Surah Al-Fatihah: what the seven verses actually say
Al-Fatihah in full, its names, its shape from praise to a single request, and how it is read in Tafsir al-Muyassar and in al-Safi and al-Mizan - including who the favoured are.
The surah in one line
Seven verses, the opening of the mushaf, and the most-recited passage in a Muslim's life: it begins every unit of every prayer. In substance it is praise of God, then a declaration that He alone is worshipped, then one request — to be guided along the straight path.
The text
In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful.
[All] praise is [due] to Allah, Lord of the worlds -
The Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful,
Sovereign of the Day of Recompense.
It is You we worship and You we ask for help.
Guide us to the straight path -
The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray.
Meccan or Medinan?
Most commentators hold it Meccan. Al-Fayd al-Kashani opens his commentary on the surah by setting out three positions as they stand: Meccan; or, it is said, Medinan; or, it is said, revealed twice — once at Mecca and once at Medina — and it is seven verses.
That third position is a move commentators make for other passages too, and the reason here is that the surah is bound to the prayer: the prayer was made obligatory at Mecca and its rulings settled at Medina.
Why "Al-Fatihah"?
Because the mushaf opens with it — fatihah means "the opener". Commentators also record other names for it, among them Umm al-Kitab ("the mother of the Book") and as-sab' al-mathani, "the seven oft-repeated". That last name is taken from a verse in Surah Al-Hijr:
And We have certainly given you, [O Muhammad], seven of the often repeated [verses] and the great Qur'an.
Al-Muyassar derives the name from the fact that the surah is recited in every unit of prayer. Al-Safi narrates from the Commander of the Faithful that the Prophet himself used the name: that the basmalah is part of Al-Fatihah, that the Prophet would recite it and count it a verse of the surah, and would say that the Opening of the Book is the seven oft-repeated.
The basmalah: a verse of Al-Fatihah, and of every surah?
In the mushaf this site serves — the King Fahd Complex's Hafs text — the basmalah is numbered as verse 1 of the surah.
This is one of the well-known points of difference. Al-Safi narrates from al-Sadiq that the basmalah is not a verse of Al-Fatihah alone:
And the naming at the head of every surah is a verse of it. The end of a surah was known only by the coming down of the opening of the next; and God sent down no book from heaven but that this was its opening.
He builds a ruling on that: he narrates, in al-Khisal from al-Sadiq, that saying it aloud in prayer is obligatory, and in al-Qummi that it is the thing most deserving to be said aloud.
Among the Sunni schools the basmalah is a verse of Al-Fatihah for some and not for others, and the division of the seven follows from that; that there are seven is not disputed. Whether it is said aloud is a juristic question that branches off the same point.
The shape: praise, pivot, request
Praise (verses 1 to 4). Praise of the Lord of the worlds, then mercy named twice, then sovereignty over the Day of Recompense. The surah opens with God, not with the one asking.
The pivot (verse 5). The middle verse, and where the grammar turns: the first four verses speak about God, and from here the surah speaks to Him. In Arabic the object is placed before the verb, which is what carries the force of "You alone".
The request (verses 6 and 7). One request only: guidance along the straight path — then a description of that path as the way of those whom God has favoured.
"Praise": how it differs from commendation
Al-Mizan begins from the language, with a fine distinction:
Hamd, by one account, is praise for what is beautiful and chosen, while madh is wider than it. One says: I praised so-and-so, or commended him, for his generosity; and one says: I commended the pearl for its clarity — but one does not say: I praised it for its clarity.
So hamd is praise for a beautiful voluntary act, while madh is broader: a pearl may be commended for its clarity but not thanked for it, because its clarity is no act of its choosing. Al-Mizan then argues that everything whatever is God's creation (Ghafir 62) and that He made everything He created good (As-Sajdah 7) — so beauty tracks createdness, and nothing beautiful remains that is not from Him. That is the force of the definite article in "the praise".
"Sovereign of the Day of Recompense": real ownership, not conventional
Al-Safi notes the other reading of the word. The mushaf here has maalik — "owner, sovereign"; the other reading shortens the first vowel to give malik, "King of the Day of Recompense". Al-Safi reports from al-Ayyashi that al-Sadiq read it that second way countless times.
Al-Mizan asks instead what kind of ownership this is, and separates two:
And this, in society, is a posited, conventional meaning, not a real one, and it is taken from another, real meaning that we also call ownership: the way the parts of our existence and our faculties subsist by us. For we have sight and hearing, a hand and a foot, and the meaning of this ownership is that in their existence they subsist by our existence, not independent of us but independent by our independence, and it is ours to dispose of them as we wish. This is real ownership.
Our ownership of a house or a field is conventional: it lapses when the convention lapses. Our ownership of our own sight and hand is real, because in their very existence they subsist by ours. Only the real kind can be ascribed to God. From there al-Mizan derives the meaning of Rabb:
And it is known that real ownership is never separate from governance; for when a thing depends in its existence on another and is not independent of it in its existence, it is not independent of it in the effects of its existence either. So He is Lord of all besides Himself, because the Lord is the owner who governs — and so He is.
Real ownership never comes apart from governance, and Rabb is the owner who governs. On that reading "Lord of the worlds" in verse 2 and "Sovereign of the Day of Recompense" in verse 4 are two faces of one meaning.
Mercy, twice
The two names appear in the basmalah and again in verse 3. Al-Muyassar reads the first as the general mercy that encompasses all creation and the second as mercy to the believers.
Al-Safi narrates from al-Sadiq a formulation that fixes the distinction in a line:
Ar-Rahman is a particular name for a general attribute, and ar-Rahim is a general name for a particular attribute.
Ar-Rahman is a particular name for a general attribute — no one else may be called by it, and its effect reaches every existing thing. Ar-Rahim is a general name for a particular attribute — others may be so described, and its effect is specific to the believers. The two commentaries arrive at the same distinction.
"It is You we worship": worship without an exchange
Al-Muyassar glosses the verse as devoting worship to God alone and seeking His help alone in all affairs; the whole matter is in His hand, and no one holds the weight of an atom of it. It adds that the verse is why no act of worship — supplication, appeal for rescue, sacrifice — may be directed to anything other than God, and that in it is a cure for hearts attached to what is not God, and for ostentation, conceit and pride.
Al-Safi narrates from al-Sadiq another sense of the exclusivity:
It means: we want nothing from You but You. We do not worship You for a recompense or a substitute, as those worship You who are ignorant of You and veiled from You.
So the exclusivity is not only in whom one worships but in what for: we want nothing from You but You, and we do not worship You for a payment.
He also explains why the surah turns from speaking about God to addressing Him:
The servant moved from the third person to direct address because, by his glorifying of God, he was drawing near to Him by degrees until he reached a station where knowledge had become sight, report had become witnessing, and absence had become presence.
By his praise the servant drew near until he reached a station in which knowledge became sight, report became witnessing, and absence became presence — so he addressed the One he had been speaking about. Al-Mizan counts the same turn among the fine points of the verse, explaining it by God's nearness to His servants and His calling them to call on Him.
Who are "those upon whom You have bestowed favour"?
On verse 6, al-Muyassar says the straight path is Islam, and that what is asked for is not merely to be shown the road but to be directed to it, granted the ability to walk it, and kept firm on it until meeting God.
Here is the first place the two readings part in this surah.
Al-Muyassar takes the favoured to be the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous — the people of guidance and uprightness. It adds that the greatest favour of all is Islam, that whoever knows the truth better and follows it more closely has the better claim to the straight path, and states that the Companions of the Messenger of God are the foremost of people in this after the prophets, so the verse indicates their merit.
Al-Safi begins from an important restriction on what the favour itself means:
That is: say, guide us to the path of those You favoured with success in Your religion and Your obedience — not with wealth and health, for those may belong to unbelievers or to the dissolute.
The favour meant is success in religion and obedience, not wealth and health, since wealth and health may belong to an unbeliever or a wrongdoer. He then takes "the favoured" to be the people of the verse naming the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous (An-Nisa 69) — exactly what al-Muyassar says.
Then he narrates, in identifying them, what is his own. From the Prophet:
"Those upon whom You have bestowed favour" are the Shia of Ali — meaning: You favoured them with the guardianship of Ali ibn Abi Talib; You were not angry with them, and they did not go astray.
And from al-Sadiq: it means Muhammad and his descendants.
So the two readings agree on the kind — those granted success in religion — and part over who comes first within it.
Those who evoked anger, and those astray
Here the two commentaries agree in a way worth noticing. Al-Muyassar says: those who evoked anger are the Jews and those like them, and those astray are the Christians and those who followed their way. Al-Safi narrates the same identification, citing for the first the verse about those whom God cursed and with whom He was angry, and for the second the verse about those who went astray before and led many astray.
Then he generalises in a way that lifts the question out of history:
Everyone who disbelieves in God is one with whom He is angry and one astray from God's path.
And the most striking thing in the entry is al-Kashani's structural reading, which takes the two groups as descriptions rather than as two communities:
Into the path of the favoured enters every balance and uprightness in belief or in deed — they are those who said, "Our Lord is God", and then held firm. Into the path of those who evoked anger enters every falling short and deficiency, above all when it is against knowledge, as the Jews did with Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. And into the path of those astray enters every excess and extravagance, above all when it is out of ignorance, as the Christians did with Jesus. That is because anger entails distance and rejection, and the one who falls short is turned away and averted, so he is the distant one; while straying is absence from the goal, and the one who goes to excess is advancing past it, so he is the one for whom the thing sought has disappeared.
The path of the favoured is every balance and uprightness; the path of those who evoked anger is every falling short, above all against knowledge; the path of those astray is every excess, above all out of ignorance. And the reason is elegant: anger entails distance, and the one who falls short has turned away, so he is far; straying is absence from the goal, and the one in excess has gone past it, so what he sought has disappeared from view.
Al-Mizan arrives at a threefold division close to it, taken from the directions of the roads rather than from excess and deficiency:
At that point people divide, in their roads, into three: one whose road is upward — they are those who believe in God's signs and are not too proud to worship Him; one whose road is downward — they are those who evoked anger; and one who has lost the road and is bewildered in it — they are those astray.
It then separates "the path" from "the ways", a distinction it builds a great deal on:
So the ways are counted many and the path one. And this straight path is either the many ways themselves, or else they lead to it by joining one to another and uniting in it.
The ways are many and the path is one; a way may coexist with some deficiency — indeed with some association of partners with God, as al-Mizan argues from Yusuf 106 — whereas the straight path cannot coexist with straying, as the verse itself says with "nor of those who are astray".
Why in every unit of prayer?
Because reciting it in prayer is, for the majority of jurists, a pillar of the prayer. The basis is the report of Ubadah ibn as-Samit that the Prophet said, "There is no prayer for one who does not recite the Opening of the Book" — recorded by both al-Bukhari and Muslim.
That makes these seven verses the passage a Muslim says most often. The five obligatory prayers alone contain seventeen units, so seventeen recitations a day.
Where they agree
- That the surah is seven verses, and that "amin" is not one of them.
- That al-mathani is from repetition — the surah is repeated in every unit of prayer — and that the Prophet used the name the seven oft-repeated.
- That reciting it in prayer is a pillar.
- That the favour in "those upon whom You have bestowed favour" is a favour of religion and not of worldly fortune, and that its people are the people of An-Nisa 69.
- That those who evoked anger are the Jews and those astray the Christians — stated by al-Muyassar and narrated by al-Safi — and that each then extends the description to anyone who does as they did.
- That the turn from speaking about God to addressing Him in verse 5 is deliberate, however differently each explains it.
What each commentary adds
- Al-Muyassar places the Prophet's Companions foremost on the path after the prophets, reads the path as Islam, and keeps nearness and mercy within what befits God's majesty.
- Al-Safi counts the basmalah a verse of every surah and narrates that saying it aloud is obligatory; confines the purpose in "It is You we worship" ("we want nothing from You but You"); places the Prophet's household foremost among the favoured; and reads the two groups as deficiency and excess.
- Al-Mizan separates hamd from madh, builds "Sovereign" and "Lord" on real rather than conventional ownership, divides the roads into three, and separates the one path from the many ways.
Counted against the mushaf
- The basmalah is a numbered verse in one surah only, Al-Fatihah. One hundred and thirteen surahs carry it, so in the remaining hundred and twelve it is written at the head of the surah and not numbered.
- It occurs inside a verse in one place in the Quran: in Solomon's letter to the Queen of Sheba (An-Naml 30).
- Surah At-Tawbah is the only surah with no basmalah at its head.
- The word for "path" occurs twice in Al-Fatihah, in two consecutive verses — the sixth and the seventh — which is among the reasons some systems of counting treat verse 7 as two verses.
Sources
- The Quran text — the Madinah mushaf, Hafs from 'Asim, King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran. English renderings of verses are the Sahih International translation this site serves.
- Tafsir al-Muyassar — a panel of commentators, King Fahd Complex.
- Tafsir al-Safi — al-Fayd al-Kashani.
- Al-Mizan fi Tafsir al-Quran — Sayyid Muhammad Husayn al-Tabatabai.
The Arabic of every quotation is on the Arabic version of this page and on the page of each verse. The English renderings of the commentaries are ours.