Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah, when the Prophet ﷺ had called his people for a decade and most had refused
Ibn al-Jawzī records agreement that all of it is Makkan; al-Qurṭubī and Ibn Kathīr give it as Makkan without mention of any other view. The traditional order places it seventy-first.
سُورَةُ نُوحٍ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ نُوحٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وَهِيَ ثَمَانٍ وَعِشْرُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ نُوحٍ 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 سُورَةُ نُوحٍ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Ibn al-Zubayr: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, al-Naḥḥās and Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ والنَّحّاسُ وابْنُ مَرْدَوَيْهِ عَنْ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ الزُّبَيْرِ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ ﴿إنّا أرْسَلْنا نُوحًا﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
عِشْرُونَ وثَمانِ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٍ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ نُوحٍ عَلَيْهِ السَّلامُ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وآياتُها ثَمانٍ وعِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
By the time this surah came down the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had spent years calling the people of Makkah, and could count those who had answered. The men of influence would not listen and would not let others listen. It is to someone in that position that the story of Nūḥ is told — not the Flood, which takes one ayah here, but the calling.
Nūḥ stayed among his people a thousand years less fifty (29:14). The surah lets him describe it himself. I called them night and day, and my calling only made them run further. Every time I called them, so that You might forgive them, they put their fingers in their ears and pulled their garments over their heads. I called them openly; then I spoke to them in public and in private. And he tells what he said: ask your Lord’s forgiveness — He is ever forgiving — and He will send the sky upon you in abundant rain, and give you wealth and sons, gardens and rivers.
What kept them from it was their attachment to five names. Do not abandon your gods, their leaders said: do not abandon Wadd, nor Suwāʿ, nor Yaghūth and Yaʿūq and Nasr. Ibn ʿAbbās explains who these were: righteous men of Nūḥ’s people. When they died, Satan prompted their people to set up images where they used to sit and call them by their names; and when that generation had passed and knowledge was lost, they were worshipped. The same idols, he says, later came to the Arabs — and the people of Makkah knew those names.
صبر الدعاة وجهادهم في الدعوة، من خلال قصة نوح، تثبيتًا للمؤمنين، وتهديدًا للمكذبين.
The patience of those who call to Allah and their struggle in calling, through the story of Nūḥ — to steady the believers, and to threaten the deniers.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Calling to Allah
- Patience
- Seeking forgiveness
- The origin of idolatry
- The Flood
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
أعظم مقاصد السورة ضرب المثل للمشركين بقوم نوح وهم أول المشركين الذين سلط عليهم عقاب في الدنيا، وهو أعظم عقاب أعني الطوفان. وفي ذلك تمثيل لحال النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم مع قومه بحالهم.
وفيها تفصيل كثير من دعوة نوح عليه السلام إلى توحيد الله ونبذ عبادة الأصنام وإنذاره قومه بعذاب أليم واستدلاله لهم ببدائع صنع الله تعالى وتذكيرهم بيوم البعث.
وتصميم قومه على عصيانه وعلى تصلبهم في شركهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–44 ayat · 19% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The mission
We sent Nūḥ to his people: warn them before a painful punishment comes. He said: I am a clear warner to you — worship Allah, be mindful of Him, and obey me; He will forgive you your sins and grant you respite to an appointed term.
- 5–2016 ayat · 44% of the surahRead from ayah 5 →
His account to his Lord
My Lord, I called my people night and day, and it only increased their flight. I said: seek forgiveness of your Lord, He is ever forgiving; He will send rain upon you, and give you wealth and sons, gardens and rivers. What is the matter with you, that you have no awe of Allah’s majesty, when He created you stage by stage? Do you not see how He made seven heavens, the moon a light and the sun a lamp; grew you from the earth, and will return you to it; and spread the earth for you to travel its wide roads?
- 21–244 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 21 →
Their answer
My Lord, they have disobeyed me and followed those whose wealth and children only add to their loss. They have plotted a mighty plot, and said: do not leave your gods — not Wadd, nor Suwāʿ, nor Yaghūth and Yaʿūq and Nasr. They have led many astray.
- 25–284 ayat · 21% of the surahRead from ayah 25 →
The end, and his prayer
Because of their sins they were drowned, and made to enter a fire. And Nūḥ said: my Lord, leave not one of the disbelievers on the earth; if You leave them they will mislead Your servants. My Lord, forgive me and my parents, and whoever enters my house as a believer, and the believing men and the believing women.
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 86% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns once. 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 idols that were among the people of Nūḥ came to be among the Arabs afterwards… They are the names of righteous men from the people of Nūḥ. When they died, Satan inspired their people to set up images in the gatherings where they used to sit, and to call them by their names. They did so, and they were not worshipped — until those people had died and knowledge was forgotten; then they were worshipped.”The name it is known by
After the prophet whose story fills it from the first ayah to the last. It is also called by its opening words, Innā arsalnā Nūḥan.
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
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.