Differed over
Either the early years in Makkah, or — on the view Ibn al-Jawzī prefers — Madinah, at the time of the spell
Two views are reported, and both from Ibn ʿAbbās. That it is Madinan is his saying in the report of Abū Ṣāliḥ, and Qatādah’s; that it is Makkan is his saying in the report of Kurayb, and that of al-Ḥasan, ʿAṭāʾ, ʿIkrimah and Jābir. Ibn al-Jawzī judges the first the sounder, on the strength of the reports that the two surahs of refuge came down when the Prophet ﷺ was bewitched in Madinah. The muṣḥaf heads it Makkan.
وَفِيها قَوْلانِ. أحَدُهُما: مَدَنِيَّةٌ، رَواهُ أبُو صالِحٍ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ، وبِهِ قالَ قَتادَةُ في آخَرِينَ. والثّانِي: مَكِّيَّةٌ، رَواهُ كُرَيْبٌ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ، وبِهِ قالَ الحَسَنُ، وعَطاءٌ، وعِكْرِمَةُ، وجابِرٌ. والأوَّلُ أصَحُّوَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْحَسَنِ وَعِكْرِمَةَ وَعَطَاءٍ وَجَابِرٍ. وَمَدَنِيَّةٌ فِي أَحَدِ قَوْلَيِ ابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ وَقَتَادَةَ. وهي خمس آياتThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سُورَةُ الْفَلَقِ مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan in the saying of al-Ḥasan, ʿIkrimah, ʿAṭāʾ and Jābir; Madinan in one of two reports from Ibn ʿAbbās, and in the saying of Qatādah.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ الحَسَنِ، وعِكْرِمَةَ، وعَطاءٍ، وجابِرٍ، ومَدَنِيَّةٌ في أحَدِ قَوْلَيِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ، وقَتادَةَ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
خَمْسُ آياتٍ، مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan, with a difference over it.
مَكِّيَّةٌ مُخْتَلَفٌ فِيها، وآيُها خَمْسٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
The Arabs before Islam lived in fear of the unseen and went to anything they thought could shield them from it: amulets, soothsayers, the jinn of a valley they were about to cross. One of the first things the revelation did was to gather all of that fear and point it at one address.
The two surahs of refuge are tied to a particular event in Madinah. A man named Labīd ibn al-Aʿṣam worked a spell on the Prophet ﷺ, using a comb and strands of hair, knotted and hidden in a well; for a time he ﷺ would think he had done a thing when he had not. The spell itself is narrated by ʿĀʾishah in al-Bukhārī and Muslim. That Jibrīl brought these two surahs down to him on that occasion is in the report of Zayd ibn Arqam, outside the two Ṣaḥīḥs and graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī — and it is on this that the view that the surahs are Madinan rests.
Whenever they came down, what is certain is how he used them afterwards. He recited them over himself in illness, before sleep, morning and evening, and after each prayer, and left every other formula of protection for them.
What came down about what
The spell of Labīd ibn al-Aʿṣam
Zayd ibn Arqam relates that a man of the Jews worked a spell upon the Prophet ﷺ, and he was ill from it for some days. Then Jibrīl came to him, bringing down the two surahs of refuge, and told him of the spell and of the well in which it lay. It was sent for and its knots were undone, and he ﷺ rose as though released from a bond. ʿĀʾishah relates the bewitching in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, and names the man: Labīd ibn al-Aʿṣam.
Zayd ibn Arqam: ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd and al-Ṭabarānī — and, without mention of the two surahs, al-Nasāʾī (4080) and Aḥmad; ṣaḥīḥ according to al-Albānī (al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah, 2761). The bewitching itself: al-Bukhārī (5763) and Muslim (2189), from ʿĀʾishah.
Graded ṣaḥīḥ
أنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ﷺ سُحِرَ وهو مَعَ عائِشَةَ، فَنَزَلَتْ عَلَيْهِ المُعَوِّذَتانِالتحصُّن والاعتصام بالله من الشرور الظاهرة.
To take shelter and hold fast to Allah against the evils that come from outside.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Seeking refuge in Allah
- Sorcery
- Envy
- Protection
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
والغرض منها تعليم النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم كلمات للتعوذ بالله من شر ما يتقى شره من المخلوقات الشريرة، والأوقات التي يكثر فيها حدوث الشر، والأحوال التي يستر أفعال الشر من ورائها لئلا يرمى فاعلوها بتبعاتها، فعلم الله نبيئه هذه المعوذة ليتعوذ بها، وقد ثبت أن النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم كان يتعوذ بهذه السورة وأختها ويأمر أصحابه بالتعوذ بهما، فكان التعوذ بهما من سنة المسلمين.
From its first ayah to its last
- 11 ayah · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
With Whom
Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of the daybreak — the One who splits the night with the morning, and so can dispel any darkness.
- 2–54 ayat · 83% of the surahRead from ayah 2 →
From what
From the evil of what He has created — which takes in everything; then three that are singled out because they come unseen: the darkness when it settles; those who blow on knots; and the envier when he envies.
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 40% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 2 times. 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
أَلَمْ تَرَ آيَاتٍ أُنْزِلَتِ اللَّيْلَةَ لَمْ يُرَ مِثْلُهُنَّ قَطُّ
“Have you not seen the ayat that were sent down tonight, the like of which has never been seen? ‘Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of the daybreak’ and ‘Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of mankind’.”When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was unwell he would recite the surahs of refuge over himself and blow. When his pain grew severe I would recite over him and wipe him with his own hand, hoping for its blessing.The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to seek refuge from the jinn and from the evil eye, until the two surahs of refuge came down. When they came down he took to them, and left everything else.“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ commanded me to recite the surahs of refuge at the end of every prayer.”The names it is known by
After the Lord it seeks refuge with: the Lord of the falaq, the splitting of the dark by the dawn — and, more widely, of everything that Allah splits open and brings out.
The name this surah shares with al-Nās. The Prophet ﷺ recited them as a pair and spoke of them together (Muslim 814).
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)
- 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 Sunan
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.