By Time.
What does Surah al-'Asr say - and what does it swear by?
Key findingsEditorial
One finding for each passage this study carries, in the order the study reads them. Each is the reason that passage was signed into the study, in full and unedited - including, where the renderings disagree, the disagreement.
- 01 103:1–3 BY THE DECLINING DAY - MAN IS IN LOSS - EXCEPT THOSE WHO BELIEVE AND DO RIGHTEOUS DEEDS AND URGE ONE ANOTHER TO TRUTH AND URGE ONE ANOTHER TO PATIENCE. The surah is read whole: an oath, the verdict it swears to, and the exception to that verdict. 103:2 without 103:3 would be a verdict with its exception removed, so the three verses are read together.
In plain wordsEditorial written by the editors, not a translation
Three verses and fourteen words. Only one surah in this canon is shorter by word count: al-Kawthar, at ten. Whatever else al-'Asr is, it is the book at close to its briefest, and its brevity is doing work - it states a condition, a verdict and an exemption without a sentence to spare.
THE OATH. The surah opens وَٱلْعَصْرِ - an oath sworn by something, in the form the book uses when it swears by a created thing. WHAT that thing is, the five cleared renderings do not agree on. Sale 1734 and Palmer 1880 both give "By the afternoon". Rodwell 1861 gives "I SWEAR by the declining day" and Pickthall 1930 "By the declining day". Itani 2012 gives "By Time." So the five offer three different objects: a part of the day, the closing of the day, and time itself. The word occurs in this form in exactly one verse of the 6,236 - this one - so the corpus gives no second occurrence to read it against. This study does not tell you which of the three is right. It tells you that a reader meeting only one English Qur'an will not know the question exists.
THE VERDICT. 103:2 is إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ. The phrase لَفِى خُسْرٍ occurs in one verse of the corpus, this one. The renderings again split, and this time along a line worth naming: Palmer's "verily, man is in loss", Pickthall's "Lo! man is a state of loss" and Itani's "The human being is in loss." make loss the condition man is IN. Sale's "verily man employeth himself in that which will prove of loss" makes it something man DOES. Rodwell's "Verily, man's lot is cast amid destruction" makes it what has befallen him. A state, an activity, a fate: the three are not the same claim, and the estate's divergence measure puts 103:2 at band 5 of 5, the furthest apart the measure goes.
THE EXEMPTION, WHICH IS MOST OF THE SURAH. 103:3 turns on إِلَّا, except, and names four things: believing, doing the righteous deeds, and then two that are reciprocal - وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلصَّبْرِ, urging one another to the truth and urging one another to patience. The last two are what the surah adds to a list the book makes often. Believing and doing right appear together in dozens of verses; the verb تَوَاصَوْا۟, urging on one another, appears in only three verses of the whole corpus. At 51:53 it is a question asked of deniers, whether they handed a saying down one to another. The other two are 90:17 and 103:3 - and 90:17 is the near twin of this verse, urging one another to patience and urging one another to mercy. So the surah's distinctive move is not the belief or the good deeds. It is that the exemption is described as something people do TO EACH OTHER, and the book says that of only three verses.
WHAT THE SURAH DOES NOT SAY. It does not say what time, or which part of the day, is being sworn by. It does not say what the loss consists of, when it is incurred, or what is lost. It does not name anyone, describe any occasion, or give any setting. Three verses and fourteen words do not carry that, and this study does not supply it from elsewhere.
Scope of this study
This platform shows the verse, its easy-read line, its translations, a plain-words reading, and each verse among its neighbours. It does not supply occasion of revelation, interpretation (tafsir) or history, and it never invents them.
WHAT THIS STUDY DOES NOT ANSWER, and the layer that would. Which of the three readings of ٱلْعَصْرِ is right; what خُسْرٍ refers to; and on what occasion the surah was given. The first two need a lexicon or a cleared , and the estate has neither. The third needs : the sources register records al-Wahidi's Asbab al-Nuzul in English as pending request and not ingest-permitted, with the rest of the traditional tier likewise unavailable, and the occasions table holds 0 rows for the whole corpus. These are absences with a named cause, not omissions.
What this rests on
Opens with 103:1–3.
Easy-read
Easy-read is a simplified pronunciation, not authoritative — a rule-by-rule romanisation, not a reading. Each verse ends in its pause form, as it is said when you stop there. Pauses inside a verse and other tajwid rules are not shown. It is derived from the Tanzil Simple edition, while the Arabic above is the Uthmani edition; both are cleared, but they are not the same edition and their orthography differs.
The versesSource fact 1 passages, each with every cleared translation
1 passages, chosen for this question and signed as part of it. Each carries the reason it is here, and each renders in full: the Arabic, then every cleared translation of that verse under its translator's name.
Each verse opens on the translation that comes first in the site's fixed order, which runs from the newest translation to the oldest. The order is not a preference. Open Compare translations on any verse to read the others.
103:1–3
Why this passage is in the study finding 01
وَٱلْعَصْرِ
Easy-read · not authoritative
Easy-read (simplified)wal-'asr
DIN 31635wal-ʿaṣri
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Compare translations (4)
By the declining day
By the afternoon
I SWEAR by the declining day
By the afternoon
Sources
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Uthmani, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Receipts Tanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) · Uthmani, Version 1.1
- Edition
- Uthmani, Version 1.1
- Custodian
- Tanzil Project
- Layer
- canonical text
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
- Licence URL
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Commercial use
- yes
- Modification
- contradictory
- Licence text
- read verbatim
- Review state
- cleared
- Retrieved
- 24 August 2026
- Digest
- 203f0f1bf3158b1e5be4ab9f8f6870e5…
- Located at
- https://tanzil.net/pub/download/index.php?quranType=uthmani&outType=xml
- Convention
- Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 ayahs. The bismillah is delivered as a separate `bismillah` attribute on ayah 1 and is NOT fused into the ayah text. 112 surahs carry one: every surah except al-Fatiha, where the bismillah is ayah 1:1 itself, and at-Tawba, which has none. Sourced from the XML output; the plain-text output of the same release DOES fuse it, which is defect D1.
CLEARED. Licence read verbatim from the block embedded in this very file. Ingested exactly as shipped: no normalisation, no stripping of marks, no Unicode recomposition.
إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ
Easy-read · not authoritative
Easy-read (simplified)inna l-'insaana lafee khusr
DIN 31635ʾinna l-ʾinsāna lafī ḫusrin
The translators word this verse differently
The human being is in loss.
Compare translations (4)
Lo! man is a state of loss
verily, man is in loss
Verily, man's lot is cast amid destruction
verily man employeth himself in that which will prove of loss
Sources
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Uthmani, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Receipts Tanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) · Uthmani, Version 1.1
- Edition
- Uthmani, Version 1.1
- Custodian
- Tanzil Project
- Layer
- canonical text
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
- Licence URL
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Commercial use
- yes
- Modification
- contradictory
- Licence text
- read verbatim
- Review state
- cleared
- Retrieved
- 24 August 2026
- Digest
- 203f0f1bf3158b1e5be4ab9f8f6870e5…
- Located at
- https://tanzil.net/pub/download/index.php?quranType=uthmani&outType=xml
- Convention
- Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 ayahs. The bismillah is delivered as a separate `bismillah` attribute on ayah 1 and is NOT fused into the ayah text. 112 surahs carry one: every surah except al-Fatiha, where the bismillah is ayah 1:1 itself, and at-Tawba, which has none. Sourced from the XML output; the plain-text output of the same release DOES fuse it, which is defect D1.
CLEARED. Licence read verbatim from the block embedded in this very file. Ingested exactly as shipped: no normalisation, no stripping of marks, no Unicode recomposition.
إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّٰلِحَٰتِ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلصَّبْرِ
Easy-read · not authoritative
Easy-read (simplified)illaa lladheena aamanoo wa'amiloo s-saalihaati watawaasaw bil-haqqi watawaasaw bis-sabr
DIN 31635ʾillā llaḏīna ʾāmanū waʿamilū ṣ-ṣāliḥāti watawāṣaw bil-ḥaqqi watawāṣaw biṣ-ṣabri
The translators word this verse differently
Except those who believe, and do good works, and encourage truth, and recommend patience.
Compare translations (4)
Save those who believe and do good works, and exhort one another to truth and exhort one another to endurance
save those who believe and do right, and bid each other be true, and bid each other be patient
Save those who believe and do the things which be right, and enjoin truth and enjoin stedfastness on each other
Except those who believe, and do that which is right; and who mutually recommend the truth, and mutually recommend perseverance unto each other
Sources
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Uthmani, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Receipts Tanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) · Uthmani, Version 1.1
- Edition
- Uthmani, Version 1.1
- Custodian
- Tanzil Project
- Layer
- canonical text
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
- Licence URL
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Commercial use
- yes
- Modification
- contradictory
- Licence text
- read verbatim
- Review state
- cleared
- Retrieved
- 24 August 2026
- Digest
- 203f0f1bf3158b1e5be4ab9f8f6870e5…
- Located at
- https://tanzil.net/pub/download/index.php?quranType=uthmani&outType=xml
- Convention
- Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 ayahs. The bismillah is delivered as a separate `bismillah` attribute on ayah 1 and is NOT fused into the ayah text. 112 surahs carry one: every surah except al-Fatiha, where the bismillah is ayah 1:1 itself, and at-Tawba, which has none. Sourced from the XML output; the plain-text output of the same release DOES fuse it, which is defect D1.
CLEARED. Licence read verbatim from the block embedded in this very file. Ingested exactly as shipped: no normalisation, no stripping of marks, no Unicode recomposition.
Other languages (18)
103:1 Betohem në kohën
103:2 se vërtet njeriu është në humbje,
103:3 përveç atyre që besojnë, bëjnë vepra të mira, këshillojnë njëri-tjetrin për të vërtetën dhe këshillojnë njëri-tjetrin për durim.
103:1 সময়ের শপথ,
103:2 নিশ্চয় মানুষ ক্ষতির মধ্যে নিমজ্জিত।
103:3 তবে তারা ছাড়া যারা ঈমান এনেছে, সৎকাজ করেছে, পরস্পরকে সত্যের উপদেশ দিয়েছে এবং পরস্পরকে ধৈর্যের উপদেশ দিয়েছে।(১)
103:1 Tako mi vremena,
103:2 doista je čovjek na gubitku,
103:3 samo nisu oni koji vjeruju i dobra djela čine, i koji jedni drugima Istinu preporučuju i koji jedni drugima preporučuju strpljenje.
103:1 Tako mi vremena,
103:2 doista je čovjek na gubitku,
103:3 samo nisu oni koji vjeruju i dobra djela čine, i koji jedni drugima Istinu preporučuju i koji jedni drugima preporučuju strpljenje.
103:1 Mi wooɗndirii waqtu asri.
103:2 Pellet neɗɗo hina woni ko e perte.
103:3 Si wona ɓeen gooŋɗinɓe ɓe ngolli golle moƴƴe ɗe, hino woodani ɓe njoɓdi ndi taƴondirtaa.
103:1 (მე, ალლაჰი) ვფიცავ დროს,
103:2 ჭეშმარიტად ადამიანი ზარალშია,
103:3 გარდა იმათისა, ვინც ირწმუნა ალლაჰი და აკეთებდა კეთილ საქმეებს, და ერთმანეთს ურჩევდნენ ჭეშმარიტებას[1], და ერთმანეთს ურჩევდნენ მოთმინებას.
103:1 Beim Zeitalter!
103:2 Wahrlich, der Mensch befindet sich fürwahr in Verlust.
103:3 Ausgenommen sind (nur) diejenigen, die glauben und rechtschaffene Werke tun und einander die Wahrheit eindringlich empfehlen und einander die Geduld eindringlich empfehlen.
103:1 (Ορκίζομαι) μα το Αλ-‘Άσρ (το Χρόνο)!
103:2 Ότι ο άνθρωπος βρίσκεται σε απώλεια,
103:3 Εκτός απ' εκείνους που πιστεύουν, κάνουν ενάρετες πράξεις, συνιστούν ο ένας στον άλλο την αλήθεια (την αληθινή πίστη και το να πράττουν καλές πράξεις) και συνιστούν ο ένας στον άλλο την υπομονή.
103:1 Per l’Era in corso:
103:2 In verità l’umanità è in perdizione,
103:3 tranne quelli che hanno creduto e hanno fatto il bene e si sono raccomandati l’un l’altro la verità e la pazienza.
103:1 1. Prisiekiu Al-Asr (laiku)!
103:2 2. Iš tiesų, žmogus yra nuostolyje,
103:3 3. išskyrus tuos, kurie patikėjo ir darė teisingus darbus, ir patarinėjo vienas kitam dėl tiesos, ir patarinėjo vienas kitam dėl kantrybės.
103:1 Клянусь предвечерьем!
103:2 Воистину, человек пребывает в убытке,
103:3 кроме тех, кто которые уверовали, совершали праведные деяния, заповедовали друг другу истину и заповедовали друг другу терпение.
103:1 Тако ми времена,
103:2 заиста је човек на губитку,
103:3 само нису они који верују и раде добра дела, и који једни другима препоручују истину и који једни другима препоручују стрпљење.
103:1 Ninaapa kwa Zama!
103:2 Hakika binadamu bila ya shaka yuko katika hasara.
103:3 Ila wale walioamini, na wakatenda mema, na wakausiana kwa haki, na wakausiana kusubiri.
103:1 Vid tiden!
103:2 Människan är sannerligen i förlust.
103:3 Utom de som tror och handlar rättfärdigt, och som manar varandra till sanningen och som manar varandra att vara ståndaktiga.
103:1 Asra yemin olsun.
103:2 Şüphesiz insanlık hüsran içindedir.
103:3 Ancak iman edenler ve salih amel yapanlar, birbirlerine hakkı ve sabrı tavsiye edenler müstesna.
Show context
What this study rests on, and what it refusessigned with it7 of the 8 paragraphs signed with this study; the paragraph naming what it does not answer is at the top of the page
The selection above and this account of it are part of what was signed. Where the renderings disagree it says so; where the question runs past what has cleared the rights audit it says that too.
The surah's own text and the five cleared renderings of it, read in full, and nothing else.
THE SERVED ARABIC is Tanzil Uthmani 1.1 (Tanzil Qur'an text, Uthmani, Version 1.1; licence CC BY 3.0), the text this platform serves. Every Arabic phrase quoted in the synthesis above is a substring of the served text at the verse cited, checked character by character on 2026-09-08.
The five cleared translations, in full at 103:1-3, and no others: Sale 1734, Rodwell 1861, Palmer 1880, Pickthall 1930 and Itani 2012. All five render all three verses; none of surah 103 falls in Palmer's seven missing verses. Every English phrase attributed to a translator above is quoted from that translator's row in the translations table at the verse cited, verbatim including Pickthall's "Lo! man is a state of loss", which is reproduced as it stands in the served rendering.
THE EDITOR'S PLAIN READING, quoted rather than re-derived. The plain-reading layer carries a signed surah-level reading of 103: "Three verses and fourteen words, the second fewest words of any surah in this canon: an oath, then that man is in loss, except those who believe, do right, and urge truth and patience on one another." The synthesis above states the same content and is consistent with it by design, under the one-claim-one-wording practice. The word count in that reading was re-checked for this draft and holds: the morphology tokens gives surah 103 fourteen tokens, and only surah 108 has fewer, at ten.
NO MEANING IS ASSIGNED TO ٱلْعَصْرِ, AND THAT IS DELIBERATE. The study reports what the five translators did with the word and stops. It does not say the word "means" time, or the afternoon, or the late day, because the estate holds no lexicon source of any kind - the sources register has no lexicon row, cleared or otherwise - and no cleared . Morphology is held only as CAMeL Morph MSA 1.0, a Modern Standard Arabic analyser used for tokenisation, and it is not a dictionary of Qur'anic usage; nothing above rests on it except the token count.
WHERE THE NUMBERS COME FROM. Every count is a query against the live tables on 2026-09-08, none is quoted from a source: 3 verses in surah 103 (the surah verse counts); 14 tokens, second fewest after surah 108's 10 (the morphology tokens); Meccan, position 13 of 114 in the one ordering the platform holds (the recorded place of revelation, the surah revelation positions - and that ordering is unnamed, as the study In what order was the Qur'an revealed, and why is that not the order of the book? sets out); ٱلْعَصْرِ in 1 verse of 6,236; لَفِى خُسْرٍ in 1 verse; تَوَاصَوْا۟ in 3 verses, 51:53, 90:17 and 103:3; divergence bands 3, 5, 4 across 103:1-3 (the divergence scores).
Correction record, 2026-09-17. At 103:1-3, a sentence naming a study that does not carry the verse, with an unsourced count of an Arabic word, and internal measurements, were removed. The verses shown and their translations are unchanged.
Sources & method
Translations Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an ·1880 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Translations George Sale, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
George Sale, English translation of the Qur'an ·1734 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Translations John Medows Rodwell, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
John Medows Rodwell, English translation of the Qur'an ·1861 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Translations Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran·Public domain — copyright term expired
Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran ·1930 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Translations Talal Itani, ClearQuran·Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Talal Itani, ClearQuran ·ClearQuran, "God" edition, EPUB·Talal Itani / ClearQuran.com ·Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International·retrieved 7 Sep 2026
Translation by Talal Itani, ClearQuran.com https://clearquran.com
Editorial status
- Editorial status
- Editorially prepared · not independently reviewed — signed by the AALAMIN Editor; no external scholarly review
- Theme
- Review status
- Published
- 8 September 2026
- Updated
- 30 September 2026
A dashed outline marks a tag the editors handle with extra care. It describes how this study is filed and shown, not what the verses say.
AALAMIN Editor
Qur'anic text from the Tanzil Project. Copyright (C) 2007-2026 Tanzil Project License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Source: tanzil.net · Updates: tanzil.net/updates/ https://tanzil.net/updates/