Surah Al-Haqqah, The Inevitable Reality

Surah 69 · 52 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Haqqah opens with a word repeated three times — the reality, what is the reality, and what will make you understand what the reality is.

The technique is used in several of the short Meccan surahs and nowhere more effectively than here. The question is asked, then asked again about itself, and only then answered, so that a reader is left waiting.

What follows is Thamud and 'Ad and Pharaoh and the towns overthrown, then the blast of the trumpet, the earth and the mountains lifted and crushed in one blow, and the sky splitting.

Then two scenes, one after the other. A man given his record in his right hand who calls out, here, read my record, I knew I would meet my reckoning. And a man given it in his left who says, if only I had not been given my record and had never known what my account was, if only death had made an end of me.

The surah closes by returning to the accusation the Meccans were making, that this was the word of a poet or of a soothsayer, and answers that it is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds. Its verses are short, its rhymes are hard, and it is one of the surahs most often chosen for recitation in the last nights of Ramadan.

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