Surah Al-Anbiya, The Prophets

Surah 21 · 112 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Anbiya moves through sixteen prophets in quick succession, giving each a few lines rather than a full account, and the effect is cumulative.

Abraham gets the longest passage: the smashing of the idols in his father's temple, the axe left resting on the largest one, and his answer when he is accused — ask the big one, if they can speak. The trap is set so that the people condemn themselves, and the surah records that they turned to one another and admitted they were in the wrong before recovering their composure.

The others pass more quickly. Moses and Aaron, Lot, Noah, David and Solomon judging a case about a field, Job in his affliction, Jonah in the darkness calling out that there is no god but God, Zachariah asking for an heir in old age, and Mary and her son.

The point being made by the sequence is stated directly: every one of them was a man, none of them ate nothing, none of them lived forever. The Meccans had objected that a messenger should not be an ordinary person. The surah answers by listing the ordinary people God had already sent.

It contains the verse in which the heavens and the earth are described as having been one mass before being separated, and every living thing made from water — lines that have drawn a great deal of attention in modern times and were read rather differently before it.

Its best-known single line is the one addressed to the Prophet: that he was sent as nothing but a mercy to all the worlds.

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