Al-An’am  · One Hundred and Sixty-Five Verses

Ta'awwudh · Seeking Refuge

أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ

A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytani ar-rajim. I seek refuge in Allah from Satan, the accursed.

The Name · Bismillah

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

Bismillahi ar-Rahmani ar-Rahim. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

✦

The Surah · In Three Parts

Al-An’am is a Makkan chapter of one hundred and sixty-five verses, and it is the most sustained argument in the Quran. Not narrative. Not law. Argument, verse after verse, against a specific set of claims, with the objections stated fairly before they are answered.

It opens on praise and on a fact about grammar. He made the darknesses and the light. Darkness plural, light singular, the same construction that opens Ibrahim.

Twice in the first fifty-five verses it says the same thing about Allah, and it is the strongest sentence in the chapter. He has written mercy upon Himself. Written, as an obligation He took on, with nobody able to impose it on Him.

The middle of the chapter belongs to Ibrahim, peace be upon him, watching a star and then the moon and then the sun, and saying about each of them, in turn, I do not love things that set.

And it closes on the clearest list of commandments in the Quran, ten of them, given twice over three verses, ending with this is My straight path, so follow it.

Three parts, in order.

Part One

Verses 1 to 55

He Has Written Mercy Upon Himself.

Darknesses in the plural and light in the singular. A parchment they could have touched and would still have refused. An angel withheld as a reprieve. Mercy written as a self-imposed obligation, twice. And an order not to send the poor away.

آمِين

Prepared with discipline · Ameen