Makkan, by agreement
The first years in Makkah
Ibn al-Jawzī records agreement that all of it is Makkan, and al-Qurṭubī gives no other view. The traditional order places it tenth, among the earliest surahs.
سُورَةُ الفَجْرِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الْفَجْرِ مَكِّيَّةٌ، وَهِيَ ثَلَاثُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْفَجْرَ 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, through several chains.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ الضُّرَيْسِ والنَّحّاسُ في ناسِخِهِ، وابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ والبَيْهَقِيُّ مِن طُرُقٍ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ ﴿والفَجْرِ﴾ 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.
ثَلاثُونَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةً
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها ثَلاثُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for the surah as a whole. It came to Makkah early, when the men who ran the city took their wealth and standing as proof that they were in the right, and the poverty of the first believers as proof that those were not.
The surah takes that reasoning apart. First it sets before them three powers far greater than Quraysh. ʿĀd of Iram, of the lofty pillars, whose like had not been created in the land. Thamūd, who hewed the rock in the valley. Pharaoh of the stakes. All of them overstepped, and filled the land with corruption; and your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment. Your Lord is ever on the watch.
Then it names the mistake directly. When his Lord tries the human being by honouring him and giving him ease, he says, “My Lord has honoured me.” When He tries him by straitening his provision, he says, “My Lord has humiliated me.” No. Neither is the measure. The measure is what you did with it — and the charge follows at once: you do not honour the orphan, you do not urge one another to feed the poor, you devour inheritance whole, and you love wealth with a boundless love.
عرض مشاهد العظمة والقدرة الإلهية في الكون وأحوال الإنسان، وبيان عاقبة المغترين.
To set out the scenes of divine greatness and power in the universe and in the states of man, and to show the end of those deluded by what they have.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Sacred time
- ʿĀd, Thamūd and Pharaoh
- Wealth as a test
- The orphan and the poor
- The soul at peace
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
حوت من الأغراض ضرب المثل لمشركي أهل مكة في إعراضهم عن قبول رسالة ربهم بمثل عاد وثمود وقوم فرعون.
وإنذارهم بعذاب الآخرة.
وتثبيت النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم مع وعده باضمحلال أعدائه.
وإبطال غرور المشركين من أهل مكة إذ يحسبون أن ما هم فيه من النعيم علامة على أن الله أكرمهم وأن ما فيه المؤمنون من الخصاصة علامة على أن الله أهانهم.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–55 ayat · 10% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oaths
By the dawn, and ten nights, and the even and the odd, and the night as it passes: is there not in that an oath for one of understanding? The ten nights are the first ten of Dhū l-Ḥijjah in the saying of Ibn ʿAbbās and most of the early commentators.
- 6–149 ayat · 28% of the surahRead from ayah 6 →
Three powers
Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with ʿĀd — Iram of the pillars; with Thamūd, who carved the rocks in the valley; and with Pharaoh of the stakes? They transgressed in the lands and spread much corruption, so your Lord poured on them a scourge of punishment. Your Lord is ever watchful.
- 15–206 ayat · 28% of the surahRead from ayah 15 →
The wrong measure
As for man: when his Lord tests him with honour and favour, he says, “My Lord has honoured me”; when He tests him by restricting his provision, he says, “My Lord has humiliated me.” No — you do not honour the orphan, nor urge the feeding of the poor; you consume inheritance greedily, and love wealth with immense love.
- 21–266 ayat · 24% of the surahRead from ayah 21 →
The Day he remembers
No — when the earth is pounded to dust, and your Lord comes, and the angels, rank upon rank, and Hell that Day is brought near: on that Day man will remember, but what use will remembering be? He will say, “If only I had sent something ahead for my life.” None punishes as He will punish that Day, and none binds as He will bind.
- 27–304 ayat · 9% of the surahRead from ayah 27 →
The soul at peace
O soul at peace: return to your Lord, well pleased and well pleasing. Enter among My servants. Enter My Paradise.
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 27% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 9 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
On the ten nights, as the majority read them: “There are no days in which righteous deeds are more beloved to Allah than these ten days.” They said: “Not even jihād in the way of Allah?” He ﷺ said: “Not even jihād in the way of Allah — except a man who goes out with his life and his wealth and returns with neither.”The name it is known by
After the oath it opens with: the breaking of the darkness from the morning, as Ibn ʿAbbās explained it.
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 الطبريJāmiʿ al-bayānMuḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310 AH)
- 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 al-Bukhārī
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.