Presented by Zia H Shah MD with help of Claude

The Qurʾān swears more than ninety distinct oaths, and almost every one of them is clustered in the short, rhythmic Meccan surahs that open with the sun, the dawn, the fig, the night, the chargers, or the stars. Divine self-swearing is one of the most distinctive rhetorical signatures of the Qurʾānic text, setting it apart from biblical literature (where the deity more rarely invokes creation as witness) and from the pre-Islamic kuhhān oracles it simultaneously echoes and overturns. This article catalogues every identifiable oath (qasam, pl. aqsām) in the Qurʾān, organised by the three Arabic particles that govern it — wāw (و), bāʾ (بِ), and tāʾ (تَ) — and supplies the Arabic text together with a literal scholarly gloss for each. Because M. A. S. Abdel Haleem’s The Qurʾan (Oxford World’s Classics, 2004/2010) remains under copyright, readers should consult his published volume directly for his authoritative English renderings; the glosses provided below are independent literal translations designed for philological comparison.

What the aqsām are and why the three particles matter

The classical science of aqsām al-Qurʾān crystallised as a discrete sub-discipline of ʿulūm al-Qurʾān between the eighth and fourteenth Islamic centuries. Al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) in al-Burhān defined the oath as “a sentence by which a statement is confirmed through emphasis,” islamic-awareness and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) devoted the sixty-seventh category of his al-Itqān to the topic. Quran.com The only dedicated pre-modern monograph, Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s al-Tibyān fī Aqsām al-Qurʾān (eighth/fourteenth century), argues that every Qurʾānic oath — whether by God’s essence, His Book, His angels, time, or natural phenomena — functions as a pointer (dalīl) to the reality it affirms. Islamic Awareness The modern South-Asian exegete Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Farāhī (d. 1930), in Imʿān fī Aqsām al-Qurʾān, pushed this insight further: the muqsam bihi (that which is sworn by) is not mere rhetorical ornament but evidentiary testimony for the muqsam ʿalayhi (that which the oath confirms, also called jawāb al-qasam). Athari Creed Michael Sells, Angelika Neuwirth, and Navid Kermani have shown in turn that in the early Meccan surahs the oath-clusters also operate as dense sonic and imagistic figures whose accumulated phonetic force carries much of the surahs’ meaning.

Arabic grammarians (Sībawayh, Ibn Hishām, al-Zamakhsharī) distinguish three particles of oath, all governing the genitive. The wāw al-qasam is the most common in the Qurʾān and requires an explicit noun while suppressing the verb of swearing; wa-l-shams, wa-l-tīn, wa-l-ʿaṣr are paradigmatic. The bāʾ al-qasam is the “mother” particle, the only one that may appear together with the explicit verb uqsimu (“I swear”) and the only one able to govern a pronoun; Scribd in the Qurʾān it surfaces almost exclusively in the seven lā uqsimu / fa-lā uqsimu passages (“Nay — I do swear by…”). The tāʾ al-qasam is the rarest and most emotionally charged: it is restricted to the divine name Scribd (taʾllāhi, “By God!”) and in the Qurʾān is almost always spoken by human characters in moments of astonishment, protest, or solemn resolve. The relative frequency — perhaps seventy wāw-oaths, eight bāʾ-oaths with uqsimu, nine tāʾ-oaths — already signals something about their respective registers.

Two recurring features deserve preliminary note. First, the jawāb al-qasam is sometimes suppressed (as in Sūrat al-Fajr and Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt) and must be inferred from the surah’s subsequent argument, a rhetorical compression classical grammarians call ḥadhf. Second, the opening lā of lā uqsimu has generated a thousand-year debate: the majority view (al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Zamakhsharī) treats it as a pleonastic emphatic or as a rebuttal of an implicit denial (“Nay — I do swear…”), while a minority read it as plain negation in which God declines to swear by objects associated with pagan soothsaying. IQRAResearchGate

Section 1 — Oaths using the particle wāw (و)

The wāw al-qasam is the ordinary particle of Qurʾānic oath. Where the oath-sequence contains linked clauses joined by fāʾ or a second wāw, the whole cluster counts as a single oath complex whose force is generated by the opening particle. The following catalogue proceeds in canonical muṣḥaf order.

Sūrat Yā-Sīn (36:2–4)

يسٓ ۝ وَٱلْقُرْءَانِ ٱلْحَكِيمِ ۝ إِنَّكَ لَمِنَ ٱلْمُرْسَلِينَ ۝ عَلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ

Literal gloss: “Yā-Sīn. By the Qurʾān full of wisdom — indeed you are among the messengers, upon a straight path.” The jawāb (v. 3–4) affirms Muḥammad’s prophethood.

Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt (37:1–4)

وَٱلصَّٰٓفَّٰتِ صَفًّا ۝ فَٱلزَّٰجِرَٰتِ زَجْرًا ۝ فَٱلتَّٰلِيَٰتِ ذِكْرًا ۝ إِنَّ إِلَٰهَكُمْ لَوَٰحِدٌ

Literal gloss: “By those ranged in ranks, by those who drive in rebuke, by those who recite a reminder — indeed your God is One.” Classical tafsīr (al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī) identifies the three cohorts as angels standing in ranks, Surah QuranQuran angels driving the clouds or rebuking demons, Khaled Alsabt and angels reciting revelation. Tafsir

Sūrat Ṣād (38:1)

صٓ ۚ وَٱلْقُرْءَانِ ذِى ٱلذِّكْرِ

Literal gloss: “Ṣād. By the Qurʾān, possessor of the reminder.” The jawāb is grammatically suppressed; exegetes supply “this Qurʾān is true” or “Muḥammad is a true prophet,” the denial of which is then reported in v. 2.

Sūrat Qāf (50:1)

قٓ ۚ وَٱلْقُرْءَانِ ٱلْمَجِيدِ

Literal gloss: “Qāf. By the glorious Qurʾān.” Again the jawāb is suppressed; most commentators supply “you shall indeed be resurrected,” pointing forward to v. 3.

Sūrat al-Dhāriyāt (51:1–6)

وَٱلذَّٰرِيَٰتِ ذَرْوًا ۝ فَٱلْحَٰمِلَٰتِ وِقْرًا ۝ فَٱلْجَٰرِيَٰتِ يُسْرًا ۝ فَٱلْمُقَسِّمَٰتِ أَمْرًا ۝ إِنَّمَا تُوعَدُونَ لَصَادِقٌ ۝ وَإِنَّ ٱلدِّينَ لَوَٰقِعٌ

Literal gloss: “By the scatterers scattering, by those bearing a heavy load, by those coursing with ease, by those apportioning a command — what you are promised is true, and the Judgement is surely to befall.” Balaipublikasi The four cohorts are traditionally glossed (following a report from ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib) as winds, clouds, ships, and angels. Quran +2

A second divine oath occurs later in the same surah at Q 51:23:

فَوَرَبِّ ٱلسَّمَآءِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ إِنَّهُۥ لَحَقٌّ مِّثْلَ مَآ أَنَّكُمْ تَنطِقُونَ

Literal gloss: “So by the Lord of the sky and the earth, it is the truth — as surely true as the fact that you speak.”

Sūrat al-Ṭūr (52:1–8)

وَٱلطُّورِ ۝ وَكِتَٰبٍ مَّسْطُورٍ ۝ فِى رَقٍّ مَّنشُورٍ ۝ وَٱلْبَيْتِ ٱلْمَعْمُورِ ۝ وَٱلسَّقْفِ ٱلْمَرْفُوعِ ۝ وَٱلْبَحْرِ ٱلْمَسْجُورِ ۝ إِنَّ عَذَابَ رَبِّكَ لَوَٰقِعٌ ۝ مَّا لَهُۥ مِن دَافِعٍ

Literal gloss: “By the Mount, by a Book inscribed on a parchment unrolled, by the frequented House, by the elevated canopy, by the swollen sea — indeed the punishment of your Lord is to befall; nothing can avert it.” The six oath-objects move from Sinai through revelation’s material form to the angelic counterpart of the Kaʿba, to sky, to sea — a cosmic sweep in six lines.

Sūrat al-Najm (53:1–2)

وَٱلنَّجْمِ إِذَا هَوَىٰ ۝ مَا ضَلَّ صَاحِبُكُمْ وَمَا غَوَىٰ

Literal gloss: “By the star when it plunges — your companion has not strayed, nor has he erred.” The muqsam ʿalayhi is a direct defence of the Prophet’s veridical visionary experience narrated in the following verses.

Sūrat al-Muddaththir (74:32–35)

كَلَّا وَٱلْقَمَرِ ۝ وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذْ أَدْبَرَ ۝ وَٱلصُّبْحِ إِذَآ أَسْفَرَ ۝ إِنَّهَا لَإِحْدَى ٱلْكُبَرِ

Literal gloss: “Nay — by the moon, by the night when it retreats, by the morning when it breaks — indeed it [Saqar] is among the greatest [of calamities].” The opening kallā (“nay”) marks this as an emphatic refutation that then pivots into oath.

Sūrat al-Mursalāt (77:1–7)

وَٱلْمُرْسَلَٰتِ عُرْفًا ۝ فَٱلْعَٰصِفَٰتِ عَصْفًا ۝ وَٱلنَّٰشِرَٰتِ نَشْرًا ۝ فَٱلْفَٰرِقَٰتِ فَرْقًا ۝ فَٱلْمُلْقِيَٰتِ ذِكْرًا ۝ عُذْرًا أَوْ نُذْرًا ۝ إِنَّمَا تُوعَدُونَ لَوَٰقِعٌ

Literal gloss: “By those sent in succession, by those raging in tempest, by those spreading abroad, by those separating apart, by those delivering a reminder — as exoneration or as warning — what you are promised is surely to befall.” Al-Ṭabarī preserves both an angelic and a meteorological reading for each participle. Al-AwailTafsir

Sūrat al-Nāziʿāt (79:1–5)

وَٱلنَّٰزِعَٰتِ غَرْقًا ۝ وَٱلنَّٰشِطَٰتِ نَشْطًا ۝ وَٱلسَّٰبِحَٰتِ سَبْحًا ۝ فَٱلسَّٰبِقَٰتِ سَبْقًا ۝ فَٱلْمُدَبِّرَٰتِ أَمْرًا

Literal gloss: “By those who wrench out violently, by those who draw forth gently, by those who glide in swimming, by those who race ahead, by those who direct an affair.” This is the locus classicus of the suppressed jawāb: no response clause appears, and grammarians from al-Farrāʾ onwards supply “you shall surely be raised,” cohering with the eschatological material in vv. 6–14.

Sūrat al-Burūj (85:1–3)

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلْبُرُوجِ ۝ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْمَوْعُودِ ۝ وَشَاهِدٍ وَمَشْهُودٍ

Literal gloss: “By the sky possessor of constellations, by the promised Day, by a witness and what is witnessed.” Grammarians dispute whether the jawāb is suppressed or appears in v. 12 (inna baṭsha rabbika la-shadīd, “indeed your Lord’s grip is severe”); the sūra’s arc links the oath to the narrative of the People of the Pit.

Sūrat al-Ṭāriq (86:1–4 and 86:11–14)

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ وَٱلطَّارِقِ ۝ وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا ٱلطَّارِقُ ۝ ٱلنَّجْمُ ٱلثَّاقِبُ ۝ إِن كُلُّ نَفْسٍ لَّمَّا عَلَيْهَا حَافِظٌ

وَٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلرَّجْعِ ۝ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ذَاتِ ٱلصَّدْعِ ۝ إِنَّهُۥ لَقَوْلٌ فَصْلٌ ۝ وَمَا هُوَ بِٱلْهَزْلِ

Literal gloss (1–4): “By the sky and the night-visitor — and what can tell you what the night-visitor is? — the piercing star: over every soul there is indeed a guardian.” (11–14): “By the sky possessor of return, by the earth possessor of cleaving — it is indeed a decisive word, and it is no frivolity.” Al-Ṭāriq is thus a rare double-oath surah, reopening the oath-mode halfway through.

Sūrat al-Fajr (89:1–5)

وَٱلْفَجْرِ ۝ وَلَيَالٍ عَشْرٍ ۝ وَٱلشَّفْعِ وَٱلْوَتْرِ ۝ وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا يَسْرِ ۝ هَلْ فِى ذَٰلِكَ قَسَمٌ لِّذِى حِجْرٍ

Literal gloss: “By the dawn, by ten nights, by the even and the odd, by the night when it journeys — is there not in that an oath for one possessed of understanding?” The Muslim Vibe The jawāb is suppressed; the surah itself comments, in v. 5, on the sufficiency of the oath-evidence for the discerning. Most exegetes tie the response to v. 14, inna rabbaka la-bi-l-mirṣād (“your Lord is ever in watchful ambush”).

Sūrat al-Balad (90:3)

Though Sūrat al-Balad opens with a bāʾ-oath (see Section 2), its oath-chain continues with a wāw at v. 3:

وَوَالِدٍ وَمَا وَلَدَ

Literal gloss: “And by a begetter and what he begot.” The jawāb arrives at v. 4: “We have indeed created the human being into toil.”

Sūrat al-Shams (91:1–10)

This is the longest continuous oath-cluster in the Qurʾān, seven parallel wāw-oaths sweeping from sun to soul.

وَٱلشَّمْسِ وَضُحَىٰهَا ۝ وَٱلْقَمَرِ إِذَا تَلَىٰهَا ۝ وَٱلنَّهَارِ إِذَا جَلَّىٰهَا ۝ وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا يَغْشَىٰهَا ۝ وَٱلسَّمَآءِ وَمَا بَنَىٰهَا ۝ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَمَا طَحَىٰهَا ۝ وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّىٰهَا ۝ فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَىٰهَا ۝ قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن زَكَّىٰهَا ۝ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَن دَسَّىٰهَا

Literal gloss: “By the sun and its morning brightness, by the moon when it follows it, by the day when it displays it, by the night when it shrouds it, by the sky and what built it, by the earth and what spread it out, by a soul and what proportioned it — then inspired it with its wickedness and its god-wariness: successful indeed is the one who purifies it, and lost indeed is the one who corrupts it.”

Sūrat al-Layl (92:1–4)

وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا يَغْشَىٰ ۝ وَٱلنَّهَارِ إِذَا تَجَلَّىٰ ۝ وَمَا خَلَقَ ٱلذَّكَرَ وَٱلْأُنثَىٰٓ ۝ إِنَّ سَعْيَكُمْ لَشَتَّىٰ

Literal gloss: “By the night when it covers, by the day when it reveals itself, by that which created the male and the female — indeed your strivings are diverse.”

Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā (93:1–3)

وَٱلضُّحَىٰ ۝ وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَىٰ ۝ مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ وَمَا قَلَىٰ

Literal gloss: “By the mid-morning brightness, by the night when it grows still — your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He loathe you.”

Sūrat al-Tīn (95:1–4)

وَٱلتِّينِ وَٱلزَّيْتُونِ ۝ وَطُورِ سِينِينَ ۝ وَهَٰذَا ٱلْبَلَدِ ٱلْأَمِينِ ۝ لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِىٓ أَحْسَنِ تَقْوِيمٍ

Literal gloss: “By the fig and the olive, by Mount Sinai, by this secure city — indeed We created the human being in the finest stature.” The oath ties Jerusalem/Palestine (fig, olive), Sinai, and Mecca into a single sacred-geographical arc.

Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt (100:1–6)

وَٱلْعَٰدِيَٰتِ ضَبْحًا ۝ فَٱلْمُورِيَٰتِ قَدْحًا ۝ فَٱلْمُغِيرَٰتِ صُبْحًا ۝ فَأَثَرْنَ بِهِۦ نَقْعًا ۝ فَوَسَطْنَ بِهِۦ جَمْعًا ۝ إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ لِرَبِّهِۦ لَكَنُودٌ

Literal gloss: “By the chargers snorting, the strikers of sparks, the raiders at dawn, stirring up dust thereby, pressing therewith into the midst of a host — indeed the human being is ungrateful to his Lord.”

Sūrat al-ʿAṣr (103:1–2)

وَٱلْعَصْرِ ۝ إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ

Literal gloss: “By the age / by the late afternoon — indeed the human being is in loss.” The shortest and among the most densely cited of the Qurʾānic oaths.

Short divine “by-My-Lord” wāw-oaths

Beyond the cosmological clusters, God swears by Himself through the formula wa-rabbī / wa-rabbika / fa-wa-rabbika in a handful of verses. These are distinct from the Meccan qasam-openers and function as emphatic affirmations embedded in discourse:

فَلَا وَرَبِّكَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ حَتَّىٰ يُحَكِّمُوكَ فِيمَا شَجَرَ بَيْنَهُمْ (Q 4:65)

“But no — by your Lord — they will not believe until they make you judge in what is disputed among them.”

فَوَرَبِّكَ لَنَسْـَٔلَنَّهُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ (Q 15:92)

“So by your Lord, We shall surely question them all.”

فَوَرَبِّكَ لَنَحْشُرَنَّهُمْ وَٱلشَّيَٰطِينَ (Q 19:68)

“So by your Lord, We shall surely muster them and the devils.”

Similar formulae occur in Q 10:53 (qul īy wa-rabbī innahu la-ḥaqq, “Say: Yes indeed, by my Lord, it is truth”), Q 34:3 (qul balā wa-rabbī), and Q 64:7. These are oaths by God’s divine essence (dhāt) rather than by creation — the category Ibn al-Qayyim foregrounds as paradigmatic.

The laʿamruka oath (Q 15:72)

لَعَمْرُكَ إِنَّهُمْ لَفِى سَكْرَتِهِمْ يَعْمَهُونَ

Literal gloss: “By your very life, they are in their drunken daze, wandering blindly.” Grammatically this is not a wāw-oath but a lām al-qasam + nominative ʿamr; it is nonetheless the only Qurʾānic verse in which God swears by the life of a human being (the Prophet Muḥammad, according to the majority of the mufassirūn, Ibn ʿAbbās foremost). I include it here because it belongs to the same functional genre of divine self-swearing.

Section 2 — Oaths using the particle bāʾ (بِ)

The bāʾ of oath appears in the Qurʾān in a very specific and famous construction: the seven lā uqsimu / fa-lā uqsimu passages, in which the verb of swearing (uqsimu, “I swear”) is made overt and governs its object through the bāʾ. The opening lā generated the major grammatical controversy summarised above; the majority reading treats it as an emphatic that intensifies rather than cancels the oath. Beyond these divine oaths, the bāʾ is the ordinary particle for human oaths across the Qurʾānic narratives.

Divine bāʾ-oaths with (lā) uqsimu bi-

Sūrat al-Wāqiʿa (56:75–77)

فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِمَوَٰقِعِ ٱلنُّجُومِ ۝ وَإِنَّهُۥ لَقَسَمٌ لَّوْ تَعْلَمُونَ عَظِيمٌ ۝ إِنَّهُۥ لَقُرْءَانٌ كَرِيمٌ

Literal gloss: “So I do swear by the setting-places of the stars — and indeed it is a tremendous oath, if only you knew — indeed it is a noble Qurʾān.” This verse is itself metapoetic, pausing to comment on the magnitude of the very oath it utters.

Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa (69:38–40)

فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِمَا تُبْصِرُونَ ۝ وَمَا لَا تُبْصِرُونَ ۝ إِنَّهُۥ لَقَوْلُ رَسُولٍ كَرِيمٍ

Literal gloss: “So I do swear by what you see and by what you do not see — indeed it is the utterance of a noble messenger.” The oath’s object spans the whole of perceptible and imperceptible creation.

Sūrat al-Maʿārij (70:40–41)

فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِرَبِّ ٱلْمَشَٰرِقِ وَٱلْمَغَٰرِبِ إِنَّا لَقَٰدِرُونَ ۝ عَلَىٰٓ أَن نُّبَدِّلَ خَيْرًا مِّنْهُمْ وَمَا نَحْنُ بِمَسْبُوقِينَ

Literal gloss: “So I do swear by the Lord of the easts and the wests — We are surely able to replace them with better than they, and We shall not be outstripped.”

Sūrat al-Qiyāma (75:1–2)

لَآ أُقْسِمُ بِيَوْمِ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ ۝ وَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِٱلنَّفْسِ ٱللَّوَّامَةِ

Literal gloss: “I do swear by the Day of Resurrection, and I do swear by the self-reproaching soul.” This is the Qurʾān’s only paired lā uqsimu sequence, placing the eschatological event and the morally self-scrutinising human conscience on the same axis of attestation.

Sūrat al-Takwīr (81:15–19)

فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِٱلْخُنَّسِ ۝ ٱلْجَوَارِ ٱلْكُنَّسِ ۝ وَٱلَّيْلِ إِذَا عَسْعَسَ ۝ وَٱلصُّبْحِ إِذَا تَنَفَّسَ ۝ إِنَّهُۥ لَقَوْلُ رَسُولٍ كَرِيمٍ

Literal gloss: “So I do swear by the receders, the coursers, the hiders; by the night when it withdraws; by the dawn when it breathes — indeed it is the utterance of a noble messenger.” The first oath uses bāʾ; vv. 17–18 continue the chain with wāw, illustrating how a single oath-complex can move seamlessly between particles.

Sūrat al-Inshiqāq (84:16–19)

فَلَآ أُقْسِمُ بِٱلشَّفَقِ ۝ وَٱلَّيْلِ وَمَا وَسَقَ ۝ وَٱلْقَمَرِ إِذَا ٱتَّسَقَ ۝ لَتَرْكَبُنَّ طَبَقًا عَن طَبَقٍ

Literal gloss: “So I do swear by the twilight glow, by the night and what it gathers, by the moon when it reaches fullness — you shall surely mount from stage to stage.”

Sūrat al-Balad (90:1–4)

لَآ أُقْسِمُ بِهَٰذَا ٱلْبَلَدِ ۝ وَأَنتَ حِلٌّۢ بِهَٰذَا ٱلْبَلَدِ ۝ وَوَالِدٍ وَمَا وَلَدَ ۝ لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ

Literal gloss: “I do swear by this city — and you are a free dweller in this city — and by a begetter and what he begot: We have indeed created the human being into toil.” The oath by Mecca is made more poignant by the parenthetical acknowledgment that the Prophet, at the moment of revelation, is undergoing persecution within it.

Human and jinn bāʾ-oaths

The Qurʾān also reports a substantial body of oaths sworn by its human and jinn characters using the bāʾ. These are not divine aqsām, but their inclusion rounds out the particle’s Qurʾānic profile. The most theologically striking is Iblīs’s oath at Q 38:82, the only Qurʾānic oath sworn by a divine attribute rather than by the divine name:

قَالَ فَبِعِزَّتِكَ لَأُغْوِيَنَّهُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ

Literal gloss: “He said: Then, by Your might, I shall surely mislead them all.”

Other significant bāʾ-oaths by humans include Iblīs’s deceit of Adam and Eve (Q 7:21: wa-qāsamahumā), the ritual witness-oaths of Q 5:106–108, the covenant (mawthiq min Allāh) exacted from Joseph’s brothers (Q 12:66, 80), and the repeated aqsamū bi-llāhi jahda aymānihim formula — “they swore by God their most solemn oaths” — used above all of the polytheists of Mecca (Q 6:109; 16:38; 35:42) and the hypocrites of Medina (Q 5:53; 9:42, 56, 62, 74, 95–96; 24:53; 58:14, 18). The jahd al-aymān construction, as al-Qurṭubī notes, is the gravest oath-formula in classical Arabic, which makes the Qurʾān’s indictment of its speakers — whose oaths are invariably broken or false — all the more pointed.

Section 3 — Oaths using the particle tāʾ (تَ)

The tāʾ al-qasam is the rarest of the three particles and, in classical Arabic, is restricted almost exclusively to the divine name Allāh (taʾllāhi, “By God!”). In the Qurʾān it occurs nine times. Grammarians from Ibn Hishām onward note that the tāʾ carries a distinct emotional register — wonder, indignation, urgency, or solemn declaration — and this is borne out by its distribution: seven of the nine occurrences are spoken by human characters in charged narrative moments, principally in the Joseph cycle.

Sūrat Yūsuf (12:73)

قَالُوا۟ تَٱللَّهِ لَقَدْ عَلِمْتُم مَّا جِئْنَا لِنُفْسِدَ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَمَا كُنَّا سَٰرِقِينَ

Literal gloss: Joseph’s brothers protest to the Egyptian officials: “By God! You have indeed known that we did not come to cause corruption in the land, and we are not thieves.”

Sūrat Yūsuf (12:85)

قَالُوا۟ تَٱللَّهِ تَفْتَؤُا۟ تَذْكُرُ يُوسُفَ حَتَّىٰ تَكُونَ حَرَضًا أَوْ تَكُونَ مِنَ ٱلْهَٰلِكِينَ

Literal gloss: The brothers to Jacob: “By God! You will not cease to remember Joseph until you are ruined or among the perished.”

Sūrat Yūsuf (12:91)

قَالُوا۟ تَٱللَّهِ لَقَدْ ءَاثَرَكَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيْنَا وَإِن كُنَّا لَخَٰطِـِٔينَ

Literal gloss: The brothers before Joseph, confessing: “By God! God has indeed preferred you over us, and we have indeed been sinners.”

Sūrat Yūsuf (12:95)

قَالُوا۟ تَٱللَّهِ إِنَّكَ لَفِى ضَلَٰلِكَ ٱلْقَدِيمِ

Literal gloss: Jacob’s household, when he senses Joseph’s scent on the wind: “By God! You are indeed in your old error.”

Four of the nine tāʾ-oaths thus cluster in a single surah and in a single set of mouths — Joseph’s brothers and their circle — whose speech is repeatedly marked by this most emotionally pitched of oath-particles, a stylistic signature that binds the Sūrat Yūsuf narrative.

Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:56)

وَيَجْعَلُونَ لِمَا لَا يَعْلَمُونَ نَصِيبًا مِّمَّا رَزَقْنَٰهُمْ ۗ تَٱللَّهِ لَتُسْـَٔلُنَّ عَمَّا كُنتُمْ تَفْتَرُونَ

Literal gloss: “And they assign a share of what We have provided them to things they do not know. By God! You shall surely be questioned about what you have been fabricating.”

Sūrat al-Naḥl (16:63)

تَٱللَّهِ لَقَدْ أَرْسَلْنَآ إِلَىٰٓ أُمَمٍ مِّن قَبْلِكَ فَزَيَّنَ لَهُمُ ٱلشَّيْطَٰنُ أَعْمَٰلَهُمْ

Literal gloss: “By God! We did send [messengers] to communities before you, but Satan made their deeds seem fair to them.”

These two Naḥl verses are the only tāʾ-oaths voiced in the divine first-person plural. The tāʾ’s emotive register — astonishment, rebuke — is here directed against the Meccan polytheists, and classical commentators (al-Zamakhsharī, Abū Ḥayyān in al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ) emphasise that the particle’s human-speech register precisely serves the polemical force.

Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (21:57)

وَتَٱللَّهِ لَأَكِيدَنَّ أَصْنَٰمَكُم بَعْدَ أَن تُوَلُّوا۟ مُدْبِرِينَ

Literal gloss: Abraham before smashing the idols: “And by God! I shall surely plot against your idols after you have turned away.” This is the oath that sets the Abrahamic iconoclasm narrative in motion.

Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ (26:97)

تَٱللَّهِ إِن كُنَّا لَفِى ضَلَٰلٍ مُّبِينٍ

Literal gloss: The damned, addressing their false idols in Hell: “By God! We were indeed in manifest error.”

Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt (37:56)

قَالَ تَٱللَّهِ إِن كِدتَّ لَتُرْدِينِ

Literal gloss: A believer in Paradise, seeing his former tempter in Hellfire: “By God! You nearly brought me to ruin.”

Patterns, distribution, and what the oaths argue

Several patterns emerge from this inventory. First, the wāw-oaths overwhelmingly concentrate in the short Meccan surahs of the final juzʾ and its near neighbours, where they function as concentrated dramatic openings; the bāʾ-oaths concentrate in the slightly longer middle-Meccan surahs (al-Wāqiʿa, al-Ḥāqqa, al-Maʿārij, al-Qiyāma, al-Takwīr, al-Inshiqāq, al-Balad); the tāʾ-oaths are narrative, embedded in the speech of characters, and cluster in Sūrat Yūsuf. The distribution is not random but registers a genre hierarchy: wāw for oracular cosmic proclamation, bāʾ for explicit first-person divine asseveration, tāʾ for emotionally marked human speech.

Second, the objects sworn by fall into a small set of recurring categories: cosmic phenomena (sun, moon, night, dawn, stars, sky, earth), sacred geography (Mount Sinai, the frequented House, this city Mecca, the fig and the olive of Palestine), the Qurʾān itself and its material transmission (the Wise Qurʾān, the glorious Qurʾān, a Book inscribed on parchment unrolled), angelic and quasi-angelic agencies (those in ranks, those that drive, those that pull out souls, those that direct affairs), and time (dawn, morning brightness, ten nights, the age, the night-visitor). What the oaths defend — the muqsam ʿalayhi — is just as consistent: the oneness of God (37:4), the truth of prophecy (36:3; 53:2), the certainty of resurrection and judgement (51:5–6; 52:7; 77:7; 75:3–4), the nobility of the Qurʾān (56:77; 69:40; 81:19), and the moral asymmetry of human striving (92:4; 100:6; 103:2). Al-Farāhī’s argumentative reading is borne out: the oath-objects furnish evidence for the oath-claims, not mere rhetorical garnish.

Third, the tāʾ’s emotive function is strikingly consistent across its nine occurrences — protest (the brothers at 12:73), exasperation (12:85), repentance (12:91), dismissal (12:95), resolve (21:57), regret (26:97; 37:56), divine rebuke (16:56, 63). The particle that is least flexible grammatically turns out to be the most expressive psychologically.

Conclusion

The Qurʾān’s oaths are not ornamental but structural. They open surahs, close arguments, and stake the Book’s most fundamental claims — the oneness of God, the reality of the resurrection, the truth of revelation — on the evidentiary witness of creation itself. The three particles form a graded rhetorical system: the wāw mobilises cosmic phenomena as oracular witnesses; the bāʾ foregrounds the act of divine swearing, complete with the famous lā that both negates and intensifies; the tāʾ reserves itself for the emotionally charged voice of the human character, concentrated above all in the Joseph story. Read in aggregate, the aqsām reveal a Qurʾān that prefers to argue by summoning witnesses rather than by issuing decrees: over ninety times, the text pauses to invoke the sun, the night, the stars, the dawn, the age, the fig, the olive, Sinai, Mecca, the Qurʾān itself, and finally God’s own essence, asking the listener to weigh the evidence and respond. For Abdel Haleem’s rendering of each of these verses into modern English, readers should consult his Oxford World’s Classics translation directly; the gloss offered here has been calibrated to the Arabic alone, so as to preserve the grammatical and rhetorical texture of the qasam as the classical science of aqsām al-Qurʾān received it.