Meccan surah

The Meccan surahs are the chronologically earlier chapters (surahs) of the Qur'an that were, according to Islamic tradition, revealed anytime before the migration of the Islamic prophet Muhammed and his followers from Mecca to Medina (Hijra). The Medinan surahs are those revelations that occurred after the move to the city of that name.

Meccan surahs are typically shorter than Medinan surahs, with relatively short verses (ayat), and mostly come near the end of the Qur'an. (As a general rule, the surahs of the Qur'an are ordered from longest to shortest.) Most of the surahs containing Muqatta'at are Meccan.

The division of surahs into 'Meccan' and 'Medinan' is primarily a consequence of stylistic and thematic considerations. Classification of the surahs into these periods is based upon factors such as the length of the verse and the presence or absence of certain key concepts or words (e.g. al-Rahman as name of God).

Following are some characteristics of Meccan verses, No 7 and 8 are stylistic characteristics, and the last 4 are content and subject characteristics:

One chronological order proposed by Abu al-Qasim `Umar ibn Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Kafi and considered the "traditional order" consists of 86 surahs, as follows:

Theodor Nöldeke proposed a different chronological order, consisting of 90 surahs, as follows:

The First Meccan period refers to the first period in which Muhammad started receiving revelations. The First Meccan surahs are surahs that have been revealed throughout that period. They reflect the public setting in which they seem to have been shared and due to their structure and length, they seem to be presented in a manner that would be very easy to memorize and pass along orally, not to mention that many of the surahs seem to be used during early liturgies. They are relatively shorter than other chapters in the Quran but are more diverse in terms of structure. Compared to other later surahs, the surahs of the First Meccan Period employ more rhymes despite their shorter length. They rank from being very short, a paragraph of less than 5 verses (for example surah 97, 103, 105, 108 and 111) to being organized in clusters of two (surahs 81, 91), three (surahs 82, 84, 86, 90, 92) or four verses (surahs 85, 89). Some of these surahs also take on a balanced tripartite structure that begin and conclude with. The major theme of these surahs revolves around presenting to humanity how obvious the existence of God is through the use of oath formulas involving the power of nature in an emphatic tone. We especially see the surahs reference destroyed civilizations, declaring their destruction to be the will of God. A huge stress is put on God being the creator of Earth and Heaven and everything that lies in between and also His unreachable generosity. In addition, certain surahs generally talk about ethics and values human beings should have, specially the fact that human beings should be humbled by God's power, they should not pursue an extravagant life, be loving and sharing, most particularly with the poorer. Last but not least these surahs contains eschatological prophecies. Although not as elaborated as in later surahs, these prophecies appear with a threatening tone to make people generally know about the existence of the Day of Judgement and all what it encompasses (surah 103, 68, etc.), but also, they contain some of the more visual explanations of Heaven..

...
Wikipedia