Makkan, by agreement
The middle years in Makkah, as Quraysh turned from mockery to plotting
It is Makkan without disagreement: Ibn al-Jawzī records the agreement and al-Qurṭubī gives no other view. The traditional order places it thirty-sixth.
سُورَةُ الطّارِقِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الطَّارِقِ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وَهِيَ سَبْعَ عَشْرَةَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الطَّارِقِ 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 والطّارِقِ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سَبْعَ عَشْرَةَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةً وهي مُشْتَمِلَةٌ عَلى التَّرْغِيبِ في مَعْرِفَةِ المَبْدَأِ والمَعادِ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها سَبْعَ عَشْرَةَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. Its closing ayat fit the years in which Quraysh turned from mockery to plotting: “They are plotting a plot, and I am planning a plan. So give the disbelievers respite — leave them a while.” The Prophet ﷺ is told not to hurry their end.
Its argument for the Resurrection is the plainest in the Qurʾan. Let the human being look at what he was made from. The One who brought him out of that is able to bring him back.
إظهار رقابة الله النافذة وقدرته البالغة.
To show how penetrating Allah’s watch is, and how far-reaching His power.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Allah’s watch over the soul
- The origin of man
- The Resurrection
- The Qurʾan as a decisive word
- Respite for the plotters
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
إثبات إحصاء الأعمال والجزاء على الأعمال.
وإثبات إمكان البعث بنقض ما أحاله المشركون ببيان إمكان إعادة الأجسام.
وأدمج في ذلك التذكير بدقيق صنع الله وحكمته في خلق الإنسان.
والتنويه بشأن القرآن.
وصدق ما ذكر فيه من البعث لأن إخبار القرآن به لما استبعدوه وموهوا على الناس بأن ما فيه غير صدق. وتهديد المشركين الذين ناوؤا المسلمين.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–44 ayat · 23% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oath
By the sky and the night-comer — and what will make you know what the night-comer is? The piercing star. There is no soul without a guardian over it.
- 5–106 ayat · 43% of the surahRead from ayah 5 →
Where he came from, and where he is going
Let man consider what he was created from: a fluid poured out, emerging from between the backbone and the ribs. He is surely able to bring him back — on the Day when secrets are put to the test, and he has no strength and no helper.
- 11–177 ayat · 34% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
A word that decides
By the sky that sends back the rain and the earth that splits with growth: this is a decisive word, and no jest. They are plotting, and I am planning. So grant the disbelievers respite; leave them for a while.
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 24% 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. Ṭāriq is anyone who arrives by night, and knocks; the surah explains it at once — the piercing star.
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)
- 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
- The Sunan of Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī; the Musnad of Aḥmad
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.