Madinan, by agreement
Madinah, the fifth year of the Hijrah: the Battle of the Trench and the months around it
It is Madinan in the saying of all. Al-Qurṭubī notes its subject at the outset: it came down about the hypocrites and the hurt they did to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and their slanders about him and his marriages. Its events fall in the fifth year of the Hijrah — the siege in Shawwāl, the Banū Qurayẓah directly after, and the Prophet’s ﷺ marriage to Zaynab bint Jaḥsh in the same year. The traditional order places it ninetieth.
سُورَةُ الأحْزابِ وَهِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الْأَحْزَابِ مَدَنِيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ جَمِيعِهِمْ. نَزَلَتْ فِي الْمُنَافِقِينَ وَإِيذَائِهِمْ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ﷺ، وَطَعْنِهِمْ فِيهِ وَفِي مُنَاكَحَتِهِ وَغَيْرِهَا. وهي ثلاث وَسَبْعُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سُورَةُ الْأَحْزَابِ مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Madinah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, al-Naḥḥās, Ibn Mardawayh and al-Bayhaqī, through several chains.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ، والنَّحّاسُ، وابْنُ مَرْدُوَيْهِ، والبَيْهَقِيُّ في الدَّلائِلِ، مِن طُرُقٍ عَنْ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ الأحْزابِ بِالمَدِينَةِ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Madinan.
تَفْسِيرُ سُورَةِ الأحْزابِ أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ والنَّحّاسُ وابْنُ مَرْدَوَيْهِ، والبَيْهَقِيُّ في الدَّلائِلِ مِن طُرُقٍ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ الأحْزابِ بِالمَدِينَةِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سَبْعُونَ وثَلاثُ آياتٍ، وهي مَدَنِيَّةٌ بِإجْماعٍ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سُورَةُ الأحْزابِ مَدَنِيَّةٌ، وهي ثَلاثٌ وسَبْعُونَ آيَةً
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
After the Banū al-Naḍīr were expelled from Madinah, some of their chiefs went from tribe to tribe raising an alliance to destroy Islam at its root. Quraysh came from the south under Abū Sufyān; Ghaṭafān and their allies from the east: some ten thousand men, against a city that could field three thousand. On the advice of Salmān the Persian, the Muslims dug a trench across the open northern approach — a device the Arabs had never met. The Prophet ﷺ dug with them, in the cold, with a stone tied against his stomach for hunger.
The siege lasted most of a month. Then the Banū Qurayẓah, the last Jewish tribe in the oasis, bound by treaty to its defence, went over to the enemy, and the city was open from behind. The surah records what that felt like: “when they came at you from above you and from below you, when eyes swerved and hearts reached the throats, and you thought thoughts about Allah. There the believers were tried, and shaken with a mighty shaking.” The hypocrites said aloud what they had been thinking, and began asking leave to go home.
No battle was fought. Allah sent against the confederates a bitter wind, and hosts they could not see; their tents were torn up and their fires put out, and they broke camp in the night. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Now we shall march on them, and they will not march on us.” He was told at once to go to the Banū Qurayẓah.
Woven through the account of the siege is a second subject: the Prophet’s ﷺ household, and through it the reform of the family. Adoption as the Arabs practised it — a man’s adopted son taking his name and counted his heir, his divorced wife forbidden to the adopter — is abolished: “Call them by their fathers.” Zayd, who had been called Zayd son of Muḥammad, became Zayd ibn Ḥārithah again; and when his marriage to Zaynab ended, the Prophet ﷺ was commanded to marry her himself, so that the old taboo would be broken by his own example. The hypocrites made of it what they could.
The same surah gives the Prophet’s ﷺ wives their choice between this world and Allah and His Messenger; names them the mothers of the believers; lays down the screen between them and visitors; and tells the believing women to draw their outer garments about them when they go out. And it gives the believers a command that is obeyed, somewhere, at every moment: “Allah and His angels send blessings upon the Prophet. O you who believe, send blessings upon him, and greet him with peace.”
What came down about what
Zayd ibn Ḥārithah
“Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, the freedman of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ — we used to call him nothing but Zayd son of Muḥammad, until the Qurʾan came down: ‘Call them by their fathers; that is more just with Allah.’”
ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar: al-Bukhārī (4782) and Muslim (2425).
Ṣaḥīḥ
Anas ibn al-Naḍr
Anas ibn Mālik said: my uncle Anas ibn al-Naḍr was absent from the fighting at Badr, and he said: “Messenger of Allah, I was absent from the first battle you fought against the idolaters. If Allah lets me be present at a battle with them, Allah will see what I do.” On the day of Uḥud, when the Muslims fell back, he said: “O Allah, I ask Your pardon for what these have done” — his own companions — “and I declare myself clear before You of what these have done” — the idolaters. Then he went forward.
Saʿd ibn Muʿādh met him, and he said: “Saʿd ibn Muʿādh — the Garden! By the Lord of al-Naḍr, I find its fragrance from this side of Uḥud.” Saʿd said afterwards: “Messenger of Allah, I could not do what he did.”
“We found on him,” said Anas, “eighty and some wounds: the stroke of a sword, the thrust of a spear, the shot of an arrow. We found him killed, and the idolaters had mutilated him, so that no one knew him but his sister, by his fingertips. We used to think that this ayah came down about him and those like him: ‘Among the believers are men who have been true to what they pledged to Allah.’”
Anas ibn Mālik: al-Bukhārī (4783, 2805) and Muslim (1903).
Ṣaḥīḥ
The choice
ʿĀʾishah said that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was commanded to give his wives the choice, he began with her: “I am going to mention something to you; do not be hasty until you have consulted your parents.” Then he recited the two ayat. She said: “Is it about this that I should consult my parents? I want Allah, His Messenger and the home of the Hereafter.” And all his wives did as she did.
Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh tells what came before it. Abū Bakr came asking leave to enter upon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and found people sitting at his door, none of them admitted. He was given leave, and then ʿUmar; and they found the Prophet ﷺ sitting with his wives around him, downcast and silent. ʿUmar said to himself: I shall say something to make the Prophet ﷺ laugh — and told how his own wife had asked him for more to spend, and how he had got up and dealt with her. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ laughed, and said: “They are around me, as you see, asking me for more to spend.” Abū Bakr rose to strike ʿĀʾishah, and ʿUmar to strike Ḥafṣah, each of them saying: “Do you ask the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for what he does not have?” They said: “By Allah, we shall never ask the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for anything he does not have.”
He kept apart from them for a month, or twenty-nine days, and then this ayah came down upon him. He began with ʿĀʾishah, and when he had recited it to her she said: “Is it about you, Messenger of Allah, that I should consult my parents? No — I choose Allah, His Messenger and the home of the Hereafter. And I ask you not to tell any of your wives what I have said.” He said: “None of them will ask me but I shall tell her. Allah did not send me to make things hard, nor to look for people’s stumbling. He sent me as a teacher, and one who makes things easy.”
ʿĀʾishah: al-Bukhārī (4785) and Muslim (1475). Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh: Muslim (1478).
Ṣaḥīḥ
Zaynab bint Jaḥsh
Zayd came complaining, and the Prophet ﷺ kept saying: “Be mindful of Allah, and keep your wife.” Anas said: had the Messenger of Allah ﷺ concealed anything, he would have concealed this. Zaynab used to say to the other wives: “Your families gave you in marriage; Allah gave me in marriage from above seven heavens.”
Anas ibn Mālik: al-Bukhārī (7420).
Ṣaḥīḥ
The screen
When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ married Zaynab he invited the people to a meal. They ate and then sat on, talking, and he was too shy to tell them to leave. He rose; some left, and three stayed. When at last they had gone, Anas went to enter with him, and he let down the curtain between them — and the ayah of the screen was sent down. ʿUmar had earlier said: “Messenger of Allah, the good and the bad come in to you; if only you would order the mothers of the believers to be screened.”
Anas ibn Mālik: al-Bukhārī (4791, 4790) and Muslim (1428).
Ṣaḥīḥ
تركز على عناية الله بنبيِّه ﷺ وحماية جنابه وأهل بيته.
It centres on Allah’s care for His Prophet ﷺ, and the protection of his honour and his household.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Battle of the Trench
- The hypocrites exposed
- The Messenger ﷺ as an example
- The abolition of adoption
- The mothers of the believers
- The Seal of the Prophets
- Sending blessings upon the Prophet ﷺ
- The Trust
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
لكثير من آيات هذه السورة أسباب لنزولها، وأكثرها نزل للرد على المنافقين أقوالا قصدوا بها أذى النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم.
وأهم أغراضها: الرد عليهم قولهم لما تزوج النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم زينب بنت جحش بعد أن طلقها زيد بن حارثة فقالوا: تزوج محمد امرأة ابنه وهو ينهى الناس عن ذلك، فأنزل الله تعالى إبطال التبني. وأن الحق في أحكام الله لأنه الخبير بالأعمال وهو الذي يقول الحق.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–88 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The Prophet ﷺ, and false relationships
O Prophet, be mindful of Allah, and do not obey the disbelievers and the hypocrites. Allah has not put two hearts in any man’s breast; nor made your wives, whom you liken to your mothers’ backs, your mothers; nor made your adopted sons your sons. Call them by their fathers. The Prophet is closer to the believers than their own selves, and his wives are their mothers.
- 9–2012 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
The siege
O you who believe, remember Allah’s favour upon you when hosts came against you, and We sent against them a wind, and hosts you did not see. When they came at you from above you and from below, and eyes swerved and hearts reached the throats — there the believers were tried and shaken. The hypocrites said: “Allah and His Messenger promised us nothing but delusion.” A party of them said: “People of Yathrib, there is no stand for you here; go back.” Others asked leave: “Our houses are exposed” — and they were not exposed; they wanted only to flee.
- 21–277 ayat · 9% of the surahRead from ayah 21 →
An excellent example
In the Messenger of Allah you have an excellent example, for whoever hopes in Allah and the Last Day (33:21). When the believers saw the confederates they said: “This is what Allah and His Messenger promised us” — and it only increased them in faith. Among the believers are men who have been true to what they pledged to Allah. Allah turned back the disbelievers in their rage; they gained no good. And He brought down from their strongholds those of the People of the Book who had backed them.
- 28–358 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 28 →
The mothers of the believers
O Prophet, say to your wives: if you desire the life of this world and its adornment, come, I will provide for you and release you handsomely; but if you desire Allah and His Messenger and the home of the Hereafter, Allah has prepared a great reward. Wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other women. Remain in your houses; establish the prayer; obey Allah and His Messenger. — And for the men and women who submit, believe, obey, are truthful, patient, humble, give charity, fast, guard their chastity and remember Allah much: forgiveness, and a great reward.
- 36–405 ayat · 10% of the surahRead from ayah 36 →
Zayd and Zaynab; the Seal of the Prophets
It is not for a believing man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, to have any choice in it. When Zayd had ended his marriage with her, We gave her to you in marriage, so that there should be no difficulty for the believers concerning the wives of their adopted sons. Muḥammad is not the father of any of your men; he is the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets.
- 41–5212 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 41 →
Remember Allah; the Prophet’s ﷺ marriages
O you who believe, remember Allah with much remembrance. O Prophet, We have sent you as a witness, a bringer of good news and a warner, one who calls to Allah by His leave, and a lamp spreading light. Then the rulings on a divorce before consummation, and on the women lawful to the Prophet ﷺ in particular.
- 53–6210 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 53 →
The screen, the blessing and the outer garment
O you who believe, do not enter the Prophet’s houses unless you are given leave; and when you ask his wives for anything, ask them from behind a screen. Allah and His angels send blessings upon the Prophet: O you who believe, send blessings upon him and greet him with peace. O Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their outer garments close about them. If the hypocrites and the rumour-mongers of Madinah do not desist, We shall set you upon them.
- 63–7311 ayat · 10% of the surahRead from ayah 63 →
The Hour, and the Trust
People ask you about the Hour. The Day their faces are turned in the Fire they will say: “If only we had obeyed Allah and obeyed the Messenger. Our Lord, we obeyed our masters and our great ones, and they led us astray.” O you who believe, be mindful of Allah and speak a word that is straight. We offered the Trust to the heavens, the earth and the mountains, and they declined to bear it and feared it; and man took it up.
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 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
اللَّهُمَّ صَلِّ عَلَى مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِ مُحَمَّدٍ
It was said: “Messenger of Allah, we know how to greet you with peace; but how do we send blessings upon you?” He said: “Say: O Allah, send blessings upon Muḥammad and the family of Muḥammad, as You sent blessings upon the family of Ibrāhīm; You are Praiseworthy, Glorious. O Allah, bless Muḥammad and the family of Muḥammad, as You blessed the family of Ibrāhīm; You are Praiseworthy, Glorious.”When the confederates had been driven off, the Prophet ﷺ said: “Now we shall raid them, and they will not raid us; we shall go to them.”The name it is known by
After the allied hosts — Quraysh, Ghaṭafān and those who joined them — who besieged Madinah in the fifth year. The same event is known as the Battle of the Trench, al-Khandaq.
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
- 33:5Call them by their fathers
- 33:6The Prophet is closer to the believers than their own selves
- 33:21An excellent example
- 33:23Men true to what they pledged
- 33:33The people of the household
- 33:35The men and the women who submit
- 33:40The Seal of the Prophets
- 33:56Send blessings upon the Prophet
- 33:59The outer garment
- 33:72The Trust
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)
- 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
- Ibn Isḥāq’s account of the Trench, as the commentators relay it
- 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.