Ayah Unpacked – Connection Map
Surah An-Nahl, in outline
All 128 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.
Ayah Unpacked – Connection Map
All 128 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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A Meccan surah named after the bee, which Allah inspired to make its homes and produce a drink of many colours that heals. It is also called the surah of blessings, because it lists so many: cattle for warmth and food, horses to ride and as adornment, rain, crops, the sea and its fresh flesh and ornaments, stars to navigate by, milk from between waste and blood, homes and shelter. It condemns burying daughters, commands justice, kindness and giving to relatives, warns against breaking oaths, and holds up Ibrahim as a nation in himself. It closes by telling the Prophet ﷺ to call to Allah’s way with wisdom and good instruction.
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.
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.
Chapter 16 · 128 verses · Meccan · read top to bottom
What to carry away from Surah An-Nahl. Drawn mainly from The Clear Quran, alongside the tafsir and teachers credited below.
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 surahDr 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.orgArabic 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 16 on Quran.comWe’d like to use Google Analytics to see which pages get read. It is off until you say yes, and saying no changes nothing about how the site works. What it records. We’d like to use Google Analytics to see which pages get read, and Google Ads to see whether our ads help anyone find them. Both are off until you say yes, and saying no changes nothing about how the site works. What they record.