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Al-Jinn الجن

In plain wordsEditorial

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

Twenty-eight verses opening with a company of jinn who listened to a recitation and reported what they had heard - the hearers this surah is named for. Most of it is their speech: that they had supposed no one would speak a lie about God, that among them are the upright and others who are not, and that they cannot escape Him. It closes on what the messenger says he neither controls nor knows.

AALAMIN Editor · signed 25 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.

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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.

72:6
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.79. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.94.

Talal Itani · 2012

Some individual humans used to seek power through some individual jinn, but they only increased them in confusion.

George Sale · 1734

And there are certain men who fly for refuge unto certain of the genii; but they increase their folly and transgression
72:21
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.77. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.92.

Talal Itani · 2012

Say, "It is not in my power to harm you, nor to bring you to right conduct."

John Medows Rodwell · 1861

SAY: No control have I over what may hurt or benefit you
Show all verses the translators word differently
72:14
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.76. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.82.

Talal Itani · 2012

Among us are those who are submitting, and among us are the compromisers. As for those who have submitted-it is they who pursue rectitude.

George Sale · 1734

There are some Moslems among us; and there are others of us who swerve from righteousness. And whoso embraceth Islam, they earnestly seek true direction
72:26
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.75. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.83.

Talal Itani · 2012

The Knower of the Invisible; He does not disclose His Invisible to anyone.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

He knows the unseen, and He lets no one know His unseen
72:4
Analysis details This verse's score: 0.74. Widest pair of the 5 renderings, at 0.83.

Edward Henry Palmer · 1880

And, verily, a fool among us spake against God wide of the mark

Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · 1930

And that the foolish one among us used to speak concerning Allah an atrocious lie
More about this surahDerived
Verses
28
Words
285
Place
Meccan
Revelation position
40th of 114 in an ordering its source does not name
Opening letters
None
Bismillah
Carried by the surah, unnumbered
Word-by-word breakdown
61.4% of 285 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
0.65 across 28 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