Makkan — its last ayah later
The very beginning of the mission; its closing ayah a year or more afterwards
Ibn al-Jawzī records agreement that it is Makkan, and then the exceptions that are reported: from Ibn ʿAbbās, that ayat 10 and 11 are Madinan; and from Ibn Yasār and Muqātil, that its last ayah is. That last ayah is unlike the rest of the surah in length and in subject — it speaks of zakāh and of those who will fight in the way of Allah — and ʿĀʾishah relates that it came down twelve months after the opening. The traditional order places the surah third.
سُورَةُ المُزَّمِّلِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْ، إلّا أنَّهُ قَدْ رُوِيَ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ أنَّهُ قالَ: سِوى آيَتَيْنِ مِنهامَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّهَا فِي قَوْلِ الْحَسَنِ وَعِكْرِمَةَ وَعَطَاءٍ وَجَابِرٍ. وَقَالَ ابْنُ عَبَّاسٍ وَقَتَادَةُ: إِلَّا آيَتَيْنِ مِنْهَاThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْمُزَّمِّلِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, Ibn Mardawayh and al-Bayhaqī.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ والبَيْهَقِيُّ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ ﴿يا أيُّها المُزَّمِّلُ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
وهِيَ عِشْرُونَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةً
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan, with the exception he names.
سُورَةُ المُزَّمِّلِ مَكِّيَّةٌ إلّا آيَةَ عَشْرَةَ، إحْدى عَشْرَةَ، عِشْرُونَ فَمَدَنِيَّةٌ، وآياتُها عِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
It is among the first three or four surahs to come down. The Prophet ﷺ had seen the angel, had returned to his house shaken, and had asked to be covered. The address reaches him there: O you wrapped up in your cloak — stand.
What he is told to stand for is not, yet, the public call. It is the night: half of it, or a little less, or a little more, reciting the Qurʾan slowly and distinctly. The reason is given in the next breath. We shall soon cast upon you a weighty word. The rising by night makes the deepest impression and the truest speech; by day you have long business to attend to.
ʿĀʾishah tells what followed. Allah made the night prayer obligatory at the opening of this surah, and the Prophet ﷺ and his Companions stood for a year, until their feet swelled. Allah held back its ending in the heaven for twelve months; then He sent down the lightening in its final ayah, and standing by night became voluntary after it had been required.
So the first generation of Muslims was formed, before anything else was asked of them, by a year of nights.
What came down about what
The lightening
“Allah made standing by night obligatory at the beginning of this surah, so the Prophet of Allah ﷺ and his Companions stood for a year. Allah withheld its conclusion for twelve months in the heaven, until He sent down the lightening at the end of this surah, and standing by night became voluntary after having been obligatory.”
ʿĀʾishah: Muslim (746).
Ṣaḥīḥ
ذكر الزاد الروحي للدعاة في مواجهة الشدائد ومصاعب الحياة، تثبيتًا للنبي ﷺ وتوعدًا للمكذبين به.
To set out the spiritual provision of those who call to Allah, in the face of hardship and the difficulties of life — steadying the Prophet ﷺ, and threatening those who deny him.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The night prayer
- Measured recitation
- Reliance on Allah
- Patience
- Pharaoh as a warning
- Ease in worship
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
الإشعار بملاطفة الله تعالى رسوله صلى الله عليه وسلم بندائه بوصفه بصفة تزمله.
واشتملت على الأمر بقيام النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم غالب الليل والثناء على طائفة من المؤمنين حملوا أنفسهم على قيام الليل.
وعلى تثبيت النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم بتحمل إبلاغ الوحي.
والأمر بإدامة إقامة الصلاة وأداء الزكاة وإعطاء الصدقات.
وأمره بالتمحض للقيام بما أمره الله من التبليغ وبأن يتوكل عليه.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–99 ayat · 26% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Rise by night
O you wrapped up: stand through the night, all but a little — half of it, or a little less, or more — and recite the Qurʾan in slow, measured tones. We shall cast upon you a weighty word. The hours of the night are firmer of tread and truer of speech. Remember the name of your Lord and devote yourself to Him wholly: Lord of the east and the west, there is no god but He, so take Him as your trustee.
- 10–145 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 10 →
Bear with them
Be patient with what they say, and part from them in a gracious manner. Leave Me to deal with the deniers, those who live in ease, and give them a little time: with Us are shackles and a blaze, food that chokes and a painful punishment, on the Day the earth and the mountains shake.
- 15–195 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 15 →
A messenger, as to Pharaoh
We have sent to you a Messenger as a witness over you, as We sent a messenger to Pharaoh. Pharaoh disobeyed, and We seized him with a crushing grip. How then will you guard yourselves, if you disbelieve, against a Day that will turn children grey? This is a reminder: let whoever wills take a way to his Lord.
- 201 ayah · 39% of the surahRead from ayah 20 →
The lightening
Your Lord knows that you stand nearly two-thirds of the night, or half of it, or a third, and a group of those with you. He knows you cannot keep count of it, and has turned to you in mercy: so recite what is easy of the Qurʾan. He knows that there will be among you the sick, and others travelling the land in search of Allah’s bounty, and others fighting in His cause. So recite what is easy of it, establish the prayer, give the zakāh, and lend Allah a goodly loan.
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 90% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 2 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
Saʿd ibn Hishām asked ʿĀʾishah about the night prayer of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. She said: “Do you not read ‘O you wrapped up’? Allah made standing by night obligatory at the beginning of this surah…”The name it is known by
After the way it addresses the Prophet ﷺ in its first ayah: you who are wrapped in your garment.
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 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.