Surah Al-Qasas, The Stories

Surah 28 · 88 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Qasas gives the life of Moses more fully than any other surah, beginning before his birth and following him to the point where he is sent back to Egypt.

It starts with the order to kill the sons of the Israelites, with his mother's fear, with the instruction she is given to put the child in the river, and with his sister following at a distance to see what becomes of him. It describes the household of Pharaoh taking him in, and his mother's heart becoming empty, and his being returned to her to nurse so that her eyes might be comforted.

It then gives the killing he did not intend, his flight, the two women at the well in Madyan whose flock he waters, the offer of work and marriage from their father, and the eight or ten years he served. Almost none of this appears elsewhere in the Qur'an.

The second half turns to Qarun, a man of the same people made enormously wealthy, whose treasuries needed a body of strong men to carry their keys, and who went out among the people in his finery. What happens to him and to those who had wished to be in his place is the surah's sharpest passage on wealth.

Its closing verses were revealed, by most accounts, to console the Prophet on the road out of Mecca, promising that the One who made the Qur'an binding on him would bring him back to a place of return. They are usually read alongside the account of Moses that fills the surah: a man driven out who was brought back.

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