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Surah Al-Qariah Meaning, Word by Word

3 September 2026 · Surah meanings

Surah Al-Qariah is the 101st surah of the Quran, eleven verses and thirty-six words long. It takes its name from its very first word, ٱلْقَارِعَةُ (al-qāriʿatu, "The Striking Calamity"), and then says that word twice more before verse 3 is finished. In the SurahKids learning order it is the fourteenth surah, and it is the first one in that sequence to reach eleven verses.

That matters more than the verse count suggests. Up to this point the order runs through surahs of three, four, five and six verses; Al-Qariah roughly doubles that. The consolation is that it repeats itself a lot: thirty-six words but only twenty-eight distinct forms, so eight of its words are ones you met a few lines earlier. Its verses are short too — the longest is five words — and it carries a strong, regular end-rhyme, which is a real memory aid rather than a decoration.

The word-by-word breakdown below uses the Arabic exactly as it appears in the mushaf. The English is a plain rendering, one among many. Translations are interpretations, and two or three words in this surah are ones English handles only approximately.

Surah Al-Qariah word by word

Verse 1

al-qāriʿatu — The Striking Calamity!

Verse 2

mā l-qāriʿatu — What is the Striking Calamity?

Verse 3

wamā adrāka mā l-qāriʿatu — And what will make you know what the Striking Calamity is?

Verse 4

yawma yakūnu l-nāsu kal-farāshi l-mabthūthi — The Day mankind will be like moths scattered.

Verse 5

watakūnu l-jibālu kal-ʿih'ni l-manfūshi — And the mountains will be like wool fluffed up.

Verse 6

fa-ammā man thaqulat mawāzīnuhu — Then as for him whose scales are heavy.

Verse 7

fahuwa fī ʿīshatin rāḍiyatin — Then he will be in a pleasant life.

Verse 8

wa-ammā man khaffat mawāzīnuhu — But as for him whose scales are light.

Verse 9

fa-ummuhu hāwiyatun — His abode will be the Pit.

Verse 10

wamā adrāka mā hiyah — And what will make you know what it is?

Verse 11

nārun ḥāmiyatun — A Fire, intensely hot.

The surah in plain English

The Striking Calamity! What is the Striking Calamity? And what will make you know what the Striking Calamity is? The Day mankind will be like moths scattered, and the mountains will be like wool fluffed up. Then as for him whose scales are heavy, he will be in a pleasant life. But as for him whose scales are light, his abode will be the Pit. And what will make you know what it is? A Fire, intensely hot.

What the words tell you

It says its own name three times before it tells you anything. ٱلْقَارِعَةُ (al-qāriʿatu) is the whole of verse 1, the second half of verse 2 and the end of verse 3. Verse 1 names it, verse 2 asks what it is, verse 3 asks again in a stronger form — and none of the three answers. The answer starts at verse 4. Three verses of naming and asking is a large share of an eleven-verse surah, and the first thing to notice about how this one is built.

The two pictures are the same shape twice. كَٱلْفَرَاشِ ٱلْمَبْثُوثِ (kal-farāshi l-mabthūthi, "like moths scattered") and كَٱلْعِهْنِ ٱلْمَنفُوشِ (kal-ʿih'ni l-manfūshi, "like wool fluffed up") are both ka- ("like") on the front of a noun, followed by one describing word. Once you have the pattern from verse 4, verse 5 costs you two new nouns and nothing else. The two describing words even rhyme with each other, -mabthūthi and -manfūshi, which is why the pair tends to stick after two or three readings.

The middle of the surah is a fork. Verse 6 and verse 8 are the same verse with two substitutions: فَأَمَّا (fa-ammā, "Then as for") becomes وَأَمَّا (wa-ammā, "But as for"), and ثَقُلَتْ (thaqulat, "(are) heavy") becomes خَفَّتْ (khaffat, "(are) light"), with مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ (mawāzīnuhu, "his scales") closing both. Of the eight words in the two verses, only two are new the second time round.

The two outcomes are unequal in length. The heavy scales get four words, فَهُوَ فِى عِيشَةٍۢ رَّاضِيَةٍۢ (fahuwa fī ʿīshatin rāḍiyatin, "Then he will be in a pleasant life"). The light scales get two, فَأُمُّهُۥ هَاوِيَةٌۭ (fa-ummuhu hāwiyatun) — and then the surah stops to ask about it for two more verses instead of describing it. Verse 9 is also where translations diverge most: the rendering above is "His abode (will be the) Pit", and other translators handle both words differently. Hold this one loosely rather than pinning it to a single English phrase.

The question returns at verse 10 with one word swapped. Verse 3 was wamā adrāka mā l-qāriʿatu. Verse 10 is wamā adrāka mā hiyah — the same three opening words, with هِيَهْ (hiyah, "it is") in place of the name. Three of the four words are free if you already have verse 3, which is a useful thing to know while memorising: verse 10 is not a new verse so much as verse 3 with a shorter ending.

It ends on an image, not an instruction. نَارٌ حَامِيَةٌۢ (nārun ḥāmiyatun, "A Fire, intensely hot") is two words answering a question asked two verses earlier. The surah draws no moral: it names the day, shows two weights and two outcomes, and stops. And it stops in rhyme — read verses 6 to 11 aloud and listen to the endings: mawāzīnuh, rāḍiyah, mawāzīnuh, hāwiyah, hiyah, ḥāmiyah, six consecutive lines on more or less the same sound. If you lose your place here, the rhyme usually hands it back.

"And what will make you know?" — a pattern that transfers

The three words وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا (wamā adrāka mā, "And what will make you know what") are not particular to Al-Qariah. Across the 37 surahs of Juz Amma, أَدْرَىٰكَ (adrāka) appears in 7 of them, وَمَآ (wamā) in 18 and مَا (mā) in 23 — and wherever adrāka turns up it arrives inside this same frame, with only the tail of the verse changing.

That question appears in Al-Humazah, Al-Qadr, Al-Balad, At-Tariq, Al-Mutaffifin and Al-Infitar as well as here — and twice within Al-Qariah itself. Al-Humazah comes earlier in the learning order, so if you have done it, the first three words of verse 3 here are not new at all.

This is worth being explicit about with a child, because it changes what they are learning. A verse built on this frame is usually four or five words long, three of which are the frame — so learning it once gives you most of a verse in six other surahs, plus the ability to recognise what it does: it marks the thing asked about as beyond the listener's reach, then answers it a line or two later.

The same goes for the fork in verses 6 and 8. فَأَمَّا (fa-ammā) appears in 6 surahs of Juz Amma and وَأَمَّا (wa-ammā) in 7 — Ad-Duhaa, Al-Layl, Al-Fajr and Al-Inshiqaq all use this two-branch structure. Al-Qariah is a good place to meet it, because here the branches are four words each and impossible to miss.

Words you already know

Al-Qariah sits fourteenth in the learning order, so 7 of its 28 distinct word forms — 25 per cent — have already appeared in a surah met before it: ٱلنَّاسُ (l-nāsu, "the mankind") from An-Nas and An-Nasr, نَارٌ (nārun, "A Fire") from Al-Humazah, and مَا, وَمَآ, مَنْ, فِى and أَدْرَىٰكَ from a spread of earlier surahs.

Looking across all 37 surahs of Juz Amma, these forms from Al-Qariah turn up in three or more of them:

• مَا (mā, "What") — in 23 surahs
• مَنْ (man, "(him) whose") — in 22 surahs
• فِى (fī, "(will be) in") — in 21 surahs
• وَمَآ (wamā, "And what") — in 18 surahs
• يَوْمَ (yawma, "(The) Day") — in 8 surahs
• أَدْرَىٰكَ (adrāka, "will make you know") — in 7 surahs
• وَأَمَّا (wa-ammā, "But as for") — in 7 surahs
• فَأَمَّا (fa-ammā, "Then as for") — in 6 surahs

Four of those eight appear in eighteen or more of Juz Amma's thirty-seven surahs. That is the argument behind studying short surahs alongside the most common words in the Quran: the words that repeat are the joints of the language rather than its nouns, and picking them up inside a surah you are memorising anyway costs nothing extra.

How long it takes to learn

This one takes longer than what came before it, and it is worth saying so plainly. If Al-Asr went in over a single day — three verses, fourteen words — Al-Qariah will not. Eleven verses and thirty-six words is about two and a half times the material, and although the verses are short there are more of them to keep in order.

A realistic pace is a week to ten days for the sound, in short daily sittings rather than one long push: verses 1 to 3 as a unit, verses 4 and 5 as the pair they are, verses 6 to 9 as the fork, then verses 10 and 11 as the close. Four chunks rather than eleven separate verses is the honest way to think about the workload. The meaning costs less than the length implies, because eight of the thirty-six words repeat and the wamā adrāka mā frame carries four of them. Then come back after a week and again after a month — the return visits decide whether it stays, which is what spaced repetition for Quran memorisation is about.

In the learning order Al-Qariah comes straight after Surah At-Takathur and straight before Surah Al-Adiyat — also eleven verses, and a similar step up. The order to learn the short surahs sets out the wider sequence, and for a shorter surah to alternate with, Surah Al-Fil is five verses built around the same kind of rhetorical question. SurahKids has Al-Qariah with per-word audio, flashcards and quizzes on the words themselves, alongside the other 36 surahs of Juz Amma.

FAQ

What is the meaning of Surah Al-Qariah?

Surah Al-Qariah names a day called the Striking Calamity, asks twice what it is, then describes it: mankind like scattered moths, the mountains like fluffed-up wool, and two outcomes depending on whether a person's scales are heavy or light — a pleasant life, or the Pit, which the last verse calls a Fire, intensely hot.

What does "al-Qariah" mean in English?

The rendering used here is "the Striking Calamity", built on a word to do with striking or knocking; you will also see "the Calamity" or "the Striking Hour". Translations differ because the Arabic carries a range no single English phrase matches — which is itself why the surah spends verses 2 and 3 asking what it is.

How many verses does Surah Al-Qariah have?

Eleven, made up of thirty-six words in total, of which twenty-eight are distinct forms. It is the 101st surah of the Quran and sits in the last section, Juz Amma, among the short surahs that are usually learned first.

Why does "wa ma adraka ma" appear in so many surahs?

Because it is a fixed three-word frame rather than vocabulary belonging to one surah. Across Juz Amma, أَدْرَىٰكَ (adrāka) appears in 7 surahs, including Al-Humazah, Al-Qadr, At-Tariq and Al-Infitar, and Al-Qariah uses it twice, at verses 3 and 10. Learning it once gives you most of a verse in each of those places.

Is Surah Al-Qariah hard to memorise?

It is a step up from the three- to six-verse surahs, but not hard for its length. Eleven verses is more to hold in order than anything before it in the learning order, but the verses are short — five words at most — eight of its thirty-six words are repeats, verse 8 is verse 6 with two words changed, verse 10 is verse 3 with one word changed, and the rhyme through verses 6 to 11 keeps you on track. Expect a week or so rather than a day.