عَالَمِين AALAMIN Read the Qur'an in context Read the Qur'an

An-Naml النمل

In plain wordsEditorial

An editorial summary of the translations. Not a translation or tafsir.

Ninety-three verses, most of them Solomon: the language of birds, the hoopoe returning with news of a queen who worships the sun, the throne brought before the eye can blink, and the floor of glass she mistakes for water. It takes its name from the ant who warns her colony to get out of the way, and whose warning Solomon overhears. It opens with disconnected letters.

AALAMIN Editor · signed 29 August 2026

not a scholar — what this signature means

I am not a scholar, and nothing here asks you to treat me as one. The plain words on this site are my restatement of what the five translations shown above say, together with counts derived from the text itself — nothing more. I sign them so that a named person is accountable for every sentence, not so you'll take my word for anything. The authority on this page is the text and its translators. If my words don't match theirs, mine are the ones that are wrong.

Read the surah Go to a verse

Every verse as a number; tap one to open it. Shaded numbers mark verses where the translations differ most.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

worded differently

Where the translators differDerived

The verses of this surah whose wording differs most, most differently worded first. Under each, the two renderings that share the fewest words are quoted in full under their translators' names; every rendering is on the verse's own page. This measures wording, not meaning.

27:43
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.75. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.85.

Talal Itani · 2012

But she was prevented by what she worshiped besides God; she belonged to a disbelieving people.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

And (all) that she was wont to worship instead of Allah hindered her, for she came of disbelieving folk
27:79
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.73. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.87.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

Rely thou then upon God, verily, thou art standing on obvious truth

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Therefor (O Muhammad) put thy trust in Allah, for thou (standest) on the plain Truth
Show all verses the translators word differently
27:32
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.73. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.81.

Talal Itani · 2012

She said, "O counselors, advise me in this matter of mine. I never make a decision unless you are present."

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

She said, 'O ye chiefs! pronounce sentence for me in my affair. I never decide an affair until ye testify for me
27:6
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.72. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.87.

Talal Itani · 2012

You are receiving the Quran from an All-Wise, All-Knowing.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Lo! as for thee (Muhammad), thou verily receivest the Qur'an from the presence of One Wise, Aware
27:92
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.72. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.83.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

And to recite the Qur'an. And whoso goeth right, goeth right only for (the good of) his own soul; and as for him who goeth astray - (Unto him) say: Lo! I am only a warner

John Medows Rodwell · 1861

And to recite the Koran: and whoever is rightly guided, assuredly will be rightly guided to his own behoof
More about this surahDerived
Verses
93
Words
1,151
Place
Meccan
Revelation position
48th of 114 in an ordering its source does not name
Opening letters
طسٓ one of 29 surahs that open this way
Bismillah
Carried by the surah, unnumbered
Word-by-word breakdown
60.5% of 1,151 words carry an analysis
  1. 96
  2. 68
  3. 73
  4. 74
  5. 1
  6. 111
  7. 81
  8. 87
  9. 92
  10. 89
  11. 93
  12. 94
  13. 103
  14. 100
  15. 108
  16. 102
  17. 107
  18. 109
  19. 105
  20. 113
  21. 114
  22. 112
  23. 53
  24. 80
  25. 97
  26. 91
  27. 85
  28. 95
  29. 106
  30. 101
  31. 75
  32. 104
  33. 77
  34. 50
  35. 90
  36. 86
  37. 54
  38. 38
  39. 7
  40. 72
  41. 36
  42. 25
  43. 35
  44. 19
  45. 20
  46. 56
  47. 26
  48. 27
  49. 28
  50. 17
  51. 10
  52. 11
  53. 12
  54. 15
  55. 6
  56. 37
  57. 31
  58. 34
  59. 39
  60. 40
  61. 41
  62. 42
  63. 43
  64. 44
  65. 45
  66. 46
  67. 51
  68. 88
  69. 18
  70. 16
  71. 71
  72. 14
  73. 21
  74. 23
  75. 32
  76. 52
  77. 67
  78. 69
  79. 70
  80. 78
  81. 79
  82. 82
  83. 84
  84. 30
  85. 29
  86. 83
  87. 2
  88. 8
  89. 3
  90. 33
  91. 60
  92. 4
  93. 99
  94. 57
  95. 47
  96. 13
  97. 55
  98. 76
  99. 65
  100. 98
  101. 59
  102. 24
  103. 22
  104. 63
  105. 58
  106. 49
  107. 66
  108. 64
  109. 61
  110. 62
  111. 48
  112. 5
  113. 9
  114. 110

Meccan Medinan

Counted from the text and the spine at build time, not written into the page. Opening letters are derived from the edition's orthography: an opening token of at most five letters carrying none of its vocalisation marks. The revelation position is reproduced from Revelation order as encoded by the Tanzil metadata, which does not name whose ordering it is.

Analysis detailsDerived

These figures count the words the translations share. They measure wording, not meaning, and they do not say which translation is right.

Mean score across this surah
0.59 across 93 scored verses

The page says a verse is worded differently only above the cut below. The cut is a stated convention, not a property of the text, and it can be changed.

The cut
0.644
Share of measured verses above it
33%
Verses above it
2,079
Verses measured
6,236
Method Wording differences — derived 13 September 2026
Method
Mean pairwise Jaccard distance over the lowercased word sets of the cleared translations of each verse. A verse is marked as worded differently when its score falls in the top third of the corpus — the cut set out in Analysis details.
Scored
6,236 verses
As at
13 September 2026, 10:56 UTC
Sources for this page

Surah metadataTanzil Qur'an metadata ·quran-data.xml v1.0·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution — version not specified by the source·retrieved 24 Aug 2026

Surah metadata from Tanzil Qur'an metadata (quran-data.xml, version 1.0), Tanzil Project, tanzil.net. (C) 2008-2009 Tanzil.info. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution; the source does not state a version. Values are reproduced unchanged; this site selects and arranges them, and derives verse ranges from the division start points. https://tanzil.net/res/text/metadata/quran-data.xml