Surah Al-Balad, The City

Surah 90 · 20 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Balad swears by the city — Mecca — and by a parent and what he begets, and then says that a human being was created into hardship.

The surah asks whether a person thinks that nobody has power over him, and whether he thinks nobody sees him, after he has boasted of having spent a great deal of wealth. It then lists what he was given: two eyes, a tongue and two lips, and a showing of the two paths.

Its central passage is the one people quote. It says he has not attempted the steep path, and then asks what will make you know what the steep path is — and answers: the freeing of a slave, or feeding on a day of hunger an orphan who is a relative, or a poor person in the dust.

There is no talk of anything grand in the list. The whole of the difficult ascent turns out to be made of very ordinary acts done at the moments they are hardest to do.

It ends by saying that then he should be of those who believe and who urge one another to patience and urge one another to compassion — and calls them the companions of the right hand.

Its opening also contains a short aside addressed to the Prophet — and you are free of restriction in this city — which many commentators read as a promise made years before the conquest of Mecca, at a time when he could not walk safely through it.

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