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Chapter 9

Repentanceal-Tawbah ( التوبة )

129 verses • revealed at Medinan

»The surah that announces for all time that God granted to His prophet, to the Emigrant and Helping Companions, and to three errant believers Repentance; and that offers the same opportunity to the unbelievers and the hypocrites, provided they forever renounce hostility, idolatry, and duplicity; and which further demonstrates the faithfulness of this offer in God’s decree of amnesty for the truly repentant idolaters who fought the believers at a place called Ḥunayn. It is named after “repentance” (tawbah) mentioned in verse 3 and verse 5. The surah opens by giving notice of the severance of the treaty with the idolaters because they had broken it, but the bulk of the surah deals with preparations and recruitment for the expedition to Tabūk (year 9/631). The hypocrites and those who stayed behind and failed to support the Prophet Muḥammad are all censured. This is the only surah not to begin with the formula Basmalah.«

The surah is also known as Dispensation, Immunity

1
بَراءَةٌ مِنَ اللَّهِ وَرَسولِهِ إِلَى الَّذينَ عاهَدتُم مِنَ المُشرِكينَ

N. J. Dawood

This is the only chapter in the Koran which does not begin with the invocation ‘In the Name of God, etc.’ Traditional commentators regard it as a continuation of ‘The Spoils’.
A declaration of immunity from God and His Apostle to the idolaters with whom you have made agreements: