Al-Qari'ah القارعة

Al-Qari'ah takes its name from one of the Quran's names for the Day of Judgement — al-Qari'ah, "the Crashing Blow" or "the Striking Calamity" — and opens by naming it three times in quick succession before explaining it: a day when people will be like scattered moths and mountains like carded wool, both familiar images turned to convey total loss of solidity and order. The surah then sets up a single scale-based test with no third outcome: those whose good deeds are heavy on the scale will have a pleasant, contented life, and those whose good deeds are light will have as their home the Hawiyah — a bottomless pit described simply as "a blazing fire." Like several of the short surahs near the end of the Quran, it makes its case almost entirely through the weight of its imagery rather than argument, moving from cosmic upheaval to an individual, binary reckoning in just eleven verses.

Arabic text and translation (M.A.S. Abdel Haleem) via the Quran.Foundation API.

Frequently asked