Madinan, by agreement
Madinah, the fourth year of the Hijrah: the siege and exile of the Banū al-Naḍīr
It is Madinan without disagreement, and the commentators say that all of it was sent down concerning the Banū al-Naḍīr. Their expulsion took place in the fourth year of the Hijrah, after Uḥud.
وَهِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْ وَذَكَرَ المُفَسِّرُونَ أنَّ جَمِيعَها أُنْزِلَتْ في بَنِي النَّضِيرِ. وكانَ ابْنُ عَبّاسٍ يُسَمِّي هَذِهِ السُّورَةَ سُورَةَ بَنِي النَّضِيرِعَنْ سَعِيدٍ بْنِ جُبَيْرٍ قَالَ: قُلْتُ لِابْنِ عَبَّاسٍ: سُورَةُ الْحَشْرِ؟ قَالَ: أُنْزِلَتْ فِي بَنِي النَّضِيرِThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سُورَةُ الْحَشْرِ 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 الحَشْرِ بِالمَدِينَةِ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
وهِيَ عِشْرُونَ وأرْبَعُ آياتٍ مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Madinan.
مَدَنِيَّةٌ وآياتُها أرْبَعٌ وعِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
When the Prophet ﷺ came to Madinah he made a covenant with its three Jewish tribes: they would not fight him nor help anyone against him. The Banū al-Naḍīr lived on the southern edge of the oasis, in strongholds among their date-palms.
In the fourth year he went to them with a few of his Companions to ask their help with a payment of blood-money that the covenant obliged them to share in. They agreed, and sat him down by a wall — and while he waited, they resolved to kill him, one of them going up to drop a millstone on his head. He was told of it by revelation, rose at once, and went back to the city. Then he sent to them: leave my town.
They prepared to go. But ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy, the leader of the hypocrites, sent word: stay — if you are fought, we will fight beside you, and if you are driven out, we will leave with you. So they shut themselves in. The Muslims besieged them; the help never came; and they sued for terms. They were allowed to leave with what their camels could carry, apart from weapons. They pulled down the lintels and beams of their own houses to take with them, and went — most to Khaybar, some to Syria.
The surah is a commentary on those days. It tells the believers that they had not thought it possible, and that the tribe had thought their forts would hold against Allah. It settles the question of the land they left, which had been taken without a fight: it is not divided as battle spoils but placed at the Messenger’s ﷺ disposal for those in need — and in saying who has a claim on it, it draws a portrait of the Emigrants, the Helpers, and all who come after them.
What came down about what
The palm trees
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ burned and cut down palms of the Banū al-Naḍīr during the siege, at al-Buwayrah. So there came down: “Whatever palm you cut down or left standing on its roots, it was by Allah’s leave.”
Ibn ʿUmar: al-Bukhārī (4031) and Muslim (1746).
Ṣaḥīḥ
“They prefer others to themselves”
A hungry man came to the Prophet ﷺ, and there was nothing in his houses but water. A man of the Anṣār took the guest home; his wife had only the children’s supper. They put the children to sleep, set the food before the guest, and put out the lamp so that he would think they were eating with him. In the morning the Prophet ﷺ said: “Allah marvelled at what the two of you did last night.” And Allah sent down: “They give them preference over themselves, even though they are in need.”
Abū Hurayrah: al-Bukhārī (3798) and Muslim (2054).
Ṣaḥīḥ
إظهار قوة الله وعزته في توهين اليهود والمنافقين، وإظهار تفرقهم، في مقابل إظهار تآلف المؤمنين.
To make manifest Allah’s power and might in bringing low the Jews and the hypocrites and exposing their division — set against the unity of the believers.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Banū al-Naḍīr
- The hypocrites’ false promises
- The Emigrants and the Helpers
- Preferring others to oneself
- Accounting for tomorrow
- The names of Allah
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
وقع الاتفاق على أنها نزلت في شأن بني النضير ولم يعينوا ما هو الغرض الذي نزلت فيه. ويظهر أن المقصد منها حكم أموال بني النضير بعد الانتصار عليهم، كما سنبينه في تفسير الآية الأولى منها.
وقد اشتملت على أن ما في السماوات وما في الأرض دال على تنزيه الله، وكون ما في السماوات والأرض ملكه، وأنه الغالب المدبر.
وعلى ذكر نعمة الله على ما يسر من إجلاء بني النضير مع ما كانوا عليه من المنعة والحصون والعدة.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–55 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The expulsion
It is He who drove out the disbelievers among the People of the Book from their homes at the first gathering. You did not think they would leave, and they thought their fortresses would protect them from Allah; but Allah came upon them from where they had not reckoned, and cast terror into their hearts, so that they ruined their houses with their own hands and the hands of the believers. So take heed, you who have eyes.
- 6–105 ayat · 30% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
The land they left, and who has a claim on it
What Allah restored to His Messenger from them, you spurred neither horse nor camel for. It is for Allah and the Messenger, the near kin, the orphans, the needy and the traveller — so that it does not merely circulate among the rich of you. Whatever the Messenger gives you, take; whatever he forbids you, leave. It is for the poor Emigrants, driven from their homes and property; and for those who were settled in the home and in faith before them, who love those who emigrate to them and prefer them over themselves; and for those who come after them, saying: “Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who went before us in faith.”
- 11–177 ayat · 26% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
The promise that was not kept
Have you not seen the hypocrites saying to their brothers among the People of the Book: “If you are driven out we shall go with you, and if you are fought we shall help you”? Allah bears witness that they are liars. You are more feared in their hearts than Allah. You think them united, but their hearts are divided. They are like Satan when he says to man, “Disbelieve,” and then says, “I am quit of you.”
- 18–214 ayat · 12% of the surahRead from ayah 18 →
Look to tomorrow
O you who believe: be mindful of Allah, and let every soul look to what it has sent ahead for tomorrow (59:18). Do not be like those who forgot Allah, so that He made them forget themselves. Had We sent down this Qurʾan upon a mountain, you would have seen it humbled, split apart from the fear of Allah.
- 22–243 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 22 →
He is Allah
He is Allah, besides whom there is no god: Knower of the unseen and the seen, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. He is Allah, besides whom there is no god: the King, the Holy, the Flawless, the Giver of security, the Watchful, the Almighty, the Compeller, the Supreme. He is Allah, the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner. His are the most beautiful names.
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 79% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 6 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
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.” Al-Ḥashr is one of them.ḤasanḤasan: accepted and acted upon, a degree below ṣaḥīḥ.
The names it is known by
From its second ayah: He drove them from their homes “at the first gathering” — their mustering into exile.
The name Ibn ʿAbbās preferred. Saʿīd ibn Jubayr said: I said to Ibn ʿAbbās, “Sūrat al-Ḥashr?” He said: “It was sent down about the Banū al-Naḍīr” (al-Bukhārī 4882).
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)
- 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
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and 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.