Сура Аль-Ахкаф: Откровения, темы и толкования

46th chapter of the Qur'an

Al Ahqaf (الأحقاف, ; "the sand dunes" or "the winding sand tracts") is the 46th chapter (surah) of the Qur'an with 35 verses (ayat). This is the seventh and last chapter starting with the Muqattaʿat letters Hāʼ Mīm. Regarding the timing and contextual background of the believed revelation (asbāb al nuzūl), it is one of the late Meccan chapters, except for verse 10 and possibly a few others which Muslims believe were revealed in Medina. The chapter covers various topics: It warns against those who reject the Quran, and reassures those who believe; it instructs Muslims to be virtuous towards their parents; it tells of the Prophet Hud and the punishment that befell his people, and it advises Muhammad to be patient in delivering his message of Islam. A passage in verse 15, which talks about a child's gestation and weaning, became the basis by which some Islamic jurists determined that the minimum threshold of fetal viability in Islamic law would be about 25 weeks. The name of the chapter comes from verse 21, where Hud is said to have warned his people "by the sand dunes" (bī al Ahqaf).

According to the Islamic tradition, Al Ahqaf is one of the late Meccan chapters, chapters which were largely revealed before prophet Muhammad's hijrah (migration) to Medina in 622 CE. Most Quranic commentators say that the tenth verse was revealed during the Medinian period—the period after Muhammad's Hijrah. There are minority opinions that say verse 15 and verse 35 were also revealed during the Medinan period. Another minority opinion argues that the entire chapter was revealed in the Meccan period. The traditional Egyptian chronology places the chapter as 66th in order of revelation; in the chronology of orientalist Theodor Nöldeke it is 88th. An academic commentary of the Quran, The Study Quran, based on a range of traditional commentators, dates the chapter's revelation to two years before the hijra, around the same time as the revelation of Chapter 72 Al Jinn.

The name al Ahqaf, translated as "the sand dunes" or "the winding sand tracks", is taken from verse 21 of the chapter, which mentions "the brother of ʿĀd" (a nickname for the ancient Arabian prophet Hud), who "warned his people by the sand dunes". According to the 15th 16th century Quranic commentary Tafsir al Jalalayn, "Valley of Ahqaf" was the name of the valley, located today in Yemen, where Hud and his people lived.

Verse 15 of the chapter talks about the period of gestation and breastfeeding, saying that "His mother bears him with hardship and she brings him forth with hardship, and the bearing of him, and the weaning of him is thirty months ". Another verse in the Quran, Chapter 2, Verse 233 speaks of mothers nursing their children for two full years. Some Islamic jurists interpret the six month time difference between the durations found in these two verses as being the threshold of fetal viability in Islamic law. Based on this reasoning, Saudi Arabia's Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta issued a fatwa (legal opinion) in 2008, saying that resuscitation of premature newborns was only required for infants of at least 6 lunar months (25 weeks and 2 days) gestation. In the cases of infants born before this period, the fatwa allowed two "specialist physicians" to study the conditions and decide whether to provide resuscitation or to leave the child to die. According to a group of Saudi pediatric practitioners, in a paper published in Current Pediatric Reviews in 2013, this opinion reduces the legal consequences for the deciding physicians, up to the 25th week of gestation, and accordingly Saudi hospitals are less aggressive at resuscitating premature infants below this threshold.