SÛRAH LXXXIX
Al-Fajr takes its name from verse 1.
A very early Meccan Sûrah.
THE DAWN
Revealed at Mecca
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
1 By the Dawn
2 And ten nights,[1]
3 And the Even and the Odd,
4 And the night when it departeth,
5 There surely is an oath for thinking man.
6 Dost thou not consider how thy Lord dealt with (the tribe of) A'âd,
7 With many-columned[2] Iram,
8 The like of which was not created in the lands;
9 And with (the tribe of) Thamûd, who clove the rocks in the valley;
10 And with Pharaoh, firm of might,
11 Who (all) were rebellious (to Allah) in these lands,
12 And multiplied iniquity therein?
13 Therefor thy Lord poured on them the disaster of His punishment.
- ↑ Of the month of pilgrimage.
- ↑ I had written "many-columned," following the run of commentators, who take the word 'imâd to mean columns, pillars, when I happened upon Ibn Khaldûn's diatribe against that rendering and all the legends to which it has given rise, in the preface to the Prolegomena. The word meant "tent-poles" to the Arabs of the Prophet's day, as Ibn Khaldûn points out. In view of recent discoveries in the Yaman, however, I prefer the usual rendering.
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