Surah Ya Seen

Ya Seen (Ya-Sin) is the 36th surah of the Quran, named after the two letters that open it. A Meccan surah of 83 verses, it spans the twenty-second and twenty-third juz and is counted 41st in the traditional order of revelation, after Al-Jinn. It affirms the Prophet's mission, tells the parable of the people of the town, lists the signs of God in nature and answers those who deny the resurrection.

Name

The letters Ya and Sin belong to the disjointed letters that open several surahs; their meaning is not established, although some early commentators read them as "O man". The surah then swears "by the wise Quran" that the Prophet is one of the messengers (36:2–3).

Themes

• The messenger and the heedless (36:1–12). The Prophet is sent to warn a people whose forefathers had not been warned; God records what people send ahead and the traces they leave behind (36:12).
• The people of the town (36:13–32). Two messengers, then a third, are sent to a town, which the Quran does not name, and are rejected. A man comes running from the far end of the city to urge his people to follow them; he is then told "Enter Paradise" and says: "If only my people knew how my Lord has forgiven me" (36:26–27).
• Signs in nature (36:33–44). The dead earth brought to life, the pairs of all things, night and day, the sun running to its resting place (36:38), the moon returning "like an old dry palm stalk" (36:39), each floating in its orbit, and the laden ship.
• Resurrection and judgement (36:48–70). At a single blast all are gathered; the people of Paradise receive "Peace, a word from a Merciful Lord" (36:58), while on that day mouths are sealed and hands and feet bear witness (36:65).
• The final argument (36:77–83). To the man who asks who will revive rotten bones, the answer is: "He who produced them the first time" (36:79). "His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it 'Be', and it is" (36:82).

A note on narrations

In al-Bukhari and Muslim, Abu Dharr reports that the Prophet explained the sun's "resting place" (36:38) as lying beneath the Throne. The popular sayings "Everything has a heart, and the heart of the Quran is Ya-Sin" (al-Tirmidhi, who himself noted an unknown narrator in its chain) and "Recite Ya-Sin over your dying" (Abu Dawud) are graded weak by hadith scholars such as al-Albani, and cannot be attributed to the Prophet with certainty.