Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah, when the Resurrection had become the centre of the dispute
Ibn al-Jawzī records the agreement of the commentators that all of it is Makkan, and al-Qurṭubī gives it as Makkan without mention of any other view. The traditional order places it eightieth, among the last surahs revealed before the Hijrah.
وَيُقالُ لَها: سُورَةُ التَّساؤُلِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ (عَمَّ) مَكِّيَّةٌ وَتُسَمَّى سُورَةُ (النَّبَأِThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ النَّبَأِ 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 مَرْدُويَهَ والبَيْهَقِيُّ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ ﴿عَمَّ يَتَساءَلُونَ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ عِنْدَ الجَمِيعِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
أرْبَعُونَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ النَّبَأِ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وآياتُها أرْبَعُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Of everything the Prophet ﷺ taught in Makkah, the point his people found hardest was not the oneness of Allah — they half admitted that — but the return to life. Bones that had crumbled, raised and questioned: they asked one another about it in their gatherings, some denying it outright, some unsure, some mocking.
Ibn al-Jawzī gives the occasion from the commentators in a sentence: when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was sent, the idolaters began questioning one another — what is this that he has brought? — and arguing and disputing over it, and the surah came down.◇
It does not join the argument. It says twice, “No — they will come to know,” and then asks them to look around: the earth laid out like a bed, the mountains driven in like tent-pegs, sleep, night and day, the lamp of the sun, the rain. Whoever arranged all of that for a purpose did not make its inhabitants for none. Then comes the appointment itself — the Day of Decision — and what waits on either side of it.
- Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
What came down about what
What they were asking one another
When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was sent, the idolaters took to questioning one another — “What is it that he has brought?” — and arguing and quarrelling over what he had been sent with. So this was revealed.
Ibn al-Jawzī, from the commentators. Al-Ṭabarī, al-Suyūṭī and al-Shawkānī relate it too.
Related, not gradedRelated by the commentators without a graded chain; not established as authentic.
قالَ المُفَسِّرُونَ: لَمّا بُعِثَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ﷺ جَعَلَ المُشْرِكُونَ يَتَساءَلُونَ بَيْنَهُمْ، فَيَقُولُونَ: ما الَّذِي أتى بِهِ؟ ويَتَجادَلُونَ، ويَخْتَصِمُونَ فِيما بُعِثَ بِهِ، فَنَزَلَتْ هَذِهِ الآيَةُإثبات البعث والجزاء بالأدلة والبراهين.
To establish the Resurrection and the Recompense by proofs and evidence.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Resurrection
- Signs in creation
- The Day of Decision
- Hell and Paradise
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
اشتملت هذه السورة على وصف خوض المشركين في شأن القرآن وما جاء به مما يخالف معتقداتهم، ومن ذلك إثبات البعث، وسؤال بعضهم بعضا عن الرأي في وقوعه مستهزئين بالإخبار عن وقوعه.
وتهديدهم على استهزائهم.
وفيها إقامة الحجة على إمكان البعث بخلق المخلوقات التي هي أعظم من خلق الإنسان بعد موته وبالخلق الأول للإنسان وأحواله.
ووصف الأهوال الحاصلة عند البعث من عذاب الطاغين مع مقابلة ذلك بوصف نعيم المؤمنين.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–55 ayat · 8% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The question
About what are they asking one another? About the tremendous news, over which they disagree. No — they will come to know. Again, no — they will come to know.
- 6–1611 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
The evidence
Have We not made the earth a resting place and the mountains its pegs; created you in pairs; made your sleep for rest, the night a covering, the day for livelihood; built seven strong heavens above you and set in them a blazing lamp; and sent down from the rain-clouds water in torrents, to bring out grain and plants and gardens thick with growth?
- 17–204 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 17 →
The appointment
The Day of Decision is a time already fixed: the Day the Trumpet is blown and you come in crowds, the sky is opened and becomes gates, and the mountains are set moving until they are a mirage.
- 21–3010 ayat · 21% of the surahRead from ayah 21 →
For the transgressors
Hell lies in wait, a home for those who overstepped, to stay in it for ages. No coolness there and no drink but scalding water and pus: a fitting recompense. They never expected a reckoning, and denied Our signs — and everything We have recorded in a book. “So taste: We shall increase you in nothing but punishment.”
- 31–366 ayat · 12% of the surahRead from ayah 31 →
For the mindful
A place of success: gardens and vines, companions, a cup that is full. No idle talk there, and no lying. A reward from your Lord, a gift that is enough.
- 37–404 ayat · 28% of the surahRead from ayah 37 →
The Day the Spirit and the angels stand
Lord of the heavens and the earth, the Most Merciful — none will have the power to address Him. The Spirit and the angels stand in rows, silent but for whom He permits. That Day is the truth; so let whoever wills take a way back to his Lord. The surah closes with the disbeliever’s wish: “If only I were dust.”
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 88% 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
شَيَّبَتْنِي هُودٌ وَالْوَاقِعَةُ وَالْمُرْسَلاَتُ وَعَمَّ يَتَسَاءَلُونَ وَإِذَا الشَّمْسُ كُوِّرَتْ
Abū Bakr said: “Messenger of Allah, you have gone grey.” He ﷺ said: “Hūd, al-Wāqiʿah, al-Mursalāt, ‘ʿAmma yatasāʾalūn’ and ‘Idhā l-shamsu kuwwirat’ have turned me grey.”The names it is known by
After the “tremendous news” of its second ayah: the Resurrection — or the Qurʾan that announced it, as others of the early commentators said.
Its first word, in full ʿAmma yatasāʾalūn. Al-Qurṭubī heads it with this name, and it is why the thirtieth juzʾ of the muṣḥaf, which begins here, is everywhere called Juzʾ ʿAmma. Ibn al-Jawzī also records Sūrat al-Tasāʾul, the Questioning.
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
- Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī
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.