37. As-Saffat

As-Saffat ('Those Ranged in Ranks'), 182 Meccan verses, opens with the ranks of angels and surveys the prophets Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Elijah, Lot and Jonah. Its central scene is Abraham's dream to sacrifice his son and the son's willing submission, ransomed by 'a great sacrifice' (37:107), commemorated at the festival of Eid al-Adha.

The identity of Abraham's son in the sacrifice narrative, unnamed in the Quranic text itself, is debated across the exegetical tradition, with a majority of later commentators, including Ibn Kathir, favouring Ishmael against an earlier and once more common view, held by figures such as Ibn Abbas in some transmitted reports, that favoured Isaac; the ransoming sacrifice (37:107) is commemorated annually at Eid al-Adha with the slaughter of an animal, a rite tied to the pilgrimage rather than confined to Mecca alone. The surah's opening image of angels 'ranged in ranks' is read by classical commentators as describing both angelic worship and, by extension, the ordered rows of congregational prayer, a connection cited to explain why straightening the prayer line is emphasised in Islamic ritual practice. Jonah's episode within the surah (37:139-148), swallowed by the fish for fleeing his mission and cast onto a barren shore where a gourd vine grew to shade him, supplies detail absent from the fuller account of his people's belief given in the surah bearing his name, illustrating the Quran's habit of distributing a single narrative's episodes across different chapters.

As-Saffat's final three verses, 'glory be to your Lord, the Lord of might, above what they describe; and peace be upon the messengers; and praise be to God, Lord of the worlds' (37:180-182), are recited in many Muslim communities as a closing formula at the end of religious gatherings, study circles and lessons, known in this devotional use as kaffarat al-majlis, an expiation for the gathering, cited in hadith as covering minor lapses of speech that may have occurred during the sitting. The custom detaches these closing verses from the surah's own narrative content and treats them as a self-contained liturgical unit, recited regardless of what was actually discussed in the gathering they close.

Classical commentary on the verses themselves, read within the surah, treats them as the fitting conclusion to a long recital of prophets and their trials, moving from denial of any resemblance between God and what disbelievers describe, to a blessing on the messengers as a class rather than any one of them individually, to a final act of praise, a three-part close some literary commentators compare to the structure of formal supplications more broadly, moving from negation of error to affirmation of truth to praise.