Ayah Unpacked – Connection Map
All 7 verses in order, with the lines between them drawn. One verse here is another surah’s verse with a single preposition changed, and it reverses the meaning completely.
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Seven verses that put belief and behaviour in the same sentence. It opens on a question about someone who denies the Day and then, instead of describing what he believes, describes what he does to an orphan and a hungry man. Then it turns and says woe to those who pray — and spends three verses qualifying which ones. 107:5 is al-Ma’arij 70:23 with one preposition and one word changed: five words each, three of them identical, and the two that differ turn constancy into heedlessness. The surah takes its name from its last word, al-ma’un, which the commentators read several ways and the page does not settle.
Click any curve to jump between the two ayahs it joins, and again to travel back. Tap a key to hide that kind of line. Each bar is one ayah, and its width is how long that ayah actually is, which here shows where the surah tightens: the three shortest verses are all in the second half, and the shortest of the seven is the one that says woe to those who pray. Hover any bar to read the Arabic, or tap one on a phone.
Chapter 107 · 7 verses · Meccan · read top to bottom
The same notes the map shows when you tap a line, written out in verse order, each with its source.
107:1
A-ra’ayta alladhi yukadhdhibu bid-din? Have you seen the one who denies the Judgment? The next verse does not describe what he thinks. It describes what he does: he shoves the orphan away. The surah treats the denial as something you can watch rather than something you can only be told.
Source: 107:1 asks about belief and 107:2 answers with an action. Reading that as the surah’s method is a structural observation.
107:3
Al-yatim in verse 2 and al-miskin in verse 3. Al-Balad 90:15 and 90:16 names the same two as the people the steep road is climbed for — an orphan who is a relative, or a needy man in the dust. One surah gives them as the way up; this one gives them as the test somebody failed.
Source: 107:2 and 107:3 name al-yatim and al-miskin, as 90:15 and 90:16 do. Checked in the Arabic.
107:4
Fa-waylun lil-musallin. Not to those who abandon prayer — to those who perform it. The sentence is left standing for a whole verse before the qualification arrives, and that is the point: the surah makes you sit with it. Al-Mutaffifin 83:1 opens the same way, wayl plus a category.
Source: 107:4 states this; the qualification begins at 107:5. Checked in the Arabic.
107:5
Al-Ma’arij 70:23: alladhina hum ’ala salatihim da’imun — constant at their prayer. Al-Ma’un 107:5: alladhina hum ’an salatihim sahun — heedless of their prayer. Five words each, three identical. What differs is the preposition, ’ala against ’an, and the last word. Praying at it, or praying away from it.
Source: The two verses are five words each with tokens 1, 2 and 4 identical; tokens 3 and 5 differ. Checked token by token in the Arabic.
107:6
107:5 and 107:6 both open on alladhina hum. The surah has already used alladhi, the singular, twice in verses 1 and 2 for one man. Here it goes plural and stacks two clauses: heedless of their prayer, and making sure they are seen. Four relative clauses in seven verses, and not one name among them.
Source: alladhi occurs in 107:1 and 107:2; alladhina hum opens 107:5 and 107:6. Checked in the Arabic.
107:7
It is read as the small everyday kindnesses, as household things people lend each other — a pot, a tool, a bucket — and as zakat. The surah gives no definition. What it does say is that this is the thing being withheld, and it puts that at the very end, after the prayer and the showing off, as the last word on the subject.
Source: The sense of al-ma’un is a long-standing difference among the commentators; the surah defines it nowhere.
Axis · 107:1–3
Have you seen the one who denies the Judgment? That is the one who shoves the orphan away and does not urge the feeding of the needy. The surah answers a question about belief with two pieces of behaviour and offers nothing else as evidence.
Source: 107:1 to 107:3 state this.
Contrast · 107:1 and 107:4
The surah opens on a man who does not believe in the Judgment and closes on people who do pray. The second half is the harder one: the first man’s behaviour at least matches what he says. The wayl is spent on the ones whose behaviour does not.
Source: 107:1 and 107:4 state their own half. Reading the second as the sharper charge is an observation.
Contrast · 107:2 and 107:6
Verse 2 is a man pushing away an orphan. Verse 6 is a man making sure he is seen. The surah puts the private act and the public one in the same list without saying they are connected, and the two halves of the surah hinge on exactly that gap.
Source: 107:2 and 107:6 state their own half. Reading them against each other is a structural observation.
Mirror · 107:3 and 107:7
Verse 3 is not even about refusing to feed — it is about not urging it. Verse 7 is about withholding al-ma’un, whatever that is, and every reading of the word makes it something minor. Both ends of the surah are about the smallest possible version of not giving.
Source: 107:3 and 107:7 state their own half. Reading both as minimal withholding is an observation.
Axis · 107:4–7
Woe to those who pray: who are heedless of their prayer, who are seen doing it, and who withhold the small kindness. One verse of shock and three of qualification, ending on something that costs almost nothing.
Source: 107:4 to 107:7 state this.
107:1 → al-Mutaffifin 83:11
Al-Mutaffifin 83:11: those who deny the Day of Judgment. Al-Ma’un 107:1: the one who denies the Judgment. The same root in both, plural there and singular here — and both surahs then describe the denial as something done with goods and with people rather than as an opinion.
Source: Both verses use the root k-dh-b with ad-din, checked in the Arabic.
107:2 → al-Balad 90:15
Al-Balad 90:15 and 90:16 give the steep road as feeding, on a day of hunger, an orphan who is a relative or a needy man in the dust. Al-Ma’un 107:2 and 107:3 give the same two people as the ones a man shoves away and does not urge anyone to feed. The same pair, once as the way up and once as the thing missed.
Source: Both pairs of verses name al-yatim and al-miskin. Checked in the Arabic.
107:3 → Quraysh 106:4
Quraysh 106:4, in the surah immediately before: who fed them out of hunger. Al-Ma’un 107:3 condemns the one who does not urge the feeding of the needy. The same root for feeding in both, once as something received from Him and once as something withheld from someone else.
Source: 106:4 uses at’amahum and 107:3 uses ta’am, both from t-’-m. Checked in the Arabic.
107:3 → al-Insan 76:8
Al-Ma’un 107:3 condemns a man who does not so much as urge the feeding of the needy. Al-Insan 76:8 describes people who feed a needy man, an orphan and a captive ’ala hubbihi — while still wanting the food themselves. The same root for feeding at opposite ends of the same act.
Source: 107:3 uses ta’am and 76:8 uses yut’imun, both from t-’-m. Checked in the Arabic.
107:3 → al-Haqqah 69:34
Wa la yahuddu ’ala ta’ami al-miskin is character for character the same in both surahs. Al-Ma’un gives it as evidence of a man who denies the Day, before you are told anything about what he believes. Al-Haqqah gives it after the verdict, as one of only two things said about a man already being chained — the other being that he did not believe in Allah the Great.
Source: 107:3 and 69:34 are byte-identical in the Uthmani text, compared character by character.
107:4 → al-Kawthar 108:2
Al-Ma’un spends four of its seven verses on prayer, and across all seven the root r-b-b never appears — the surah that pronounces woe over prayer never names the Lord it should be for. Al-Kawthar 108:2, opening the surah immediately after, gives the instruction straight: fa-salli li-rabbika wanhar, so pray to your Lord and sacrifice. The same root for prayer in both, and the second surah supplies exactly the word this one does not have.
Source: A search of all seven verses of surah 107 returns no occurrence of the root r-b-b. 107:4 and 108:2 both use the root s-l-w, and 108:2 attaches li-rabbika. Checked in the Arabic.
107:4 → al-Muddaththir 74:43
Al-Muddaththir 74:43 and 74:44: asked what brought them there, they answer — we were not of those who prayed, and we did not feed the needy. Those are exactly the two failures al-Ma’un describes, in the same order, one surah stating them as a charge and the other as a confession.
Source: 74:43 uses the root s-l-w and 74:44 names al-miskin; 107:3 and 107:4 name the same two. Checked in the Arabic.
107:5 → al-Ma’arij 70:23
Al-Ma’arij 70:23: alladhina hum ’ala salatihim da’imun. Al-Ma’un 107:5: alladhina hum ’an salatihim sahun. Three of the five words are identical. ’Ala holds you on the thing; ’an moves you off it. Two surahs describing people who both pray, separated by a preposition.
Source: Five words each, tokens 1, 2 and 4 identical, tokens 3 and 5 different. Checked token by token in the Arabic.
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.
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 surahShort animated walkthroughs of each surah. The opening paragraph on this page — the setting this surah was revealed into, and the way it reads as one piece — follows their walkthrough of it. The connections themselves are checked against the Arabic, and each one names its own source in its popup.
YouTubeBayyinah Institute, known for close linguistic readings of the Quran and for treating each surah as one coherent piece. More of his work will show up here as further surahs are added.
YouTubeArabic 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 107 on Quran.com