Surah Al-Qalam, The Pen

Surah 68 · 52 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Qalam opens with an oath by the pen and by what they write, and it is among the earliest surahs revealed.

It was sent down when the Meccans had begun calling the Prophet mad, and its second verse answers them directly: you are not, by the favour of your Lord, mad. Its fourth says that he is of a great character. The two lines stand close together, and the second is the verse Muslims quote most often about the Prophet's own conduct.

The surah then describes the kind of man whose opinion should not be followed — a habitual swearer, a contemptible person, a slanderer going about with malicious talk, a preventer of good, a transgressor, coarse and of doubtful birth — and the list is specific enough that the Meccans would have known who was meant.

Its centre is the parable of the owners of a garden who swore they would harvest it in the morning and let nothing reach the poor, and who found it stripped bare when they arrived. One of them, described as the most moderate, reminds the others that he had told them to say if God wills. The story ends with them blaming themselves rather than the weather.

It also holds the reference to Jonah, called the man of the fish, and the instruction to the Prophet not to be like him in his impatience.

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