Madinan, by agreement
Madinah, on the return from the expedition of al-Muraysīʿ — the fifth or sixth year of the Hijrah
It is Madinan without disagreement, and the commentators agree that it came down about ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy and those like him. Its occasion is narrated in the two Ṣaḥīḥs by the man it vindicated, and falls on the return from the expedition against the Banū al-Muṣṭaliq, at the watering-place of al-Muraysīʿ — in the fifth or sixth year.
وَهِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْ وَذَكَرَ أهْلُ التَّفْسِيرِ أنَّها نَزَلَتْ في عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ أُبَيٍّ ونُظَرائِهِسُورَةُ الْمُنَافِقُونَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجَمِيعِ، وَهِيَ إِحْدَى عَشْرَةَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
سُورَةُ الْمُنَافِقُونَ 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 في الدَّلائِلِ، عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ المُنافِقِينَ بِالمَدِينَةِ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Madinan.
هي مَدَنِيَّةٌ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Madinan.
إحْدى عَشْرَةَ آيَةً مَدَنِيَّةً
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Madinan.
مَدَنِيَّةٌ وآياتُها إحْدى عَشْرَةَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Before the Hijrah, the people of Yathrib had been about to crown ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy their king. The arrival of the Prophet ﷺ ended that, and he never forgave it. He professed Islam after Badr, when it had become the prudent thing to do, and spent the rest of his life working against it from inside.
On the way back from al-Muraysīʿ a quarrel broke out at the well between a hired man of the Emigrants and an ally of the Helpers; each called on his own side, and for a moment the old tribal cry was raised. Ibn Ubayy saw his chance. Zayd ibn Arqam, then a boy, tells it: “I heard ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy say: ‘Do not spend on those who are with the Messenger of Allah, until they break away from him.’ And: ‘If we return to Madinah, the mightier will surely drive out the meaner.’ I told my uncle, and he told the Prophet ﷺ.”
Ibn Ubayy was sent for. He swore he had said nothing of the kind, and men of his tribe spoke up for him: the boy must have misheard. “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ believed him and disbelieved me,” Zayd says, “and a grief came over me such as I had never known. I stayed in my house.” Then the surah was sent down. “The Prophet ﷺ sent for me and recited it, and said: Allah has confirmed you, Zayd.”
Ibn Ubayy’s own son, a sincere believer, stood at the gate of Madinah with his sword drawn and would not let his father enter until the Messenger of Allah ﷺ gave leave — so that he would know which of the two was the mightier.
What came down about what
What Zayd ibn Arqam heard
Zayd ibn Arqam said: “I was on a campaign and heard ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy say: ‘Do not spend on those who are with the Messenger of Allah, until they disperse from around him; and if we return, the mightier will drive out the meaner from it.’ I mentioned it to my uncle, and he mentioned it to the Prophet ﷺ, who called me, and I told him. He sent for ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy and his companions, and they swore they had not said it. So the Messenger of Allah ﷺ disbelieved me and believed him, and a grief came over me such as had never come over me before. I sat at home, and my uncle said: ‘What did you want, but that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ should call you a liar and detest you?’ Then Allah sent down: ‘When the hypocrites come to you.’ The Prophet ﷺ sent for me and recited it, and said: ‘Allah has confirmed you, Zayd.’”
Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh tells what had set it off. They were on a campaign when a man of the Emigrants struck a man of the Helpers from behind. The Helper cried, “Help, Helpers!” and the Emigrant, “Help, Emigrants!” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ heard it and said: “What is this cry of the days of ignorance?” They told him what had happened. He said: “Leave it; it is a foul thing.”
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ubayy heard of it and said: “So they have done it? By Allah, if we return to Madinah, the mightier will drive out the meaner from it.” It reached the Prophet ﷺ, and ʿUmar stood up: “Messenger of Allah, let me strike the neck of this hypocrite.” He ﷺ said: “Leave him. Let people not say that Muḥammad kills his companions.”
Zayd ibn Arqam: al-Bukhārī (4900) and Muslim (2772). Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh: al-Bukhārī (4905) and Muslim (2584).
Ṣaḥīḥ
كشف المنافقين وصفاتهم وبيان موقفهم من الإسلام وأهله، تحذيرًا منهم ومن التشبه بهم.
To expose the hypocrites, their traits and their stance towards Islam and its people — as a warning against them, and against resembling them.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Hypocrisy
- False oaths
- Honour belongs to Allah
- Wealth and children as a distraction
- Spending before death
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
فضح أحوال المنافقين بعد كثير من دخائلهم وتولد بعضها عن بعض من كذب، وخيس بعهد الله، واضطراب في العقيدة، ومن سفالة نفوس في أجسام تغر وتعجب، ومن تصميم على الإعراض عن طلب الحق والهدى، وعلى صد الناس عنه، وكان كل قسم من آيات السورة المفتتح ب إذا خص بغرض من هذه الأغراض. وقد علمت أن ذلك جرت إليه الإشارة إلى تكذيب عبد الله بن أبي ابن سلول فيما حلف عليه من التنصل مما قاله.
وختمت بموعظة المؤمنين وحثهم على الإنفاق والادخار للآخرة قبل حلول الأجل.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–44 ayat · 34% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
What they are
When the hypocrites come to you they say, “We testify that you are the Messenger of Allah.” Allah knows that you are His Messenger — and Allah testifies that the hypocrites are liars. They have made their oaths a cover. They believed and then disbelieved, so their hearts were sealed. When you see them, their appearance pleases you, and when they speak you listen; but they are like timbers propped against a wall. They think every cry is against them. They are the enemy, so beware of them.
- 5–62 ayat · 18% of the surahRead from ayah 5 →
Too proud to be forgiven
When it is said to them, “Come, the Messenger of Allah will ask forgiveness for you,” they turn their heads aside in arrogance. It is the same whether you ask forgiveness for them or do not: Allah will not forgive them.
- 7–82 ayat · 21% of the surahRead from ayah 7 →
The two sentences
They are the ones who say, “Do not spend on those who are with the Messenger of Allah, until they disperse” — when to Allah belong the treasuries of the heavens and the earth. They say, “If we return to Madinah, the mightier will drive out the meaner” — when might belongs to Allah, to His Messenger and to the believers, but the hypocrites do not know.
- 9–113 ayat · 27% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
To the believers
O you who believe, do not let your wealth and your children distract you from the remembrance of Allah. Spend from what We have provided you before death comes to one of you and he says, “My Lord, if only You would grant me a little more time, so that I might give in charity and be among the righteous.” Allah does not delay a soul when its term has come.
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.
All 11 of its ayat close on one sound.
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 Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to recite in the Friday prayer Sūrat al-Jumuʿah and “When the hypocrites come to you”.The name it is known by
After those it describes, from its first ayah. The Prophet ﷺ recited it, by this name, in the second unit of the Friday prayer (Muslim 877).
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 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.