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Meccan surah
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surahs of the Quran supposed to have been revealed or composed in Mecca (as opposed to Medina), before the Hijra
Wikidata facts
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- opposite of
- Medinan surah
- topic's main category
- Category:Meccan surahs
- described by source
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online
- Commons category
- Meccan Surahs
- different from
- Medinan surah
- native label
- سورة مكية
Sources (2)
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Encyclopedic overview
A Meccan surah (Arabic: سورة مكية, romanized: Surah Makkiyah) is, according to the timing and contextual background of their revelation (asbāb al-nuzūl) within Islamic tradition, a chronologically earlier chapter (suwar, singular sūrah) of the Qur'an. The traditional chronological order attributed to Ibn Abbas became widely accepted following its adoption by the 1924 Egyptian standard edition. The Meccan chapters are believed to have been revealed anytime before the migration of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina (Hijra). The Medinan surahs are those revelations which occurred after the move. There are 86 Meccan surahs.
Meccan surahs are typically shorter than Medinan surahs, with relatively short verses (āyāt), and mostly come near the end of the Qur'an. (As a general rule, the chapters of the Qur'an are ordered from longest to shortest.) Most of the chapters containing Muqatta'at are Meccan, Except 2, 3 and 13.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Meccan surah” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.