✦ AT A GLANCE ✦
الواقعة
Al-Waqi'ah
✦ Why this name
The Inevitable Event — al-Waqi'ah, the Hour that will certainly occur.
✦ When it came
Meccan. Abu Bakr رضي الله عنه noticed the Prophet's ﷺ hair greying and was told: "Hud and its sisters have aged me" — this surah among them.
✦ The story
It opens with the earth shaken and the mountains crumbled to scattered dust, and then does something no other surah does quite so cleanly: it sorts everyone into three, and keeps them separate for the rest of the surah.
**The foremost** — those closest, in gardens of pleasure, on woven couches. **The companions of the right** — among thornless lote trees, clustered bananas, extended shade, water poured. **The companions of the left** — in scorching wind and scalding water, in the shade of black smoke.
Then it asks three questions in a row that no one can answer: the fluid you emit — do you create it, or do We? The seed you sow — do you make it grow, or do We? The fire you strike — did you make its tree, or did We? The whole argument of the surah is that you did not make any of the things you depend on.
✦ How it unfolds
- AYAH 74-96
A noble Quran
In a well-guarded register — and the soul at the throat while onlookers can do nothing.