Surah Al-Ahqaf, The Sand Dunes

Surah 46 · 35 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Ahqaf is named after the long sand dunes in southern Arabia where the people of 'Ad lived, and where a cloud they took for rain turned out to be something else.

The surah is the last of the seven that begin with the same two letters. It was revealed late in the Meccan period, at a point when the Prophet had been rejected by his own city and had just been driven out of Ta'if as well.

Its most quoted passage concerns parents. It instructs kindness to them, notes that a mother carries her child with difficulty and gives birth with difficulty, and then gives the prayer of a person reaching forty: asking to be enabled to be grateful for the favour shown to them and to their parents, to do right, and to be given soundness in their offspring. It is among the most recited prayers in Muslim family life.

It also gives the case of a son who answers his parents badly when they warn him, saying that this is nothing but tales of the ancients, and sets the two portraits side by side without comment.

Near the end a group of jinn are described listening to the Qur'an being recited, falling silent, and going back to their people as warners. It is one of only two places in the book where that episode is told.

Surah Al-Ahqaf on this site

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