Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah, when the deniers had taken to demanding the punishment as a taunt
It is Makkan by agreement, as both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī record. The traditional order places it seventy-ninth, straight after al-Ḥāqqah, whose subject it continues.
سُورَةُ سَألَ سائِلٌ، ويُقالُ لَها: سُورَةُ المَعارِجِ، ويُقالُ لَها: سُورَةُ الواقِعِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الْمَعَارِجِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِاتِّفَاقٍ. وَهِيَ أَرْبَعٌ وأربعون آيةThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْمَعَارِجِ 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 سُورَةٌ سَألَ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ المَعارِجِ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وآياتُها أرْبَعٌ وأرْبَعُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
By the later Makkan years the warning of punishment had been repeated so often that the leaders of Quraysh had turned it into a joke. If it is true, they said, then bring it on. The Qurʾan records the very words elsewhere: “O Allah, if this is the truth from You, then rain down stones on us from the sky, or bring us a painful punishment” (8:32).
Ibn al-Jawzī relates from the commentators that this surah came down about the man who said that — al-Naḍr ibn al-Ḥārith, in the view of Ibn ʿAbbās, Mujāhid and the majority; others said Abū Jahl.◇ A questioner has asked for a punishment that is going to fall.
The surah does not hurry to oblige him. It tells the Prophet ﷺ to be patient, with a patience that has no complaint in it: they see it as far off, and We see it as near. Then it describes the Day in terms of what will become of human ties — no close friend will ask after his friend, though they are put in sight of each other, and the guilty one would give his children, his wife, his brother, his clan and everyone on earth to buy himself out.
And in the middle it places one of the Qurʾan’s great character sketches. Man was created restless: fretful when harm touches him, tight-fisted when good comes his way. Except — and eight qualities follow, which begin with those who are constant in their prayer and end with those who guard it.
- Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
What came down about what
The man who asked for it
The commentators said it came down about al-Naḍr ibn al-Ḥārith, when he said: “O Allah, if this is the truth from You, then rain down stones upon us from the sky.” This is the position of the majority, among them Ibn ʿAbbās and Mujāhid. Al-Rabīʿ ibn Anas said it was Abū Jahl.
Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-Masīr.
Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
قالَ المُفَسِّرُونَ: نَزَلَتْ في النَّضْرِ بْنِ الحارِثِ حِينَ قالَ: ﴿اللَّهُمَّ إنْ كانَ هَذا هو الحَقَّ مِن عِنْدِكَ فَأمْطِرْ عَلَيْنا حِجارَةً مِن السَّماءِتأكيد وقوع العذاب على الكافرين، والنعيم للمصدقين بيوم الدين.
To affirm that punishment will fall on the disbelievers, and bliss come to those who affirm the Day of Recompense.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The certainty of punishment
- Patience
- The Day when ties are cut
- Human restlessness
- Prayer
- The rights of the poor
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
حوت من الأغراض تهديد الكافرين بعذاب يوم القيامة، وإثبات ذلك اليوم ووصف أهواله.
ووصف شيء من جلال الله فيه، وتهويل دار العذاب وهي جهنم. وذكر أسباب استحقاق عذابها.
ومقابلة ذلك بأعمال المؤمنين التي أوجبت لهم دار الكرامة وهي أضداد صفات الكافرين.
وتثبيت النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم، وتسليته على ما يلقاه من المشركين.
ووصف كثير من خصال المسلمين التي بثها الإسلام فيهم، وتحذير المشركين من استئصالهم وتبديلهم بخير منهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–77 ayat · 14% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
A punishment bound to fall
A questioner asked about a punishment that will fall upon the disbelievers, which none can avert, from Allah, Lord of the ways of ascent. The angels and the Spirit ascend to Him in a Day whose measure is fifty thousand years. So be patient, with a beautiful patience. They see it distant; We see it near.
- 8–1811 ayat · 19% of the surahRead from ayah 8 →
The Day no friend asks after a friend
The Day the sky is like molten metal and the mountains like wool. They will be shown one another — and the guilty will wish to ransom himself from that Day’s punishment with his sons, his wife, his brother, the kin who sheltered him and everyone on earth. No: it is a raging flame that strips away the scalp, calling the one who turned his back, and gathered, and hoarded.
- 19–3517 ayat · 37% of the surahRead from ayah 19 →
Man, and the exception
The human being was created anxious: fretful when evil touches him, withholding when good touches him. Except those who pray, and are constant in their prayer; in whose wealth there is a known right for the beggar and the deprived; who affirm the Day of Recompense and fear their Lord’s punishment; who guard their chastity; who keep their trusts and their pledges; who stand by their testimony; and who guard their prayer. Those will be in gardens, honoured.
- 36–449 ayat · 29% of the surahRead from ayah 36 →
What are they hoping for?
What is the matter with the disbelievers, hurrying towards you in crowds from right and left? Does each of them hope to be admitted to a garden of delight? No — We created them from what they know. So leave them to their idle talk and play until they meet the Day they are promised: the Day they come out of the graves in haste, as if racing to a goal, their eyes cast down, humiliation covering them.
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 9 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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The names it is known by
From its third ayah: Allah, Lord of the ways of ascent, by which the angels and the Spirit go up to Him.
Its opening words. Ibn al-Jawzī and Ibn Kathīr both head it with this name; Ibn al-Jawzī adds a third, Sūrat al-Wāqiʿ.
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 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.
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.