Texts of Islam

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): LXXIV. The Chapter o...

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is an excerpt from Surah Al-Muddaththir (The Covered One), one of the early chapters of the Qur'an, presented here in E.H. Palmer's 1880 English translation as part of the Sacred Books of the East series. The passage opens with a divine command to the Prophet Muhammad to rise and warn, then shifts to a vivid condemnation of a wealthy, arrogant disbeliever (identified in a footnote as Walid ibn Mughairah, a Quraysh chieftain) who dismisses the Qur'an as mere magic and mortal speech. A central concern is eschatology: the text describes hell-fire guarded by nineteen angels, explains that this specific number is a trial for disbelievers while a source of strengthened faith for believers, and recounts the damned explaining their fate — they neglected prayer, ignored the poor, engaged in fruitless disputation, and denied the Day of Judgment. The chapter closes with an affirmation that the Qur'an is a memorial and reminder open to all, but that true remembrance and guidance rest with God alone. Distinctively, the passage presents divine punishment not just as retribution but as a layered test whose very details serve different spiritual functions for different audiences — certainty for scripture-holders, deepened faith for believers, and confusion for the skeptical.

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): LXXIV. The Chapter o...

Related pages View as graph →