Surah Al-Qadr, The Decree

Surah 97 · 5 verses · classification disputed

Al-Qadr is five verses about a single night, and it is the reason the last ten nights of Ramadan are observed as they are.

It says that the Qur'an was sent down on the Night of Decree, and then asks what will convey to the reader what that night is — a rhetorical form the Qur'an reserves for things it is about to say are beyond ordinary reckoning. The answer given is that this night is better than a thousand months. A thousand months is about eighty-three years — a long human life. The comparison is deliberate.

On that night, the surah says, the angels and the Spirit come down by their Lord's permission with every decree, and it is peace until the break of dawn. The final word of the surah, fajr, is the dawn, and the night it describes ends exactly where the day's first prayer begins.

The Qur'an does not say which night it is. The hadith literature points to the last ten nights of Ramadan and to the odd-numbered ones among them, and records the Prophet urging that it be sought rather than announced. The absence of a fixed date has always been understood as intentional: a night that must be looked for produces ten nights of looking.

The surah's placement is disputed. Most authorities list it as Meccan, a number as Medinan, and the question has never been settled.

Surah Al-Qadr on this site

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Surah Al-Qadr, The Decree

Surah Al-Qadr on this site

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