Critics sometimes compare two verses about Mecca and claim that the Quran contradicts itself: one verse supposedly says Allah does not swear by the city, while another swears by it. The objection depends on reading a recognized Arabic oath formula as if it were a crude word-by-word dictionary exercise.

The alleged contradiction

The two verses are:

لَا أُقْسِمُ بِهَٰذَا الْبَلَدِ

"No indeed, I swear by this city."

Quran 90:1

وَهَٰذَا الْبَلَدِ الْأَمِينِ

"And by this secure city."

Quran 95:3

The critic wants the first verse to mean, "I do not swear by this city," and the second to mean, "I swear by this city." But that is not how the Arabic expression in 90:1 functions.

"La uqsimu" is an oath formula

The phrase in 90:1 is la uqsimu (لَا أُقْسِمُ). Taken as isolated words, la can mean "no/not" and uqsimu means "I swear." But in this construction, it is a known Quranic Arabic oath formula. The la is not a refusal to swear by what follows.

The mufassirun and grammarians commonly explain it in two sound ways:

  • La as emphasis or syntactically additional: the sense is, "I swear by this city." When scholars call it zaidah or silah, they do not mean "meaningless"; they mean it is not functioning as an ordinary negation here, but serves the force and style of the expression.
  • La as rebuttal: the sense is, "No indeed!" or "Nay!" followed by the oath: "I swear by this city." It rejects an implied false claim before introducing the oath.

On either explanation, the result is an emphatic oath, not a denial of an oath.

The passage itself confirms an oath

Surah al-Balad opens with an oath sequence. Verse 1 mentions "this city"; verse 3 says, "and by the father and what he begot"; and verse 4 gives the answer to the oath:

لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنسَانَ فِي كَبَدٍ

"We have certainly created man in hardship."

Quran 90:4

The emphatic لَقَدْ construction is exactly what one expects as the response to an oath. Reading 90:1 as "I refuse to swear by this city" breaks the flow of the Arabic passage.

The same formula appears elsewhere in the Quran:

لَا أُقْسِمُ بِيَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ

"No indeed, I swear by the Day of Resurrection."

Quran 75:1

It is even clearer in Surah al-Waqiah, where the same formula is followed by an explicit statement that it is a great oath:

فَلَا أُقْسِمُ بِمَوَاقِعِ النُّجُومِ
وَإِنَّهُ لَقَسَمٌ لَّوْ تَعْلَمُونَ عَظِيمٌ

"Then no, I swear by the positions of the stars. And indeed, it is a great oath, if you only knew."

Quran 56:75-76

The same pattern is also used in places such as Quran 69:38. A forced literal rendering of la as "I do not" in all these places would distort the Arabic usage.

What the commentators say

This is not a modern attempt to escape a difficulty. It is the standard tafsir reading:

  • Al-Tabari treats the verse as an oath by "this city," meaning Mecca.
  • Ibn Kathir states that this is Allah's oath by Mecca, the Mother of Cities.
  • Al-Qurtubi and al-Baghawi explain the verse as an oath and discuss the grammatical role of la in this type of construction.
  • Al-Jalalayn likewise takes la here as additional in the construction and identifies the city as Mecca.

A careful note: the late commentary commonly printed as Tafsir Ibn Abbas or Tanwir al-Miqbas should not be relied on as an independent proof for Ibn Abbas. The point here does not depend on that attribution; it is established by the Arabic construction and by the major tafsir works.

No contradiction with Quran 95:3

Quran 95:3 swears by Mecca with the oath-waw: "and by this secure city." Quran 90:1 swears by Mecca with the verb uqsimu and the preposition bi: "I swear by this city." The forms differ, but the meaning is consistent.

Verse 90:2, "and you are hill in this city," uses the Arabic word hill, which the mufassirun explained in more than one way: that the Prophet (PBUH) was residing in Mecca, or that the sanctity of Mecca would be made lawful for him for a limited time, or that his enemies were violating his sanctity there. None of these explanations turns the oath in 90:1 into a refusal to swear.

Conclusion

There is no contradiction between Quran 90:1 and Quran 95:3. Both verses honor Mecca with a divine oath. The alleged problem comes from mistranslating la uqsimu as a flat negation instead of recognizing it as an emphatic oath formula.

For more on Mecca's standing and the Quran's Arabic style, see the related topics below.