Al-Haaqqa takes its name from its opening word — al-Haaqqa, the Inevitable Reality, a name for the Day of Judgment that is repeated three times to seize the listener before a single argument is made: the Reality — what is the Reality — and what could make you grasp what the Reality is? The surah then answers with history. Nations that denied this Day were struck down: Thamud by the overpowering blast, 'Aad by a screaming, violent wind that Allah loosed on them for seven nights and eight days in succession, leaving them fallen like hollow palm-trunks, and Pharaoh with those before him and the overturned cities, seized with a seizure exceeding all others. Only the ark of Nuh's people rode above the flood — a reminder for every conscious ear.

Then the Trumpet sounds a single blast, the earth and mountains are lifted and crushed in one blow, the sky splits, and the Throne of your Lord is borne, that Day, by eight. Every soul is exhibited; nothing hidden stays hidden. The scene divides in two: the one handed his record in his right hand cries out in joy — Here, read my record! — and is welcomed into an elevated garden; the one handed it in his left wishes he had never been given it, wishes his death had been the end, and is dragged to the chain seventy cubits long — because he did not believe in Allah nor urge the feeding of the poor. The surah closes by defending its own source: this Qur'an is the word of a noble Messenger, not a poet or a soothsayer, a revelation from the Lord of the worlds — and had the Prophet ﷺ invented it, Allah would have seized him by the right hand and cut his aorta. It is the truth of certainty; so exalt the name of your Lord, the Most Great.