Surah Al-An'am, The Cattle

Surah 6 · 165 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-An'am is a sustained argument against idolatry, and reports say it came down complete in a single night rather than in pieces.

Its name comes from the livestock that the Meccans had divided into categories — this one may not be ridden, that one is set aside for a god, this milk is for men and not for women — rules they had invented and then attributed to God. The surah takes those rules apart one at a time and asks, simply, who told you this.

The wider argument runs the same way. It moves through the created world — night and day, seed and stone, the sea and the stars — and asks what any of it has to do with the idols in the sanctuary. It recounts Abraham looking at a star, then the moon, then the sun, each time saying this is my Lord, and each time watching it set.

It is a Meccan surah and carries none of the community law that fills the Medinan ones. What it deals with is belief itself: that God is one, that He has no partners and no children, that the dead will be raised, and that the messengers before Muhammad brought the same message.

It also sets out a short list of things forbidden, given plainly and without the elaboration the Meccans had built around their own prohibitions, and closes by telling the Prophet to say that his prayer and his living and his dying belong to God alone.

Surah Al-An'am on this site

Every link below has been opened and checked to make sure there is something on the other side.

Read

Listen

Download as PDF

← Al-Ma'idah Al-A'raf →