Makkan, by agreement
The early years in Makkah
Ibn al-Jawzī records agreement that all of it is Makkan, and al-Qurṭubī and Ibn Kathīr give no other view. The traditional order places it thirty-first, among the earlier surahs — which fits what its middle ayat describe: a Prophet ﷺ still new to receiving revelation.
سُورَةُ القِيامَةِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْتَفْسِيرُ سُورَةِ الْقِيَامَةِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْقِيَامَةِ 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, through several chains.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ والنَّحّاسُ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ والبَيْهَقِيُّ في الدَّلائِلِ مِن طُرُقٍ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ القِيامَةِ، وفي لَفْظٍ، نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ ﴿لا أُقْسِمُ بِيَوْمِ القِيامَةِ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ بِلا خِلافٍ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
أرْبَعُونَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةً
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ القِيامَةِ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وآياتُها أرْبَعُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
The objection in Makkah was always the same, and it was a practical one. A body rots; its bones scatter. How is it to be put back? The surah answers with something no one in that age could have appreciated as we can: “Yes — We are able to restore even his fingertips.”
Then it says why the objection is really made. It is not that man cannot believe. It is that he wants to go on sinning into the time ahead of him; so he asks, as a way of putting it off, “When is this Day of Resurrection?”
In the middle of all this the address suddenly turns: “Do not move your tongue with it, to hasten it.” Ibn ʿAbbās explains. When Jibrīl came down with revelation, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to move his lips and tongue with it as it was being recited, straining to hold on to every word, and it was hard on him. So Allah sent down these ayat: its gathering in your heart and its recitation are for Us to see to. When We recite it, follow its recitation; then its explanation is for Us to see to. After that, when Jibrīl came, he would listen in silence, and when Jibrīl left, he would recite it as he had recited it.
It is a passage that could only have come from outside him. No author interrupts his own argument to correct the way he is speaking it.
What came down about what
“Do not move your tongue with it”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to suffer hardship when revelation came down, and would move his lips with it. So Allah sent down: “Do not move your tongue with it to hasten it. Its collection and its recitation are upon Us.” After that he would listen when Jibrīl came, and when Jibrīl had gone he would recite it as Jibrīl had.
Ibn ʿAbbās: al-Bukhārī (5, 4929) and Muslim (448).
Ṣaḥīḥ
إظهار قدرة الله على جمع خلق الإنسان وبعثه.
To show Allah’s power to gather together what He created of man, and to raise him.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Resurrection
- The self-reproaching soul
- How the Qurʾan was received
- Seeing Allah
- The moment of death
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
اشتملت على إثبات البعث.
والتذكير بيوم القيامة وذكر أشراطه.
وإثبات الجزاء على الأعمال التي عملها الناس في الدنيا.
واختلاف أحوال أهل السعادة وأهل الشقاء وتكريم أهل السعادة.
والتذكير بالموت وأنه أول مراحل الآخرة.
والزجر عن إيثار منافع الحياة العاجلة على ما أعد لأهل الخير من نعيم الآخرة.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–66 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oath, and the doubt
I swear by the Day of Resurrection, and I swear by the self-reproaching soul. Does man think that We will not assemble his bones? Yes — We are able to restore his very fingertips. But man wishes to go on in sin ahead of him; he asks, “When is the Day of Resurrection?”
- 7–159 ayat · 21% of the surahRead from ayah 7 →
The Day
When the sight is dazed, and the moon is darkened, and the sun and the moon are brought together — man will say that Day, “Where is the escape?” No: there is no refuge. To your Lord, that Day, is the place of rest. Man will be told what he sent ahead and what he left behind; indeed, man is a witness against himself, though he puts forward his excuses.
- 16–194 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 16 →
To the Prophet ﷺ
Do not move your tongue with it to hasten it. Its gathering and its recitation are upon Us; so when We have recited it, follow its recitation. Then upon Us is its explanation.
- 20–256 ayat · 12% of the surahRead from ayah 20 →
Two kinds of faces
No — you love the fleeting life and neglect the Hereafter. Faces, that Day, will be radiant, looking at their Lord (75:23). And faces, that Day, will be scowling, expecting something back-breaking to be done to them.
- 26–305 ayat · 10% of the surahRead from ayah 26 →
The deathbed
No — when the soul reaches the collarbones, and it is said, “Who is there to cure him?”, and he knows it is the parting, and one leg is wound about the other: to your Lord, that Day, is the driving.
- 31–4010 ayat · 29% of the surahRead from ayah 31 →
Left to no purpose?
He neither believed nor prayed, but denied and turned away, and went to his people swaggering. Does man think that he will be left neglected? Was he not a drop of fluid emitted, then a clinging clot, which He created and proportioned, and made of it the pair, male and female? Is not He able to give life to the dead?
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 45% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 5 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
إِنَّكُمْ سَتَرَوْنَ رَبَّكُمْ كَمَا تَرَوْنَ هَذَا الْقَمَرَ لاَ تُضَامُّونَ فِي رُؤْيَتِهِ
“You will see your Lord as you see this moon, and you will not be crowded in seeing Him. So if you are able not to be overcome in a prayer before the rising of the sun and a prayer before its setting, then do so.”“When Jibrīl came down with revelation, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ would move his tongue and his lips with it, and it was hard on him… So Allah sent down the ayah in ‘I swear by the Day of Resurrection’: ‘Do not move your tongue with it to hasten it.’”The name it is known by
After the oath it opens with: I swear by the Day of Resurrection. It is also called by its opening words, Lā uqsimu.
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
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.