Makkan, by the majority
The early years in Makkah
The majority hold it to be Makkan. That it is Madinan is reported from al-Ḍaḥḥāk and al-Kalbī. It speaks to Quraysh about “this House” as people who live beside it.
وَيُقالُ لَها: سُورَةُ لِإيلافِ وَفِيها قَوْلانِ. أحَدُهُما: مَكِّيَّةٌ، قالَهُ الجُمْهُورُ. والثّانِي: مَدَنِيَّةٌ، قالَهُ الضَّحّاكُ، وابْنُ السّائِبِمَكِّيَّةٌ، فِي قَوْلِ الْجُمْهُورِ. وَمَدَنِيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الضَّحَّاكِ وَالْكَلْبِيِّ وَهِيَ أَرْبَعُ آياتThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ قُرَيْشٍ 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 ﴿لإيلافِ قُرَيْشٍ﴾ 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.
وهِيَ أرْبَعُ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها أرْبَعٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Makkah had no fields and no river. What it had was the House, and what the House gave its keepers was immunity. In an Arabia where every tribe raided every other, a caravan of Quraysh could cross the peninsula unharmed, because they were the people of Allah’s sanctuary. On that they built their living: one journey each winter south to Yemen, and one each summer north to Shām.
The surah calls this their īlāf — what they were accustomed to, their settled arrangement — and it treats it as a gift, which it was. The surah before it has just told how that gift was protected: an army came to destroy the House and was destroyed. Some of the scholars read the two as a single statement, and al-Qurṭubī begins his commentary by noting the view that this surah is joined in meaning to the one before.
So the conclusion is short. Let them worship the Lord of this House — not the idols they had set around it — who has fed them against hunger and made them safe from fear.
الامتنان على قريش وما يلزمهم تجاه ذلك.
To recall Allah’s favour to Quraysh, and what it obliges them to.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Gratitude
- Security and provision
- Worship of the Lord of the House
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
أمر قريش بتوحيد الله تعالى بالربوبية تذكيرا لهم بنعمة أن الله مكن لهم السير في الأرض للتجارة برحلتي الشتاء والصيف لا يخشون عاديا يعدو عليهم.
وبأنه أمنهم من المجاعات وأمنهم من المخاوف لما وقر في نفوس العرب من حرمتهم لأنهم سكان الحرم وعمار الكعبة.
وبما ألهم الناس من جلب الميرة إليهم من الآفاق المجاورة كبلاد الحبشة.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–22 ayat · 35% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The favour
For the accustomed security of Quraysh — their security in the journey of winter and of summer.
- 3–42 ayat · 65% of the surahRead from ayah 3 →
What it calls for
Let them worship the Lord of this House, who has fed them against hunger and made them safe from fear. The two things every community wants; here, the reasons for worship.
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 50% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 3 times. 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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The names it is known by
After the tribe it addresses: the descendants of al-Naḍr ibn Kinānah, keepers of the Kaʿbah, and the Prophet’s ﷺ own people.
Its opening words. Ibn al-Jawzī records this as its other name.
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.