال شكر المنعم العظيم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–22 ayat · 18% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The diagnosis
Rivalry in piling up has distracted you, until you visit the graves.
- 3–53 ayat · 43% of the surahRead from ayah 3 →
The warning
No — you will come to know. Then no — you will come to know. No — if only you knew with the knowledge of certainty.
- 6–83 ayat · 39% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
What is coming
You will surely see Hellfire; then you will see it with the eye of certainty. Then, on that Day, you will be asked about the delights you enjoyed (102:8).
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 75% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns once. One of those turns comes 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
يَقُولُ ابْنُ آدَمَ مَالِي مَالِي
ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Shikhkhīr said: I came to the Prophet ﷺ while he was reciting “Alhākumu l-takāthur”, and he said: “The son of Ādam says: my wealth, my wealth. And do you have anything of your wealth, son of Ādam, except what you ate and used up, or wore and wore out, or gave in charity and sent on ahead?”The Prophet ﷺ, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar went out one day driven by hunger, and a man of the Anṣār brought them dates, slaughtered a sheep for them, and gave them water. When they had eaten and drunk their fill he ﷺ said: “By the One in whose hand is my soul, you will be asked about this delight on the Day of Resurrection.”The name it is known by
Competing to have more, and boasting of it: wealth, children, followers, numbers of any kind. The Prophet ﷺ was heard reciting it by its opening words, Alhākumu l-takāthur (Muslim 2958).
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.
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.