Makkan, by agreement
The early years in Makkah, when he still hoped the chiefs of Quraysh would accept
It is Makkan in the saying of all, as al-Qurṭubī puts it, and Ibn al-Jawzī records the agreement. Its occasion fixes it in the years when the call was still being made to the leaders of Quraysh one by one.
سُورَةُ عَبَسَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ عَبَسَ مَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجَمِيعِThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ عَبَسَ 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 في الدَّلائِلِ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ عَبَسَ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, by agreement.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ الجَمِيعِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
وهِيَ أرْبَعُونَ وآيَتانِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ عَبَسَ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وآياتُها اثْنانِ وأرْبَعُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
The reasoning was sound enough, as people reason. If the heads of the clans became Muslims, their clans would follow, and the persecution of the weak would end. So when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ found himself one day in close conversation with some of them — the reports name ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah, Abū Jahl, and Umayyah and Ubayy, the sons of Khalaf — he gave it all his attention.
Then Ibn Umm Maktūm arrived. He was blind, a cousin of Khadījah, and one of the early Muslims; he could not see who was there or what he was interrupting. “Teach me, Messenger of Allah, some of what Allah has taught you,” he said, and said it again. The Prophet ﷺ, wishing he would wait, frowned and turned back to the others.
The blind man saw none of that. But the correction came all the same, and came in the third person at first — “He frowned and turned away” — as though sparing him the directness of it. The message is not a favour to be bestowed on the important. It is a reminder, in honoured pages, and whoever wills may take it. The one who comes to you eager and in awe has a greater claim on you than the one who thinks he needs nothing.
Afterwards the Prophet ﷺ would honour Ibn Umm Maktūm whenever he saw him. He was one of the two men who called the adhān in Madinah, and more than once the Prophet ﷺ left him in charge of the city when he rode out.
What came down about what
Ibn Umm Maktūm
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was one day addressing one of the great men of Quraysh, hoping for his Islam, when Ibn Umm Maktūm — one of those who had accepted Islam early — came asking him about something, and pressed him. The Prophet ﷺ wished he would hold off for that hour; he frowned and turned from him to the other. So Allah sent down: “He frowned and turned away, because the blind man came to him.”
Ibn Kathīr, from more than one of the commentators. ʿĀʾishah reports it in al-Tirmidhī (3331), who called the report gharīb; al-Albānī graded its chain ṣaḥīḥ.
Graded ṣaḥīḥ
أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ﷺ كَانَ يَوْمًا يخاطبُ بَعْضَ عُظَمَاءِ قُرَيْشٍ، وَقَدْ طَمع فِي إِسْلَامِهِ، فَبَيْنَمَا هُوَ يُخَاطِبُهُ وَيُنَاجِيهُ إِذْ أَقْبَلَ ابنُ أُمِّ مَكْتُومٍ-وَكَانَ مِمَّنْ أَسْلَمَ قَدِيمًا-فَجَعَلَ يَسْأَلُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ﷺ عَنْ شَيْءٍ وَيُلِحُّ عَلَيْهِحقيقة دعوة القرآن، وكرامة من ينتفع بها، وحقارة من يعرض عنها.
To show what the call of the Qurʾan really is: the honour of those who benefit from it, and the worthlessness of those who turn from it.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Who the message is for
- The honour of the Qurʾan
- Ingratitude
- Provision
- The Day each flees the other
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
تعليم الله رسوله - صلى الله عليه وسلم - الموازنة بين مراتب المصالح ووجوب الاستقراء لخفياتها كيلا يفيت الاهتمام بالمهم منها في بادىء الرأي مهما آخر مساويا في الأهمية أو أرجح.
ولذلك يقول علماء أصول الفقه: إن على المجتهد أن يبحث عن معارض الدليل الذي لاح له.
والإشارة إلى اختلاف الحال بين المشركين المعرضين عن هدي الإسلام وبين المسلمين المقبلين على تتبع مواقعه.
وقرن ذلك بالتذكير بإكرام المؤمنين وسمو درجتهم عند الله تعالى.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–1010 ayat · 24% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The reproach
He frowned and turned away, because the blind man came to him. What could tell you? He might be purified, or reminded, and the reminder profit him. The one who thinks himself in no need — to him you give your attention, though it is not upon you if he is not purified. And the one who came to you striving, in awe — from him you are distracted.
- 11–166 ayat · 11% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
What the reminder is
No — it is a reminder, and whoever wills may take it to heart: in pages held in honour, exalted and kept pure, by the hands of scribes who are noble and dutiful.
- 17–237 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 17 →
The ingratitude of man
Perish man — how thankless he is. From what did He create him? From a drop: He created and proportioned him, then made the way easy for him, then caused him to die and be buried; then, when He wills, He will raise him. No — he has not yet done what he was commanded.
- 24–329 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 24 →
Let him look at his food
We poured down the water in torrents, then split the earth, and brought out of it grain, and grapes and herbage, olives and palms, gardens dense with trees, and fruit and pasture — provision for you and your animals.
- 33–4210 ayat · 25% of the surahRead from ayah 33 →
The Deafening Blast
When it comes: the Day a man flees from his brother, his mother and his father, his wife and his children — each of them, that Day, with concern enough of his own. Faces that Day bright, laughing, rejoicing; and faces with dust upon them, darkness covering them.
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 57% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 4 times. 2 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
“You will be gathered barefoot, naked and uncircumcised.” A woman said: “Will we see one another’s nakedness?” He ﷺ said: “O so-and-so — ‘each one of them, that Day, will have concern enough of his own’.”The name it is known by
Its first word. It is also called al-Aʿmā, the Blind Man, and al-Ṣākhkhah, the Deafening Blast, after the name it gives the Day near its end (80:33).
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.