Makkan, by agreement
The middle years in Makkah
It is Makkan in the saying of all: Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī both record the agreement. The traditional order places it forty-third.
سُورَةُ فاطِرٍ وَتُسَمّى سُورَةَ المَلائِكَةِ، وهي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْقالَ ابْنُ عَبّاسٍ: ما كُنْتُ أدْرِي ما فاطِرُ السَّماواتِ والأرْضِ حَتّى اخْتَصَمَ أعْرابِيّانِ في بِئْرٍ، فَقالَ أحَدُهُما: أنا فَطَرْتُها، أيِ: ابْتَدَأتُهاThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ فَاطِرٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, al-Naḥḥās, Ibn Mardawayh and al-Bayhaqī.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ، والنَّحّاسُ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهْ، والبَيْهَقِيُّ في الدَّلائِلِ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: أُنْزِلَتْ سُورَةُ فاطِرٍ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan.
تَفْسِيرُ سُورَةِ فاطِرٍ وهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
أرْبَعُونَ وخَمْسُ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ فاطِرٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وهى خَمْسٌ وأرْبَعُونَ آيَةً
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. It is the last of the five surahs that open with “Praise be to Allah”, and it reads as one sustained act of drawing attention: look at what you have been given, and from whom.
It is addressed, more than most, to mankind as such — “O mankind” comes three times. The first: remember Allah’s favour upon you; is there any creator other than Allah who provides for you from the heaven and the earth? The second: the promise of Allah is true, so do not let this life deceive you. And the third states the relation in a sentence: “O mankind, it is you who are the poor, in need of Allah; and Allah is the Rich, the Praiseworthy.”
To the Prophet ﷺ, who was being called a liar, it says twice that this is how messengers have always been received, and tells him not to wear himself out with grief over those whose evil has been made to look good to them. “You cannot make those in the graves hear. You are only a warner.”
Then comes a passage that the scholars of every age have returned to. Rain falls, and the fruit it brings out is of every colour; the mountains are streaked white and red and deep black; people, beasts and cattle differ in their colours likewise. “Only those of His servants who have knowledge fear Allah.” And of those to whom the Book was given as an inheritance it distinguishes three: the one who wrongs himself, the one who keeps a middle course, and the one who is foremost in good deeds, by Allah’s leave. All three are of those He chose.
عرض مشاهد قدرة الله والإبداع في الخلق، وبواعث تعظيمه وخشيته والإيمان به وتذكر آلائه.
To display the scenes of Allah’s power and His originality in creation, and what moves a person to revere Him, fear Him, believe in Him and remember His favours.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Originator
- The angels
- Mankind’s need of Allah
- The deception of this life
- Signs in colour and variety
- Knowledge and the fear of Allah
- The three inheritors of the Book
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
أغراض هذه السورة اشتملت هذه السورة على إثبات تفرد الله تعالى بالإلهية فافتتحت بما يدل على أنه مستحق الحمد على ما أبدع من الكائنات الدال إبداعها على تفرده تعالى بالإلهية.
وعلى إثبات صدق الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم فيما جاء به وأنه جاء به الرسل من قبله. وإثبات البعث والدار الآخرة.
وتذكير الناس بإنعام الله عليهم بنعمة الإيجاد ونعمة الإمداد، وما يعبد المشركون من دونه لا يغنون عنهم شيئا وقد عبدهم الذين من قبلهم فلم يغنوا عنهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–88 ayat · 18% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The Originator, and His mercy
Praise be to Allah, Originator of the heavens and the earth, who made the angels messengers with wings — two, three and four; He adds to creation as He wills. Whatever mercy Allah opens to people, none can withhold it; and what He withholds, none can release. O mankind, remember Allah’s favour upon you. If they deny you, messengers before you were denied. Satan is an enemy to you, so treat him as an enemy. Do not let your soul waste away in grief over them.
- 9–146 ayat · 19% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
Signs of His power
It is Allah who sends the winds that raise the clouds, and We drive them to a dead land and revive it: such is the resurrection. Whoever desires honour — all honour belongs to Allah. To Him the good word ascends, and the righteous deed raises it. The two seas are not alike: one sweet, one bitter, and from each you eat fresh meat. Those you call on besides Him do not own so much as the skin of a date-stone.
- 15–2612 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 15 →
The poor, and the Rich
O mankind, you are the poor in need of Allah, and Allah is the Rich, the Praiseworthy. If He wills, He can remove you and bring a new creation. No bearer of burdens bears the burden of another. The blind and the seeing are not equal, nor darkness and light, nor shade and heat, nor the living and the dead. You are only a warner; and there is no nation but a warner has passed among it.
- 27–359 ayat · 18% of the surahRead from ayah 27 →
Those who know, and those given the Book
Do you not see that Allah sends down water from the sky, and We bring out by it fruits of differing colours; and in the mountains are streaks white and red, and raven-black; and people, beasts and cattle likewise of differing colours? Only those of His servants who have knowledge fear Allah (35:28). Then We gave the Book as an inheritance to those of Our servants whom We chose: among them one who wrongs himself, one who is moderate, and one who is foremost in good deeds. They will enter Gardens of Eden, and say: “Praise be to Allah, who has removed sorrow from us.”
- 36–416 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 36 →
The disbelievers’ plea
For those who disbelieve is the fire of Hell. They will cry out in it: “Our Lord, bring us out; we will do right, not what we used to do.” — “Did We not give you a life long enough for whoever would take heed to take heed? And the warner came to you.” Allah holds the heavens and the earth, lest they cease; and if they were to cease, no one could hold them after Him.
- 42–454 ayat · 13% of the surahRead from ayah 42 →
The oath they broke
They swore by Allah their strongest oaths that if a warner came to them they would be better guided than any nation. But when a warner came, it increased them only in aversion. The evil plot encloses none but its authors. If Allah were to take people to task for what they have earned, He would not leave a creature on the face of the earth; but He defers them to an appointed term.
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 64% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 14 times. 4 of those turns come 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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The names it is known by
From its first ayah: Allah, Originator of the heavens and the earth. Ibn ʿAbbās said he did not understand the word until two Bedouin came to him disputing over a well, and one of them said, “Anā faṭartuhā” — it was I who first dug it.
A name Ibn al-Jawzī records, from the same ayah: “who made the angels messengers, with wings, two and three and four.”
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)
- 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.
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.