Az-Zukhruf الزخرف

Makki · 89 ayat · 89 with pondering

• Ayah 1The surah that will expose the glitter of gold begins with the plainest thing in the language: two letters, spoken by name, with nothing added.
• Ayah 2Allah swears by His own Book, which needs nothing greater to vouch for it, and calls it clear: clear in itself, and clearing your road.
• Ayah 3The oath is answered not with a threat but a courtesy: the Book was shaped into its hearers' own speech, so understanding was within reach.
• Ayah 4Before anyone accepted or rejected it, the Quran stood high with Allah in the Mother of the Book, and no vote of ours moves it.
• Ayah 5You may turn your back on the Reminder, but it does not turn its back on you; your excess does not stop Allah speaking.
• Ayah 6The Prophet was not the first sent to an unwilling people: a long line of prophets stood behind him, a comfort and a charge.
• Ayah 7Every prophet was met with the same reflex, a laugh, because mockery spares the mocker the trouble of answering.
• Ayah 8Peoples with a far harder grip than Quraysh were taken, and their story has already gone ahead as a pattern for anyone who reads it.
• Ayah 9Ask who made the heavens and the earth and they name the Mighty, the Knowing: the problem was never the answer, but living by it.
• Ayah 10The Mighty uses His might to make a cradle and lay roads, so you can find your way across the earth and through it to Him.
• Ayah 11Rain in measure spreads a dead land green again; that is how you will be brought out, and the words for each quietly swap.
• Ayah 12Every kind was made in pairs by the One who is no pair, and He set the boats and beasts beneath you.
• Ayah 13Settle on what carries you, remember who gave it, then say: glory to the One who made this yield to us; we were never its match.
• Ayah 14Every journey ends with the same sentence: we are turning back to our Lord, so the small trip is a rehearsal for the great one.
• Ayah 15Those who admitted Allah made the heavens then carved off a piece of His creation and called it His: the human being openly covers gifts.
• Ayah 16Their claim fails twice: the Creator takes no children from His creatures, and even by their own values the 'share' they gave Him exposes them.
• Ayah 17They ascribed daughters to the Most Merciful, yet darkened at news of their own: the claim is judged by their own faces.
• Ayah 18By their own measure they gave Allah the one they raised in ornaments and kept from debate; the ayah exposes the claim and the upbringing.
• Ayah 19They declared the angels female without having seen them made; their testimony will be written down, and they will be asked about it.
• Ayah 20They turned Allah's will into an alibi for their worship of others; the ayah calls it what it is: a guess dressed up as knowledge.
• Ayah 21Asked whether Allah had given them an earlier book to cling to, the Makkans had nothing in their hands but their fathers' habits.
• Ayah 22With no knowledge and no book behind them, their real reason was this: we found our fathers on a way, and we follow their footprints.
• Ayah 23In every town that received a warner, the first to defend the old ways were the pampered: comfort had made inquiry feel like hardship.
• Ayah 24The warner offered their fathers no insult, only the question of something better guided, and their refusal was decided before he finished.
• Ayah 25After warner upon warner was refused, retribution came; look at how it ended, because the end of a thing tells its truth.
• Ayah 26Against the Makkans' 'our fathers', the surah brings their greatest father, who told his own: I am wholly clear of what you worship.
• Ayah 27From all he disowned Ibrahim kept One: the One who split him into being and would guide him on a road not yet seen.
• Ayah 28Ibrahim's sentence, no god but the One who made me, was left lasting in his descendants so that those who strayed might return.
• Ayah 29Instead of returning, Ibrahim's descendants were given long life and comfort, until the truth arrived with a messenger who made it plain.
• Ayah 30When the truth finally arrived they called it magic: the word people use for what they cannot answer and will not accept.
• Ayah 31They wanted a great man to carry the message, then measured greatness by money and rank, and missed the man before them.
• Ayah 32People who could not even share out their own bread wanted to decide where Allah's mercy should go; He alone measures every portion.
• Ayah 33Silver roofs and stairs are so slight to Allah that He would give them to those who reject Him, except that we would all follow.
• Ayah 34Doors and couches of silver, reclining like kings with nothing to trouble them: Allah would hand out even this, so little does it weigh.
• Ayah 35Gold on top of silver, and all of it a brief enjoyment; what lasts is kept with your Lord for those who carry His shield.
• Ayah 36Turn your weak eyes away from the Merciful's reminder, and the empty seat beside you is filled by a companion who never leaves.
• Ayah 37Their companions turn them off the open road, and the cruellest part comes with it: they feel sure they are rightly guided.
• Ayah 38The companion who felt like a guide all his life is, at the arrival, the one he wants as far away as east from west.
• Ayah 39In this world, shared pain softens; on that Day, sharing the punishment with your companion will not lighten it by a single grain.
• Ayah 40A gentle question to a Messenger wearing himself out, asking if he can make the deaf hear, lifts from him what only Allah can carry.
• Ayah 41Even if the Messenger is taken before he sees it, Allah's justice will still arrive: it was never waiting on any human lifespan.
• Ayah 42Or Allah will let him see the promise kept in his own lifetime, for the chiefs who seemed untouchable stood wholly within His measure.
• Ayah 43Whichever way events turn, the instruction is the same: grip what has been revealed to you, because you are on a straight road.
• Ayah 44The Quran is an honour and a reminder for those it came to, and every honour carries a question that will one day be asked.
• Ayah 45No messenger before him was ever told to set up gods beside the Merciful, and that unbroken line is itself a sign.
• Ayah 46A man with no gold walks into the court of a king with everything, and his first words name a Lord above them both.
• Ayah 47Musa brought clear signs, and the court's first response was not to think but to laugh, before the signs had even been looked at.
• Ayah 48Every sign shown to Pharaoh's court was greater than the last, and even the hardships came with a door left open: perhaps they would return.
• Ayah 49Under pressure, the court begs Musa to pray to his Lord and promises guidance, a promise already meant to be broken.
• Ayah 50The moment the punishment was lifted, the promise was unpicked, as quickly as a spun thread pulled apart strand by strand.
• Ayah 51Pharaoh points to his kingdom and the rivers running beneath him and asks if they cannot see, not knowing whose water it was.
• Ayah 52Out of arguments, Pharaoh attacks the man: he is lowly, he can barely speak, and I am better, the oldest boast of all.
• Ayah 53Pharaoh asks where Musa's gold bracelets and escort of angels are, measuring a messenger of Allah by a king's badges.
• Ayah 54Pharaoh made his people light-minded and they obeyed him, yet the ayah does not excuse them: they had already slipped out of their casing.
• Ayah 55After sign upon sign and promise upon broken promise, they provoked Allah's anger, and the water Pharaoh had boasted of closed over them all.
• Ayah 56Pharaoh's people became forerunners and a byword for all who came after: everyone goes ahead of someone, and the only question is where.
• Ayah 57When the son of Maryam was made a debating point, the Prophet's own people erupted in noise, as if cleverness were victory.
• Ayah 58Their question about which was better was never a search for truth, only a rope to twist, by a people who love quarrelling.
• Ayah 59ʿIsa, born without a father and given wonders no one else had, was nothing but a servant whom Allah favoured, and that is his honour.
• Ayah 60Had Allah willed, angels would walk the earth in our place, so we hold our turn at the well by His choice.
• Ayah 61ʿĪsā's return is a lit landmark for the Hour: be certain it is coming, and walk the straight road towards it now.
• Ayah 62Shayṭān rarely blocks the road; he turns you off it, and his enmity is already plain for anyone who remembers.
• Ayah 63ʿĪsā came with clear proofs, bridling wisdom and answers to what mattered, then said what every messenger said: fear Allah and obey me.
• Ayah 64One small word, huwa, makes ʿĪsā's creed exclusive: Allah, He and no other, is my Lord and yours.
• Ayah 65After the clearest possible sentence, those who heard it split into factions; the wrong lay in putting a creature where only the Creator belongs.
• Ayah 66The Hour will come all at once, and the real danger is not its suddenness but arriving with no awareness, not even a hair's breadth.
• Ayah 67On that Day the closest friendships turn to enmity, except those built on mindfulness of Allah, which alone survive the change of worlds.
• Ayah 68Allah Himself calls them 'My servants', and with one sentence removes the two burdens every human carries: fear of what comes, grief for what went.
• Ayah 69The ones called 'My servants' are named in two strokes: a heart that rested its weight on Allah's signs, and a life that stayed handed over to Him.
• Ayah 70The Garden's welcome is not a solitary prize: you enter with those who were yours in faith, joy written on your faces.
• Ayah 71In a surah that exposed gold as a false measure, gold now circles the believers, with all the soul wants and the eye loves.
• Ayah 72The Garden comes like an inheritance: deeds were its cause, yet it arrives as a gift no wage could buy.
• Ayah 73After food and drink comes fruit, eaten for delight not survival, in such abundance that every branch stays laden and nothing is ever used up.
• Ayah 74After the Garden, one line on the other end: those who harvested wrong against themselves remain in what they gathered.
• Ayah 75Every pain in this world has its lull; this one has none, and those in it fall silent, without hope or argument.
• Ayah 76Allah clears Himself of the smallest wrong: the darkness they are in is the darkness they made, and they themselves were the wrongdoers.
• Ayah 77Those who never called on their Lord now call His keeper, asking only to be ended, and are told: you remain.
• Ayah 78The truth was brought and made plain; most refused it from aversion, not ignorance, because truth makes claims and falsehood offers ease.
• Ayah 79However tightly people twist their plans, Allah's settling is tighter: no rope of human scheming holds against His.
• Ayah 80No whisper, not even the words you say only to yourself, escapes Allah's hearing, and His messengers beside you are writing it down.
• Ayah 81Told of a divine son, the Prophet ﷺ answers with courtesy and certainty: were it so, I would bow first; but it is not.
• Ayah 82Every false description falls far below Allah: Lord of the heavens, the earth and the Throne, beyond all of it.
• Ayah 83After the proof, those absorbed in wealth and status are left to their busy play, until the promised Day arrives.
• Ayah 84No god for the sky and another for the earth: the One worshipped above is worshipped below, Wise and Knowing.
• Ayah 85All above, below and between belongs to the One whose good settles and grows; He alone knows the Hour, and every soul goes home to Him.
• Ayah 86No one called upon besides Allah owns intercession; it stands only beside those who bore witness to the truth, knowing what they said.
• Ayah 87Ask them who made them and they will say Allah; so how are they turned upside down, away from the One they admit made them?
• Ayah 88The Prophet's quiet complaint, 'My Lord, these are a people who will not believe', is held by Allah, honoured beside His knowledge of the Hour.
• Ayah 89Allah answers His Prophet's grief: turn your face from their fault, leave them with peace, and let the truth reveal itself.