إِذْ تَسْتَغِيثُونَ رَبَّكُمْ فَٱسْتَجَابَ لَكُمْ أَنِّى مُمِدُّكُم بِأَلْفٍۢ مِّنَ ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ مُرْدِفِينَ
Iz tastagheesoona Rabbakum fastajaaba lakum annee mumiddukum bi alfim minal malaaa'ikati murdifeen
[Remember] when you asked help of your Lord, and He answered you, "Indeed, I will reinforce you with a thousand from the angels, following one another."
Themes in this ayah
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8:9Ayah 175
16 ayahs in Al-Anfaal are strongly about lessons from past peoples. This is one of them.
← Previous on Lessons from past peoples8:7[Remember, O believers], when Allah promised you one of the two groups - that it would be yours - and you wished that the unarmed one would be yours.Next on Lessons from past peoples →8:11[Remember] when He overwhelmed you with drowsiness [giving] security from Him and sent down upon you from the sky,
Tafsir
Scholars offer complementary perspectives
When you sought help from your Lord asking Him to help you by granting you victory over them and He answered you saying ‘I shall reinforce you I shall assist you with a thousand angels rank upon rank’ one rank following after the next God promised them this number at first but it then became three thousand and then five thousand as stated in sūrat Āl ‘Imrān Q. 3124-125 a variant reading of alf ‘thousand’ has the plural āluf ‘thousands’ similar in pattern to aflus ‘coins’.
Related Hadiths
from 'Umar bin Al-Khattab, who said: "The Prophet (ﷺ) looked over the idolaters, and there were a thousand of them, while his Companions were three-hundred and ten and some odd number of men. So the Prophet of Allah (ﷺ) faced the Qiblah, stretched forth his hands and began beseeching his Lord: 'O Allah! Fulfill what You promised for me. O Allah! If you destroy this band of adherents to Islam, you will not be worshiped upon the earth,' He continued beseeching his Lord with his hands stretched, facing the Qiblah until his Rida fell from his shoulders. Abu Bakr came to him, took his Rida and placed it back upon his shoulders, then embraced him from behind and said: 'O Prophet of Allah! You have sufficiently beseeched your Lord, indeed He shall fulfill what He promised you.' So Allah, Blessed and Most High, revealed: When you sought help of your Lord and He answered you (saying): 'I will help you with a thousand of the angels in succession (8:9).'
This Hadith is Hasan Sahih Gharib. We do not know of it as a Hadith of 'Umar, except through the narration of 'Ikrimah bin 'Ammar, from Abu Zumail, and Abu Zumail's name is Simãk Al-Hanafi. And this was on the Day of Badr.
"I asked the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) about the saying of Allah, Most High: 'And We sent him to a hundred thousand, or even more (37:147). He said: 'Twenty thousand (more).'"
I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say: When a Muslim supplicates for his absent brother the angels say: Amin, and may you receive the like.
I asked Jabir: How many were you on the Day of Hudaibiya? He said: One thousand and four hundred.
On the day of (the battle of) the Trench, the Prophet (ﷺ) called the people (to bring news about the
enemy). Az-Zubair responded to his call. He called them again and Az-Zubair responded to his call
again; then he called them for the third time and again Az-Zubair responded to his call whereupon the
Prophet said, "Every prophet has his Hawairi (helper), and Az-Zubair is my Hawari."
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