Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah
It is Makkan without disagreement: both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī record the agreement. The traditional order places it eighty-first, directly after al-Nabaʾ, as it stands in the muṣḥaf.
سُورَةُ النّازِعاتِ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ النَّازِعَاتِ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِإِجْمَاعٍ. وَهِيَ خَمْسٌ أَوْ سِتٌّ وَأَرْبَعُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ النَّازِعَاتِ 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 النّازِعاتِ 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.
وهي أرْبَعُونَ وسِتُّ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ النّازِعاتِ مَكِّيَّةٌ آياتُها سِتٌّ وأرْبَعُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No particular occasion is transmitted for it. It belongs with al-Nabaʾ before it: the same hearers, the same denial, the same subject. “Are we really to be brought back to our former state — even after we are crumbled bones?” they said. “That would be a losing return.”
The surah answers with three things. A scene they had all witnessed and none could explain — a person dying. A story they all knew — Mūsā sent to Pharaoh, the most powerful man of his age, who gathered his people and proclaimed himself their highest lord, and was made an example in this life and the next. And an argument from scale: are you harder to create, or the sky above you?
It was sent to steady the Prophet ﷺ as much as to warn his people. They kept asking him when the Hour would be. He is told that fixing its time is no part of his task: “You are only a warner to whoever fears it.”
قَرْع القلوب المكذبة بالبعث والجزاء، من خلال عرض مشاهد الموت والبعث والحشر والقيامة.
To strike hearts that deny the Resurrection and the Recompense, by setting before them death, the raising, the gathering and the Hour.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Death
- The Resurrection
- Mūsā and Pharaoh
- Restraining the soul
- The Hour
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
اشتملت على إثبات البعث والجزاء، وإبطال إحالة المشركين وقوعه.
وتهويل يومه وما يعتري الناس حينئذ من الوهل.
وإبطال قول المشركين يتعذر الإحياء بعد انعدام الأجساد.
وعرض بأن نكرانهم إياه منبعث عن طغيانهم فكان الطغيان صادا لهم عن الإصغاء إلى الإنذار بالجزاء فأصبحوا آمنين في أنفسهم غير مترقبين حياة بعد هذه الحياة الدنيا بأن جعل مثل طغيانهم كطغيان فرعون وإعراضه عن دعوة موسى عليه السلام وإن لهم في ذلك عبرة، وتسلية لرسول الله صلى الله عليه
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–55 ayat · 6% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Five oaths
By those who pull out with force, and those who draw out gently; by those who glide, and race ahead, and arrange each matter. The angels, on the reading of most of the early commentators, at their work from the taking of the soul onwards.
- 6–149 ayat · 17% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
The two blasts
The Day the Quaking shakes, and the second follows it. Hearts that Day will pound and eyes be lowered. They used to say, “Shall we be brought back, when we are decayed bones?” It will be a single cry — and there they are, awake, on the open plain.
- 15–2612 ayat · 28% of the surahRead from ayah 15 →
Mūsā and Pharaoh
Has the story of Mūsā reached you? His Lord called him in the sacred valley of Ṭuwā: go to Pharaoh, he has transgressed. He showed him the greatest sign; Pharaoh denied, gathered his people, and declared: “I am your lord, most high.” So Allah seized him as an example for the next life and this. In that is a lesson for whoever fears.
- 27–337 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 27 →
Which is harder to create?
Are you a harder creation, or the heaven He built? He raised its canopy and ordered it, darkened its night and brought out its morning; then spread the earth, drew out its water and pasture, and set the mountains firm — provision for you and your herds.
- 34–418 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 34 →
The Greatest Calamity
When the Great Overwhelming comes, the Day a person remembers all he strove for. Whoever transgressed and preferred the life of this world, the Fire is his home. Whoever feared standing before his Lord, and held his soul back from its desire (79:40), Paradise is his home.
- 42–465 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 42 →
When?
They ask you about the Hour: when will it arrive? What have you to do with naming it? Its end is with your Lord. You are only a warner to those who fear it. The Day they see it, it will be as though they had stayed only an evening, or its morning.
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 78% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 4 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
No authenticated report specific to this surah is recorded here.
The name it is known by
After the oath it opens with. ʿAlī, Ibn Masʿūd and Ibn ʿAbbās said they are the angels who draw out the souls — harshly from the disbeliever, gently from the believer — and this is the view of most. Ibn al-Jawzī counts seven sayings in all.
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.
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.