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

Az-Zukhruf الزخرف

In plain wordsEditorial

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

Eighty-nine verses answering the objection that a prophet ought to have come with wealth, or from one of the two great towns. It imagines what would happen if belief were made profitable, and returns to Jesus, who was only a servant on whom favour was placed, and to the ancestors people follow without asking why. 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.

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

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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.

43:79
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.85. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.93.

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

Or do they determine any thing (against the Prophet)? Lo! We (also) are determining

George Sale · 1734

Have the infidels fixed on a method to circumvent our apostle? Verily We will fix on a method to circumvent them
43:18
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.82. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.89.

Talal Itani · 2012

"Someone brought up to be beautiful, and unable to help in a fight?"

George Sale · 1734

Do they therefore attribute unto God female issue, which are brought up among ornaments, and are contentious without cause
Show all verses the translators word differently
43:72
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.74. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.96.

Talal Itani · 2012

Such is the Garden you are made to inherit, because of what you used to do.

John Medows Rodwell · 1861

This is Paradise, which ye have received as your heritage in recompense for your works
43:1
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.73. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 1.00.

Talal Itani · 2012

Ha, Meem.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

‘H. M.
43:43
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.72. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.93.

Talal Itani · 2012

So adhere to what is revealed to you. You are upon a straight path.

George Sale · 1734

Wherefore hold fast the doctrine which hath been revealed unto thee; for thou art in a right way
More about this surahDerived
Verses
89
Words
830
Place
Meccan
Revelation position
63th of 114 in an ordering its source does not name
Opening letters
حمٓ one of 29 surahs that open this way
Bismillah
Carried by the surah, unnumbered
Word-by-word breakdown
59.0% of 830 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 89 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