055- AL-RAHMAN
THE COMPASSIONATE
Most scholars take all of al-Raḥmān to be a Makkan sūrah, although Ibn ʿAbbās is said to have maintained that v. 29 is from the Madinan period. A minority maintain that the entire sūrah is Madinan. It takes its name from the mention of the Divine Name the Compassionate at the opening, the only Divine Name to be directly equated with the Name Allāh, as in 17:110: Say, “Call upon God (Allah), or call upon the Compassionate (al-Raḥmān). Whichever you call upon, to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names.” Because the last verse of the preceding sūrah and the first verse of this sūrah contain two Divine Names that can be read in complementary opposition to one another, Omnipotent King (54:55) and the Compassionate (v. 1), al-Raḥmān is seen by some as an extension of al-Qamar. This sūrah is known to many Muslims as “The Bride of the Quran” after a well-known yet unauthenticated ḥadīth that says, “For everything there is a bride, and the bride of the Quran is Sūrat al-Raḥmān”.
Some commentaries maintain that this sūrah was revealed in response to the idolaters of Makkah, who are said to have asked the meaning of the Prophet’s frequent references to the Compassionate, as in 25:60: And when it is said unto them, “Prostrate before the Compassionate,” they say, “And what is the Compassionate? Shall we prostrate before that [to] which you command us?” And it increases them in aversion. The idolaters’ disbelief in the Compassionate is also mentioned in 13:30, where the Prophet is ordered to declare belief in the Lord: Thus have We sent thee unto a community before whom other communities have passed away, that thou mayest recite unto them that which We have revealed unto thee; yet they disbelieve in the Compassionate. Say, “He is my Lord; there is no god but He. In Him do I trust and unto Him do I turn.”
The first section of the sūrah (vv. 1–25) discusses the nature of the Compassionate as Creator, Teacher, and Revealer and the blessings He provides in the created world. It then transitions into an extended discussion of the blessings of Heaven and its many Gardens. The duality between Heaven and earth and the dualities within them are present throughout the sūrah. This thematic structure is reflected in the grammatical structure, which employs the dual form in many of the verbs and pronouns and in the refrain, addressed to both human beings and jinn, So which of your Lord’s boons do you two deny? This duality is offset by the discussion of the Compassionate in vv. 1–10 and by vv. 26–27, which emphasize that God remains while all else fades away. Appearing in the middle of the sūrah, these verses imply that God’s Essence is the center that lies at the heart of and yet transcends all dualities, even those in the Gardens of Heaven. V. 27 is then echoed in the last verse (v. 78), showing that just as God transcends the blessings of this earth, so too does He transcend the blessings of Heaven.
(source: “The Study Quran” a new translation and commentary by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
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