Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah
Ibn al-Jawzī records agreement that it is Makkan. Al-Kalbī and Muqātil excepted three ayat (32:18–20) as Madinan, and others five, beginning with the sixteenth. The traditional order places it seventy-fifth.
سُورَةُ السَّجْدَةِ وَتُسَمّى سُورَةَ المَضاجِعِ، وهي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْتَفْسِيرُ سُورَةِ السَّجْدَةِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan; ʿAṭāʾ said: except three ayat.
سُورَةُ السَّجْدَةِ مَكِّيَّةٌ ، قَالَ عَطَاءٌ: إِلَّا ثَلَاثَ آيَاتٍ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, Ibn Mardawayh and al-Bayhaqī.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضَّرِيسِ، وابْنُ مَرْدُوَيْهِ، والبَيْهَقِيُّ في الدَّلائِلِ، عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ: ﴿الم﴾ ﴿تَنْزِيلُ﴾ السَّجْدَةُ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
وتُسَمّى سُورَةَ المَضاجِعِ، مَكِّيَّةٌ عِنْدَ أكْثَرِهِمْ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ، وهى ثَلاثُونَ آيَةً، وقِيلَ: تِسْعٌ وعِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. Its opening states the charge it answers — “Or do they say: he has invented it?” — and replies: no, it is the truth from your Lord, to warn a people to whom no warner came before you.
What follows is the whole of the faith in very small compass, and that is the best explanation of the use the Prophet ﷺ made of it. Abū Hurayrah says that on Fridays he recited it in the first unit of the dawn prayer, and “Has there come upon man” in the second. Friday is the day on which Ādam was created and on which the Hour will come; and these two surahs carry the worshipper from the one to the other. Here: the heavens and the earth made in six days; the affair directed from heaven to earth; the human being begun from clay, then from a drop, then shaped and given hearing, sight and a heart. Then the question — “when we are lost in the earth, shall we be created anew?” — and the answer: the angel of death, who has been given charge of you, will take you.
Then the two parties. The guilty hang their heads before their Lord: “Our Lord, we have seen and heard; send us back, and we will do right.” And the believers are described by what they do when the ayat are recited to them — they fall down in prostration — and by their nights: “Their sides forsake their beds, as they call upon their Lord in fear and hope, and they spend of what We have provided them.”
For them the surah holds the ayah that the Prophet ﷺ explained with words from his Lord: “No soul knows what delight of the eyes is kept hidden for them, as a reward for what they used to do.”
بيان دلائل الحق ومشاهده التي نزل بها القرآن، ومنها حقيقة الخلق وأحوال الإنسان.
To set out the proofs and scenes of the truth that the Qurʾan came down with — among them the reality of creation, and the states of man.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The truth of the Book
- Creation in stages
- The Resurrection
- Night worship
- The hidden reward
- The believer and the transgressor are not equal
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
أولها التنويه بالقرآن أنه منزل من عند الله، وتوبيخ المشركين على ادعائهم أنه مفترى بأنهم لم يسبق لهم التشرف بنزول كتاب. والاستدلال على إبطال إلهية أصنامهم بإثبات انفراد الله بأنه خالق السماوات والأرض ومدبر أمورهما. وذكر البعث والاستدلال على كيفية بدء خلق الإنسان ونسله، وتنظيره بإحياء الأرض، وأدمج في ذلك أن إحياء الأرض نعمة عليهم كفروا بمسديها. والإنحاء على الذين أنكروه ووعيدهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–33 ayat · 7% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
No doubt in it
Alif Lām Mīm. The sending down of the Book, in which there is no doubt, is from the Lord of the worlds. Or do they say, “He has invented it”? No — it is the truth from your Lord, that you may warn a people to whom no warner has come before you.
- 4–96 ayat · 21% of the surahRead from ayah 4 →
The Creator, and how He made you
It is Allah who created the heavens and the earth and what is between them in six days, and then rose over the Throne. He directs the affair from the heaven to the earth; then it ascends to Him in a Day whose measure is a thousand years of your counting. He made excellent everything He created, and began the creation of man from clay; then made his offspring from an extract of a lowly fluid; then shaped him and breathed into him of His spirit, and gave you hearing, sight and hearts.
- 10–145 ayat · 19% of the surahRead from ayah 10 →
“When we are lost in the earth?”
They say: “When we are lost in the earth, shall we really be in a new creation?” Say: the angel of death, who has been entrusted with you, will take you; then to your Lord you will be returned. If you could see the guilty, hanging their heads before their Lord: “Our Lord, we have seen and heard, so send us back.” Taste, then — for you forgot the meeting of this Day.
- 15–228 ayat · 27% of the surahRead from ayah 15 →
Those who believe in Our ayat
Only those believe in Our ayat who, when reminded of them, fall down in prostration and glorify their Lord with praise, and are not proud. Their sides forsake their beds, as they call on their Lord in fear and hope. No soul knows what delight of the eyes is hidden for them (32:17). Is one who believes like one who transgresses? They are not equal. We shall make them taste the nearer punishment before the greater, so that they may return.
- 23–308 ayat · 25% of the surahRead from ayah 23 →
Leaders, when they were patient
We gave Mūsā the Book, and made it a guidance for the Children of Israel; and We made from among them leaders guiding by Our command, when they were patient and were certain of Our signs. Do they not see that We drive the water to the barren land and bring out crops by it? They say, “When is this Decision, if you are truthful?” So turn from them, and wait; they too are waiting.
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 97% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 2 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
“The Prophet ﷺ used to recite, in the dawn prayer on Friday, ‘Alif Lām Mīm, the sending down’ — al-Sajdah — and ‘Has there come upon man’.”“The Prophet ﷺ would not sleep until he had recited ‘the sending down’ of al-Sajdah, and ‘Blessed is He’.”أَعْدَدْتُ لِعِبَادِي الصَّالِحِينَ مَا لاَ عَيْنٌ رَأَتْ وَلاَ أُذُنٌ سَمِعَتْ وَلاَ خَطَرَ عَلَى قَلْبِ بَشَرٍ
“Allah said: I have prepared for My righteous servants what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and what has never occurred to a human heart.” Abū Hurayrah said: recite, if you wish, “No soul knows what delight of the eyes is hidden for them.”The names it is known by
After the ayah of prostration in it, the fifteenth. It is called Alif Lām Mīm Tanzīl, or Tanzīl al-Sajdah, in the hadith, from its opening words.
A name Ibn al-Jawzī records, from its sixteenth ayah: “their sides forsake their beds.”
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)
- 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; 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.