Surah Al-Isra: The Night Journey | Quran Study Guide

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 Two Parts

One hundred and eleven verses, read in two sittings. The surah opens on the night journey and then does something no reader expects. Having just described the highest thing that ever happened to a human being, it turns immediately to a list of instructions about parents, money, speech, orphans, scales, and how a man walks down a street. The elevation and the conduct are placed side by side deliberately. A man is measured by what he does on the ground, and the surah spends most of its length showing exactly where.

Part One

Verses 1 to 52

Read Your Book.

The night journey, the two corruptions and the promise attached to each, the record fastened to a man's own neck, the seventeen commands that sit at the center of the surah, and the argument with men who could not imagine being raised.

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Verses 53 to 111

Say What Is Best.

Speech raised from true to best, an inventory of what the enemy was actually given and the authority he was denied, firmness that was supplied rather than earned, the dawn recitation that is witnessed and the praised station attached to the night vigil, six demands that move their own goalposts, and a close on praise.

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آمِين

Prepared with discipline · Ameen