Makkan, by agreement
The start of the mission: the first revelation after the pause that followed Ḥirāʾ
It is Makkan in the saying of all. Ibn al-Jawzī notes only that Muqātil held one ayah of it, the long thirty-first, to be Madinan. Its opening is among the earliest of all revelation: Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh held that it was the very first, and the majority, as Ibn Kathīr records, that the first was the opening of al-ʿAlaq and that this came first after the pause.
سُورَةُ المُدَّثِّرِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإجْماعِهِمْ وَقالَ مُقاتِلٌ: فِيها مِنَ المَدَنِيِّ آيَةٌعَنْ جَابِرٍ أَنَّهُ كَانَ يَقُولُ: أَوَّلُ شَيْءٍ نَزَلَ مِنَ الْقُرْآنِ: ﴿يَا أَيُّهَا الْمُدَّثِّرُ﴾ وَخَالَفَهُ الْجُمْهُورُ فَذَهَبُوا إِلَى أَنَّ أَوَّلَ الْقُرْآنِ نُزُولًاThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْمُدَّثِّرِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays, Ibn Mardawayh, al-Naḥḥās and al-Bayhaqī.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ والنَّحّاسُ والبَيْهَقِيُّ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ المُدَّثِّرِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
خَمْسُونَ وسِتُّ آياتٍ، مَكِّيَّةٌ، وعِنْدَ بَعْضِهِمْ أنَّها أوَّلُ ما نَزَلَ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ المُدَّثِّرِ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وآياتُها سِتٌّ وخَمْسُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
After the first words in the cave of Ḥirāʾ, the revelation stopped for a time. The Prophet ﷺ described its return himself, as Jābir relates. “While I was walking I heard a voice from the sky. I raised my eyes, and there was the angel who had come to me at Ḥirāʾ, seated on a throne between the sky and the earth. I was struck with awe of him, and went back and said: cover me, cover me.” And Allah sent down: “O you enveloped in your cloak — arise and warn; magnify your Lord; purify your garments; and shun all defilement.” After that, he said, the revelation came strongly and in close succession.
Those first seven ayat are a commission in the fewest possible words: the task, and the character of the one who is to carry it out.
The middle of the surah belongs to a later moment and a particular man. Quraysh needed something to tell the pilgrims who would soon arrive and hear the Qurʾan. They went to al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah, the richest and most respected of them, who had himself been shaken by what he heard. The surah describes him at work: he reflected, and he plotted; he looked; he frowned and scowled; he turned away in pride — and said, “This is nothing but magic handed down. This is nothing but the word of a human being.” The reply names where he is going: Saqar. “Over it are nineteen.”
The number was meant as a test, and it worked as one. Abū Jahl is reported to have mocked it: nineteen — surely ten of you can deal with each of them.◇ The long ayah that follows says exactly this: We have made their number a trial for those who disbelieve, a certainty for those given the Book, and an increase in faith for those who believe.
- Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
What came down about what
After the pause
“I stayed in retreat at Ḥirāʾ for a month. When my retreat was over I came down into the bottom of the valley, and I was called. I looked in front of me and behind me, to my right and to my left, and saw no one. Then I raised my head, and there he was, upon a throne in the air…” He went to Khadījah and said, “Cover me,” and these ayat were sent down.
Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh: al-Bukhārī (4922–4926) and Muslim (161).
Ṣaḥīḥ
فَرَوى البُخارِيُّ ومُسْلِمٌ في صَحِيحِيهِما مِن حَدِيثِ جابِرِ بْنِ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ قالَ: حَدَّثَنا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ﷺ قالَ: جاوَرْتُ بِحِراءَ شَهْرًا، فَلَمّا قَضَيْتُ جِوارِي نَزَلْتُ فاسْتَبْطَنْتُ بَطْنَ الوادِي، فَنُودِيتُAl-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah
The commentators relate that these ayat came down about al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah, whom Quraysh consulted on what to say of the Qurʾan. He admitted that it was not poetry and not the muttering of a soothsayer, and then settled on calling it magic that parts a man from his family.
Ibn Kathīr and Ibn al-Jawzī, from Ibn ʿAbbās and others; Ibn Isḥāq gives the story at length. Al-Qurṭubī: “the commentators hold that he is al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah.”
Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
الأمر بالنهوض للدعوة، وتوعد المكذبين بها.
The command to rise and call to Allah — and a threat to those who deny the call.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The commission of the Prophet ﷺ
- The arrogance of al-Walīd
- Saqar
- Every soul held in pledge
- The prayer and feeding the poor
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
جاء فيها من الأغراض تكريم النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم والأمر بإبلاغ دعوة الرسالة.
وإعلان وحدانية الله بالإلهية.
والأمر بالتطهر الحسي والمعنوي.
ونبذ الأصنام.
والإكثار من الصدقات.
والأمر بالصبر.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–77 ayat · 6% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The commission
O you enveloped in your cloak: arise and warn. Magnify your Lord. Purify your garments. Shun defilement. Do not give in order to receive more. And for your Lord’s sake, be patient.
- 8–103 ayat · 5% of the surahRead from ayah 8 →
A hard Day
When the Horn is sounded, that will be a difficult Day — for the disbelievers, not easy.
- 11–3121 ayat · 49% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
The one who thought it over
Leave Me with the one I created alone, and gave ample wealth, and sons at his side, and smoothed everything for; and still he wants more. He thought and plotted — may he perish, how he plotted — then looked, frowned, turned away in pride and said: “This is only magic passed on; only the word of a mortal.” I will burn him in Saqar, which spares nothing and leaves nothing. Over it are nineteen: angels, whose number We have made a test.
- 32–376 ayat · 8% of the surahRead from ayah 32 →
One of the greatest
No — by the moon, and the night as it retreats, and the dawn as it brightens: it is one of the greatest of things, a warning to humankind, to whoever among you wills to go forward or to hang back.
- 38–4811 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 38 →
“What brought you to Saqar?”
Every soul is held in pledge for what it has earned, except the people of the right hand, in gardens, asking the guilty: what led you into Saqar? They will say: we were not among those who prayed; we did not feed the poor; we waded in with those who waded in; and we denied the Day of Recompense, until the certain end came to us. No intercession will benefit them.
- 49–568 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 49 →
Fleeing the reminder
What is the matter with them, turning from the reminder like startled donkeys fleeing a lion? Each of them wants to be handed scriptures unrolled. No — they do not fear the Hereafter. It is a reminder; let whoever wills remember it. He is worthy to be feared, and worthy to forgive.
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 50% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 10 times. 3 of those turns come 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, speaking of the pause in revelation: “While I was walking I heard a voice from the sky. I raised my eyes, and there was the angel who had come to me at Ḥirāʾ, seated on a throne between the sky and the earth. I was awed by him, and went back and said: cover me, cover me. Then Allah sent down: ‘O you enveloped in your cloak, arise and warn’ — to ‘and shun defilement’. Then the revelation grew strong and came in succession.”The name it is known by
After the way it addresses the Prophet ﷺ: you who are covered in your cloak — the dithār, the outer wrap he had asked his family to put over him.
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
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.