Makkan, by agreement
The early years in Makkah — some forty years after the event it recalls
It is Makkan without disagreement; both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī record the agreement. The event it recalls took place before the Prophet ﷺ was sent — in the year of his birth, on the best-known view.
سُورَةُ الفِيلِ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْوَلَكِنْ كَانَ هَذَا مِنْ بَابِ الْإِرْهَاصِ وَالتَّوْطِئَةِ لِمَبْعَثِ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ﷺ، فَإِنَّهُ فِي ذَلِكَ الْعَامِ وُلِدَ عَلَى أَشْهَرِ الْأَقْوَالِThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْفِيلِ 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: أنْزَلَ ﴿ألَمْ تَرَ كَيْفَ فَعَلَ رَبُّكَ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
خَمْسُ آياتٍ، مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها خَمْسٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Abrahah was the Abyssinian governor of Yemen. He had built a great church in Ṣanʿāʾ and meant the pilgrimage of the Arabs to come to it instead of to Makkah; and when that did not happen — the reports say an Arab defiled the building — he swore to pull the Kaʿbah down, and set out north with an army and an elephant.◇
Quraysh could not fight him and did not try. On the way his men seized the camels of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the Prophet’s ﷺ grandfather and the chief of Makkah, who came to ask for them back. Abrahah was astonished: I have come to destroy the House that is your religion and your fathers’, and you speak to me about camels? ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s answer is one of the most quoted sentences in the sīrah: I am the lord of the camels. The House has a Lord who will defend it. Then he and his people withdrew to the mountains.
The elephant, the reports say, knelt and would not go forward towards Makkah.◇ Then birds came, in flocks, each carrying stones of baked clay, and the army was destroyed where it stood: left like straw that has been eaten.
The Arabs dated their years from it — the Year of the Elephant. When this surah was recited in Makkah there were men still alive who had seen it, and none of them contradicted it. The point was plain to them: the House had been saved by its Lord, at a time when not one person in the city worshipped Him alone. It had not been saved for the sake of their idols. Ibn Kathīr says it outright: this was a preparation for the sending of the Messenger ﷺ, who was born that same year.
- Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
إظهار قدرة الله على حماية بيته الحرام، تذكيرًا وامتنانًا.
To show Allah’s power to protect His Sacred House — as a reminder, and as a favour to be acknowledged.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Allah’s protection of the Kaʿbah
- The fate of the arrogant
- A favour to Quraysh
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
وقد تضمنت التذكير بأن الكعبة حرم الله وأن الله حماه ممن أرادوا به سوءا أو أظهر غضبه عليهم فعذبهم لأنهم ظلموا بطمعهم في هدم مسجد إبراهيم وهو عندهم في كتابهم، وذلك ما سماه الله كيدا، وليكون ما حل بهم تذكرة لقريش بأن فاعل ذلك هو رب ذلك البيت وأن لا حظ فيه للأصنام التي نصبوها حوله.
وتنبيه قريش أو تذكيرهم بما ظهر من كرامة النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم عند الله إذ أهلك أصحاب الفيل في عام ولادته.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–22 ayat · 52% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Have you not seen?
Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the Companions of the Elephant? Did He not make their plot go astray?
- 3–53 ayat · 48% of the surahRead from ayah 3 →
How
He sent against them birds, in flocks, pelting them with stones of baked clay, and made them like eaten straw.
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 5 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
حَبَسَهَا حَابِسُ الْفِيلِ
On the way to al-Ḥudaybiyah the Prophet’s ﷺ she-camel knelt and would not rise, and the people said she had turned stubborn. He said: “She has not turned stubborn, and that is not her nature. The One who held back the elephant has held her back.”On the day Makkah was conquered he ﷺ said: “Allah held back the elephant from Makkah, and has given His Messenger and the believers authority over it.”The name it is known by
After the Companions of the Elephant — Abrahah’s army, named for the animal that marched with it and that the Arabs had never seen in war.
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)
- 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
- Ibn Isḥāq’s account, as the commentators relay it
- 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.