Makkan, by the majority
The first years in Makkah
That it is Makkan is the saying of Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn al-Zubayr and the majority; that it is Madinan is reported from Mujāhid, Qatādah and Muqātil. The muṣḥaf heads it Makkan, and the traditional order places it thirteenth — among the very first surahs.
وَفِيها قَوْلانِ. أحَدُهُما: أنَّها مَكِّيَّةٌ، قالَهُ ابْنُ عَبّاسٍ، وابْنُ الزُّبَيْرِ، والجُمْهُورُ. والثّانِي: مَدَنِيَّةٌ، قالَهُ مُجاهِدٌ، وقَتادَةُ، ومُقاتِلٌThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْعَصْرِ 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 ﴿والعَصْرِ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, in the saying of the majority.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ عِنْدَ الجُمْهُورِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
ثَلاثُ آياتٍ، مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها ثَلاثٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it, and it needs none: it is addressed to everyone who has ever had a lifetime to spend.
It came down in a town of traders, and it speaks their language. Khusr is a merchant’s word — loss, the capital gone and nothing to show for it. The surah swears by time, which is every person’s capital, that the human being is in exactly that position: spending what he cannot get back. Then it names the only trade that shows a profit, and it has four parts. Two a person does for himself — to believe, and to do what is right. Two he does with others — to urge one another to the truth, and to urge one another to patience in holding to it.
The Companions took it as a summary of everything they had been taught. Two of them, it is reported, would not part company after meeting until one had recited it to the other.
بيان حقيقة الربح والخسارة في الحياة، والتنبيه على أهمية الوقت الذي يعيشه الإنسان.
To set out what profit and loss in life really are, and to draw attention to the worth of the time a person is given.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Time
- Loss and profit
- Faith and deeds
- Truth
- Patience
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
واشتملت على إثبات الخسران الشديد لأهل الشرك ومن كان مثلهم من أهل الكفر بالإسلام بعد أن بلغت دعوته، وكذلك من تقلد أعمال الباطل التي حذر الإسلام المسلمين منها.
وعلى إثبات نجاة وفوز الذين آمنوا وعملوا الصالحات والداعين منهم إلى الحق.
وعلى فضيلة الصبر على تزكية النفس ودعوة الحق.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–22 ayat · 36% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oath, and the verdict
By time: the human being is in loss. All of them — the word takes in every person — until the exception is made.
- 31 ayah · 64% of the surahRead from ayah 3 →
The exception
Except those who believe, and do righteous deeds, and counsel one another to the truth, and counsel one another to patience. Knowledge, then action, then calling others to it, then bearing what comes of that.
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 3 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
“When two men from among the Companions of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ met, they would not part until one of them had recited Sūrat al-ʿAṣr to the other, to its end; then one would give the other the greeting of peace.”كَانَ الرَّجُلَانِ مِنْ أَصْحَابِ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ ﷺ إِذَا الْتَقَيَا، لَمْ يَتَفَرَّقَا إِلَّا عَلَى أَنْ يَقْرَأَ أَحَدُهُمَا عَلَى الْآخَرِ سُورَةَ الْعَصْرِ إِلَى آخِرِهَا، ثُمَّ يُسَلِّمُ أَحَدُهُمَا عَلَى الْآخَرِ . وَقَالَ الشَّافِعِيُّ، رَحِمَهُ اللَّهُ: لَوْ تَدَبَّرَ النَّاسُ هَذِهِ السُّورَةَ، لَوَسِعَتْهُمْThe name it is known by
After the oath it opens with. Al-ʿaṣr is time itself, the age in which the deeds of the children of Ādam take place — this is the well-known view, from Ibn ʿAbbās. It was also said to be the late afternoon, or the afternoon prayer.
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 القيمTafsīr Ibn al-QayyimIbn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751 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.