Sūrah Ad-Duhā The Morning Brightness
سورة الضحى
Al-Ṭabarī investigates Ad-Duhā through its occasion of revelation the pause in waḥy that prompted the Quraysh taunt "Muḥammad has been abandoned" assembling competing chains about the duration of the pause and the specific trigger for this divine reassurance.
Surah Overview
Key Themes from Al-Ṭabarī
Al-Ṭabarī opens with a Jundub ibn Sufyān chain stating the Prophet was ill for two or three nights and did not rise for night prayer, prompting a Quraysh woman to say "Your devil has abandoned you." This chain is then compared with a Khawlah chain (via ʿĀʾishah) explaining that a dog entered the house and died under the Prophet's bed, causing waḥy to cease. Al-Ṭabarī argues these are not competing occasions but two perspectives on the same extended interruption the physical cause (dog) and the external taunt (Quraysh woman) both triggered the revelation.
Al-Ṭabarī then analyses the three rhetorical questions in 93:6–8 as divine reminders of past blessings: "Did He not find you orphaned and give shelter?" al-Ṭabarī notes via an Ibn ʿAbbās chain that this refers to the death of the Prophet's parents and his care by his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and then uncle Abū Ṭālib. "Did He not find you lost and guide you?" al-Ṭabarī records two positions: (1) spiritually unaware of prophetic mission before revelation; (2) physically lost as a child at Mecca. He prefers position (1) via the stronger chain from Mujāhid.
- Complementary occasions: Al-Ṭabarī resolves the Jundub/Khawlah chain tension by reading them as two angles on the same interruption rather than contradictory narrations.
- Duration agnosticism: Al-Ṭabarī declines to arbitrate between twelve, fifteen, and forty-day narrations, preserving the chain record without forced harmonisation.
- "Ḍāllan" defined: Via Mujāhid chain, al-Ṭabarī pins the meaning of "lost/unaware" to pre-prophetic spiritual unawareness, not moral error protecting the Prophet's pre-prophetic character.
- Three-blessing structure: Orphan + shelter, unaware + guidance, needy + enrichment al-Ṭabarī reads these as three proofs that Allah has always cared for the Prophet, making abandonment impossible.
- Imperative application: Al-Ṭabarī notes that 93:9–10 derive directly from the three blessings: because you were once orphaned, do not oppress the orphan; because you were once guided, do not rebuff the asker.