Texts of Islam

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 55. ar-Rahman:...

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This is Surah 55 (ar-Rahman, "The Merciful"), the 55th chapter of the Qur'an, presented here in M.M. Pickthall's early 20th-century English translation — one of the first by a native English-speaking Muslim. The surah catalogs divine creative acts and natural gifts: the teaching of language, the ordered movements of celestial bodies, the earth's provisions, the separation of two seas, and the bounties drawn from them. Its central argument is that God's beneficence is so pervasive and evident that denial of it is irrational, a point driven home by the chapter's most distinctive formal feature — the refrain "Which is it, of the favours of your Lord, that ye deny?" repeated 31 times, addressed jointly to mankind and jinn. The surah moves through three registers: a hymn of creation, a warning of eschatological judgment (the guilty identified by their marks, consigned to fire and boiling water), and an extended, sensory description of paradise — gardens with flowing fountains, silk-lined couches, paired fruits, and unspoiled companions. The repeated refrain functions both as rhetorical challenge and liturgical rhythm, making gratitude and accountability the chapter's twin themes.

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 55. ar-Rahman:...

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