Al-Mursalat, "Those Sent Forth," is the seventy-seventh surah — 50 verses revealed in Mecca.1 It is one of the surahs the Prophet ﷺ named when he was asked why his hair had turned gray.6
What it is about
The surah opens with oaths: "By those [winds] sent forth in gusts and the winds that blow violently and [by] the winds that spread [clouds] and those [angels] who bring criterion and those [angels] who deliver a message." Their subject is a single promise: "Indeed, what you are promised is to occur." It will come "when the stars are obliterated and when the heaven is opened and when the mountains are blown away." Then comes the line that will return ten times: "Woe, that Day, to the deniers."2
How it unfolds
Between the refrains, the surah sets out evidence. The fate of earlier peoples: "Did We not destroy the former peoples? Then We will follow them with the later ones." The making of each human being: "Did We not create you from a liquid disdained? And We placed it in a firm lodging [i.e., the womb] for a known extent." And the earth itself: "Have We not made the earth a container of the living and the dead?" — with its mountains and "sweet water."3
Then the scene of judgment. The deniers are told to proceed to "a shadow [of smoke] having three columns" that gives no shade, and "this is a Day they will not speak, nor will it be permitted for them to make an excuse."4 The righteous, by contrast, are "among shades and springs and fruits from whatever they desire." The surah ends with a question aimed at those who "do not bow" when called to prayer: "Then in what statement after it [i.e., the Quran] will they believe?"5
Why it matters
Al-Mursalat is built almost entirely around its refrain, which turns every sign — the winds, the womb, the earth, the fate of past nations — into a warning addressed to the listener. Its closing question makes the point of the whole surah: if this message does not move a person, no other will. To read Al-Mursalat in Arabic with translations and recitation, open it on Quran.com.