Al Fitan

Try one of these

Major signs

The Smoke

In brief

The Smoke, al-Dukhan in Arabic, is one of the ten great signs: a smoke that covers people, mentioned in the surah of the Quran that carries its name.

The Quran calls it 'a visible smoke that will cover the people: this is a painful punishment.' Scholars who hold that it is still to come say it will affect a believer like a cold, and a disbeliever far more severely.

The Companions differed about this verse. Ibn Mas'ud held that it described a famine in Makkah, when the starving Quraysh saw something like smoke between the sky and the earth. Others, such as Ali and Ibn Abbas, held that it is a sign still to come, because the Prophet ﷺ counted the smoke among the great signs. Ibn Kathir preferred the second view. The Prophet ﷺ listed the great signs without giving them a fixed order.

What to do

The Prophet ﷺ told us to hasten to good deeds before six things, the smoke among them.

Where it sits in the sequence

Phase 5 / 7The last signs

The sun rising from the west and the Beast come close together, whichever is first (Sahih Muslim 2941). One version of Sahih Muslim 2901 ends its list with a fire that drives people to their gathering. The narrations here do not fix the places of the Smoke or the destruction of the Ka'bah.