Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah
It is Makkan with all the scholars, in al-Qurṭubī’s words; Ibn al-Jawzī records the agreement. The traditional order places it eighty-second, with the last group of surahs revealed in Makkah.
سُورَةُ الِانْفِطارِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الِانْفِطَارِ مَكِّيَّةٌ عِنْدَ الْجَمِيعِ وَهِيَ تِسْعَ عشرة آيةThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الِانْفِطَارِ 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 ﴿إذا السَّماءُ انْفَطَرَتْ﴾ 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.
تِسْعَ عَشْرَةَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةًبِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الأنْفِطارِ مَكِّيَّةٌ وآياتُها تِسْعَةَ عَشَرَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. It stands beside al-Takwīr as a second telling of the same hour, and the Prophet ﷺ named the two together, with al-Inshiqāq, as the surahs to recite if one wishes to see the Day of Resurrection.
Where al-Takwīr turns, halfway through, to defend the revelation, this surah turns to the listener. “O human being — what has deceived you concerning your Lord, the Generous?” The early Muslims heard the answer inside the question. ʿUmar, on hearing it recited, said: his ignorance. Others said that the very word “Generous” is put there to hand the servant his reply — it was Your generosity that deceived me — and at the same time to take it from him, since generosity is a reason for shame and not for boldness.
Then it removes the last hiding place. Over each of you are keepers, noble, writing down; they know what you do.
تصوير القيامة بتبعثر المخلوقات المنتظمة وتغير حالها ومسارها.
To picture the Resurrection as the scattering of an ordered creation, and the overturning of its state and course.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Last Day
- The generosity of Allah
- The recording angels
- The righteous and the wicked
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
واشتملت هذه السورة على: إثبات البعث، وذكر أهوال تتقدمه.
وإيقاظ المشركين للنظر في الأمور التي صرفتهم عن الاعتراف بتوحيد الله تعالى وعن النظر في دلائل وقوع البعث والجزاء.
والأعلام بأن الأعمال محصاة. وبيان جزاء الأعمال خيرها وشرها.
وإنذار الناس بأن لا يحسبوا شيئا ينجيهم من جزاء الله إياهم على سيىء أعمالهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–55 ayat · 21% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Four signs, and one result
When the sky breaks apart, the stars are strewn, the seas are burst open and the graves are overturned — a soul will know what it sent ahead and what it left behind.
- 6–83 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
The question
O human being, what has deceived you concerning your generous Lord — who created you, shaped you and set you in balance, and put you together in whatever form He willed?
- 9–124 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
The record
No — you deny the Recompense. Yet over you are guardians: noble, recording, who know whatever you do.
- 13–197 ayat · 44% of the surahRead from ayah 13 →
The Day of Recompense
The righteous will be in bliss, and the wicked in a blaze which they enter on the Day of Recompense and are never absent from. And what will make you know what the Day of Recompense is? Again, what will make you know? A Day when no soul can do anything for another, and the command, that Day, belongs to Allah.
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 58% 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
“Whoever would be glad to look at the Day of Resurrection as though seeing it with his own eyes, let him recite ‘When the sun is folded up’, ‘When the sky breaks apart’ and ‘When the sky is split open’.”The name it is known by
From its first ayah: when the sky is cleft. In the hadith it goes by its opening, Idhā l-samāʾu nfaṭarat.
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.