Makkan, by agreement
The middle years in Makkah
Ibn al-Jawzī says it is Makkan, all of it, without any disagreement he knew of, and Ibn Kathīr heads it Makkan. The traditional order places it fifty-fourth, directly after Yūsuf.
سُورَةُ الحِجْرِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها مِن غَيْرِ خِلافٍ نَعْلَمُهُتَفْسِيرُ سُورَةِ الْحِجْرِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةِ الْحِجْرِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by al-Naḥḥās and Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ النَّحّاسُ في ناسِخِهِ، وابْنُ مَرْدُوَيْهِ، عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ الحِجْرِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement, citing al-Qurṭubī.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِالِاتِّفاقِ كَما قالَ القُرْطُبِيُّ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
تِسْعُونَ وتِسْعُ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
It opens with a sentence about the future that no one in Makkah would then have credited: “Perhaps those who disbelieve will wish that they had been Muslims.” For the present, the instruction is to leave them alone — “let them eat and enjoy themselves, and let hope distract them; they will come to know.”
What they were saying is quoted: “You, upon whom the Reminder has been sent down — you are surely mad. Why do you not bring us the angels, if you are truthful?” The answer comes in two parts. The angels are not sent down except with the truth, and when they come there is no more respite. And as for the Reminder: “It is We who sent it down, and it is We who shall guard it.” Every earlier scripture had been entrusted to its people to keep. This one, alone, Allah takes upon Himself.
Then the surah does what the Makkan surahs do: it widens the frame until the mockers look small. The sky with its constellations, guarded against every devil. The earth spread out, and everything in it weighed. “There is not a thing but its storehouses are with Us, and We send it down only in a known measure.” Behind the mockers stands an older one. Iblīs refuses to bow to a creature made of dried clay, and is given respite, and says: “I shall make things seem fair to them on earth, and mislead them all — except Your chosen servants among them.” The reply is the believer’s charter: “Over My servants you have no authority.”
At its centre the surah gives a two-sided announcement, and at once illustrates both sides. “Tell My servants that I am the Forgiving, the Merciful — and that My punishment is the painful punishment.” The same angels come to Ibrāhīm with news of a son, and go on to the towns of Lūṭ. “Who despairs of the mercy of his Lord but those who are astray?”
Its last passage is spoken directly to the Prophet ﷺ. “We have given you seven of the oft-repeated, and the mighty Qurʾan” — so do not look with longing at what others have been given. “So proclaim what you are commanded, and turn away from the idolaters. We are enough for you against the mockers.” And then, with a tenderness that is easy to miss: “We know that your breast is straitened by what they say. So glorify your Lord with praise, and be among those who prostrate, and worship your Lord until the certain end comes to you.”
إنذار المكذبين بالعقاب من خلال عرض مشاهد المهلكين، تحذيرًا للمخاطبين وتثبيتًا للمؤمنين.
To warn those who deny of the punishment, by showing scenes of those who were destroyed — as a caution to those addressed, and to steady the believers.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Reminder, guarded
- The sky guarded, the earth weighed
- Iblīs and the clay
- “Over My servants you have no authority”
- Mercy and punishment together
- The guests of Ibrāhīm; Lūṭ
- The seven oft-repeated
- Proclaim what you are commanded
- Worship until the certain end
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
افتتحت بالحروف المقطعة التي فيها تعريض بالتحدي بإعجاز القرآن. وعلى التنويه بفضل القرآن وهديه.
وإنذار المشركين بندم يندمونه على عدم إسلامهم.
وتوبيخهم بأنهم شغلهم عن الهدى انغماسهم في شهواتهم.
وإنذارهم بالهلاك عند حلول إبان الوعيد الذي عينه الله في علمه.
وتسلية الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم على عدم إيمان من لم يؤمنوا، وما يقولونه في شأنه وما يتوركون بطلبه منه، وأن تلك عادة المكذبين مع رسلهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–1515 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The Reminder
Alif Lām Rā. These are the ayat of the Book, and of a clear Qurʾan. Perhaps those who disbelieve will wish that they had been Muslims. Leave them to eat and enjoy themselves. They say: “You, upon whom the Reminder has been sent down, you are surely mad.” It is We who sent down the Reminder, and it is We who shall guard it (15:9). Even if We opened to them a gate of heaven and they kept ascending through it, they would say: “Our eyes have been dazzled; we are a people bewitched.”
- 16–2510 ayat · 12% of the surahRead from ayah 16 →
Sky, earth and storehouses
We have set constellations in the sky and made it fair to those who look, and guarded it from every outcast devil. The earth We have spread out, and cast into it firm mountains, and caused to grow in it everything in due balance. There is not a thing but its storehouses are with Us, and We send it down only in a known measure. We send the winds to fertilise. It is We who give life and cause death, and We are the inheritors.
- 26–4823 ayat · 24% of the surahRead from ayah 26 →
Clay, and the one who would not bow
We created man from dried clay, from moulded mud, and the jinn We created before, from scorching fire. Your Lord said to the angels: “When I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My spirit, fall down in prostration to him.” All bowed, except Iblīs. “My Lord, because You have sent me astray, I shall make things seem fair to them, and mislead them all — except Your chosen servants.” — “Over My servants you have no authority.” Hell has seven gates. The mindful are among gardens and springs: “Enter in peace, secure.”
- 49–8436 ayat · 32% of the surahRead from ayah 49 →
Mercy and punishment
Tell My servants that I am the Forgiving, the Merciful, and that My punishment is the painful punishment. Tell them of the guests of Ibrāhīm: “We give you good news of a knowing boy.” — “Who despairs of the mercy of his Lord but those who are astray?” The messengers came to the family of Lūṭ: “Set out with your family in a part of the night.” The blast seized them at sunrise. In that are signs for those who read the marks. The people of the Thicket were wrongdoers; and the people of al-Ḥijr denied the messengers, hewing houses from the mountains, feeling secure.
- 85–9915 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 85 →
The gift, and the command
We did not create the heavens and the earth and what is between them except in truth; the Hour is surely coming, so pardon with a gracious pardon. We have given you seven of the oft-repeated, and the mighty Qurʾan. Do not stretch your eyes towards what We have given some of them to enjoy; and lower your wing to the believers. So proclaim what you are commanded. We are enough for you against the mockers. We know that your breast is straitened by what they say; so glorify your Lord with praise, and worship your Lord until the certain end comes to you.
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 98% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 4 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
أُمُّ الْقُرْآنِ هِيَ السَّبْعُ الْمَثَانِي وَالْقُرْآنُ الْعَظِيمُ
“The Mother of the Qurʾan is the seven oft-repeated, and the mighty Qurʾan.”Abū Saʿīd ibn al-Muʿallā said: the Prophet ﷺ said to me, “Shall I not teach you the greatest surah in the Qurʾan before I leave the mosque?” Then, as he was about to leave, I reminded him, and he said: “‘Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds’ — it is the seven oft-repeated, and the mighty Qurʾan that I have been given.”The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to his Companions as they passed al-Ḥijr: “Do not enter upon these people who were punished, unless you are weeping. If you are not weeping, do not enter upon them, lest there befall you what befell them.”The name it is known by
After the people of al-Ḥijr (15:80–84): Thamūd, who carved their houses in the cliffs, north of Madinah on the road to Syria. The Prophet ﷺ passed their ruins on the way to Tabūk.
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
- 15:2They will wish they had been Muslims
- 15:9The Reminder, guarded
- 15:21Its storehouses are with Us
- 15:28–31The command to bow, and the refusal
- 15:42“Over My servants you have no authority”
- 15:45–48“Enter in peace, secure”
- 15:49–50The Forgiving — and the painful punishment
- 15:56Who despairs of his Lord’s mercy?
- 15:87The seven oft-repeated
- 15:94–95Proclaim; We are enough for you
- 15:97–99Worship until the certain end
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)
- 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
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.