Surah Ar-Rum, The Romans

Surah 30 · 60 verses · revealed at Mecca

Ar-Rum opens with a prediction: that the Romans, newly defeated, would win within a few years, and that the believers would rejoice on that day.

The Meccans had taken the Persian victory over Byzantium as a sign, since the Persians were fire worshippers and the Byzantines people of scripture. The verses were revealed while the defeat was recent and the reversal looked unlikely. Early reports say a wager was made over it, and the surah is often cited in discussions of prophecy for that reason.

After the opening the subject widens. The surah becomes a series of signs offered as evidence, each introduced the same way — among His signs is this, and among His signs is that. The making of a person from dust. The making of mates so that people may find rest in one another, and the affection and mercy placed between them. The difference of languages and colours. Sleep at night and the search for livelihood by day. Lightning that brings fear and hope together. Rain on dead ground.

The verse on marriage is the one most often read at Muslim weddings, in every language the religion is practised in.

Near the end comes an observation about the world rather than the next: that corruption has appeared on land and at sea because of what people's hands have earned. It is quoted constantly now in a sense its first hearers could not have had in mind.

Surah Ar-Rum on this site

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