Ayah Unpacked – Connection Map

Surah Al-An’am, in outline

All 165 verses in order, grouped into the surah’s sections, with what it is about and what to take from it. The lines between verses come next.

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What this surah is about

A long Meccan surah, named after the cattle that the idolaters divided between Allah and their idols, that argues for Allah’s oneness from every direction. It says He has the keys of the unseen and knows every leaf that falls, takes souls at night and returns them, and is the One who splits the seed and the date stone and splits the dawn. It recounts Ibrahim reasoning past star, moon and sun to the One who created them, rejects the pagans’ invented rules about food and their killing of children, and closes with a set of commandments and the instruction to say that one’s prayer, sacrifice, life and death are for Allah, Lord of the worlds.

This page is an outline. Every verse of the surah is drawn below as a bar whose width is the length of that verse in the Arabic, grouped into the surah’s sections, so its shape is visible at a glance. The notes and the lines joining verses to each other and to the rest of the Quran have not been drawn yet; they will be added here, verified against the Arabic, as this surah’s full map is built.

165verses, Meccan
9sections
 the longest verse
6surah in the mushaf

Each bar is one ayah, and its width is how long that ayah actually is. Hover any bar to read the Arabic and Pickthall’s English, or tap one on a phone; click it to open the verse on Quran.com.

Surah Al-An’am الأنعام

Chapter 6 · 165 verses · Meccan · read top to bottom

See every surah drawn this way →

Key takeaways

What to carry away from Surah Al-An’am. Drawn mainly from The Clear Quran, alongside the tafsir and teachers credited below.

  1. Not a leaf falls without His knowledge. The keys of the unseen are with Him.
  2. Reason leads to the Creator. Ibrahim looked past everything that sets.
  3. Do not insult what others worship. Lest they insult Allah in ignorance.
  4. Open hearts are a gift. Whom He wills to guide, He opens their chest to Islam.
  5. Do not kill your children for fear of poverty. He provides for you and for them.
  6. My prayer, sacrifice, life and death are for Allah. The surah’s summary of devotion.

Where this comes from

The connections on these maps come from more than one place. Most are counts and comparisons made directly in the Arabic, and those say so. Readings of a word, or of the occasion a surah came down in, come from the classical books of tafsir. Some pages also draw on teachers whose lectures shaped how a surah is read, and they are credited by name below. Every connection names its own source in its popup, so you can always tell whether you are looking at something the text states, something the tafsir records, or one teacher’s reading of it.

Tafsir books

When a page says the commentators, it means the classical works of tafsir, Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari first among them, where the readings of a word, an occasion or a verse are recorded along with who held them. Where those readings differ, the page sets them side by side rather than picking one.

Ibn Kathir on this surah

The Clear Quran

Dr Mustafa Khattab’s thematic English translation. The summary at the top of this page, the key takeaways at the bottom and the way the surah is divided into sections all draw mainly on its surah introductions, section headings and notes, written here in our own words.

theclearquran.org

The text on this page

Arabic is the Uthmani script and numbering follows Hafs. The English is Marmaduke Pickthall’s 1930 translation, which is in the public domain. Its wording is deliberately old-fashioned; every ayah links straight to Quran.com, where you can read the same verse in The Clear Quran, Saheeh International, Abdel Haleem and others.

Surah 6 on Quran.com