Surah 59 of 114 · Madinah
سُورَةُ الحَشۡرِ
Al-Hashr The Exile
24 verses · revealed in Madinah
The context
Al-Hashr is Madinan and was revealed about the expulsion of Banu an-Nadir, a Jewish tribe of the city, in the fourth year after the emigration. The sirah reports that the Prophet ﷺ went to them over a matter of blood money and that a plan was made to drop a stone on him from a roof, after which they were told to leave. They shut themselves in their strongholds. The siege lasted a matter of days and ended on terms: they would go, carrying what their camels could bear, leaving their weapons. Most settled at Khaybar and some went on to Syria.
Because there was no battle, the surah has a legal problem to solve, and it says so at verse 6: no horse or camel was spurred for this. Property taken without fighting could not be divided as spoils, so a separate rule is given, with its purpose stated before its list of recipients. The surah then turns from the property to the people receiving it, and the three groups it describes there are the reason this passage is read constantly outside its occasion.
The name
The name is taken from verse 2, which calls the expulsion the first gathering. It records the act rather than the tribe, and it does so with a word the Qur'an uses elsewhere for the gathering at the resurrection, so the exile is set on a scale larger than itself. Sa'id ibn Jubayr reports that when he said to Ibn Abbas, Surat al-Hashr, Ibn Abbas told him to say Surat an-Nadir instead. That exchange is recorded by al-Bukhari and Muslim, and both names have stayed in use.
How it moves
- 1-5The expulsionThe opening tasbih, then the first gathering. They thought their strongholds would hold and were reached from a direction they had not considered, and they pulled down their own houses with their own hands and the hands of the believers. Verse 5 says the palms cut and the palms left standing were both by permission, and jurists have differed ever since over what may be destroyed in war.
- 6-10What is done with what is takenProperty that came without a ride being spurred is assigned by rule, with the stated aim that it not stay circulating among the rich. Three groups are then named in turn: the emigrants who left their homes and property, the people of the city who love those who came to them, and those who come afterwards asking forgiveness for both.
- 11-17The promise that was not keptThe hypocrites had told Banu an-Nadir they would leave with them and fight beside them, and did neither. Their fear of the believers is said to be greater than their fear of Allah, and their apparent unity is described as hearts pulled in different directions. The section ends with Satan telling a man to disbelieve and then disowning him.
- 18-20Look at what you sent aheadEvery soul is told to consider what it has put forward for tomorrow. The warning that follows is against becoming like those who forgot Allah and were made to forget themselves, and the section closes by saying the people of the fire and the people of the garden are not equal.
- 21-24The mountain, and the namesHad this Qur'an come down on a mountain, the mountain would be seen humbled and split apart. The closing verses then run through the names of Allah without pause and end where the surah began, with everything in the heavens and the earth glorifying Him.
The themes
A victory with no battle
The surah insists that nothing here was won by force and then builds a legal category on that fact. The rule for property taken without fighting differs from the rule for spoils, and the jurists differ over how it was to be allocated after the Prophet ﷺ died.
Property described by where it must not settle
Verse 7 gives the reason for the distribution before it gives the list of recipients, and the reason is that wealth should not become a thing turning over among the rich alone.
Preference over oneself
Verse 9 praises hosts who gave while they were short themselves, and the phrase it uses is that they prefer others over their own selves though poverty is their own condition. The verse is about the Ansar and reads as a standard.
The Qur'an set against a mountain
Verse 21 measures the book against a physical object so that its weight can be pictured, then says such comparisons are struck for people to think with.
The heart of it
For a surah that begins with a siege, most of its length is spent somewhere else. Read slowly, the middle is a set of portraits: people who walked away from their property, people who took them in and preferred them to themselves while short of everything, and people who come long afterwards and ask forgiveness for both. By the surah's own arrangement a reader belongs to the third group, and verse 10 hands that group its words.
The last four verses are recited on their own more than any other part of it. Verse 21 sets the Qur'an against a mountain and says the mountain would split. The three that follow move through the names of Allah with no break in them, and the surah closes on the same tasbih it opened with, which leaves the whole exile framed at both ends by something larger.
Verses worth knowing
- 59:2The account of the expulsion ends with an instruction to draw the lesson. Jurists cite this phrase when they argue that one case may be reasoned from another.
- 59:7The rule for property taken without fighting, with its purpose stated inside the verse, and the clause about taking what the Messenger gives and refraining from what he forbids, which is among the verses most often cited for the authority of the sunnah.
- 59:9The description of the Ansar, including the line about preferring others while in need themselves. It is a short verse and it sets a standard most readers measure themselves against rather than meet.
- 59:22-24The closing three verses, a run of the names of Allah ending in tasbih. They are memorised early and recited apart from the surah by many readers.
On reciting it
No authentic report establishes a specific merit for reciting al-Hashr. A report in at-Tirmidhi describes a reward for one who seeks refuge in a set form and then recites the closing three verses morning and evening; at-Tirmidhi himself called it gharib, and later hadith critics have graded its chain weak, so it is not offered here as established. What the surah rests on is its content: a rule of distribution with its purpose written into it, the description of the Ansar at verse 9, and the run of divine names at the end.
No virtue report
Read beside it
On the shelf
Surahs it travels with
- 8Al-AnfalAl-Anfal legislates the division of what is taken in battle. Al-Hashr legislates what comes without a battle, and the two rules are deliberately different, which is why the surah insists no horse was spurred.الأنفال
- 63Al-MunafiqunAl-Munafiqun gives a full portrait of the men who appear in verses 11 to 17 here, promising support to others that they never intend to deliver.المنافقون