At-Takathur التكاثر
Rivalry in World Increase
At-Takathur opens with a single, plain diagnosis: "striving for more distracts you, until you go into your graves." Takathur, the surah's name, means competing to accumulate — more wealth, more children, more of anything countable — and the surah treats that competition as something people carry all the way to the point of death without ever pausing to question it. Its turn is abrupt: three times it repeats "no indeed," moving from that distraction to certainty, to the promise that everyone will see Hellfire directly, "with the eye of certainty," and be asked on that day about their pleasures — what they did with the abundance they'd spent a lifetime chasing. Read alongside Al-Humazah and At-Takathur's Meccan neighbors, it's part of a cluster of short surahs the Quran uses to interrupt exactly the kind of accumulation most people never stop to examine while they're still doing it.
أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ
Striving for more distracts you
حَتَّىٰ زُرْتُمُ ٱلْمَقَابِرَ
until you go into your graves.
كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ
No indeed! You will come to know.
ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ
No indeed! In the end you will come to know.
كَلَّا لَوْ تَعْلَمُونَ عِلْمَ ٱلْيَقِينِ
No indeed! If only you knew for certain.
لَتَرَوُنَّ ٱلْجَحِيمَ
You will most definitely see Hellfire,
ثُمَّ لَتَرَوُنَّهَا عَيْنَ ٱلْيَقِينِ
you will see it with the eye of certainty.
ثُمَّ لَتُسْـَٔلُنَّ يَوْمَئِذٍ عَنِ ٱلنَّعِيمِ
On that Day, you will be asked about your pleasures.
Arabic text and translation (M.A.S. Abdel Haleem) via the Quran.Foundation API.
Frequently asked
Eight verses.
Meccan, revealed in Makkah.
"Rivalry in world increase" or "competing for more" — the surah's opening word describes the human drive to accumulate wealth, children, or status competitively.
Verse 8 states that on the Day of Judgement, everyone will be asked about their pleasures — what they did with the abundance they pursued during their lifetime.