Surah Al Fil Transliteration and Translation

Background Surah Information
Surah Fil is unanimously regarded as a Meccan surah, and studying its content reveals its revelation was early. The Quraysh tribe before Prophet Muhammad’s (ﷺ) rise was still regarded as the dominant power in Mecca. They supervised all the pilgrims who would visit the Kaaba to worship their idols. There was a consistent influx of people traveling to Mecca for pilgrimage that helped to establish Mecca as a strong commercial center for commerce. An Abyssinian general having seen the prosperity a place of pilgrimage can bring tried to mimic Mecca’s success by building a church in Sana’a to compete with the Kaaba. The Arabs, however, failed to recognize the church, some traditions say some Quraysh members had actually defiled or tried to burn down Abraha’s church. Abraha then put together a military expedition of the largest army with several war elephants to stampede and destroy the Kaaba to gain popularity of his place of worship. But Allah (سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ) had other plans, he protected the Quraysh and the Kaaba by sending a swarm of birds that carried stones and small pebbles and dropped them from extreme heights destroying Abraha’s army completely.

The divine intervention led the Arabs to believe that the Quraysh who oversaw the Kaaba as being the chosen men of God and true custodians of the house of Allah. It is believed this was part of the reason why the Surah was revealed to serve as a reminder to the Quraysh that they were not saved because they were superior in status but because Allah wished to protect the Kaaba and to give passage to His final Messenger who was also born the same year (i.e. 570 CE).

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🤲 Here you can read Surah Fil in Arabic text but for those not strong in reading Arabic, we’ve included the roman transliteration to help you with the pronunciation.
🤲 For the knowledge seekers we’ve incorporated various respected English translations to help understand the meaning of each verse. We’re also expanding to include more languages to help people understand these verses in their native tongue. Currently, this includes Hindi, Urdu, and Malay.
🤲 You can listen to the MP3 audio of Surah Fil with the beautiful recitation by Mishary Al-Alfasy, just press play. For faster navigation use the keyboard shortcuts spacebar, d, and/or arrow keys.
🤲 Once you press play it will automatically scroll to the correct verse giving a hands-free experience so you can just focus on reading and don’t need to scroll. You can turn this feature off in the settings. (keyboard shortcuts, s=settings, t=tafsir, and q= Qur’an navigational menu).
🤲 Lastly, if you want to take it one step further you can go to the individual ayat pages where you’ll find the Quranic commentaries by Ibn Katheer and Abul Ala Maududi which expound on each verse in detail.