Surah al-Waqi‘ah: Meccan (1)

In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.

“When the Inevitable Event comes to pass, none can deny its coming to pass. It will lower and raise. When the earth is shaken with a violent shaking, and the mountains are crushed to powder.”

“When the Inevitable Event comes to pass”: that is, when the Day of Resurrection begins. It was also said: when the cry of the Resurrection descends—the final Blast.

“None can deny its coming to pass”: that is, its arrival; “none can deny”—there will be no falsehood concerning it, as in His saying, “Therein you will hear no idle talk” (Surah al-Ghashiyah, 11), meaning: no idle speech. That is, it will indeed occur in truth and reality. The word rendered “falsehood” is a noun, like the words for “well-being” and “calamity.”

“It will lower and raise”: it will lower some people into the Fire and raise others to Paradise. Aṭāʾ related from Ibn ʿAbbās: It will lower people who were exalted in this world, and raise people who were deemed weak in this world (2).

“When the earth is shaken with a violent shaking”: it will be stirred and convulsed violently. Al-Kalbī said: When Allah reveals to it, it quivers in fear. The commentators said: It will be shaken as an infant is rocked in its cradle, until every structure upon it collapses and everything upon it—mountains and otherwise—is broken apart (3). The basic linguistic meaning of shaking is movement; one says, “I shook it, and it shook.”

“And the mountains are crushed to powder”: [Aṭāʾ, Muqātil, and Mujāhid said] (4): They will be pulverized until they become like moistened flour. Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib and al-Suddī said: They will be shattered. Al-Kalbī said: They will be carried along over the face of