Makkan, by agreement
The early years in Makkah
It is Makkan by agreement; both Ibn al-Jawzī and al-Qurṭubī say so. The traditional order places it twenty-sixth.
سُورَةُ الشَّمْسِ وَهِيَ مَكِيهٌ كُلُّها بِإجْماعِهِمْسُورَةُ الشَّمْسِ مَكِّيَّةٌ بِاتِّفَاقٍ، وَهِيَ خَمْسَ عَشْرَةَ آيةThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الشَّمْسِ 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 ﴿والشَّمْسِ وضُحاها﴾ 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.
خَمْسَ عَشْرَةَ آيَةً مَكِّيَّةً
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan.
مَكِّيَّةٌ وآيُها خَمْسَ عَشْرَةَ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
No occasion is reported for it. It belongs to the first years of the call, and it is built the way those early surahs often are: an oath, a truth, and an example.
The oath takes in the whole visible world in pairs — sun and moon, day and night, sky and earth — and comes to rest on something that cannot be seen at all: the soul, and the One who shaped it and inspired it with its wickedness and its piety. Every human being is given the knowledge of both.
The truth sworn to is the shortest statement of success and failure in the Qurʾan. He has succeeded who purifies it; he has failed who buries it. The second verb, dassāhā, is to press a thing down into the earth and hide it: the soul is not destroyed by sin so much as smothered.
The example is Thamūd. They had been given a sign they had asked for — the she-camel — and told to leave her to drink in her turn. The most wretched man among them rose to kill her; they followed, and their Lord levelled them for it. Quraysh, who travelled past the ruins of Thamūd on the road to Shām, are being told what the denial of a messenger has cost before.
تركز على إظهار آيات الله وآلائه في الآفاق والأنفس وأحوالها، تزكية للنفوس، وزجرًا عن العصيان.
To display the signs and favours of Allah in the horizons and in souls, so that souls are purified and held back from disobedience.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- Signs in creation
- The soul
- Purification
- Thamūd and the she-camel
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
تهديد المشركين بأنهم يوشك أن يصيبهم عذاب بإشراكهم وتكذيبهم برسالة محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم كما أصاب ثمودا بإشراكهم وعتوهم على رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم الذي دعاهم إلى التوحيد.
وقدم لذلك تأكيد الخبر بالقسم بأشياء معظمة وذكر من أحوالها ما هو دليل على بديع صنع الله تعالى الذي لا يشاركه فيه غيره فهو دليل على أنه المنفرد بالإلهية والذي لا يستحق غيره الإلهية وخاصة أحوال النفوس ومراتبها في مسالك الهدى والضلال والسعادة والشقاء.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–88 ayat · 43% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The oaths
By the sun and its brightness, the moon as it follows it, the day as it displays it, the night as it covers it; by the sky and the One who built it, the earth and the One who spread it; by the soul and the One who proportioned it, and inspired it with its wickedness and its righteousness.
- 9–102 ayat · 15% of the surahRead from ayah 9 →
What they are sworn to
He has succeeded who purifies it, and he has failed who buries it.
- 11–155 ayat · 43% of the surahRead from ayah 11 →
Thamūd
Thamūd denied, in their transgression, when the most wretched of them rose up. The messenger of Allah said to them: the she-camel of Allah, and her turn to drink. But they called him a liar and hamstrung her — so their Lord crushed them for their sin and levelled them. And He does not fear the outcome.
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.
All 15 of its ayat close on one sound.
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
اللَّهُمَّ آتِ نَفْسِي تَقْوَاهَا وَزَكِّهَا أَنْتَ خَيْرُ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا أَنْتَ وَلِيُّهَا وَمَوْلاَهَا
The Prophet ﷺ used to say: “O Allah, grant my soul its piety and purify it; You are the best to purify it. You are its Guardian and its Master.”The Prophet ﷺ spoke of the man who hamstrung the she-camel, and said: “There rose to it a man of power and standing among his people, like Abū Zamʿah.”To Muʿādh, who had made the prayer long for his people: “Why did you not pray with ‘Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High’, ‘By the sun and its brightness’ and ‘By the night when it covers’?”The name it is known by
After the first thing it swears by. The Prophet ﷺ named it by its opening words, Wa-l-shamsi wa-ḍuḥāhā, when he told Muʿādh what to recite (al-Bukhārī 705).
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 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.