Tabuk is over. The army has come home, the long march into the desert that found no enemy waiting has done its work, and now the seerah pauses to read the surah it produced. Surat at-Tawbah is one of the last chapters of the Qur'an to descend, and roughly two thirds of it was sent down for this one expedition. Today the story slows to walk through it.
It is a strange and heavy surah. It opens without the basmalah, the only one in the Qur'an that does. It names no one and yet exposes everyone who hid. And it begins with a funeral: the death of the man who spent a lifetime trying to wound the Prophet ﷺ, and the mercy that buried him anyway.
The funeral of the man who hated him
اسْتَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ أَوْ لَا تَسْتَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ إِن تَسْتَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ سَبْعِينَ مَرَّةً فَلَن يَغْفِرَ اللَّهُ لَهُمْ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّهُمْ كَفَرُوا بِاللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ ۗ وَاللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الْفَاسِقِينَ
“Ask forgiveness for them, [O Muhammad], or do not ask forgiveness for them. If you should ask forgiveness for them seventy times - never will Allah forgive them. That is because they disbelieved in Allah and His Messenger, and Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:80 Read 9:80 with tafsir
Within a month of the return, Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul fell ill and knew he was dying. He was the senior politician of Madinah, the man who would have been crowned its leader had Islam never come, and his whole record under Islam is a chain of one injury after another: turning back with a third of the army at Uhud, terrifying the believers at the trench, vowing on the road home that the honorable of Madinah would expel the lowly, and lighting the first match of the slander against Aisha radiyallahu anha. He is the ringleader the Qur'an describes without naming.
And on his deathbed, he sent for the Prophet ﷺ, and asked him to seek forgiveness for him. That request is the whole psychology of the hypocrite in a single gesture: at some level he knew exactly who Allah was, and at another he was too proud to truly submit. Umar ibn al-Khattab radiyallahu anhu could not bear it. How can you visit him, he asked, when he is an enemy of Allah? The Prophet ﷺ did not argue the point. He answered only that he hoped, through this kindness, that a thousand of those who still looked up to the man might be drawn to faith. So he went. He gave his own shirt for the burial, and he prayed over him.
Umar held on to the Prophet's ﷺ garment and recited back to him the very ayah Allah had revealed about such men: would you pray for him after he said this, and did this, and did this? It is one of the most striking moments of the whole seerah, a companion gently reminding the Messenger of Allah ﷺ of a verse, and being heard. The Prophet ﷺ replied that Allah had given him a choice in the words seek forgiveness or do not, and that if seventy times would have won their forgiveness he would have asked seventy-one. Dr. Yasir Qadhi draws the lesson out slowly: a man can have no love left for his worst enemy and still not wish the Fire on him, and still climb down into his grave to bury him. That was the tenderness of the Prophet ﷺ.
The verse that drew the line
وَلَا تُصَلِّ عَلَىٰ أَحَدٍ مِّنْهُم مَّاتَ أَبَدًا وَلَا تَقُمْ عَلَىٰ قَبْرِهِ ۖ إِنَّهُمْ كَفَرُوا بِاللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ وَمَاتُوا وَهُمْ فَاسِقُونَ
“And do not pray [the funeral prayer, O Muhammad], over any of them who has died - ever - or stand at his grave. Indeed, they disbelieved in Allah and His Messenger and died while they were defiantly disobedient.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:84 Read 9:84 with tafsir
After that burial, this verse came down. Never again pray over one of them, never again stand at his grave. It looks, at first, like a rebuke, but the Sheikh asks you to notice what it really is: Allah let His Messenger ﷺ pour out his mercy one last time, and only then closed the door.
And here is the careful part, the part the Sheikh insists you not miss. This verse never reached down to us. The Prophet ﷺ knew who the hypocrites were because Jibril had named them to him; he was forbidden from praying over people whose hidden disbelief had been disclosed from the heavens. We have no such knowledge. Hypocrisy is hidden by its very nature, that is what the word means. So when a Muslim dies who professed Islam openly, we wash him, we pray over him, and we bury him among the Muslims, and what was truly in his heart we leave to Allah. The verse drew a line only the Prophet ﷺ could see.
The surah with no basmalah
Now the seerah steps back to read the surah whole, and the first thing anyone notices is what is missing. Surat at-Tawbah is the only chapter in the Qur'an that does not open with bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. It is also among the very last to be revealed: there is barely a year of the Prophet's ﷺ life left when it descends.
Why no basmalah? Two answers come down from the Companions, and Dr. Yasir Qadhi gives both their due. Uthman ibn Affan radiyallahu anhu, who compiled the mushaf, was asked why he placed at-Tawbah beside al-Anfal with no basmalah between them, when the two were revealed so far apart. He answered that at-Tawbah was among the last surahs to come, the matter of where it belonged was not fully clear to them, and because its subject was the same as al-Anfal, fighting and striving, they set the two together and did not write a basmalah between them, unsure whether they were one surah or two. From this very report a small number of the early scholars, like Qatada the student of Ibn Abbas, even held that al-Anfal and at-Tawbah were a single surah, which is why some early counts list one hundred and thirteen. But that view stood almost alone, and the ummah settled, with no real disagreement, on two distinct surahs.
The second answer comes from Ali ibn Abi Talib radiyallahu anhu. This, he said, is a surah in which Allah severs His ties with the idolaters; it opens with a declaration of disassociation, and it would not befit such a chapter to begin with the name of the Most Merciful. Both readings, the Sheikh notes, carry a real weight: the placement was uncertain, and the tone of severance made mercy an odd door to enter by.
One more thing the surah quietly teaches, almost in passing. The order of the verses within every surah was set by the Prophet ﷺ himself under revelation; on that there is no dispute. But the order of the surahs appears to have been arranged by the Companions, who standardized it in the time of Uthman, after which it became binding on the ummah to keep. The flow you feel moving from one ayah to the next is divine. The sequence of the chapters is the Companions' trust, faithfully kept.
What is the matter with you?
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مَا لَكُمْ إِذَا قِيلَ لَكُمُ انفِرُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ اثَّاقَلْتُمْ إِلَى الْأَرْضِ ۚ أَرَضِيتُم بِالْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا مِنَ الْآخِرَةِ ۚ فَمَا مَتَاعُ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا فِي الْآخِرَةِ إِلَّا قَلِيلٌ
“O you who have believed, what is [the matter] with you that, when you are told to go forth in the cause of Allah, you adhere heavily to the earth? Are you satisfied with the life of this world rather than the Hereafter? But what is the enjoyment of worldly life compared to the Hereafter except a [very] little.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:38 Read 9:38 with tafsir
انفِرُوا خِفَافًا وَثِقَالًا وَجَاهِدُوا بِأَمْوَالِكُمْ وَأَنفُسِكُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ ۚ ذَٰلِكُمْ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ إِن كُنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ
“Go forth, whether light or heavy, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the cause of Allah. That is better for you, if you only knew.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:41 Read 9:41 with tafsir
From verse thirty-eight, the surah turns to Tabuk itself. It opens like a hand on the shoulder that then tightens: what is the matter with you, that when you are called to march, your bodies sink to the ground? Have you grown so content with this world over the next? It is a severe and beautiful warning, and Dr. Yasir Qadhi pauses to set a fence around it. These are powerful verses of jihad, revealed for a specific command at a specific moment, and it is impermissible for anyone to lift them out of that and stamp them onto his own private cause as though Allah had revealed them for him. Every legitimate cause has a share of their spirit; no faction owns them. Reading them as if they were sent down to oneself is exactly the road that leads to extremism.
Then the order becomes plain: go forth, light or heavy. Whether you are healthy or sick, rich or poor, equipped or empty-handed, go. Unlike many earlier expeditions, Tabuk was not optional; every able-bodied believer was bound to it. And the Sheikh keeps returning to the same question he raised at the start of this story: why? No real enemy materialized, no battle was fought. The expedition was a test, deliberately set, to raise the bar so high that after the Prophet ﷺ was gone, this same generation would carry the struggle out to the ends of the earth. Tabuk was Allah sorting the true believer from the one who only adheres to the ground.
If you do not aid him, Allah already has
إِلَّا تَنصُرُوهُ فَقَدْ نَصَرَهُ اللَّهُ إِذْ أَخْرَجَهُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا ثَانِيَ اثْنَيْنِ إِذْ هُمَا فِي الْغَارِ إِذْ يَقُولُ لِصَاحِبِهِ لَا تَحْزَنْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَنَا ۖ فَأَنزَلَ اللَّهُ سَكِينَتَهُ عَلَيْهِ وَأَيَّدَهُ بِجُنُودٍ لَّمْ تَرَوْهَا وَجَعَلَ كَلِمَةَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا السُّفْلَىٰ ۗ وَكَلِمَةُ اللَّهِ هِيَ الْعُلْيَا ۗ وَاللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ
“If you do not aid him - Allah has already aided him when those who disbelieved had driven him out [of Makkah] as one of two, when they were in the cave and he said to his companion, "Do not grieve; indeed Allah is with us." And Allah sent down His tranquility upon him and supported him with soldiers you did not see and made the word of those who disbelieved the lowest, while the word of Allah - that is the highest. And Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:40 Read 9:40 with tafsir
Then comes a verse that reaches back across nine years to the cave. If you will not help him, Allah is telling the believers, know that Allah already helped him, on a night when there were no believers to help, when he was one of only two, hunted, hiding in the dark of Thawr, saying to his companion: do not grieve, indeed Allah is with us. There were perhaps more Muslims gathered at Tabuk than ever before, and Allah is asking them: do you imagine I need your numbers? I stood by him when he had no numbers at all.
The Sheikh lingers on the Arabic. Allah calls him the second of two, thaniya ithnayn, which is simply the Arabic way of saying one of two people, just as one says the third of three; it carries no ranking, only the picture of two men alone. And it settles a matter forever: this is the verse that names Abu Bakr radiyallahu anhu the companion, sahibihi, in the cave. There is no other verse that calls a specific person the Prophet's ﷺ companion by this description. Anyone who denies that Abu Bakr was his companion has contradicted the plain testimony of the Qur'an itself.
Exposed by their fear of being exposed
قُل لَّن يُصِيبَنَا إِلَّا مَا كَتَبَ اللَّهُ لَنَا هُوَ مَوْلَانَا ۚ وَعَلَى اللَّهِ فَلْيَتَوَكَّلِ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ
“Say, "Never will we be struck except by what Allah has decreed for us; He is our protector." And upon Allah let the believers rely.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:51 Read 9:51 with tafsir
لَا تَعْتَذِرُوا قَدْ كَفَرْتُم بَعْدَ إِيمَانِكُمْ ۚ إِن نَّعْفُ عَن طَائِفَةٍ مِّنكُمْ نُعَذِّبْ طَائِفَةً بِأَنَّهُمْ كَانُوا مُجْرِمِينَ
“Make no excuse; you have disbelieved after your belief. If We pardon one faction of you - We will punish another faction because they were criminals.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:66 Read 9:66 with tafsir
Much of the surah is a long exposure of the hypocrites who stayed behind, and the readings the Sheikh dwells on are unforgettable. There were the men who came with the flimsiest excuses, one begging to be left home lest the sight of foreign women tempt him on a battlefield, and the Qur'an answers that they had already fallen into the very trial they claimed to flee. There were those who, had they marched, would only have spread discord through the ranks, and Allah names three kinds of people: those who sow fitna, those steady enough to resist it, and the dangerous middle, the soft hearts who would have listened. For every Companion whose name we know, the Sheikh reminds you, there were thousands we do not, and some of even that generation could be swayed; so what of ours.
And against all of that fear stands the believer's line, one Dr. Yasir Qadhi calls among the most beloved in the Qur'an: nothing will ever strike us except what Allah has already written for us. He is our protector. We wait for only one of two beautiful endings, victory in this world or martyrdom into the next, so we win in every case while the hypocrite loses in both. Then the surah turns its sharpest edge on the jokes of the road home, the mockery some of them made of the Prophet ﷺ and the revelation, and when they swore they were only chatting and playing, Allah cut through it: were you mocking Allah, His verses, and His Messenger? Make no excuse; you have disbelieved after your belief. The deepest thing the Sheikh draws out is the eloquence of it. The hypocrites lived in terror that a surah would descend baring what was in their hearts, and Allah exposed them by narrating their fear of being exposed.
The mercy at the close
لَقَدْ جَاءَكُمْ رَسُولٌ مِّنْ أَنفُسِكُمْ عَزِيزٌ عَلَيْهِ مَا عَنِتُّمْ حَرِيصٌ عَلَيْكُم بِالْمُؤْمِنِينَ رَءُوفٌ رَّحِيمٌ
“There has certainly come to you a Messenger from among yourselves. Grievous to him is what you suffer; [he is] concerned over you and to the believers is kind and merciful.”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:128 Read 9:128 with tafsir
فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا فَقُلْ حَسْبِيَ اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ۖ عَلَيْهِ تَوَكَّلْتُ ۖ وَهُوَ رَبُّ الْعَرْشِ الْعَظِيمِ
“But if they turn away, [O Muhammad], say, "Sufficient for me is Allah; there is no deity except Him. On Him I have relied, and He is the Lord of the Great Throne."”
Surah at-Tawbah 9:129 Read 9:129 with tafsir
Before it ends, the surah lets some light back in. It tells of the three Companions whose case was held back, their verdict suspended while Madinah was commanded to keep its distance from them, until Allah turned to them in mercy and forgave the men who had owned their mistake and told the truth. And before forgiving the three, Allah first declares the Muhajirun and the Ansar already forgiven, those who followed the Prophet ﷺ in the hour of hardship, the hour of Tabuk, even after a party of them had nearly inclined to waver.
And then, after a surah of severance and exposure, the very chapter that refused to open with mercy closes on the most merciful of men. There has certainly come to you a Messenger from among yourselves, one of you: your suffering weighs on him, your harm pains him, he is forever concerned for you, and to the believers he is kind and merciful. The Sheikh ties it straight back to where this story began, to the graveside of Abdullah ibn Ubayy. You saw it with your own eyes: a man grieved at the punishment awaiting even a hypocrite, eager that even he might be spared. That is the Prophet ﷺ this surah describes. And the final word given to him is the believer's whole posture in two breaths: if they turn away, say, Allah is sufficient for me; there is no deity but Him; upon Him I rely, and He is the Lord of the Mighty Throne. With that, the Tabuk material comes to a close, and the seerah turns toward the last year of his life ﷺ.