Madinan, by the majority
Madinah, after the Opening — when Islam had become safe to join, and cheap
Ibn al-Jawzī gives it as Madinan from Ibn ʿAbbās, al-Ḥasan, Mujāhid, ʿIkrimah, Jābir ibn Zayd, Qatādah and Muqātil, and records one saying, from al-Kalbī, that it is Makkan; al-Qurṭubī calls it Madinan in the saying of all. Its tenth ayah speaks of the Opening as something that has already happened — “those of you who spent and fought before the Opening are not equal” — which places that passage after al-Ḥudaybiyah or the conquest of Makkah. A report from Ibn Masʿūd in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim suggests that ayah 16 is earlier.
وَفِيها قَوْلانِ أحَدُهُما: أنَّها مَدَنِيَّةٌ، رَواهُ العَوْفِيُّ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ، وبِهِ قالَ الحَسَنُ، ومُجاهِدٌ، وعِكْرِمَةُ، وجابِرُ بْنُ زَيْدٍ، وقَتادَةُ، ومُقاتِلٌ. والثّانِي: أنَّها مَكِّيَّةٌ، قالَهُ ابْنُ السّائِبِسورة الحديد مَدَنِيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجَمِيعِ، وَهِيَ تِسْعٌ وَعِشْرُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سُورَةُ الْحَدِيدِ 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.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ، والنَّحّاسُ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهْ، والبَيْهَقِيُّ، عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ الحَدِيدِ بِالمَدِينَةِ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Madinan.
هِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
وهِيَ تِسْعٌ وعِشْرُونَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan; Madinan is also said.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وقِيلَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ وآياتُها تِسْعٌ وعِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
For the first Muslims, belief had cost everything: homes, property, family, sometimes life. By the time this surah came down that had changed. The community had a city and an army; after the Opening it was the winning side. People were entering Islam who had risked nothing for it, and some who had been in it for years had begun to hold on to what they owned.
The surah speaks to that moment. It begins far above it — everything in the heavens and the earth glorifies Allah; He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; He is with you wherever you are — and then comes down to a blunt request: believe, and spend out of what He has made you trustees of. It draws a line no later generosity can cross: those who spent and fought before the Opening are greater in rank than those who spent and fought afterwards, though Allah has promised the best to all.
Then the question that gives the surah its edge. “Has the time not come for those who believe that their hearts should be humbled at the remembrance of Allah and what has come down of the truth, and that they not be like those given the Scripture before, for whom the time grew long, so their hearts grew hard?” Ibn Masʿūd said: between our accepting Islam and Allah reproaching us with this ayah there were only four years.
Its closing passages name what a community needs. Messengers, with the Book and the Balance, so that people may stand by justice. And iron — in which there is great might — so that Allah may make known who will help Him and His messengers, unseen.
What came down about what
Four years
“There were only four years between our accepting Islam and Allah reproaching us with this ayah: ‘Has the time not come for those who believe that their hearts should be humbled at the remembrance of Allah?’”
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd: Muslim (3027).
Ṣaḥīḥ
بناء القوة الإيمانية والمادية الباعثة على الدعوة والجهاد، وتخليص النفوس من عوائقها، ولذا تكرر فيها ذكر الإنفاق والإيمان.
To build the strength of faith and of means that drives a people to call to Allah and to strive — and to free souls from what holds them back; which is why spending and belief are mentioned in it again and again.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The names and majesty of Allah
- Spending in His cause
- The light of the believers
- Hardness of heart
- The reality of worldly life
- Justice and iron
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
الأغراض التي اشتملت عليها هذه السورة:
التذكير بجلال الله تعالى، وصفاته العظيمة، وسعة قدرته وملكوته، وعموم تصرفه، ووجوب وجوده، وسعة علمه، والأمر بالإيمان بوجوده، وبما جاء به رسوله صلى الله عليه وسلم، وما أنزل عليه من الآيات البينات.
والتنبيه لما في القرآن من الهدي وسبيل النجاة، والتذكير برحمة الله ورأفته بخلقه.
والتحريض على الإنفاق في سبيل الله، وأن المال عرض زائل لا يبقى منه لصاحبه إلا ثواب ما أنفق منه في مرضاة الله.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–66 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Who He is
All that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies Allah. His is the dominion; He gives life and causes death. He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward, and He knows all things. He created the heavens and the earth in six days and then rose over the Throne; He knows what enters the earth and what leaves it, what descends from the sky and what ascends — and He is with you wherever you are.
- 7–115 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 7 →
Believe, and spend
Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and spend from what He has made you successors in. What ails you that you do not spend in Allah’s way, when to Him belongs the inheritance of the heavens and the earth? Not equal among you are those who spent and fought before the Opening. Who is it that will lend Allah a goodly loan, that He may multiply it for him?
- 12–154 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 12 →
The light, and the wall
The Day you see the believing men and women with their light streaming before them and on their right. The hypocrites will call to them: “Wait for us, that we may take from your light.” A wall is set between them with a gate in it: mercy within, punishment without. “Were we not with you?” — “Yes; but you led yourselves into temptation, and waited, and doubted, and false hopes deceived you.”
- 16–194 ayat · 13% of the surahRead from ayah 16 →
Has the time not come?
Has the time not come for the hearts of those who believe to be humbled at the remembrance of Allah, and not be like those before them whose hearts hardened with the passing of time? Know that Allah gives life to the earth after its death. Those who give in charity, men and women, will have it multiplied; and those who believe in Allah and His messengers — they are the truthful, and the witnesses with their Lord.
- 20–245 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 20 →
What this life is
Know that the life of this world is play and diversion and adornment, boasting among yourselves and rivalry in wealth and children — like a rain whose growth delights the sowers, then withers, yellows and turns to chaff. So race towards forgiveness from your Lord and a Garden as wide as the sky and the earth. No misfortune strikes on earth or in yourselves but it is in a Book before We bring it into being — so that you do not grieve over what has passed you by, nor exult over what He has given you.
- 25–273 ayat · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 25 →
The Book, the Balance and iron
We sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, that people may uphold justice; and We sent down iron, in which is great might and benefits for people. We sent Nūḥ and Ibrāhīm, and placed prophethood and the Book among their descendants; then ʿĪsā son of Maryam, and gave him the Gospel. The monasticism his followers invented, We did not prescribe for them.
- 28–292 ayat · 7% of the surahRead from ayah 28 →
A double share
O you who believe: be mindful of Allah and believe in His Messenger, and He will give you a double portion of His mercy, and make for you a light to walk by, and forgive you — so that the People of the Book may know that they have no power over any of Allah’s bounty; it is in His hand, and He gives it to whom He wills.
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 52% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 15 times. 3 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
The Prophet ﷺ used to recite the Musabbiḥāt before he lay down to sleep, and would say: “In them is an ayah that is better than a thousand ayat.” The Musabbiḥāt are the surahs that open with the glorification of Allah; al-Ḥadīd is the first of them, and Ibn Kathīr takes the ayah to be its third: “He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward.”ḤasanḤasan: accepted and acted upon, a degree below ṣaḥīḥ.
اللَّهُمَّ أَنْتَ الأَوَّلُ فَلَيْسَ قَبْلَكَ شَيْءٌ وَأَنْتَ الآخِرُ فَلَيْسَ بَعْدَكَ شَيْءٌ
Of the supplication of the Prophet ﷺ on going to bed: “O Allah, You are the First, and there is nothing before You; You are the Last, and there is nothing after You; You are the Outward, and there is nothing above You; You are the Inward, and there is nothing nearer than You. Settle our debt for us, and free us from poverty.”The name it is known by
After the iron of its twenty-fifth ayah, sent down “with great might in it, and benefits for people”. It is the first of the Musabbiḥāt, the surahs that open with the glorification of Allah.
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.
Also drawn on
- Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim; the Sunan of al-Tirmidhī and Abū Dāwūd
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.