Surah Ad-Dukhan, The Smoke

Surah 44 · 59 verses · revealed at Mecca

Ad-Dukhan is named after a sign described in its tenth verse: a smoke from the sky, visible, covering the people, a painful punishment. The commentators divided over whether this had already happened — some connected it with a famine that struck Mecca — or whether it is still to come. Both readings are old and both are held by serious authorities.

The surah opens by saying that the Book was sent down on a blessed night. The great majority of commentators identify that night with Laylat al-Qadr in Ramadan, which Surah 97 describes directly. A minority connected it with the middle of Sha'ban instead, and a body of popular practice grew around that reading; the reports underpinning it have been widely questioned, and the weight of classical opinion is against it. Readers should know the disagreement exists and how lopsided it is.

Most of the surah is a compressed retelling of Pharaoh and Musa, and then a description of the Day itself — and the description contains a line that has been quoted for centuries: neither the sky nor the earth wept for them. It is an unusual image, and the commentators spent a great deal of ink on it, since it implies that for some the sky and the earth do.

The surah is short, urgent and almost entirely in the rhythm of warning. It belongs to a group of seven surahs that begin with the letters Ha Mim, and which the early Muslims treated as a set.

Surah Ad-Dukhan on this site

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Surah Ad-Dukhan, The Smoke

Surah Ad-Dukhan on this site

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