Makkan — its last four ayat are reported Madinan
The early and middle years in Makkah
It is Makkan in the saying of the majority. Ibn ʿAbbās and Qatādah excepted four ayat, from “And the poets — the misguided follow them” to the end, which they said came down in Madinah; Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī both record this. Its command to “warn your nearest kin” is tied by the reports in the two Ṣaḥīḥs to the day the Prophet ﷺ climbed al-Ṣafā and called Quraysh clan by clan. With two hundred and twenty-seven ayat it has more than any surah but al-Baqarah, though its ayat are short. The traditional order places it forty-seventh.
سُورَةُ الشُّعَراءِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها، إلّا أرْبَعَ آياتٍ مِنها نَزَلَتْ بِالمَدِينَةِهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجُمْهُورِThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan, except four ayat.
سُورَةُ الشُّعَرَاءِ مَكِّيَّةٌ إِلَّا أَرْبَعَ آيَاتٍ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays and Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ، وابْنُ مَرْدُوَيْهِ، عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ طسم الشُّعَراءِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan, with the exception he names.
سُورَةُ الشُّعَراءِ مَكِّيَّةٌ إلّا أرْبَعَ آياتٍ فَإنَّها مَدَنِيَّةٌ، وهي ﴿والشُّعَراءُ يَتَّبِعُهُمُ الغاوُونَ﴾ إلى آخِرِها
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
The surah opens on the Prophet’s own state. He wanted his people to believe so much that it was consuming him, and he is told that if Allah willed He could send down a sign from the sky before which their necks would stay bowed. That is not how it is to be. They have already been given signs enough: “Have they not looked at the earth — how many of every noble kind We have caused to grow in it?”
What follows is seven stories, told fast. Mūsā before Pharaoh, at the greatest length; then Ibrāhīm and his people; then Nūḥ, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lūṭ and Shuʿayb. The last five are cut to one pattern on purpose. Each messenger says the same words — “Will you not be mindful? I am to you a trustworthy messenger; so be mindful of Allah, and obey me. I ask of you no wage for it; my wage is only with the Lord of the worlds” — and then names the one wrong his own people were sunk in: Nūḥ’s people their contempt for the poor who followed him, ʿĀd their towers and their tyranny, Thamūd their luxury, the people of Lūṭ their indecency, the people of the Thicket their short measure. Each is refused. Each story ends with the refrain. By the eighth time, the listener knows it by heart.
The point for the Prophet ﷺ is in the refrain’s two names. Al-ʿAzīz: none of those peoples escaped. Al-Raḥīm: every one of them was sent a messenger first, and given time.
Then the surah turns to the Qurʾan and clears it of both things Quraysh called it. It is not the work of a soothsayer: “The devils have not brought it down; it is not for them, nor are they able.” And it is not poetry. The poets wander in every valley and say what they do not do — but this was brought down by the Trustworthy Spirit upon your heart, in a clear Arabic tongue.
And in the middle of that close stands the command that began the public call: “Warn your nearest kin.” Ibn ʿAbbās relates that when it came down, the Prophet ﷺ climbed al-Ṣafā and called out, “Banū Fihr! Banū ʿAdī!” — until the clans of Quraysh had gathered — and asked whether they would believe him if he told them of horsemen in the valley about to raid them. They said: we have never known you to say anything but the truth. He said: “Then I am a warner to you before a severe punishment.”
What came down about what
The call from al-Ṣafā
When “And warn your nearest kin” was revealed, the Prophet ﷺ went up al-Ṣafā and began to call: “Banū Fihr! Banū ʿAdī!” — the clans of Quraysh — until they had gathered; a man who could not come himself sent someone to see what it was. He said: “Tell me: if I informed you that horsemen in the valley were about to attack you, would you believe me?” They said: “Yes; we have never found you anything but truthful.” He said: “Then I am a warner to you before a severe punishment.” Abū Lahab said: “May you perish for the rest of the day! Is it for this you gathered us?”
Ibn ʿAbbās: al-Bukhārī (4770) and Muslim (208).
Ṣaḥīḥ
مواجهة المُصِرِّين على التكذيب بالرسول ﷺ، الطاعنين برسالته، وتوهينُ شأنهم.
To confront those who persist in denying the Messenger ﷺ and attacking his message, and to show how little their standing is.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Consolation for the Prophet ﷺ
- Mūsā and Pharaoh
- The prayer of Ibrāhīm
- Five messengers, one speech
- The Almighty, the Merciful
- The Qurʾan brought down by the Trustworthy Spirit
- Warning the nearest kin
- The poets
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
أولها التنويه بالقرآن، والتعريض بعجزهم عن معارضته، وتسلية النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم على ما يلاقيه من إعراض قومه عن التوحيد الذي دعاهم إليه القرآن.
وفي ضمنه تهديدهم على تعرضهم لغضب الله تعالى، وضرب المثل لهم بما حل بالأمم المكذبة رسلها والمعرضة عن آيات الله.
وأحسب أنها نزلت إثر طلب المشركين أن يأتيهم الرسول بخوارق، فافتتحت بتسلية النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم وتثبيت له ورباطة لجأشه بأن ما يلاقيه من قومه هو سنة الرسل من قبله مع أقوامهم مثل موسى وإبراهيم ونوح وهود وصالح
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–99 ayat · 5% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Do not grieve yourself to death
Ṭā Sīn Mīm. These are the ayat of the clear Book. Perhaps you will destroy yourself with grief because they do not believe. If We willed, We could send down on them a sign from the sky, and their necks would remain bowed to it. Have they not looked at the earth — how many of every noble kind We have caused to grow in it? In that is a sign, yet most of them were not believers. And your Lord — He is the Almighty, the Merciful.
- 10–6859 ayat · 29% of the surahRead from ayah 10 →
Mūsā and Pharaoh
Your Lord called Mūsā: “Go to the wrongdoing people.” — “My Lord, I fear they will deny me; my chest tightens and my tongue does not run free.” Pharaoh said: “Did we not bring you up among us as a child?… And what is the Lord of the worlds?” The staff, and the hand. The sorcerers gathered, and fell prostrate: “We believe in the Lord of the worlds.” Then, at the sea, the companions of Mūsā said: “We are overtaken.” He said: “No. My Lord is with me; He will guide me” (26:62). And the sea parted, each part like a great mountain.
- 69–10436 ayat · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 69 →
Ibrāhīm, and his prayer
Recite to them the story of Ibrāhīm. “Do they hear you when you call? Do they benefit you, or harm?” — “We found our fathers doing so.” — “They are enemies to me, all but the Lord of the worlds: who created me, and He guides me; who feeds me and gives me drink; and when I am ill, He heals me; who will cause me to die and then give me life.” “My Lord, grant me judgement, and join me with the righteous… and do not disgrace me on the Day they are raised — the Day when neither wealth nor sons will avail, but only he who comes to Allah with a sound heart.”
- 105–14036 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 105 →
Nūḥ, and Hūd
The people of Nūḥ denied the messengers. “Shall we believe you, when the lowest follow you?” — “I am not one to drive away the believers.” We saved him and those with him in the laden ship. ʿĀd denied the messengers. “Do you build on every height a monument, in vanity? And when you strike, you strike as tyrants.” They said: “It is the same to us whether you preach or do not.” So We destroyed them.
- 141–19151 ayat · 23% of the surahRead from ayah 141 →
Ṣāliḥ, Lūṭ and Shuʿayb
Thamūd denied the messengers. “Will you be left secure in what is here — gardens and springs, and houses carved skilfully from the mountains?” They hamstrung the she-camel. The people of Lūṭ denied the messengers: “Do you approach the males of the worlds?” The people of the Thicket denied the messengers: “Give full measure, and weigh with a true balance.” — “Then make fragments of the sky fall upon us, if you are truthful.” The punishment of the day of shadow seized them.
- 192–22736 ayat · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 192 →
The Trustworthy Spirit, and the poets
It is the sending down of the Lord of the worlds: the Trustworthy Spirit brought it down upon your heart, that you may be of the warners, in a clear Arabic tongue; and it is in the scriptures of the ancients. Warn your nearest kin, and lower your wing to the believers who follow you. Put your trust in the Almighty, the Merciful, who sees you when you stand, and your movement among those who prostrate. Shall I tell you upon whom the devils descend? Upon every sinful liar. And the poets — the misguided follow them; they wander in every valley, and say what they do not do — except those who believe and do right, and remember Allah much.
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 8 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
يَا فَاطِمَةُ بِنْتَ مُحَمَّدٍ سَلِينِي مَا شِئْتِ مِنْ مَالِي لاَ أُغْنِي عَنْكِ مِنَ اللَّهِ شَيْئًا
When “And warn your nearest kin” was sent down, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ stood and said: “People of Quraysh, ransom yourselves; I can avail you nothing against Allah. Banū ʿAbd Manāf, I can avail you nothing against Allah. ʿAbbās son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, I can avail you nothing against Allah. Ṣafiyyah, aunt of the Messenger of Allah, I can avail you nothing against Allah. Fāṭimah daughter of Muḥammad, ask me for what you will of my wealth; I can avail you nothing against Allah.”The name it is known by
After the poets of its closing ayat (26:224–227), set against the Prophet ﷺ whom Quraysh had called one of them. Ibn Kathīr notes that in the commentary transmitted from Mālik it is called Sūrat al-Jāmiʿah.
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
- 26:3“Perhaps you will destroy yourself with grief”
- 26:62“No. My Lord is with me; He will guide me”
- 26:78–82Ibrāhīm describes his Lord
- 26:83–89The prayer of Ibrāhīm, and the sound heart
- 26:109“I ask of you no wage for it”
- 26:181–183Give full measure
- 26:192–195The Trustworthy Spirit, upon your heart
- 26:214Warn your nearest kin
- 26:224–227The poets
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 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 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.