Circumstances of Revelation
Place: Mecca, as the context indicates. → Introduction
Verses 1–7, the occasion: Imam al-Bāqir reports that Abū Jahl and some of Quraysh went to Abū Ṭālib and asked him to make the Prophet leave their gods alone. The Prophet offered them instead a declaration by which they would rule the Arabs: there is no god but Allah. They put their fingers in their ears and left, saying, We heard nothing of this in the latest religions; it is but an invention (), and God revealed verses 1–7. Tafsīr al-Qummī gives a similar account, set after the Prophet proclaimed his call openly: Quraysh offered him wealth and rule, and he replied that even if they put the sun in his right hand and the moon in his left he would not want them; it says verses 4–7 were revealed then, together with verses 8–11. Al-Mizan: the story is also related through Sunni chains. → Narrations
Verse 11 (a host defeated over there, one of the factions): Tafsīr al-Qummī takes the factions as those who allied against the Prophet at the siege of Medina. Al-Mizan: the verse groups these deniers among the parties that united against the Prophet and that God ultimately put an end to, and so calls them defeated although they had not yet been defeated when it was revealed. → Commentary on verse 11 · Narrations
A summary prepared from Tafsīr al-Mīzān: where and when the sūrah was revealed, and the occasions reported for its verses, with the ʿAllāmah's view of them. Each point links to the full discussion.