Madinan, by agreement — the last surah revealed complete
The last months of the Prophet’s ﷺ life, after the opening of Makkah — the tenth year of the Hijrah
There is no difference over it. Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī both record the agreement, and both cite Ibn ʿAbbās in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: it is the last surah of the Qurʾan to have been sent down all together. “Madinan” here means after the Hijrah; reports place its coming down during the Farewell Pilgrimage itself, in the days at Minā.
وَهِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْ وَفِي أفْرادِ مُسْلِمٍ مِن حَدِيثِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ أنَّها آخِرُ سُورَةٍ نَزَلَتْ جَمِيعًاوَهِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ بِإِجْمَاعٍ. وَتُسَمَّى سُورَةَ (التَّوْدِيعِ). وَهِيَ ثَلَاثُ آيَاتٍ. وَهِيَ آخِرُ سُورَةٍ نزَلَتْ جَمِيعًا قَالَهُ ابْنُ عُبَّاسٍ فِي صحيح مسلمThe same, in other works
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Madinah. Recorded by Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: أُنْزِلَ بِالمَدِينَةِ ﴿إذا جاءَ نَصْرُ اللَّهِ والفَتْحُ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Madinan, by agreement.
هي مَدَنِيَّةٌ بِلا خِلافٍ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
وهِيَ ثَلاثُ آياتٍ، مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Madinan.
مَدَنِيَّةٌ وآيُها ثَلاثٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
For years the tribes of Arabia had watched the struggle between Muḥammad ﷺ and his own people and kept their distance. Leave him and his tribe, they said: if he prevails over them, he is a true prophet. Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī put their reasoning this way: Allah had defended the people of the Sanctuary against the army of the elephant; if Muḥammad has now been given victory over them, no one can stand against him.
In the eighth year of the Hijrah he entered Makkah at the head of ten thousand, almost without bloodshed, and broke the idols round the Kaʿbah. After that the delegations came from every quarter of the peninsula — so many that the ninth year is called the Year of Delegations — and people who had held out for two decades entered Islam tribe by tribe.
This surah describes exactly that, and then gives an instruction that has nothing of triumph in it: glorify your Lord with His praise, and ask His forgiveness.
ʿUmar once asked the elders of Badr what they understood from it. Some said: we are commanded to praise Allah and seek His forgiveness when He helps us and gives us victory. He turned to the young Ibn ʿAbbās, who said: it is the term of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, which Allah made known to him — when the help of Allah and the opening come, that is the sign of your end. ʿUmar said: I know of it only what you say.
What came down about what
“It is the term of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ”
ʿUmar used to bring Ibn ʿAbbās in with the veterans of Badr. He asked them about this surah, and then asked him. Ibn ʿAbbās said: “It is the term of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, which He made known to him.” ʿUmar said: “I know of it only what you say.”
Ibn ʿAbbās: al-Bukhārī (4970).
Ṣaḥīḥ
فَقُلْتُ: هُوَ أجلُ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ ﷺ أَعْلَمَهُ لَهُ، قَالَ: ﴿إِذَا جَاءَ نَصْرُ اللَّهِ وَالْفَتْحُ﴾ فَذَلِكَ عَلَامَةُ أَجَلِكَ، ﴿فَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّكَ وَاسْتَغْفِرْهُ إِنَّهُ كَانَ تَوَّابًا﴾ فَقَالَ عُمَرُ بْنُ الْخَطَّابِ: لَا أَعْلَمُ مِنْهَا إِلَّا مَا تَقُولُبيان عاقبة الإسلام بالنصر والفتح، وما يُشْرع عند حصول ذلك، كما تشير لقرب أجل النبي ﷺ.
To make known how Islam ends — in help and in conquest — and what is prescribed when that comes; and it points to the nearness of the Prophet’s ﷺ death.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Victory from Allah
- The opening of Makkah
- Praise and seeking forgiveness
- The end of the mission
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
والغرض منها الوعد بنصر كامل من عند الله أو بفتح مكة، والبشارة بدخول خلائق كثيرة في الإسلام بفتح وبدونه إن كان نزولها عند منصرف النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم من خيبر كما قال ابن عباس في أحد قوليه.
والإيماء إلى أنه حين يقع ذلك فقد اقترب انتقال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم إلى الآخرة.
ووعده بأن الله غفر له مغفرة تامة لا مؤاخذة عليه بعدها في شيء مما يختلج في نفسه الخوف أن يكون منه تقصير يقتضيه تحديد القوة الإنسانية الحد الذي لا يفي بما تطلبه همته الملكية بحيث يكون قد ساوى
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–22 ayat · 63% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The sign
When the help of Allah comes, and the opening — and you see people entering the religion of Allah in crowds.
- 31 ayah · 37% of the surahRead from ayah 3 →
The response
Then glorify your Lord with His praise and ask His forgiveness; He is ever accepting of repentance. The greatest success of his life is to be met with humility.
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 67% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns once. None of them comes where a 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
سُبْحَانَكَ اللَّهُمَّ رَبَّنَا وَبِحَمْدِكَ اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ لِي
After “When the help of Allah comes, and the opening” was sent down, the Prophet ﷺ did not pray a prayer without saying in it: “Glory be to You, our Lord, and with Your praise; O Allah, forgive me.” In another wording: he would say it often in his bowing and prostration, acting on the Qurʾan.Ibn ʿAbbās asked ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUtbah: “Do you know the last surah of the Qurʾan to be sent down all together?” He said: “Yes — ‘When the help of Allah comes, and the opening’.” He said: “You are right.”The names it is known by
After the help of Allah that it opens with. It is also called by its first words, Idhā jāʾa naṣru llāh.
A name al-Qurṭubī records for it, because in it the Prophet ﷺ was told that his time was near.
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 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.