Al-A'raf The Heights

The context

Al-A'raf is Makkan and is the longest surah revealed before the hijrah. Most authorities place it late in that period, close to Al-An'am, when the Prophet ﷺ had been preaching for years in a town that had settled into refusal. To people in that position it gives a long look backwards at five other towns that refused, and then at Pharaoh, who refused with an army behind him.

The shape follows from that. More than half its length is narrative, and the narratives are arranged as one case file: Nuh, Hud, Salih, Lut and Shu'ayb receive short parallel entries in almost identical wording, after which Musa receives some seventy verses. Repetition is the argument. By the time Pharaoh speaks, a reader recognises the lines, because five other peoples have already said them.

The name

The name comes from verses 46 to 49, where a group stands on the heights between the Garden and the Fire, seeing both sides and knowing the people of each by their marks. Who they are is not stated, and the commentators differ. Naming the surah after them rather than after Adam or Musa keeps a reader inside its central concern, the weighing announced at verse 8.

How it moves

• 1-25The scales and the first refusalThe Book is sent down, the destroyed towns are recalled, and the scales are set for the Day. Then Adam: the refusal of Iblis, the whispering, the tree, and the exposure that follows.
• 26-58Children of AdamRepeated addresses to the children of Adam, on clothing, on the adornment to be taken at every place of prayer, and on the enemy who stripped their parents. The nations then argue with one another in the Fire.
• 59-102Five townsNuh, Hud, Salih, Lut and Shu'ayb, each sent to his own people, each denied, each community removed. Verse 96 names the alternative: had the towns believed, blessings would have been opened from the sky and the earth.
• 103-141Musa and PharaohThe staff, the contest with the magicians, and the magicians prostrating and then threatened with mutilation and crucifixion. Plagues follow in sequence, and then the sea.
• 142-171The mountain, the tablets, the calfMusa asks to see his Lord and the mountain is levelled. He returns to find the calf, and the surah turns to the covenant of Israel, the unlettered Prophet ﷺ described in their scripture, and the Sabbath-breaking town by the sea.
• 172-206The testimony and the closeThe covenant taken from the offspring of Adam, the man who shook off the signs he was given, and the finest names. Verse 204, on listening when the Qur'an is recited, is cited in the schools' long disagreement over reciting al-Fatihah behind an imam.

The themes

One message, many towns

Five prophets are given nearly the same speech and receive nearly the same answer. The wording repeats on purpose, so the outcome reads as a rule and not as a run of local misfortunes.

Clothing and exposure

Adam's account turns on being stripped, and the address to his children immediately after is about garments, including the garment of mindfulness at verse 26.

A vantage point between

A group belonging to neither party yet able to see both is unusual in the Qur'an, and it gives the surah somewhere to stand, since everything before has been about which way a life tips.

Testimony older than memory

At verse 172 the descendants of Adam are brought out and asked whether He is their Lord. The passage removes the plea of inherited ignorance rather than explaining an event.

The heart of it

This surah asks to be read in long stretches, because its effect depends on accumulation. A page a day makes the Nuh section a story and nothing more. Taken in one sitting, the five towns begin to work, the near identical sentences arriving again and again until a reader stops wondering what happened to Thamud and starts watching the mechanism.

Then the ending changes register. After two hundred verses of nations and armies, the last lines narrow to one person: hold to pardon, enjoin what is right, turn away from the ignorant, and when the whisper comes, remember. The final verse is a place of prostration, the first in the order of the mushaf.

Verses worth knowing

• 7:23The words Adam and his wife said afterwards, the first repentance recorded in the Qur'an and the pattern for the rest: naming the wrong as one's own before asking for anything.
• 7:143Musa asks to see his Lord and the mountain is levelled. The verse sets the limit of what is given even to a messenger in this life.
• 7:172The covenant taken from all the descendants of Adam. Readers return to it because it makes belief a matter of recognition rather than acquisition.
• 7:199Hold to pardon, enjoin what is right, turn away from the ignorant. An ethic of conduct in one line, at the end of a surah about civilisations that failed.

On reciting it

No report states a reward for reciting Al-A'raf. What is established is the practice of the Prophet ﷺ: Zayd ibn Thabit objected to short surahs being recited at Maghrib and said he had seen the Prophet ﷺ recite in that prayer the longer of the two long ones, in Bukhari 764, and an-Nasa'i 990 names that surah as Al-A'raf. The report fixes a practice and promises nothing.

No virtue reportBukhari 764, from Zayd ibn Thabit; an-Nasa'i 990 names the surah as Al-A'raf

Read beside it

On the shelf

• 7:126Al-A'raf · 7:126
• 7:128Al-A'raf · 7:128
• 7:151Al-A'raf · 7:151
• 7:156Al-A'raf · 7:156
• 7:180Al-A'raf · 7:180
• 7:196Al-A'raf · 7:196
• 7:199Al-A'raf · 7:199
• 7:200Al-A'raf · 7:200
• 7:204Al-A'raf · 7:204
• 7:205Al-A'raf · 7:205
• 7:23Al-A'raf · 7:23
• 7:29Al-A'raf · 7:29
• 7:31Al-A'raf · 7:31
• 7:55-56Al-A'raf · 7:55-56

Surahs it travels with

• 26Ash-Shu'araAsh-Shu'ara tells the same run of prophets in compressed form with a refrain, delivering the same material at a different speed.الشعراء
• 20TahaTa-Ha gives Musa at close range, including the conversation at the fire that Al-A'raf passes over in a few words.طه