Surah Sad, Sad

Surah 38 · 88 verses · revealed at Mecca

Sad is named after the single Arabic letter that opens it, one of a number of surahs beginning with letters whose meaning has never been settled.

It was revealed in the years when the leaders of Mecca were still trying to talk the Prophet out of what he was doing, and it opens with them walking away from a meeting telling one another to stand firm by their gods, saying they had never heard such a thing in the religion of their fathers.

Its longest passage is David: the two disputants who climb the wall of his private chamber and put a case to him about ninety-nine ewes and one, his swift judgement, and his realisation that he has been tested. The surah says he fell down bowing and turned in repentance, and it is one of the places in the Qur'an where a reader is expected to prostrate.

Then Solomon, with the horses displayed before him at evening that made him forget the remembrance of his Lord, and Job, told to strike the ground with his foot and find cool water to wash in and to drink.

It ends with the refusal of Iblis told once more, and with his stated reason — that he was made of fire and the other of clay. The surah places it last rather than first, after every human failure it has described, so that the original refusal reads as the pattern for all of them.

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