Sura

A sura (in Arabic: سورة‎, sūrah, pl. suwar), traditionally known in Spanish as azora, is the equivalent of a chapter in the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, which consists of a total of 114 suras.

Structure

All surahs except one are preceded by the basmala, a ritual formula that reads: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate" (bismi l-lāhi r-rahmāni r-rahīm). The ninth surah, At-Tawba ("The Retraction"), is the only one in the Quran that is not headed by the basmala. Most of the exegetes of the book, including Utmán b. Affan, they think that this is so because its content is connected to the previous surah, "The Spoils of War" and in the time of Muhammad they were called "The Two Who Go Together" (Al-Qāribatān), to the point that there was disagreement about whether they were two surahs or one; and for this reason the basmala was no longer included at the beginning of it. On the other hand, Ali ibn Abi Talib assures that the basmala is a guarantee of security, while this surah descended with the sword, that is, with the ayats& #39; concerning the struggle, and that is why it does not begin with the basmala. The basmala does not count as a verse, that is, it is not numbered except in the Fatiha.

Divisions

The suras are of two types: Meccan or Meccan and Medinish or Mediní. These denominations refer to whether they were revealed in Mecca, in the first moments of Islam, or in Medina, after the hijra or emigration of the Muslim community to this city to escape the persecution to which it was subjected in Mecca. In general, the Meccans are short and have a more marked poetic rhythm, while the Medinese ones correspond to the time when the first Muslim State was organized in Medina, the seed of the later empire, and are longer, in accordance with their greater normative content.. There is, however, no total agreement on which suras are Meccan and which are Medinese, apart from the fact that not all suras were composed as a block, but rather in parts, so there are, for example, Meccan verses in Medinese suras.

Ordering

In each revelation that the prophet Muhammad received from the archangel Gabriel, he was told what position those fragments occupied in the book. These revelations, which were sometimes in the form of a verse, other times in the form of a group of verses, and on other occasions in the form of complete surahs, usually responded to situations that were taking place at that time. The fact that the surahs are not arranged chronologically combined with the fact that there are religious or legal prescriptions that have varied throughout the revelations makes it necessary to carry out an exhaustive study of the meanings, the order of revelation and the contexts in which the different suras and verses were revealed.

For example, regarding alcohol consumption, in a first revelation God prohibits believers from establishing prayer while under the influence of alcohol. Later, there would be a new revelation where it is recommended not to consume it because alcohol has more harmful than positive effects on people. The logical thing is to consider that the last prescription according to its position in the book is the valid one, however, as the text is not ordered chronologically, it cannot be determined what the last prescription was other than through a work of exegesis that has given place among Muslims to a whole discipline called "science of the abrogant and the abrogated" (adjectives refer to verses) discipline currently questioned by many scholars in the semantics of the ancient Arabic language in which the Quran was written, since it differs substantially with the semantic change of modern Arabic which takes the Ayah out of context on which said "discipline" (see Naskh (exegesis)).