Al-Fajr
This sūrah was revealed in Mecca and consists of 30 verses. It criticizes worldly attachments, which lead one to transgression and ungratefulness. It threatens such individuals with the severest punishments of God in this world and the next. It explains how humankind, due to their short-sightedness and misconception, imagine that it is for their honor before God that He bestows His bounties upon them, and that it shows their dishonor if they are afflicted with poverty and need. As a result of this view, they rebel and cause mischief on the earth when they are endowed, and fall into ingratitude when they lack. However, they are mistaken in this. The fact is that whatever they experience—including power, wealth, poverty and calamity—is a test and trial from God to reveal what the person would send forth from what they have in this world for their hereafter.
Things are not as people imagine and claim. They will soon realize the fact of the matter when they face reckoning and punishment. At that point, it will become evident to them that whatever reached them—including poverty, wealth, potence and impotence—was a divine test. They will also learn that they could have sent ahead [good deeds] for their life tomorrow, but they failed to do so. Thus they chose punishment over reward. Achieving a happy life in the hereafter will only be the reward of a soul which has found peace with its Lord, which has submitted to His commands, which does not shake by the turmoil of calamities, which does not rebel when it is endowed with power, and which does not show ingratitude in the face of tragedy. The theme of the verses testify that the chapter was revealed in Mecca.
This is the ʿAllāmah's introduction to the sūrah, from the opening of the commentary.