Surah Al-Ghashiyah, The Overwhelming Event

Surah 88 · 26 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Ghashiyah opens by asking whether the account of the overwhelming event has reached you, and the Prophet is reported to have recited it often at the Friday prayer and at the festivals.

The first half sets two scenes against each other. Faces that day humbled, labouring and weary, entering a blazing fire, given to drink from a boiling spring, with no food but a bitter thorn that neither nourishes nor satisfies hunger. And faces that day joyful, pleased with their striving, in a lofty garden where they hear no idle talk, with a flowing spring and raised couches and cups set ready and cushions in rows and carpets spread out.

Then the surah changes direction completely. It stops describing the next world and tells the listener to look at four things in this one: the camel, and how it was made; the sky, and how it was raised; the mountains, and how they were fixed; and the earth, and how it was spread.

The choice of the camel first has been remarked on for centuries. To the people first addressed it was the most ordinary thing in sight and the thing their whole living depended on, and the surah asks them to look at it as though for the first time.

It ends by telling the Prophet to remind, since he is only a reminder, and is not there to compel them.

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