Makkan
Makkah, after the Night Journey — the last years before the Hijrah
Ibn al-Jawzī says it is Makkan in the saying of the generality, though some held that parts are Madinan: a report from Ibn ʿAbbās, followed by Qatādah, sets apart eight ayat beginning “They were about to tempt you away” (17:73), and al-Qurṭubī names three. Ibn Masʿūd counted it with al-Kahf and Maryam among the earliest surahs he had learned. Its opening fixes it after the Night Journey, which took place in the last years before the Hijrah. The traditional order places it fiftieth.
هِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ الجَماعَةِ، إلّا أنَّ بَعْضَهم يَقُولُ: فِيها مَدَنِيٌّسَمِعْتُ ابْنَ مَسْعُودٍ، رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ، قَالَ فِي بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ وَالْكَهْفِ وَمَرْيَمَ: إِنَّهُنَّ مِنَ الْعِتَاقِ الْأُوَلِ وَهُنَّ مِنْ تِلَادِيهَذِهِ السُّورَةُ مَكِّيَّةٌ، إِلَّا ثَلَاثَ آيَاتٍThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْإِسْرَاءِ مَكِّيَّةٌ وَهِيَ مِائَةٌ وَإِحْدَى عَشْرَةَ آيَةً
- 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، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهْ، عَنِ اِبْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ بَنِي إسْرائِيلَ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan, with the exception he names.
سُورَةُ الإسْراءِ مَكِّيَّةٌ إلّا الآياتِ السّادِسَةَ والعِشْرِينَ، والثّانِيَةَ والثَّلاثِينَ، والثّالِثَةَ والثَّلاثِينَ، والسّابِعَةَ والخَمْسِينَ، ومِن آيَةِ ثَلاثٍ وسَبْعِينَ إلى ثَمانِينَ فَمَدَنِيَّةٌ وآياتُها إحْدى عَشَرَةَ ومِائَةٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
By the dating most widely held, it was about a year before the Hijrah: Khadījah was dead, and Abū Ṭālib, and al-Ṭāʾif had driven him out with stones. The Prophet ﷺ was brought a mount called al-Burāq, and carried by night to Jerusalem, where he prayed, and from there taken up through the heavens. When he told Quraysh in the morning, they laughed; and ʿĀʾishah relates that some who had believed fell away. The surah refers to that test in its sixtieth ayah — “We did not make the vision We showed you except as a trial for people” — and Ibn ʿAbbās explains: it was a vision of the eye, shown to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the night he was taken to Jerusalem.
What is striking is how little the surah says about it. One ayah, beginning with a word of awe — Subḥān — and calling him by the highest title he has: “His servant.” Then, without a pause, it turns to Mūsā, the Book given to him, and the people who received it — who twice spread corruption in the land and were twice overrun, their Temple entered and laid waste. The sanctuary to which he had just been carried had been lost by its keepers. The next ayah says why this is being told: “This Qurʾan guides to what is most upright.” Another people are about to be entrusted.
And so the surah gives them their charge. In seventeen ayat (17:23–39) it sets out a whole way of life, opening and closing with the oneness of Allah. Worship none but Him. Be good to parents — “do not say to them so much as ‘uff’… and lower to them the wing of humility, out of mercy, and say: My Lord, have mercy on them, as they raised me when I was small.” Give the kinsman his due. Do not squander, and do not be tight-fisted. Do not kill your children for fear of want. Do not go near adultery. Do not take life. Do not touch the orphan’s property. Keep your word. Give full measure. Do not pursue what you have no knowledge of. Do not walk the earth exultantly. “That is part of the wisdom your Lord has revealed to you.”
Few surahs speak of the Qurʾan by name so insistently. It is a healing and a mercy. If mankind and jinn joined forces to produce its like, they could not. It was sent down in truth and in truth it descended, in portions, to be recited to people at intervals. Quraysh, for their part, set out what it would take to convince them — a spring gushing from the ground, a garden, the sky brought down in pieces, a house of gold, a ladder to heaven and a book fetched down from it — and are answered in one line: “Say: glory be to my Lord! Am I anything but a human being, a messenger?”
There is pressure in it, plainly stated: “They were about to tempt you away from what We revealed to you… and had We not made you firm, you would almost have inclined to them a little.” “They were about to scare you out of the land.” And there is the answer to the pressure: the prayer from the sun’s decline to the dark of night, the recitation at dawn, the night vigil — “it may be that your Lord will raise you to a praised station” — and a prayer of his own: “My Lord, bring me in by an entrance of truth, and bring me out by an exit of truth.” Then: “Say: the truth has come, and falsehood has vanished.” Within ten years he would say those words aloud, in Makkah, to three hundred and sixty idols.
What came down about what
The Night Journey, as he ﷺ told it
Anas ibn Mālik relates that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “I was brought al-Burāq — a white animal, long, larger than a donkey and smaller than a mule, which sets its hoof at the furthest point its eye can reach. I rode it until I came to Jerusalem, and I tethered it at the ring where the prophets tether their mounts. Then I entered the mosque and prayed two rakʿahs in it, and came out; and Jibrīl brought me a vessel of wine and a vessel of milk. I chose the milk, and Jibrīl said: You have chosen the natural way.”
Then he was taken up. At each heaven Jibrīl asked for it to be opened, and was asked: “Who are you?” — “Jibrīl.” — “And who is with you?” — “Muḥammad.” — “Has he been sent for?” — “He has been sent for.” In the first heaven he met Ādam, who welcomed him and prayed for good for him. In the second were the two cousins, ʿĪsā son of Maryam and Yaḥyā son of Zakariyyā; in the third Yūsuf, “who had been given half of all beauty”; in the fourth Idrīs, of whom Allah says, “We raised him to a high place”; in the fifth Hārūn; in the sixth Mūsā. In the seventh was Ibrāhīm, resting his back against the Much-Frequented House, which seventy thousand angels enter each day and do not return to again.
“Then I was taken to the Lote Tree of the Furthest Limit. Its leaves were like the ears of elephants and its fruits like great jars. And when there covered it, by the command of Allah, what covered it, it was changed, and no one of Allah’s creation could describe it for its beauty.” There Allah revealed to him what He revealed, and made fifty prayers obligatory in every day and night.
On the way down he came to Mūsā, who asked: “What has your Lord enjoined upon your community?” — “Fifty prayers.” — “Go back to your Lord and ask Him to lighten it. Your community cannot bear that; I have tried the Children of Israel and tested them.” He went back and said, “My Lord, lighten it for my community,” and five were taken off; and Mūsā said the same again. “I did not cease going back and forth between my Lord and Mūsā until He said: Muḥammad, they are five prayers in every day and night, and each prayer is as ten; that is fifty prayers. Whoever intends a good deed and does not do it, one good deed is written for him, and if he does it, ten are written; and whoever intends an evil deed and does not do it, nothing is written, and if he does it, one evil deed is written.” When he told Mūsā, he said once more: go back and ask for it to be lightened. “I said: I have gone back to my Lord until I am ashamed before Him.”
Anas ibn Mālik: Muslim (162). Al-Bukhārī gives the ascent from Mālik ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿah (3887).
Ṣaḥīḥ
“They ask you about the spirit”
Quraysh said to the Jews: “Give us something to ask this man about.” They said: “Ask him about the spirit.” So they asked him, and Allah sent down: “They ask you about the spirit. Say: the spirit is of the command of my Lord; and you have been given of knowledge only a little.”
Ibn ʿAbbās: al-Tirmidhī (3140); a ṣaḥīḥ chain according to al-Albānī. Ibn Masʿūd relates the question from a group of Jews in Madinah: al-Bukhārī (4721) and Muslim (2794).
Graded ṣaḥīḥ
Neither loud nor silent
“It came down while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was in hiding in Makkah. When he prayed with his Companions he would raise his voice with the Qurʾan; and when the idolaters heard it, they reviled the Qurʾan, and Him who sent it down, and him who brought it. So Allah said to His Prophet ﷺ: ‘Do not be loud in your prayer’ — so that the idolaters hear and revile the Qurʾan — ‘nor silent in it’ — so that your Companions cannot hear — ‘but seek a way between.’”
Ibn ʿAbbās: al-Bukhārī (4722) and Muslim (446).
Ṣaḥīḥ
بيان كمال الرسالة المحمدية، وفيها إشارات وبشارات للرسالة مضمونًا ومستقبلًا.
To set out the perfection of the message of Muḥammad ﷺ; in it are signs and good tidings for that message, in what it contains and in what was to come.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Night Journey
- The two corruptions of the Children of Israel
- The Qurʾan guides to what is most upright
- The commandments
- Everything glorifies Him
- The honour of the children of Ādam
- The prayers, and the praised station
- “The truth has come”
- The spirit
- A human being, a messenger
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
العماد الذي أقيمت عليه أغراض هذه السورة إثبات نبوة محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم.
وإثبات أن القرآن وحي من الله.
وإثبات فضله وفضل من أنزل عليه.
وذكر أنه معجز.
ورد مطاعن المشركين فيه وفيمن جاء به، وأنهم لم يفقهوه فلذلك أعرضوا عنه.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–88 ayat · 8% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The journey, and the first trustees
Glory be to Him who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him some of Our signs. We gave Mūsā the Book, and made it a guidance for the Children of Israel. We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Book: you will spread corruption in the land twice. When the first of the two came, We sent against you servants of Ours of great might. Then We gave you back your turn. If you do good, you do good for yourselves; and if you return, We return.
- 9–2214 ayat · 12% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
What is most upright
This Qurʾan guides to what is most upright (17:9). Man prays for evil as he prays for good; man is ever hasty. We have fastened every person’s fate to his neck, and on the Day of Resurrection We shall bring out for him a book he will find spread open: “Read your book; today you are enough as a reckoner against yourself.” No bearer of burdens bears the burden of another; and We do not punish until We have sent a messenger. Whoever desires the fleeting life — and whoever desires the Hereafter and strives for it as it should be striven for.
- 23–3917 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 23 →
The commandments
Your Lord has decreed that you worship none but Him, and that you be good to parents: do not say to them “uff”; lower to them the wing of humility, out of mercy. Give the kinsman his due, and the needy, and the traveller; do not squander. Do not kill your children for fear of poverty. Do not go near adultery. Do not take the life Allah has made sacred. Do not approach the orphan’s property. Fulfil the covenant. Give full measure. Do not pursue what you have no knowledge of. Do not walk the earth exultantly. That is part of the wisdom your Lord has revealed to you.
- 40–6021 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 40 →
The Qurʾan, and those who turn from it
We have set things out in this Qurʾan in many ways, that they may take heed. The seven heavens and the earth and whoever is in them glorify Him; there is not a thing but glorifies Him with praise, though you do not understand their glorifying. They say: “When we are bones and fragments, shall we be raised?” Tell My servants to say what is best. Those they call upon are themselves seeking a way to their Lord. We did not make the vision We showed you except as a trial for people.
- 61–7212 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 61 →
Iblīs, and the honour of mankind
When We said to the angels, “Prostrate to Ādam” — Iblīs said: “Shall I prostrate to one You created of clay? If You give me respite, I shall master his descendants, all but a few.” — “Over My servants you have no authority.” Your Lord is He who drives the ship for you through the sea. We have honoured the children of Ādam, carried them on land and sea, and preferred them above many of those We created. The Day We call every people with their leader.
- 73–8412 ayat · 9% of the surahRead from ayah 73 →
Held firm
They were about to tempt you away from what We revealed to you; had We not made you firm, you would almost have inclined to them a little. Establish the prayer from the decline of the sun to the darkness of the night, and the recitation of dawn: the recitation of dawn is witnessed. And in part of the night, keep vigil with it; it may be that your Lord will raise you to a praised station. Say: “My Lord, bring me in by an entrance of truth.” Say: the truth has come, and falsehood has vanished. We send down of the Qurʾan what is a healing and a mercy for the believers.
- 85–10016 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 85 →
The spirit, the challenge, and their demands
They ask you about the spirit. Say: the spirit is of the command of my Lord. Say: if mankind and jinn gathered to produce the like of this Qurʾan, they could not produce its like. They say: “We shall not believe you until you make a spring gush from the earth for us… or you ascend into heaven.” Say: glory be to my Lord! Am I anything but a human being, a messenger? Nothing kept people from believing but that they said, “Has Allah sent a human being as messenger?”
- 101–11111 ayat · 10% of the surahRead from ayah 101 →
The close
We gave Mūsā nine clear signs. With the truth We sent it down, and with the truth it has come down. A Qurʾan We have divided, that you may recite it to people at intervals. Those given knowledge before it, when it is recited to them, fall on their faces in prostration, weeping, and it increases them in humility. Say: call upon Allah, or call upon the Most Merciful; whichever you call — His are the Most Beautiful Names. And say: “Praise be to Allah, who has taken no son, and has no partner in sovereignty.”
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 99% 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
كَانَ النَّبِيُّ صلى الله عليه وسلم لاَ يَنَامُ حَتَّى يَقْرَأَ بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ وَالزُّمَرَ
ʿĀʾishah said: “The Prophet ﷺ would not sleep until he had recited Banī Isrāʾīl and al-Zumar.”إِنَّهُنَّ مِنَ الْعِتَاقِ الأُوَلِ وَهُنَّ مِنْ تِلاَدِي
Ibn Masʿūd said of Banī Isrāʾīl, al-Kahf and Maryam: “They are among the first and finest, and they are my oldest wealth.”The Prophet ﷺ entered Makkah, and around the House were three hundred and sixty idols. He began to strike them with a stick in his hand, saying: “The truth has come, and falsehood has vanished. The truth has come, and falsehood neither begins anything nor brings it back.”Ibn ʿUmar said: “On the Day of Resurrection people will be on their knees, each community following its prophet, saying: ‘So-and-so, intercede!’ — until the intercession comes to the Prophet ﷺ. That is the day on which Allah will raise him to the praised station.”“The prayer in congregation is twenty-five degrees better than the prayer of one alone; and the angels of the night and the angels of the day gather at the dawn prayer.” Abū Hurayrah said: recite, if you wish: “The recitation of dawn is witnessed.”The names it is known by
After the journey by night told in its first ayah.
The name by which the Companions knew it — Ibn Masʿūd and ʿĀʾishah both call it this — after the account of the Children of Israel that follows the opening (17:2–8).
After its first word.
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
- 17:1The Night Journey
- 17:9The Qurʾan guides to what is most upright
- 17:13–14“Read your book”
- 17:23–24Parents: the wing of humility
- 17:31–34Four prohibitions
- 17:36Do not pursue what you have no knowledge of
- 17:44Everything glorifies Him
- 17:70We have honoured the children of Ādam
- 17:78–79The prayers, and the praised station
- 17:80–81An entrance of truth; the truth has come
- 17:82A healing and a mercy
- 17:85The spirit
- 17:88The challenge
- 17:109An ayah of prostration
- 17:110–111His are the Most Beautiful Names
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)
- 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; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī
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.