Surah Al-A'la, The Most High

Surah 87 · 19 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-A'la is nineteen short verses and moves very fast. It opens with a command to glorify the name of the Lord, the Most High, and then gives the reasons in a rapid sequence, each one a few words: who created and proportioned, who determined and guided, who brought out the pasture and then made it dark stubble.

That last image is the surah in miniature. Green growth turning to dry dark refuse is something anyone farming in Arabia saw every year. It is offered without comment, and the reader is left to do the arithmetic.

There is then a promise made directly to the Prophet: that he will be made to recite and will not forget. In the earliest period he had been anxious about losing what was given to him, and this is the answer to that anxiety.

The surah ends by naming what it has just said as being in the earlier scriptures too — the scrolls of Ibrahim and of Musa. It is a short surah claiming very old company.

Between these passages sits a line that has become proverbial: that the reminder benefits whoever is willing to be reminded, and that the one who purifies himself has succeeded — followed immediately by the observation that people prefer the life of this world, while the next is better and lasting.

Al-A'la is recited in the Eid prayers and often in the Friday prayer, customarily paired with Surah Al-Ghashiyah, a practice recorded in Sahih Muslim. It was also, by several reports, a surah the Prophet favoured in the witr prayer.

Surah Al-A'la on this site

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Surah Al-A'la, The Most High

Surah Al-A'la on this site

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