Makkan, by the majority
The middle years in Makkah
Most hold it to be Makkan — Ibn al-Jawzī names Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Ḥasan, ʿAṭāʾ, ʿIkrimah, Qatādah, Jābir and Muqātil. One report from Ibn ʿAbbās, through ʿAṭiyyah, has it Madinan, and another excepts a single ayah (56:82) as Madinan. The traditional order places it forty-sixth.
وَفِيها قَوْلانِ. أحَدُهُما: أنَّها مَكِّيَّةٌ، قالَهُ الأكْثَرُونَ، مِنهُمُ ابْنُ عَبّاسٍ، والحَسَنُ، وعَطاءٌ، وعِكْرِمَةُ، وقَتادَةُ، وجابِرٌ، ومُقاتِلٌعَنِ ابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ قَالَ: قَالَ أَبُو بَكْرٍ: يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ، قَدْ شبتَ؟ قَالَ: شيَّبتني هُودٌ، وَالْوَاقِعَةُ، وَالْمُرْسَلَاتُ، وعَمَّ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ، وَإِذَا الشَّمْسُ كُوِّرَتْThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْوَاقِعَةِ 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: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ الواقِعَةِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, in the saying of al-Ḥasan, ʿIkrimah, Jābir ibn Zayd and ʿAṭāʾ.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ الحَسَنِ، وعِكْرِمَةَ، وجابِرٍ، وعَطاءٍ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
وهِيَ سِتٌّ وتِسْعُونَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is transmitted for the surah as a whole. Its place in the life of the Prophet ﷺ is told by a remark of Abū Bakr’s. He looked at him one day and said, “Messenger of Allah, you have gone grey.” He answered: “Hūd, al-Wāqiʿah, al-Mursalāt, ‘ʿAmma yatasāʾalūn’ and ‘Idhā l-shamsu kuwwirat’ have turned me grey.” This is one of the surahs whose weight he felt in his own body.
The people of Makkah thought in two classes: the noble and the rest. The surah replaces that with three, and they are not the classes anyone expected. The Foremost — those who raced to faith and to every good — are brought nearest. The People of the Right are saved. The People of the Left are lost. And of the Foremost it says: a throng from the earliest generations, and few from the later ones.
Then come four questions, each about something the listener does every day without thinking: the seed you emit, the crop you sow, the water you drink, the fire you kindle. Is it you who make it, or We? If We willed, We could make the crop chaff and the water bitter.
One passage near the end has an occasion that Ibn ʿAbbās relates in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Rain fell in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, and he said: “This morning some people are grateful and some are ungrateful. Some said: this is the mercy of Allah. Others said: such-and-such a star has proved true.” And the ayat came down — “I swear by the setting-places of the stars” — as far as: “and you make your share of it that you deny.”
What came down about what
Rain, and who is thanked for it
The people were given rain in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, and he said: “Some of the people have risen this morning grateful, and some of them ungrateful. They said: this is Allah’s mercy; and some of them said: such-and-such a rain-star has been true.” Then this was revealed: “I swear by the setting-places of the stars…” until “and you make your provision that you deny.”
Ibn ʿAbbās: Muslim (73).
Ṣaḥīḥ
التخويف بيوم القيامة، وتحقق وقوعه وأصناف الناس فيه وبيان جزاء كل منهم.
To strike fear of the Day of Resurrection, establish that it will occur, set out the kinds of people on it, and make plain the recompense of each.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Resurrection
- The Foremost, the Right and the Left
- Paradise and the Fire
- Proofs from creation
- The noble Qurʾan
- The moment of death
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
التذكير بيوم القيامة وتحقيق وقوعه.
ووصف ما يعرض وهذا العالم الأرضي عند ساعة القيامة.
ثم صفة أهل الجنة وبعض نعيمهم.
وصفة أهل النار وما هم فيه من العذاب وأن ذلك لتكذيبهم بالبعث. وإثبات الحشر والجزاء والاستدلال على إمكان الخلق الثاني بما أبدعه الله من الموجودات بعد أن لم تكن.
والاستدلال بدلائل قدرة الله تعالى.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–1010 ayat · 9% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
When it falls
When the Event occurs — and none can deny its occurring — bringing low and raising high; when the earth is shaken and the mountains crumbled to scattered dust; you will be three kinds: the People of the Right, the People of the Left, and the Foremost, the foremost.
- 11–2616 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
The Foremost
They are those brought near, in Gardens of Delight: many from the first generations and few from the later. On thrones inlaid, facing one another; served by youths who do not age, with cups from a flowing spring that brings no headache; whatever fruit they choose and the meat of fowl they desire; and companions like hidden pearls — a reward for what they used to do. They hear no idle or sinful talk there, only: “Peace, peace.”
- 27–4014 ayat · 10% of the surahRead from ayah 27 →
The People of the Right
Among thornless lote-trees and clustered banana-trees, shade extended and water ever-flowing, fruit in abundance, never cut off and never forbidden, and couches raised high. A throng from the first generations, and a throng from the later.
- 41–5616 ayat · 18% of the surahRead from ayah 41 →
The People of the Left
In scorching wind and scalding water, and a shade of black smoke, neither cool nor kind. They lived before that in luxury, persisted in the great sin, and used to say: “When we are dead, and dust and bones, shall we really be raised?” Say: the first and the last will be gathered. Then you will eat of the tree of Zaqqūm and drink boiling water on top of it, as thirst-maddened camels drink. That is their welcome on the Day of Recompense.
- 57–7418 ayat · 23% of the surahRead from ayah 57 →
Four questions
We created you; why then will you not believe? Have you considered the seed you emit — do you create it, or do We? The seed you sow — do you make it grow? The water you drink — did you bring it down from the cloud? The fire you kindle — did you make its tree? So glorify the name of your Lord, the Tremendous.
- 75–828 ayat · 8% of the surahRead from ayah 75 →
A noble Qurʾan
I swear by the setting-places of the stars — and it is a mighty oath, if only you knew: this is a noble Qurʾan, in a Book well guarded, which none touch but the purified; a sending down from the Lord of the worlds. Is it this discourse that you make light of, and make your thanks that you deny?
- 83–9614 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 83 →
At the throat
Why, then, when the soul reaches the throat, and you are there looking on — and We are nearer to him than you, though you do not see — why do you not bring it back, if you are not to be held to account? If he is of those brought near: rest, and fragrance, and a Garden of Delight. If of the People of the Right: “Peace to you.” If of the deniers gone astray: a welcome of boiling water, and burning in Hell. This is the certain truth. So glorify the name of your Lord, the Tremendous.
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 76% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 15 times. 2 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
شَيَّبَتْنِي هُودٌ وَالْوَاقِعَةُ وَالْمُرْسَلاَتُ وَعَمَّ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ وَإِذَا الشَّمْسُ كُوِّرَتْ
Abū Bakr said: “Messenger of Allah, you have gone grey.” He ﷺ said: “Hūd, al-Wāqiʿah, al-Mursalāt, ‘ʿAmma yatasāʾalūn’ and ‘Idhā l-shamsu kuwwirat’ have turned me grey.”The name it is known by
One of the names of the Resurrection, and the surah’s opening word: that which is bound to fall. The Prophet ﷺ named the surah by it when he listed those that had turned him grey (al-Tirmidhī 3297).
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 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.