Surah At-tur – Mohamed Shaaban Abu Qarn

At-tur (The Mount, understood as Mount Sinai) is the 52nd surah of the Quran. It is a Meccan surah of 49 verses and the 76th in the traditional order of revelation, after As-Sajda. It opens with an oath by the mountain where God spoke to Moses and declares that the punishment of the Lord will surely come; no one can avert it.

Oaths and warning

Five oaths open the surah: by the Mount, by a Book inscribed on unrolled parchment, by the Frequented House, by the raised canopy and by the swelling sea (52:1–6). The Frequented House (al-Bayt al-Ma'mur) is described in the hadith of the Night Journey, reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim, as a house in the seventh heaven which seventy thousand angels enter every day, never to return.

Themes

• The Day when the sky sways and the mountains move, and the deniers are driven to the Fire (52:9–16).
• The bliss of the God-fearing, whose offspring who followed them in faith will be joined with them (52:21).
• Pointed questions to those who call the Prophet ﷺ a soothsayer, a madman or a poet: let them produce a discourse like it (52:29–34). "Or were they created from nothing, or are they themselves the creators?" (52:35).
• The command to endure patiently, "for you are under Our eyes", and to glorify God when rising, in the night and as the stars retreat (52:48–49).

In the Prophet's recitation

Jubayr ibn Mut'im, then a non-Muslim who had come to Medina about the captives of Badr, heard the Prophet recite At-tur in the sunset prayer. When he reached verses 35–37, "my heart almost flew", he said, and that was the first time faith settled in his heart (al-Bukhari). Umm Salama also reported that she circled the Ka'ba on her mount while the Prophet prayed beside it reciting this surah (al-Bukhari and Muslim).

Related surahs

It follows Adh-Dhariyat; its closing mention of the retreating stars leads into An-Najm.