Surah At-Takwir, The Folding Up

Surah 81 · 29 verses · revealed at Mecca

At-Takwir opens with twelve short lines describing the undoing of the world, each beginning with the word when, and none of them resolved until the thirteenth.

The sun folded up. The stars falling. The mountains moved. The pregnant camels left untended. The wild beasts gathered. The seas set on fire. Souls paired. The sky stripped away. The Fire kindled. The Garden brought near. And then, finally, the point of the sentence: every soul will know what it has brought.

Among those lines is one that changed a society. When the girl buried alive is asked for what sin she was killed. The Qur'an does not question the killer. It questions the child, and lets the absence of any possible answer stand as the verdict.

The second half of the surah is about the revelation itself and about the Prophet's own state, insisting that he saw the messenger clearly on the horizon, that he is not withholding anything of the unseen, and that this is not the word of an accursed devil.

It closes by asking where, then, are you going — a question of three words in Arabic that has been quoted ever since — and saying that this is nothing but a reminder to all the worlds, to whoever among you wishes to go straight.

Surah At-Takwir on this site

Every link below has been opened and checked to make sure there is something on the other side.

Read

Listen

Download as PDF

← 'Abasa Al-Infitar →