Makkan, by agreement
The day the call was first made in public, from the hill of Ṣafā — about the third year of the mission
It is Makkan without disagreement, and its occasion is narrated in both Ṣaḥīḥs. The traditional order places it sixth: it came down at the very start of the open call.
وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْ وَسَبَبُ نُزُولِها ما رَوى البُخارِيُّ ومُسْلِمٌ في الصَّحِيحَيْنِ مِن حَدِيثِ سَعِيدِ بْنِ جُبَيْرٍ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍسُورَةُ تَبَّتْ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإِجْمَاعٍ. وَهِيَ خُمْسُ آياتThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْمَسَدِ 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 ﴿تَبَّتْ يَدا أبِي لَهَبٍ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِلا خِلافٍ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
خَمْسُ آياتٍ، مَكِّيَّةٌ بِالِاتِّفاقِ
- 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
For the first years the Prophet ﷺ called people to Islam quietly, one household at a time. Then came the command: “And warn your nearest kindred” (26:214).
Ibn ʿAbbās tells what he did. He went out and climbed Ṣafā, the low hill beside the Kaʿbah from which a man could be heard across the town, and gave the cry the Arabs used for a dawn attack: Yā ṣabāḥāh! Quraysh gathered. He said: “Tell me — if I told you that cavalry were coming out from the foot of this mountain, would you believe me?” They said: “We have never known you to lie.” He said: “Then I am a warner to you, ahead of a severe punishment.”
Abū Lahab — ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, his father’s brother — spoke first. “May you perish for the rest of the day! Is it for this that you gathered us?” And this surah came down.
He and his wife Umm Jamīl, the sister of Abū Sufyān, were neighbours of the Prophet ﷺ and among the most persistent of those who harmed him. The surah says that he will enter a blazing fire — which is to say that he will die a disbeliever. He heard it. He had roughly a decade in which to say the words of faith, even insincerely, and call the Qurʾan a liar. He never did. He died after Badr, of a disease that kept his own sons from going near his body.
What came down about what
The call from Ṣafā
When “And warn your nearest kindred” came down, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ climbed Ṣafā and called out until Quraysh had gathered, and warned them. Abū Lahab said: “May you perish for the rest of this day! Was it for this that you gathered us?” So there came down: “Perish the two hands of Abū Lahab, and perish he.”
Ibn ʿAbbās: al-Bukhārī (4770, 4971) and Muslim (208).
Ṣaḥīḥ
عدم منفعة النسب والجاه مع الكفر بالله.
That lineage and standing are of no use alongside disbelief in Allah.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Kinship without faith
- Wealth that does not avail
- Enmity to the Prophet ﷺ
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
زجر أبي لهب على قوله: «تبا لك ألهذا جمعتنا؟ ووعيده على ذلك، ووعيد امرأته على انتصارها لزوجها، وبغضها النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–33 ayat · 65% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Abū Lahab
Perish the two hands of Abū Lahab, and perish he. His wealth has not availed him, nor what he earned. He will enter a fire of blazing flame — lahab, the very word he was nicknamed by.
- 4–52 ayat · 35% of the surahRead from ayah 4 →
His wife
And his wife, the carrier of firewood: around her neck, a rope of palm fibre. She carried thorns to strew in the Prophet’s ﷺ path, and carried tales to set people against him; the early commentators give both.
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 80% 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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The names it is known by
After its last word: the twisted rope round the neck of Abū Lahab’s wife.
Its opening word, and the name both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī head it with. It is also called Sūrat Abī Lahab.
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.