Surah Ya-Sin

Surah 36 · 83 verses · revealed at Mecca

Ya-Sin takes its name from the two Arabic letters that open it. A number of surahs begin this way, with letters standing alone, and the classical commentators did not agree on what they mean. Some treated them as a divine secret not given to any reader. Others read them as a challenge: the Qur'an is built from the same letters as ordinary Arabic speech, and yet no one could produce its like. The honest position, and the one most commentators settled on, is that their meaning is not known with certainty.

The surah runs to 83 verses and belongs to the Meccan period. Its subject is the one that dominates the Meccan revelations: the truth of the message, the refusal of those who hear it, and what follows from that refusal. It moves through three long passages. The first addresses the Prophet himself and the opposition he met. The second tells of a town that received messengers and rejected them, and of one man who believed and spoke up. The third turns outward to the created world — the dead earth brought to life, the night and day, the sun and moon each on its course, the ships that carry people across the sea — and asks what these things indicate about the power to raise the dead.

Ya-Sin is widely known as "the heart of the Qur'an". The phrase comes from a report attributed to the Prophet, and it is worth being straightforward about its standing: specialists in hadith have questioned the chain of that report, and a number of them classed it as weak. The same is true of several reports recommending its recitation over the dying, which is a settled custom in many Muslim communities. The custom is real and old; the evidence for it is debated. Readers deserve to know both parts.

What is not in dispute is the surah's place in practice. It is among the most memorised, most recited and most frequently heard portions of the Qur'an outside the daily prayers, and for many people it is the passage they know best after Al-Fatihah.

Surah Ya-Sin on this site

Every link below has been opened and checked to make sure there is something on the other side.

Surah Ya-Sin

Surah Ya-Sin on this site

Read

Listen

Download as PDF