Ayah Unpacked – Connection Map

Surah Al-Isra, in outline

All 111 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 Meccan surah that opens with the Night Journey, when Allah took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque. It warns the Children of Israel of two corruptions, says the Quran guides to what is most upright, and lays out a series of commandments: worship Allah alone, honour your parents and speak to them gently, give relatives and the needy their due without wasting, do not kill your children for fear of poverty, do not approach adultery, give full measure, do not follow what you have no knowledge of, and do not walk the earth arrogantly. It recounts Iblis’s defiance, honours the children of Adam, and challenges anyone to produce the like of the Quran.

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.

111verses, Meccan
8sections
 the longest verse
17surah 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-Isra الإسراء

Chapter 17 · 111 verses · Meccan · read top to bottom

See every surah drawn this way →

Key takeaways

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

  1. Never say ‘uff’ to your parents. Lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy.
  2. Do not waste. Wasters are brothers of the devils.
  3. Do not follow what you do not know. Hearing, sight and heart will all be questioned.
  4. Do not walk the earth in arrogance. You cannot split the earth or reach the mountains in height.
  5. The children of Adam are honoured. Carried on land and sea and preferred over much of creation.
  6. The Quran is a healing and a mercy. For those who believe.

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 17 on Quran.com