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Surah Quraysh Meaning, Word by Word

3 September 2026 · Surah meanings

Surah Quraysh is the 106th surah of the Quran, four verses and seventeen words long, and it is one complete argument: because of a particular blessing, worship the One who gave it, and here is what else He gives. It takes its name from قُرَيْشٍ (qurayshin, "(of the) Quraish") in verse 1 — the tribe of Makkah, and the tribe the Prophet ﷺ was born into.

Seventeen words makes it one of the shortest surahs in the Quran, and one of the first most children learn after the very shortest ones. In the SurahKids learning order it is the ninth surah. Verse 1 is two words long; the longest verse is seven.

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 the surah's opening word is one that English does not have a clean equivalent for.

Surah Quraysh word by word

Verse 1

liīlāfi qurayshin — For the familiarity of Quraish.

Verse 2

īlāfihim riḥ'lata l-shitāi wal-ṣayfi — Their familiarity with the journey of winter and summer.

Verse 3

falyaʿbudū rabba hādhā l-bayti — So let them worship the Lord of this House.

Verse 4

alladhī aṭʿamahum min jūʿin waāmanahum min khawfin — The One Who feeds them against hunger and gives them security from fear.

The surah in plain English

For the familiarity of Quraysh — their familiarity with the journey of winter and summer — so let them worship the Lord of this House, the One Who feeds them against hunger and gives them security from fear.

What the words tell you

One word carries the whole first half. لِإِيلَـٰفِ (liīlāfi, "For (the) familiarity") and إِۦلَـٰفِهِمْ (īlāfihim, "Their familiarity") are the same word twice over, the second time with "their" attached to the end. It is the only repetition in the surah, and it is doing the load-bearing work: whatever īlāf is, it is the reason for everything the surah goes on to ask. The root behind it carries a sense of becoming accustomed to something, and of things being brought together. English has no single word for that, which is why translations of these two verses differ from one another more than the rest of the surah does.

Winter and summer, in one phrase. رِحْلَةَ ٱلشِّتَآءِ وَٱلصَّيْفِ (riḥ'lata l-shitāi wal-ṣayfi, "(with the) journey (of) winter and summer") is three words describing a way of life rather than a single trip. Two seasons, joined by the wa- on the front of the last word, which is the ordinary Arabic "and" — the first place many children meet it as a prefix rather than a separate word.

Verse 3 is the hinge, and it starts with one letter. فَلْيَعْبُدُوا۟ (falyaʿbudū, "So let them worship") begins with fa-, "so" or "then". Everything before it was the reason; everything from here is the consequence. It is the same construction that turns Surah Al-Kawthar on its hinge, and it is worth learning as a unit rather than as a letter: fa- signals that a conclusion is coming.

"The Lord of this House." رَبَّ هَـٰذَا ٱلْبَيْتِ (rabba hādhā l-bayti, "(the) Lord (of) this House") — هَـٰذَا (hādhā, "this") is a pointing word, and what it points at is understood as the Kaaba, standing in front of the surah's first listeners. Note also what the verse does not say: not the Lord of Quraysh, but the Lord of the House they lived beside.

Verse 4 is built as two matched halves. أَطْعَمَهُم (aṭʿamahum, "feeds them") against جُوعٍۢ (jūʿin, "(against) hunger"), and وَءَامَنَهُم (waāmanahum, "and gives them security") from خَوْفٍۭ (khawfin, "fear"). Two verbs, both ending in the same "them"; two needs, one of the body and one of the mind. And مِّن (min) appears in both halves, which is why the surah has seventeen words but only sixteen distinct forms.

Surah Quraysh and Surah Al-Fil

Quraysh follows immediately after Surah Al-Fil (105) in the mushaf, and the two are very commonly read as one continuous passage. The reason is the first word of Quraysh: the lām on the front of لِإِيلَـٰفِ (liīlāfi, "For (the) familiarity") reads most naturally as attaching to something already said, and many commentators take that something to be Al-Fil. Read that way, the sense runs on — He dealt with the Companions of the Elephant, and made their plan go astray, for the familiarity of Quraysh — and some reciters recite the two surahs together for that reason.

Take it as how the pair is commonly read and taught rather than as a ruling: both are counted as separate surahs in every copy of the Quran, and each is recited on its own perfectly normally. It is still the single most useful thing to know when you are learning them, because it makes the pair one job instead of two. Surah Al-Fil word by word is five verses and twenty-three words.

Words you already know

Quraysh is ninth in the learning order, so not much has come before it: 2 of its 16 distinct word forms, 12 per cent, have already appeared in an earlier surah. Coming this early, most of what it teaches you is new.

What matters more is which of its words keep coming back. Across the 37 surahs of Juz Amma, these forms from Quraysh appear in three or more of them:

• مِّن (min, "[from]") — in 22 surahs
• ٱلَّذِىٓ (alladhī, "The One Who") — in 12 surahs
• هَـٰذَا (hādhā, "(of) this") — in 3 surahs
• رَبَّ (rabba, "(the) Lord") — in 3 surahs

Rabba is worth a second look. It is the same word you meet as rabbi, rabbuka and birabbi elsewhere — one word wearing different endings for its different grammatical roles. Counted as separate forms it looks like four words to learn; understood as one word with endings, it is nearly free. That is the argument set out in the most common words in the Quran, and it is why learning the Quran word by word pays off faster than the word counts suggest.

How long it takes to learn

Four verses and seventeen words is a small job. Most children get the sound of Quraysh inside a couple of sittings, and verse 1 — two words — is usually solid on the first try.

The meaning takes a little longer, and the sticking point is nearly always īlāf, because there is no English word to hang it on. A workable pace is verses 1 and 2 on one day, verse 3 on the next, verse 4 on the third, then a whole-surah pass, then a return a week later and again a month later. That spacing is what decides whether it stays, which is the subject of spaced repetition for Quran memorisation. SurahKids has Quraysh with per-word audio, flashcards and quizzes on the words themselves, alongside the other 36 surahs of Juz Amma.

In the learning order, Quraysh comes after Surah Al-Ma'un and before Surah Al-Fil — which is the reverse of the mushaf order, since Quraysh is the shorter of the two and the easier one to start with. The order to learn the short surahs explains the sequence, and Surah Al-Kawthar is a good companion at three verses.

FAQ

What is the meaning of Surah Quraysh?

Surah Quraysh gives a reason and then an instruction: because of the familiarity Quraysh had with the journey of winter and summer, let them worship the Lord of this House — the One who feeds them against hunger and gives them security from fear. Four verses, in which the first two are the reason and the last two the response.

Who were the Quraysh?

Quraysh is the name of the tribe of Makkah, and the tribe the Prophet ﷺ was born into. The surah names them once, in verse 1, and says nothing further about them: everything after that is about what they were given and what they should do in return.

How many verses does Surah Quraysh have?

Four, made up of seventeen words in total. It is the 106th surah of the Quran and one of the shortest, which is why it usually comes early among the surahs a child learns.

What does "īlāf" mean in Surah Quraysh?

It is glossed here as "familiarity", and it is the surah's hardest word to translate. The root carries a sense of becoming accustomed to something and of things being joined together, which is why you will also see it rendered in terms of security, custom or safe passage. The Arabic covers a range that no single English word matches.

Why are Surah Quraysh and Surah Al-Fil recited together?

Because Quraysh follows Al-Fil in the mushaf and its first word begins with a lām that reads as connecting back to what came before. Many commentators therefore read Quraysh as continuing the sense of Al-Fil, and some reciters recite the pair as one passage. They remain two separate surahs, and reciting either alone is entirely ordinary.