Surah Al-'Adiyat, The Charging Horses

Surah 100 · 11 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-'Adiyat opens with horses charging, panting, striking sparks from the stones with their hooves, raiding at dawn and stirring up a cloud of dust in the middle of the enemy.

The opening is cinematic and moves fast, and then it stops dead on a single line: that the human being is ungrateful to his Lord, and is himself a witness to that.

The surah does not explain the connection and has never needed to. The picture of energy, speed and total commitment is set beside the way the same creature behaves towards the one who gave him everything, and the reader is left to put the two together.

It then says that he is violent in his love of wealth, and asks whether he does not know that when what is in the graves is scattered and what is in the breasts is brought out, their Lord will be fully aware of them on that day.

The phrase about what is in the breasts being collected has often been noted as the surah's real subject. The reckoning it describes is not of what was done but of what was intended, and eleven short verses are enough to say it.

Early scholars differed about what the opening describes. Most read it as war horses. Ibn Abbas is reported to have argued for the camels of the pilgrims moving from Arafat, and to have debated the point with Ali. The disagreement is an old one and neither reading changes what the surah goes on to say.

Surah Al-'Adiyat 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

← Az-Zalzalah Al-Qari'ah →