Makkan, by agreement
The middle years in Makkah, while the Prophet ﷺ was being harmed in his own sanctuary
It is Makkan by agreement, as both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī record. Its opening is said of Makkah by one standing in it: “And you are a dweller in this city.” The traditional order places it thirty-fifth.
سُورَةُ البَلَدِ وَهِيَ مَكِّيَّةٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الْبَلَدِ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِاتِّفَاقٍ. وَهِيَ عِشْرُونَ آيَةًThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْبَلَدِ 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 ﴿لا أُقْسِمُ بِهَذا البَلَدِ﴾ 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 آيَةً، مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها عِشْرُونَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Makkah was a sanctuary. By a custom older than Quraysh could remember, no blood was shed there, no game hunted, no tree cut; a man might meet his father’s killer in its precincts and leave him be. And in that city the one person whose honour was not respected was the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
The second ayah is read against that. “And you are ḥill in this city.” Some of the early commentators took it as: you are a resident here — so the oath is by Makkah as the place he lives. Others, Ibn ʿAbbās and Mujāhid among them, took ḥill in its legal sense, free of restriction: a time will come when this city is made lawful to you, to fight in it for an hour. If so, it is a promise of the Conquest made years before the Hijrah, to a man who at that moment could not pray at the Kaʿbah without being assaulted. The Prophet ﷺ said on the day it came true: “It was made lawful for me for one hour of one day.”
The rest is addressed to the kind of man who was doing the harm: sure that no one has power over him, boasting, “I have squandered wealth in heaps.” Does he think no one saw how he spent it? He was given two eyes, a tongue and two lips, and shown the two roads. He has not attempted the steep one.
ذكر حال الإنسان، بين كَبَد الكفر والعذاب وبين الصعود لسلم الرحمة والإيمان في الدارين.
To describe the human condition — between the toil of disbelief and punishment, and the climb up the ladder of mercy and faith, in both worlds.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The sanctity of Makkah
- Man created in toil
- Freeing the slave
- Feeding the orphan and the poor
- Patience and compassion
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
حوت من الأغراض التنويه بمكة. وبمقام النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم بها. وبركته فيها وعلى أهلها.
والتنويه بأسلاف النبيء صلى الله عليه وسلم من سكانها الذين كانوا من الأنبياء مثل إبراهيم وإسماعيل أو من أتباع الحنيفية مثل عدنان ومضر كما سيأتي.
والتخلص إلى ذم سيرة أهل الشرك. وإنكارهم البعث. وما كانوا عليه من التفاخر المبالغ فيه، وما أهملوه من شكر النعمة على الحواس، ونعمة النطق، ونعمة الفكر، ونعمة الإرشاد فلم يشكروا ذلك بالبذل في سبل الخير وما فرطوا فيه من خصال الإيمان
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–44 ayat · 20% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oath
I swear by this city — and you are a free dweller in this city — and by the parent and what he begot: We have created man in hardship.
- 5–106 ayat · 28% of the surahRead from ayah 5 →
The delusion
Does he think that no one will have power over him? He says, “I have spent wealth in abundance.” Does he think that no one has seen him? Have We not given him two eyes, a tongue and two lips, and shown him the two ways?
- 11–166 ayat · 27% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
The steep road
Yet he has not attempted the steep road. And what will make you know what the steep road is? The freeing of a slave; or feeding, on a day of hunger, an orphan who is near of kin, or a poor man lying in the dust.
- 17–204 ayat · 26% of the surahRead from ayah 17 →
The two companies
And then to be among those who believe, and urge one another to patience, and urge one another to compassion: those are the people of the right hand. Those who deny Our signs are the people of the left; over them is a fire, closed in.
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 50% of its ayat, and the rhyme turns 4 times. One of those turns comes 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 day Makkah was opened he ﷺ said: “Allah made this city sacred on the day He created the heavens and the earth… Fighting in it was not lawful for anyone before me, and it was made lawful for me only for an hour of a day.”The name it is known by
After the oath it opens with — by this city: Makkah, the Sacred City. It is also called by its opening words, Lā uqsimu.
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 and 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.