Surah Al-Anfal, The Spoils of War

Surah 8 · 75 verses · revealed at Medina

Al-Anfal came down after Badr, the first battle the Muslims fought, and it opens with a quarrel among the victors about how the captured goods should be divided.

The answer it gives is blunt: the spoils belong to God and His Messenger, so set your own affairs in order and be conscious of God. The surah then spends much of its length explaining what actually happened at Badr — that the outcome was not theirs to claim, that they were the smaller force, and that what they thought they had achieved by their own arms they had not.

Alongside that runs a set of instructions for conduct in war. It sets limits, it requires that an offer of peace be accepted, it deals with prisoners, and it insists that a treaty be honoured openly and, if it must be ended, be ended openly too.

The surah is unusually candid about the state of the community at the time — frightened, outnumbered, and not yet sure of itself. It describes the sleep that fell on them the night before the battle and the rain that steadied the ground under their feet.

Al-Anfal and At-Tawbah, which follows it, are closely related and deal with much of the same material. Between them they form the Qur'an's fullest account of the years in which the community in Medina had to defend itself.

Surah Al-Anfal on this site

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