Makkan, by agreement
The later 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 seventy-sixth.
سُورَةُ الطُّورِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْعَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ جُبَير بْنِ مُطْعِمٍ، عَنْ أَبِيهِ: سَمِعْتُ النَّبِيُّ ﷺ يَقْرَأُ فِي الْمَغْرِبِ بِالطُّورِ، فَمَا سَمِعْتُ أَحَدًا أَحْسَنَ صَوْتًا -أَوْ قِرَاءَةً-مِنْهُThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الطُّورِ 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 عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ الطُّورِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement, citing al-Qurṭubī.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ، قالَ القُرْطُبِيُّ: في قَوْلِ الجَمِيعِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
أرْبَعُونَ وتِسْعُ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for its revelation. What is recorded is the effect it had on one of its hearers. Jubayr ibn Muṭʿim was the son of one of the chief men of Makkah. After Badr he was sent to Madinah to negotiate for the captives, and arrived as the Prophet ﷺ was leading the sunset prayer.
“I heard the Prophet ﷺ reciting al-Ṭūr in the sunset prayer,” he said. “When he reached this ayah — ‘Or were they created by nothing, or are they themselves the creators? Or did they create the heavens and the earth? No, they have no certainty. Or do they possess the treasuries of your Lord, or are they the ones in control?’ — my heart almost flew.” In another narration: “And that was when faith first settled in my heart.” He was still an idolater. He accepted Islam some years later.
Those ayat are the centre of the surah: a volley of some fifteen questions, each beginning with “or”, that goes through every position a denier could take and leaves none standing. Is he a soothsayer? A poet whose death they can wait for? Did he make it up — then let them produce a discourse like it. Do they have a ladder by which they listen to the heavens? Does Allah have daughters while they have sons? Do they have another god?
Around that centre the surah sets its certainties: five oaths that the punishment will fall, the Fire into which the deniers are driven, and the people of the Garden, who turn to one another and remember how, among their families in the world, they had been afraid.
دحض شبهات المكذبين من خلال عرض الحجج والبراهين، إرغامًا على الإذعان والتسليم.
To refute the doubts of the deniers by setting out proofs and evidence — compelling them to yield and submit.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The certainty of punishment
- The people of the Garden and their families
- Questions that leave no escape
- Creation from nothing
- Patience under Allah’s eye
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
أول أغراض هذه السورة التهديد بتحقيق وقوع العذاب يوم القيامة للمشركين المكذبين بالنبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم فيما جاء به من إثبات البعث وبالقرآن المتضمن ذلك فقالوا: هو سحر.
ومقابلة وعيدهم بوعد المتقين المؤمنين وصفة نعيمهم ووصف تذكرهم خشية، وثنائهم على الله بما من عليهم فانتقل إلى تسلية النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم وإبطال أقوالهم فيه وانتظارهم موته.
وتحديهم بأنهم عجزوا عن الإتيان بمثل القرآن.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–88 ayat · 6% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Five oaths
By the Mount; by a Book inscribed on parchment unrolled; by the House frequented; by the canopy raised high; by the sea set aflame: the punishment of your Lord will surely come to pass. There is none to avert it.
- 9–168 ayat · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
The Day
The Day the sky heaves and the mountains move. Woe that Day to the deniers, who play in their idle talk — the Day they are thrust into the fire of Hell: “This is the Fire you used to deny. Is this magic, then, or do you not see? Burn in it; be patient or impatient, it is the same for you.”
- 17–2812 ayat · 29% of the surahRead from ayah 17 →
The people of the Garden
The mindful will be in gardens and delight, reclining on ranged couches. Those who believed and whose offspring followed them in faith — We shall join their offspring to them, and take nothing from their own deeds; every person is in pledge for what he earned. They turn to one another, asking: “We used to be fearful, before, among our families. So Allah was gracious to us and saved us from the scorching wind. We used to call upon Him; He is the Kind, the Merciful.”
- 29–4315 ayat · 34% of the surahRead from ayah 29 →
The questions
So remind: by your Lord’s favour you are neither a soothsayer nor a madman. Or do they say, “A poet — we await for him some turn of fate”? Or “He has invented it”? Then let them bring a discourse like it. Or were they created from nothing, or are they the creators? Did they create the heavens and the earth? Do they hold the treasuries of your Lord? Have they a ladder to listen by? Has He daughters, while you have sons? Do you ask them for a wage? Do they possess the unseen? Do they intend a plot? Or have they a god other than Allah?
- 44–496 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 44 →
Leave them, and be patient
If they saw a piece of the sky falling they would say, “Clouds, heaped up.” So leave them until they meet their Day. Be patient for the decision of your Lord, for you are before Our eyes; and glorify your Lord with praise when you rise, and in the night, and at the setting of the stars.
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 78% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 7 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
كَادَ قَلْبِي أَنْ يَطِيرَ
“I heard the Prophet ﷺ reciting al-Ṭūr in the sunset prayer. When he reached this ayah — ‘Or were they created by nothing, or are they the creators? Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Rather, they are not certain. Or do they have the treasuries of your Lord, or are they the controllers?’ — my heart almost flew.”“I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ recite al-Ṭūr in the sunset prayer.”The name it is known by
After the oath it opens with: the mountain on which Allah spoke to Mūsā. The Companions called it by this name — “I heard the Prophet ﷺ recite al-Ṭūr in the sunset prayer” (al-Bukhārī 765).
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)
- 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.