Surah Al-'Ankabut, The Spider

Surah 29 · 69 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-'Ankabut takes its name from the spider's house, offered as the image of what it is to take a protector other than God: of all houses, the frailest.

The surah opens with the question that gives it its subject. Do people think they will be left alone to say that they believe, and not be tested. What follows is an argument that being tried is not a sign of abandonment but the ordinary condition of belief.

It was revealed in Mecca at a time when some of the community were being pressed hard by their own families, and it deals with that directly: a person told by their parents to turn back, and instructed to keep company with them kindly in this world while not obeying them in this one thing.

It also names people who gave way under pressure and then claimed, once safe, to have been believers all along, and it is unsparing about them. Alongside that it tells of Abraham thrown into a fire, and of Lot, and of Noah among his people for nine hundred and fifty years.

Its closing verse is among the most quoted in the Qur'an: that those who strive for God's sake will be guided to His paths. It is the surah's whole argument compressed into one line, and it comes only after sixty-eight verses about how hard that striving is.

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