Surah Al-Ma'idah, The Table Spread

Surah 5 · 120 verses · revealed at Medina

Al-Ma'idah is named after a table of food that Jesus's disciples ask for and are granted, a story told nowhere else and only in its closing pages.

It is generally held to be among the last surahs revealed, and it reads that way. Much of it is settled law rather than argument: what may be eaten and what may not, how to prepare for prayer, the rules of oaths, the penalties for certain crimes, and the conduct required of someone in the state of pilgrimage.

It also contains the verse that many of the earliest Muslims understood as the closing of the revelation — that the religion had that day been completed. One report says a Jewish scholar told Umar that had such a verse come to his own people they would have made the day a festival, and that Umar answered that he knew the day and the place it was revealed.

A long section addresses Jews and Christians directly, acknowledging the scriptures given before, disputing particular claims, and setting out where the disagreement lies. The surah is unusually careful in tone here: it distinguishes between communities and between individuals within them.

Near its middle stands the account of the two sons of Adam, one of whom kills the other, followed by the statement that to take one life unjustly is as though one had killed all people, and to save one life is as though one had saved all people. It is among the most quoted verses in the Qur'an, and among the most quoted out of its setting.

Surah Al-Ma'idah on this site

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