Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah, when Quraysh turned from abuse to offers
It is Makkan in the saying of all; Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī both record the agreement. It is the second of the Ḥawāmīm, and the traditional order places it sixty-first. The meeting with ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah, at which its opening was recited, took place after Ḥamzah had accepted Islam and while the Muslims were growing in number.
سُورَةُ السَّجْدَةِ مَكِّيَّةٌ [كُلُّها] بِإجْماعِهِمْ، ويُقالُ لَها: سَجْدَةُ المُؤْمِنِ، ويُقالُ لَها: المَصابِيحُسُورَةُ فُصِّلَتْ مَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجَمِيعِ وَهِيَ أربع وخمسونThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ فُصِّلَتْ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ مَرْدُويَهْ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ حم السَّجْدَةِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
خَمْسُونَ وأرْبَعُ آياتٍ، مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ فُصِّلَتْ مَكِّيَّةٌ وآياتُها أرْبَعٌ وخَمْسُونَ آيَةً
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Ibn Kathīr gives the story at the head of the surah, from several routes.◇ Quraysh met and said: find us the man most learned in sorcery, soothsaying and poetry, and let him go to this man who has split our community and reviled our religion, and see what answer he gets. They said: we know of no one but ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah.
ʿUtbah went to him. If you want wealth, he said, we will collect for you until you are the richest of us. If you want honour, we will make you our chief. If you want kingship, we will make you king. And if this thing that comes to you is a spirit you cannot shake off, we will pay for physicians until you are cured. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ waited until he had finished. “Have you done, Abū al-Walīd?” “Yes.” “Then listen to me.” And he recited: “Ḥā Mīm. A sending down from the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful. A Book whose ayat are set out in detail…” — on, until he reached: “But if they turn away, say: I have warned you of a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt of ʿĀd and Thamūd.” ʿUtbah put his hand over the Prophet’s ﷺ mouth and implored him by their kinship to stop.
He went back changed. “I have heard words such as, by Allah, I have never heard. It is not poetry, nor sorcery, nor soothsaying. Men of Quraysh, take my advice: leave this man to what he is about.” They said: he has bewitched you with his tongue.
The surah describes exactly the people ʿUtbah returned to. “Our hearts are under covers from what you call us to; in our ears is deafness; and between us and you is a veil.” And later: “Do not listen to this Qurʾan; drown it in noise, so that you may prevail.” Against that it sets the calm of those who say, “Our Lord is Allah,” and then stand firm — and a rule for answering hostility that is among the highest things the Qurʾan teaches: repel with what is better, and the one between whom and you there was enmity will be as though he were a close friend.
- Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
What came down about what
ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah
ʿUtbah came to the Prophet ﷺ on behalf of Quraysh with offers of wealth, leadership and kingship. When he had finished, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ recited to him from the beginning of this surah as far as the warning of “a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt of ʿĀd and Thamūd”, and ʿUtbah put his hand on his mouth and adjured him by their kinship to stop.
Ibn Kathīr, from Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh through ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd, Abū Yaʿlā and al-Baghawī, and from Ibn Isḥāq. Al-Baghawī, al-Qurṭubī, al-Suyūṭī and al-Shawkānī relate it too.
Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
فَقَالُوا: مَا نَعْلَمُ أَحَدًا غَيْرَ عتبة ابن رَبِيعَةَ. فَقَالُوا: أَنْتَ يَا أَبَا الْوَلِيدِ. فَأَتَاهُ عُتْبَةُ فَقَالَ: يَا مُحَمَّدُ، أَنْتَ خَيْرٌ أَمْ عَبْدُ اللَّهِ؟ فَسَكَتَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ﷺبيان كيفية معالجة المعرضين عن القرآن برفق، ببيان أن القرآن هو الحق، وعاقبة الإعراض.
To show how those who turn away from the Qurʾan are to be treated gently — by making plain that the Qurʾan is the truth, and what turning from it leads to.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Qurʾan in clear Arabic
- Turning away
- The creation of the heavens and the earth
- The limbs bearing witness
- Steadfastness
- Repelling evil with what is better
- Signs in the horizons and in themselves
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
التنويه بالقرآن والإشارة إلى عجزهم عن معارضته. وذكر هديه، وأنه معصوم من أن يتطرقه الباطل، وتأييده بما أنزل إلى الرسل من قبل الإسلام. وتلقي المشركين له بالإعراض وصم الآذان. وإبطال مطاعن المشركين فيه وتذكيرهم بأن القرآن نزل بلغتهم فلا عذر لهم أصلا في عدم انتفاعهم بهديه. وزجر المشركين وتوبيخهم على كفرهم بخالق السماوات والأرض مع بيان ما في خلقها من الدلائل على تفرده بالإلهية.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–88 ayat · 9% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The Book, and their answer
Ḥā Mīm. A sending down from the Most Merciful: a Book whose ayat are set out in detail, an Arabic Qurʾan, for people who know — bringing good news and warning. But most of them turn away. They say: “Our hearts are under covers from what you call us to, in our ears is deafness, and between us and you is a veil.” Say: I am only a human being like you; it is revealed to me that your God is One God.
- 9–1810 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
The Creator, and the thunderbolt
Say: do you really disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days? He set mountains on it and measured out its sustenance in four days. Then He turned to the heaven when it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth, “Come, willingly or unwillingly.” They said, “We come, willingly.” If they turn away, say: I warn you of a thunderbolt like that of ʿĀd and Thamūd. ʿĀd said, “Who is mightier than us?” Thamūd We guided, and they preferred blindness.
- 19–2911 ayat · 19% of the surahRead from ayah 19 →
Their own skins will testify
The Day the enemies of Allah are gathered to the Fire, their hearing, their sight and their skins will testify against them. They will say to their skins, “Why did you testify against us?” — “Allah, who gives speech to everything, has given us speech.” Those who disbelieve say, “Do not listen to this Qurʾan, and make noise in it, so that you may prevail.”
- 30–367 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 30 →
Those who stand firm
Those who say, “Our Lord is Allah,” and then stand firm — the angels descend upon them: “Do not fear and do not grieve; rejoice in the Garden you were promised.” Who is better in speech than one who calls to Allah, does right, and says, “I am of those who submit”? Good and evil are not equal. Repel with what is better, and the one between whom and you was enmity will be as a close friend. None are granted this but the patient.
- 37–4610 ayat · 22% of the surahRead from ayah 37 →
His signs, and His Book
Among His signs are the night and the day, the sun and the moon: do not prostrate to the sun or the moon, but prostrate to Allah who created them. Among His signs: you see the earth lying still, and when We send down water it stirs and swells. It is a mighty Book; falsehood cannot come at it from before it or from behind it. Nothing is said to you but what was said to the messengers before you. Say: for those who believe it is guidance and healing.
- 47–548 ayat · 18% of the surahRead from ayah 47 →
Until it is clear to them
To Him is referred the knowledge of the Hour. Man does not weary of asking for good, and if evil touches him he despairs. We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth (41:53). Is it not enough that your Lord is witness over all things?
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 70% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 15 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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The names it is known by
From its third ayah: “a Book whose ayat have been set out in detail, an Arabic Qurʾan, for people who know.”
The name it most often has in the early books, to tell it from the other Ḥā Mīm surahs and from Sūrat al-Sajdah: it contains an ayah of prostration. Ibn al-Jawzī heads it al-Sajdah, and adds Sajdat al-Muʾmin and al-Maṣābīḥ, the Lamps.
Its place in the muṣḥaf
Ayat you will hear named
- 41:3A Book whose ayat are set out in detail
- 41:11“We come, willingly”
- 41:20–21Their hearing, sight and skins testify
- 41:30“Our Lord is Allah” — and then stand firm
- 41:33Who is better in speech than one who calls to Allah?
- 41:34Repel with what is better
- 41:38An ayah of prostration
- 41:53Signs in the horizons and in themselves
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
- Ibn Isḥāq’s account, as the commentators relay it
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.