Surah Al-Hijr, The Rocky Tract

Surah 15 · 99 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Hijr is named after the valley where the people of Thamud carved their houses into the rock, and where the ruins still stand in the north of Arabia.

The surah uses the place as an argument. These were people who built for permanence, cutting homes out of cliffs so that nothing could take them, and the homes outlasted the people. Travellers on the road north passed the site and could see it for themselves.

Its most quoted verse is the one in which God says He has sent down the reminder and will Himself guard it. Muslims have always read that as the promise that the Qur'an's text would not be altered, and it is the verse usually cited in any discussion of how the book has been preserved.

The surah also returns to the refusal of Iblis, and gives the exchange in full: the command, the refusal, the reason offered, the respite granted until an appointed day, and the boast that he will make wrongdoing attractive to everyone except God's sincere servants. The last clause is the whole limit of his power.

Towards the end it tells the Prophet plainly that his chest is tightened by what people say, and instructs him to praise God and to keep praying until the certainty comes. The surah was revealed in the hardest Meccan years, and the instruction is practical rather than lofty.

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