Surah Al-Jinn, The Jinn

Surah 72 · 28 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Jinn reports what a group of jinn said after they overheard the Qur'an being recited, and most of the surah is in their voice rather than anyone else's.

They say they heard a wonderful recitation guiding to what is right, and that they believed in it and will not associate anyone with their Lord. Then they describe their own situation with a frankness that is unusual in the book: that there are righteous ones among them and others who are not, that they are of different ways, and that they had used to sit in places to listen and now find the sky guarded.

They also say that they had thought no human being or jinn would ever speak a lie about God, and that some foolish one among them had been doing exactly that.

The surah's second half returns to the Prophet, and tells him to say that he has no power to harm or benefit anyone, that no one can protect him from God, and that he has no refuge but Him. It is one of the plainest statements in the Qur'an about the limits of what a prophet is.

It ends by saying that God alone knows the unseen, and does not disclose it to anyone except a messenger He has chosen — a verse constantly cited in arguments about fortune-telling and about claims to hidden knowledge.

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