Differed over
On the view that it is Makkan: the early years, soon after the revelation it describes had begun
This is one of the surahs the scholars do not agree on, and they do not even agree on which view is the majority’s. Ibn al-Jawzī gives two sayings: that it is Makkan, reported by Abū Ṣāliḥ from Ibn ʿAbbās, and that it is Madinan, held by al-Ḍaḥḥāk and Muqātil — and then notes that al-Māwardī called the first the view of most, and al-Thaʿlabī the second. Al-Qurṭubī reports the same disagreement. The muṣḥaf heads it Makkan, and the traditional order places it twenty-fifth, among the early surahs.
وَفِيها قَوْلانِ. أحَدُهُما: أنَّها مَكِّيَّةٌ، رَواهُ أبُو صالِحٍ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ. والثّانِي: مَدَنِيَّةٌ، قالَهُ الضَّحّاكُ، ومُقاتِلٌ. قالَ الماوَرْدِيُّ: والأوَّلُ قَوْلُ الأكْثَرِينَ. وقالَ الثَّعْلَبِيُّ: الثّانِي قَوْلُ الأكْثَرِينَوَهِيَ مَدَنِيَّةٌ فِي قَوْلِ أَكْثَرِ الْمُفَسِّرِينَ ذَكَرهُ الثَّعْلَبِيُّ. وَحَكَى الْمَاوَرْدِيُّ عَكْسَهُThe same, in other works
- al-BaghawīMaʿālim al-tanzīlAhl al-Sunnah in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
سُورَةُ الْقَدْرِ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- al-Suyūṭīal-Durr al-manthūrAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Ibn ʿAbbās: it came down in Makkah. Recorded by Ibn Mardawayh.
أخْرَجَ ابْنُ مَرْدُويَهَ عَنِ ابْنِ عَبّاسٍ قالَ: نَزَلَتْ سُورَةُ ﴿إنّا أنْزَلْناهُ في لَيْلَةِ القَدْرِ﴾ بِمَكَّةَ
A report he gathers; its chain is not graded here.
- al-ShawkānīFatḥ al-qadīr→
Makkan, according to most of the commentators.
هي مَكِّيَّةٌ عِنْدَ أكْثَرِ المُفَسِّرِينَ
- al-RāzīMafātīḥ al-ghaybAshʿarī in creedShāfiʿī in fiqh→
Makkan.
خَمْسُ آياتٍ مَكِّيَّةٌ
- Abū al-SuʿūdIrshād al-ʿaql al-salīmMāturīdī in creedḤanafī in fiqh→
Makkan, with a difference over it.
سُورَةٌ مَكِّيَّةٌ مُخْتَلَفٌ فِيها، وآيُها خَمْسٌ
Each line of English says what the Arabic beneath it says.
What was happening
Whichever city it came down in, its subject is the night the revelation began. Al-ʿAlaq, before it in the muṣḥaf, holds the first words that were revealed; this surah says when: “We sent it down on the Night of Decree.” The month is named elsewhere — Ramaḍān (2:185) — and the night is called blessed (44:3).
Ibn ʿAbbās explained the sending down in two stages: the Qurʾan was sent down all at once on that night from the Preserved Tablet to the lowest heaven, and then came down to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ piece by piece over twenty-three years, as events called for it.
The night was not left behind in the past. It comes each year in Ramaḍān, and the Prophet ﷺ would strive in the last ten nights of the month as he strove at no other time, and told his Companions to look for it in the odd nights among them.
بيان عظم ليلة القدر وفضلها وما أنزل فيها.
To make known the greatness of the Night of Decree, its merit, and what was sent down in it.
The surah’s aim, as al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-Tafsīr states it
- The Qurʾan
- Laylat al-Qadr
- Angels
- Worship
Its aims, as Ibn ʿĀshūr sets them out
التنويه بفضل القرآن وعظمته بإسناد إنزاله إلى الله تعالى ...
والرد على الذين جحدوا أن يكون القرآن منزلا من الله تعالى.
ورفع شأن الوقت الذي أنزل فيه ونزول الملائكة في ليلة إنزاله.
وتفضيل الليلة التي توافق ليلة إنزاله من كل عام.
ويستتبع ذلك تحريض المسلمين على تحين ليلة القدر بالقيام والتصدق.
From its first ayah to its last
- 1–33 ayat · 53% of the surahRead from ayah 1 →
The night
We sent it down on the Night of Decree. And what will make you know what the Night of Decree is? The Night of Decree is better than a thousand months — worship in it is better than the worship of some eighty-three years in which it does not fall.
- 4–52 ayat · 47% of the surahRead from ayah 4 →
What happens in it
The angels and the Spirit — Jibrīl — descend in it by their Lord’s leave, with every decree. It is peace, until the rising of the dawn.
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 5 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
مَنْ قَامَ لَيْلَةَ الْقَدْرِ إِيمَانًا وَاحْتِسَابًا غُفِرَ لَهُ مَا تَقَدَّمَ مِنْ ذَنْبِهِ
“Whoever stands in prayer on the Night of Decree out of faith and in hope of reward will have his past sins forgiven.”“Seek the Night of Decree in the odd nights of the last ten of Ramaḍān.”اللَّهُمَّ إِنَّكَ عَفُوٌّ تُحِبُّ الْعَفْوَ فَاعْفُ عَنِّي
ʿĀʾishah asked: “Messenger of Allah, if I know which night is the Night of Decree, what should I say in it?” He said: “Say: O Allah, You are Pardoning and love to pardon, so pardon me.”The names it is known by
After Laylat al-Qadr, the night it is about. Qadr is both decree — the night in which the year’s affairs are set out — and worth: a night of immense standing.
Its opening words, by which it is often called.
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 Sunan of al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah
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.