Surah At-Takathur

About Surah At-Takathur

Takathur is the urge to have more than the next person and to be counted as having it. The surah is named after that word, which is the second word of its first ayah, and its eight Makkan ayahs are about the habit rather than any single sin. The audience were people whose standing rested on wealth, sons and lineage. Nothing here is declared forbidden and nobody is told to give anything up. The question put to them is simply where the counting is supposed to end.

The answer arrives immediately: the rivalry occupies you until you visit the graves (102:1 to 102:2). Several of the classical commentators read that second ayah as boasting continued into the cemetery, tallying the dead. Warnings follow (102:3 to 102:5), the last of them breaking off mid sentence, as though what would be said next is better left for the reader to finish. Then the register shifts from warning to certainty, moving from the knowledge of certainty named in 102:5 to the sight of it in 102:7. The closing ayah is the one most often quoted: on that Day you will be asked about the comforts you enjoyed (102:8). Not accused of them, asked about them.