Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 10 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:10

فَٱرْتَقِبْ يَوْمَ تَأْتِى ٱلسَّمَآءُ بِدُخَانٍ مُّبِينٍ

“Then watch for the Day when the sky will bring a visible smoke”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Prophet ﷺ is told to watch for the day the sky brings an unmistakable smoke, the sign that names this surah.

A reflection

The Companion who sat up

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim preserve a scene from a mosque in Kufa. A storyteller was holding forth by one of the doors. He told his listeners exactly what this smoke would be. It would come on the Day of Resurrection, he said. It would seize the hearing and sight of the hypocrites, while the believers would catch something like a head cold.

Some of the listeners went to ʿAbdullah ibn Masʿud and repeated it. He had been lying down. He sat up sharply, alarmed. Then he said something that deserves to be memorised. Allah told your Prophet ﷺ to say: I ask no reward for this, and I am not one of those who pretend (38:86). It is part of knowledge, he said, that when a man does not know something, he says: Allah knows best.

Only then did he give his own account, which he had witnessed. Quraysh had resisted the Prophet ﷺ, and he prayed against them for years like the years of Yusuf. Famine struck. People ate bones and carrion. A man would look up at the sky and see only something like smoke between himself and it, from sheer exhaustion.

Picture a video shared widely on social media. A confident presenter explains, with diagrams, precisely how the smoke of the end times will affect each kind of person, and when it will come. Thousands share it. Few ask where the details came from.

The Companion's reaction is the lesson. He was not angry that someone was interested in the unseen. He was alarmed that someone was certain about it beyond what he knew. His rebuke used no insult. It used an ayah and a principle.

Before passing on any detail about the signs of the Hour, the same test applies. Do I know this, or am I pretending? 'Allah knows best' is not a confession of ignorance. In the words of this Companion, it is part of knowledge itself.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.