Makkan, by agreement
The later years in Makkah
It is Makkan in the saying of all: both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī record the agreement. The traditional order places it sixty-eighth.
سُورَةُ الغاشِيَةِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْوَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ الْجَمِيعِ، وَهِيَ سِتٌّ وَعِشْرُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْغَاشِيَةِ 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 الغاشِيَةِ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, in the saying of the majority.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ في قَوْلِ الجُمْهُورِ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
وهِيَ عِشْرُونَ وسِتُّ آياتٍ، مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها سِتٌّ وعِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. It was, with al-Aʿlā, the surah the people of Madinah heard from the Prophet ﷺ more than any other in the great public prayers — every Friday, and at both ʿĪds — and so it is one of the passages by which the community has been reminded of the next life, week after week, since his time.
Its argument is made for people of the desert, and made with what the desert holds. Do they not look at the camel — how it was created? It was the Arab’s wealth, his transport, his food and drink, an animal that kneels to be loaded and carries a man across country that would kill him. And the sky, how it was raised; the mountains, how they were set; the earth, how it was spread out. A rider crossing the open land sees exactly those four things and nothing else.
Then comes one of the clearest statements in the Qurʾan of what a messenger is and is not. So remind: you are only one who reminds. You are not set over them as a controller. Their return is to Us, and their reckoning is Ours to take.
تذكير النفوس بمشاهد القدرة الإلهية في العذاب والنعيم، ودلائل ذلك في الآيات الحاضرة، لتمتلئ النفوس رغبة ورهبة.
To remind souls of the scenes of divine power in punishment and in bliss, and of its proofs in the signs before them — so that they are filled with longing and with awe.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The faces of the Last Day
- Paradise
- Signs in creation
- The Prophet ﷺ as a reminder
- The return to Allah
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
اشتملت هذه السورة على تهويل يوم القيامة وما فيه من عقاب قوم مشوهة حالتهم، ومن ثواب قوم ناعمة حالتهم وعلى وجه الإجمال المرهب أو المرغب.
والإيماء إلى ما يبين ذلك الإجمال كله بالإنكار على قوم لم يهتدوا بدلالة مخلوقات من خلق الله وهي نصب أعينهم، على تفرده بالإلهية فيعلم السامعون أن الفريق المهدد هم المشركون.
وعلى إمكان إعادته بعض مخلوقاته خلقا جديدا بعد الموت يوم البعث.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–77 ayat · 30% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
Faces cast down
Has the news of the Overwhelming reached you? Faces that Day will be humbled, toiling and worn out, entering a scorching fire, given to drink from a boiling spring, with no food but a bitter thorn that neither nourishes nor satisfies hunger.
- 8–169 ayat · 26% of the surahRead from ayah 8 →
Faces at ease
Faces that Day will be joyful, well pleased with their striving, in a lofty garden where they hear no idle word: a flowing spring, couches raised high, cups set ready, cushions in rows and carpets spread.
- 17–204 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 17 →
Four things to look at
Do they not look at the camels, how they were created; at the sky, how it was raised; at the mountains, how they were set up; and at the earth, how it was spread out?
- 21–266 ayat · 24% of the surahRead from ayah 21 →
Only a reminder
So remind — you are only one who reminds; you are not a controller over them. But whoever turns away and disbelieves, Allah will punish him with the greatest punishment. To Us is their return; then upon Us is their reckoning.
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 54% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 5 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
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to recite, in the two ʿĪds and on Friday, “Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High” and “Has the news of the Overwhelming reached you?” And when an ʿĪd and a Friday fell on the same day, he would recite them in both prayers.The name it is known by
One of the names of the Resurrection: that which covers everything and everyone with its terrors. This is the saying of Ibn ʿAbbās; Saʿīd ibn Jubayr said it is the Fire, which covers the faces of the disbelievers. The Prophet ﷺ called the surah by its opening, Hal atāka ḥadīthu l-ghāshiyah.
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 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.