Surah Ibrahim, Abraham

Surah 14 · 52 verses · revealed at Mecca

Ibrahim is named after Abraham, and its closing pages give one of the longest prayers recorded from any prophet in the Qur'an.

The prayer is unusual in what it asks for. Abraham, having left his family in a bare valley by the ancient House, asks that the place be made safe, that he and his sons be kept from worshipping idols, and that the hearts of people be inclined towards them. Then, almost as an afterthought, that they be given fruits. The order of the requests is itself the point.

Before that the surah sets out its central image: a good word is like a good tree, its root firm and its branches in the sky, giving its fruit in every season; a bad word is like a bad tree torn from the surface of the earth with no stability at all. It is the most memorable thing in the surah and the line most often taken out of it.

There is a scene of the day of reckoning in which Satan addresses those who followed him and tells them that he had no power over them beyond calling, that they answered him of their own accord, and that they should blame themselves. It is one of the few passages in the Qur'an that gives him a speech.

The surah opens by stating why the book exists at all: to bring people out of darkness into light. Nearly everything that follows is an illustration of what that means in practice.

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