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Surah At-Takathur Meaning, Word by Word

3 September 2026 · Surah meanings

Surah At-Takathur is the 102nd surah of the Quran, eight verses and twenty-eight words long, and almost nothing in it is said only once. Its twenty-eight words come from twenty distinct forms: كَلَّا appears three times, تَعْلَمُونَ three times, ثُمَّ three times, سَوْفَ twice and ٱلْيَقِينِ twice. Of the 37 surahs of Juz Amma, only Al-Kafirun repeats itself more.

That repetition is the surah's method rather than a shortage of vocabulary, and it makes At-Takathur unusually cheap to learn for its length — eight verses, but effectively twenty words. It takes its name from the second word of verse 1, ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ (l-takāthuru, "the competition to increase"). In the SurahKids learning order it is the thirteenth surah, after the three-verse Al-Asr and before the eleven-verse Al-Qari'ah.

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 this surah has two or three words English can only approximate.

Surah At-Takathur word by word

Verse 1

alhākumu l-takāthuru — Diverts you the competition to increase.

Verse 2

ḥattā zur'tumu l-maqābira — Until you visit the graves.

Verse 3

kallā sawfa taʿlamūna — Nay Soon you will know.

Verse 4

thumma kallā sawfa taʿlamūna — Then nay Soon you will know.

Verse 5

kallā law taʿlamūna ʿil'ma l-yaqīni — Nay If you know (with) a knowledge (of) certainty.

Verse 6

latarawunna l-jaḥīma — Surely you will see the Hellfire.

Verse 7

thumma latarawunnahā ʿayna l-yaqīni — Then surely you will see it (with the) eye (of) certainty.

Verse 8

thumma latus'alunna yawma-idhin ʿani l-naʿīmi — Then surely you will be asked that Day about the pleasures.

The surah in plain English

The competition to increase diverts you, until you visit the graves. Nay! Soon you will know. Then nay! Soon you will know. Nay! If you knew with a knowledge of certainty — surely you will see the Hellfire. Then surely you will see it with the eye of certainty. Then surely you will be asked, that Day, about the pleasures.

What the words tell you

One Arabic word carries the whole subject. ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ needs four English words here, "the competition to increase": the Arabic names not wealth and not increase but the contest of increasing, people accumulating against one another. Verse 1 is only two words, أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ٱلتَّكَاثُرُ, and the first says what the contest does — "Diverts you".

It is addressed to a group, and stays that way. أَلْهَىٰكُمُ ends in the plural "you", and so does every verb after it: زُرْتُمُ ("you visit"), تَعْلَمُونَ ("you will know"), لَتَرَوُنَّ ("Surely you will see"), لَتُسْـَٔلُنَّ ("surely you will be asked"). Eight verses without one singular address, which is unusual among the short surahs.

The word in verse 2 is "visit". حَتَّىٰ زُرْتُمُ ٱلْمَقَابِرَ (ḥattā zur'tumu l-maqābira, "Until you visit the graves"). حَتَّىٰ ("Until") does the structural work: it puts a limit on verse 1 and says nothing at all about what lies past it.

Verses 3 and 4 are the same verse twice. كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ ("Nay, Soon you will know"), then ثُمَّ كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ — the identical three words with ثُمَّ ("Then") in front. That one added word is the entire difference between the two verses.

Verse 5 begins a sentence it does not finish. كَلَّا arrives a third time, now followed by لَوْ ("If") instead of سَوْفَ: كَلَّا لَوْ تَعْلَمُونَ عِلْمَ ٱلْيَقِينِ ("Nay! If you know with a knowledge of certainty"). The "then" of that condition is never stated. Note also that تَعْلَمُونَ is glossed "you will know" in verses 3 and 4 and "you know" in verse 5 — the same form all three times; only لَوْ in front of it changes what English does with it.

Certainty twice, reached two ways. ٱلْيَقِينِ ("of certainty") ends both verse 5 and verse 7, each time after a different first word: عِلْمَ ٱلْيَقِينِ ("a knowledge of certainty"), then عَيْنَ ٱلْيَقِينِ ("the eye of certainty"). Knowledge of the thing, then sight of it; the second phrase is built on the word for an eye.

Three emphatic verbs close the surah, and then a question. لَتَرَوُنَّ ("Surely you will see"), then لَتَرَوُنَّهَا ("surely you will see it") — the same verb with the pronoun for "it" attached — then لَتُسْـَٔلُنَّ ("surely you will be asked"). Each carries an emphatic form a plain English future does not, which is why each is glossed with "surely". And ثُمَّ opens verses 7 and 8 as it opened verse 4: see, see it again, be asked. ٱلْجَحِيمَ ("the Hellfire") is named once, in verse 6, and not described — verse 7 says only that it will be seen with the eye of certainty. The last verse turns instead to a question — لَتُسْـَٔلُنَّ يَوْمَئِذٍ عَنِ ٱلنَّعِيمِ ("surely you will be asked, that Day, about the pleasures"). A surah about piling things up ends on a question about what one had.

Words you already know

At-Takathur is repetitive inside and thin on overlap outside. Only 2 of its 20 distinct word forms — 10 per cent — have appeared in a surah earlier in the learning order:

• كَلَّا (kallā, "Nay") — in Al-Humazah, two places earlier
• عَنِ (ʿani, "about") — in Al-Ma'un

That is a low figure — Al-Humazah, two places earlier, arrives with nine of its thirty-one forms already met — and worth knowing before you start. The compensation is internal: eight of At-Takathur's twenty-eight words repeat a form used earlier in the same surah, so the vocabulary to learn is twenty words, not twenty-eight.

Looking outward, these forms from At-Takathur appear in three or more of the 37 surahs of Juz Amma:

• ثُمَّ (thumma, "Then") — in 12 surahs
• يَوْمَئِذٍ (yawma-idhin, "that Day") — in 9 surahs
• كَلَّا (kallā, "Nay") — in 8 surahs
• عَنِ (ʿani, "about") — in 6 surahs
• ٱلْجَحِيمَ (l-jaḥīma, "the Hellfire") — in 4 surahs
• حَتَّىٰ (ḥattā, "Until") — in 3 surahs

يَوْمَئِذٍ is the one to notice: a single word for the two English ones "that Day", appearing here in the final verse and in eight other surahs of Juz Amma. Learn it once and it keeps coming back, the general finding in the most common words in the Quran.

At-Takathur and Surah Al-Humazah

Surah Al-Humazah is the companion piece to this surah, and Al-Asr sits between the two in both orders — mushaf and learning order alike. Al-Humazah describes one man, ٱلَّذِى جَمَعَ مَالًۭا وَعَدَّدَهُۥ ("The one who collects wealth and counts it"), who thinks his wealth will make him immortal. At-Takathur describes everyone: a competition to increase that diverts them until they visit the graves. The same subject, once close up and once wide.

They also share كَلَّا ("Nay"), which turns Al-Humazah at verse 4 of nine and opens three of At-Takathur's eight verses — and since Al-Humazah comes first in the learning order, that is where you meet the word. Structurally the two are opposites: Al-Humazah has thirty-one distinct forms in thirty-three words and almost no internal repetition, while this surah has twenty in twenty-eight.

How long it takes to learn

Eight verses and twenty-eight words is a few days for the sound. The repetition does most of the work: verses 3 and 4 are one verse learned twice, verses 6 and 7 share a verb, and verses 4, 7 and 8 all open with ثُمَّ. Nothing in the surah runs past five words.

The place to slow down is exactly where the repetition helps. Learn كَلَّا سَوْفَ تَعْلَمُونَ as one unit, then learn deliberately that verse 4 puts ثُمَّ in front of it and that verse 5 swaps سَوْفَ for لَوْ and goes somewhere else. Getting that straight early is cheaper than unpicking it later, and a return after a week and again after a month is what fixes it, which is the argument in spaced repetition for Quran memorisation. SurahKids has At-Takathur with per-word audio, flashcards and quizzes on the words themselves, alongside the other 36 surahs of Juz Amma.

In the learning order it comes straight after Surah Al-Asr, three verses and the shortest complete argument in the Quran, and before Surah Al-Qari'ah, which is eleven verses and a real step up in size. The order to learn the short surahs sets out the sequence and the reasoning behind it.

FAQ

What is the meaning of Surah At-Takathur?

Surah At-Takathur says the competition to increase diverts people until they visit the graves, tells them twice that they will soon know, and then states that they will surely see the Hellfire, see it with the eye of certainty, and be asked on that Day about the pleasures they had. Eight verses, built almost entirely from repeated words.

What does "at-Takathur" mean in English?

At-takāthur is rendered "the competition to increase" in the word-by-word above, and it takes four English words because the Arabic is one word for the act of vying to have more. Translations choose different phrases for it; each is one rendering of a single Arabic word.

How many verses does Surah At-Takathur have?

Eight, made up of twenty-eight words in total. It is the 102nd surah of the Quran and sits in the last section, Juz Amma, among the short surahs usually learned first.

Why does Surah At-Takathur repeat itself so much?

Because repetition is how the surah makes its point, and it repeats with small deliberate changes rather than exactly copying. كَلَّا appears three times, تَعْلَمُونَ three times and ثُمَّ three times, so twenty-eight words come from only twenty distinct forms. Verses 3 and 4 are identical apart from ثُمَّ at the front of verse 4, and verse 5 opens the same way once more before turning to لَوْ ("If").

Are Surah At-Takathur and Surah Al-Humazah connected?

They are close in subject: Al-Humazah describes one man who collects wealth and counts it, while At-Takathur describes a whole society competing to increase. Both also turn on the word كَلَّا ("Nay"), and Al-Asr sits between them in the mushaf and in the SurahKids learning order alike. They are separate surahs and neither is a commentary on the other, but reading them near each other makes both easier.