(Revealed before Hijrah)
This Surah is generally considered to have been revealed on the Holy Prophet’s return from Ta’if, where, after he had almost despaired of the Meccans from whom he had received nothing but ridicule, opposition and persecution, he had gone to preach his Message. The visit to Ta’if took place two years before Hijrah when the opposition to the new Faith had taken an ugly turn and the condition of the Holy Prophet and his followers had become desperate in the extreme. If, as some authorities are of the view, the Surah relates to an incident other than the one mentioned in Surah Al-Ahqaf (46:30-33), then it might have been revealed much earlier. The context and contents of the Surah seem to lend some weight to the latter view. In the preceding Surah it was stated that the lifelong preaching of Noah had met with only gibes and jeers, and that only a few persons other than his near relatives had given him their allegiance—even his son and wife taking an active part in opposition to him. In order to show that there existed a similarity between the circumstances of Noah and those of the Holy Prophet it is stated that a party of the jinn—a people not known to the Holy Prophet before—visited him, listened to the Qur’an and at once believed in him. The Surah gives a fairly long account of the beliefs and doctrines of these people, their conduct and outlook on life, and emphatically affirms that it is impossible for anyone to distort or tamper with the revealed Word of God because, like a precious treasure, it is strongly guarded by Divine sentinels. Towards the end, it is stated that whenever a Divine Teacher calls men to God, the forces of evil try to stifle his voice, but the Teacher carries on his mission, undeterred by the machinations of evilly-disposed people. The Surah closes with an infallible criterion to test the Divine Source of the Message of a Prophet, viz. that it contains prophecies about great world events which human knowledge cannot foresee or foretell, and also that the Prophet succeeds in delivering his Message and fulfils his mission.