Makkan, by agreement
The years of persecution in Makkah
It is Makkan without disagreement; Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī both record the agreement. The traditional order places it twenty-seventh, in the years when the weaker Muslims of Makkah were being publicly tormented.
سُورَةُ البُرُوجِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الْبُرُوجِ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِاتِّفَاقٍ. وَهِيَ ثَنَتَانِ وَعِشْرُونَ آيةThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْبُرُوجِ 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 ﴿والسَّماءِ ذاتِ البُرُوجِ﴾ 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.
عِشْرُونَ وآيَتانِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها اثْنَتانِ وعِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Bilāl was laid on the burning ground with a rock on his chest. ʿAmmār’s mother, Sumayyah, was killed, and his father died under torture. Khabbāb was pressed onto live coals. The believers of Makkah who had no clan to shield them were being broken one at a time, and they asked the Prophet ﷺ why he did not pray for Allah’s help. He told them of people before them who were sawn in two and combed with iron and did not give up their religion.
This surah gave them such a people. The Prophet ﷺ told the story in full, as Ṣuhayb relates in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: a king, his sorcerer, and a boy sent to learn sorcery who met a monk on the road and learned faith instead. The king could not kill the boy by any means until the boy told him how: gather the people, and shoot me saying, “In the name of Allah, the Lord of the boy.” He did, the boy died — and the people said, “We believe in the Lord of the boy.” So the king had trenches dug and fires lit, and those who would not recant were driven in. A woman came with her infant and hesitated; the child said, “Mother, be patient — you are upon the truth.”
The surah does not say that the believers were rescued. It says that those who burned them are cursed, that the fire of Hell is waiting for anyone who torments believing men and women and does not repent, and that the believers have gardens — “that is the great success.” Victory, in this surah, is to have held on.
What came down about what
The boy, the monk and the king
Ṣuhayb relates that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: there was a king among those who came before you, and he had a sorcerer. When the sorcerer grew old he said to the king: I have grown old; send me a boy to whom I can teach sorcery. A boy was sent. On his road there was a monk, and he sat with him and listened to what he said, and it pleased him. So whenever he went to the sorcerer he would stop and sit with the monk, and the sorcerer would beat him when he arrived. He complained of it to the monk, who said: “When you fear the sorcerer, say: my family kept me. And when you fear your family, say: the sorcerer kept me.”
One day he came upon a great beast that had blocked the people’s way. He said: “Today I shall know which is better, the sorcerer or the monk.” He took up a stone and said: “O Allah, if the way of the monk is dearer to You than the way of the sorcerer, kill this beast, so that the people may pass.” He threw it and killed it, and the people went on. He told the monk, who said: “My son, today you are better than I am. You have come to what I see; and you will be tried. If you are tried, do not point to me.”
The boy came to heal the blind and the leper, and to treat people of every ailment. A courtier of the king who had gone blind heard of him and brought him many gifts: “All that is here is yours, if you cure me.” He said: “I cure no one. It is Allah who cures. If you believe in Allah, I will call upon Him and He will heal you.” He believed, and Allah healed him. He went and sat beside the king as he used to, and the king said: “Who gave you back your sight?” — “My Lord.” — “Have you a lord other than me?” — “My Lord and your Lord is Allah.” He was seized and tortured until he pointed to the boy. The boy said the same — “I cure no one; it is Allah who cures” — and was tortured until he pointed to the monk.
The monk was brought and told: give up your religion. He refused; a saw was set on the parting of his head, and he was cut through until his two halves fell. The courtier was told the same, and refused, and it was done to him. Then the boy was told, and refused. The king handed him to some of his men: take him to such-and-such a mountain and climb it with him, and when you reach its summit, if he does not give up his religion, throw him from it. On the mountain he said: “O Allah, deal with them for me however You will.” The mountain shook with them and they fell, and he came walking back to the king. “What became of your companions?” — “Allah dealt with them for me.” He was handed to others, to be taken out in a boat to the middle of the sea and cast overboard. He made the same prayer; the boat capsized and they drowned, and he came walking back to the king.
Then he said to the king: “You will not kill me until you do what I tell you. Gather the people on one open ground and bind me to the trunk of a tree. Then take an arrow from my quiver, set it in the middle of the bow, and say: In the name of Allah, the Lord of the boy. Then shoot me. If you do that, you will kill me.” The king gathered the people and did it. The arrow struck the boy’s temple; he put his hand on the place where it had struck, and died. And the people said: “We believe in the Lord of the boy. We believe in the Lord of the boy. We believe in the Lord of the boy.”
The king was told: do you see? What you feared has come upon you; the people have believed. He ordered trenches to be dug at the openings of the roads, and fires lit in them, and said: whoever does not give up his religion, throw him in. And they did so, until there came a woman with a small child of hers, and she shrank from falling into it. The child said to her: “Mother, be patient. You are upon the truth.”
Ṣuhayb: Muslim (3005), and Aḥmad, as Ibn Kathīr gives it under these ayat.
Ṣaḥīḥ
عَنْ صُهَيب: أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ﷺ قَالَ: كَانَ مَلِكٌ فِيمَنْ كَانَ قَبْلَكُمْ، وَكَانَ لَهُ سَاحِرٌ، فَلَمَّا كَبُرَ السَّاحِرُ قَالَ لِلْمَلِكِ: إِنِّي قَدْ كَبُرَتْ سِنِّي وَحَضَرَ أَجَلِيإظهار قوة الله وإحاطته الشاملة وتوعده للمتربصين بالمؤمنين، بالعذاب الشديد.
To show Allah’s might and His all-encompassing grasp, and His threat of severe punishment to those who lie in wait for the believers.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Persecution for faith
- Steadfastness
- Allah as Witness
- His might and His love
- The preserved Qurʾan
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
ابتدئت أغراض هذه السورة بضرب المثل للذين فتنوا المسلمين بمكة بأنهم مثل قوم فتنوا فريقا ممن آمن بالله فجعلوا أخدودا من نار لتعذيبهم ليكون المثل تثبيتا للمسلمين وتصبيرا لهم على أذى المشركين وتذكيرهم بما جرى على سلفهم في الإيمان من شدة التعذيب الذي لم ينلهم مثله ولم يصدهم ذلك عن دينهم.
وإشعار المسلمين بأن قوة الله عظيمة فسيلقى المشركون جزاء صنيعهم ويلقى المسلمون النعيم الأبدي والنصر.
والتعريض للمسلمين بكرامتهم عند الله تعالى.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–33 ayat · 6% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Three oaths
By the sky with its great stars, by the promised Day, and by a witness and what is witnessed.
- 4–96 ayat · 32% of the surahRead from ayah 4 →
The makers of the Trench
Cursed were the people of the Trench — of the fire fed with fuel — as they sat beside it, witnesses to what they were doing to the believers. They held nothing against them except that they believed in Allah, the Almighty, the Praiseworthy, to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. And Allah is Witness over all things.
- 10–112 ayat · 26% of the surahRead from ayah 10 →
The two outcomes
Those who torment believing men and women and then do not repent will have the punishment of Hell, and the punishment of burning. Those who believe and do right will have gardens beneath which rivers flow: that is the great success. Even here, the door of repentance is named.
- 12–165 ayat · 16% of the surahRead from ayah 12 →
Who He is
The grip of your Lord is severe. It is He who originates and brings back; and He is the Forgiving, the Loving, Lord of the Throne, the Glorious, Doer of whatever He wills.
- 17–226 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 17 →
The armies before
Has the story of the hosts reached you — Pharaoh and Thamūd? Yet the disbelievers persist in denial, while Allah surrounds them from behind. This is a glorious Qurʾan, in a Preserved Tablet.
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 73% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 8 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
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to recite, in the noon and afternoon prayers, “By the sky with its great stars” and “By the sky and the night-comer”, and surahs like them.The name it is known by
After the oath it opens with, by the sky and its burūj: its great stars, or the stations through which the sun and moon pass. The Prophet ﷺ recited it as Wa-l-samāʾi dhāti l-burūj.
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 Muslim; the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd and 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.