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Chapter 72

The Jinnal-Jinn ( الجن )

28 verses • revealed at Meccan

»The surah that opens with the revelation that a group of The Jinn listened to the Prophet reciting the Quran, believed in it, and so admonished their own race. It is names after the jinn-kind, whose account is given in its first part. The surah begins with the account of what a group of jinn said when they overheard a recitation of the Quran and realized its truth (verse 1 ff.). This is a lesson to the Meccan Arabs, who are also told that the Prophet can help them only by delivering the Message—God is the All Powerful One (verse 16 ff.). The disbelievers are threatened with what they will meet on the Day of Judgement (verse 23 ff).«

The surah is also known as Jinn-kind, Sprites, The Jinn's, The Spirits

بِسمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحمٰنِ الرَّحيمِ

Muhammad Asad: In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Dispenser of Grace:

1
قُل أوحِيَ إِلَيَّ أَنَّهُ استَمَعَ نَفَرٌ مِنَ الجِنِّ فَقالوا إِنّا سَمِعنا قُرآنًا عَجَبًا

Muhammad Asad

REVEALED not later than during the last two years of the Prophet's sojourn in Mecca, this surah takes its name from the plural noun al-jinn in the first verse.
SAY: "It has been revealed to me that some of the unseen beings gave ear [to this divine writ],1 and thereupon said [unto their fellow-beings]: "'Verily, we have heard a wondrous discourse,
  • I.e., had heard and accepted it: this being the meaning, in the above context, of the verbal form istama'a. - As regards the various meanings attributable to the plural noun jinn (rendered by me here as "unseen beings"), see Appendix III. As pointed out there, the jinn are referred to in the Qur'an in many connotations. In a few cases - e.g., in the present instance and in 46:29-32 - this expression may possibly signify "hitherto unseen beings", namely, strangers who had never before been seen by the people among and to whom the Qur'an was then being revealed. From 46:30 (which evidently relates to the same occurrence as the present one) it transpires that the jinn in question were followers of the Mosaic faith, inasmuch as they refer to the Qur'an as "a revelation bestowed from on high after [that of] Moses", thus pointedly omitting any mention of the intervening prophet, Jesus, and equally pointedly (in verse 3 of the present surah) stressing their rejection of the Christian concept of the Trinity. All this leads one to the assumption that they may have been Jews from distant parts of what is now the Arab world, perhaps from Syria or even Mesopotamia. (Tabari mentions in several places that the jinn referred to in this surah as well as in 46:29 ff. hailed from Nasibin, a town on the upper reaches of the Euphrates.) I should, however, like to stress that my explanation of this occurrence is purely tentative.