المكي والمدني
al-Makkī, al-Madanī
Terms for the Quran’s Meccan and Medinan verses and surahs, those revealed before and after the move to Medina.
What it means
Al-Makkī is the Meccan part of the Quran and al-Madanī the Medinan. Scholars of the Quranic sciences define the division in two ways: by place, so that verses revealed in Mecca are Meccan, or, more often, by time, so that verses revealed before the hijrah are Meccan and those revealed after it are Medinan, even when they came down elsewhere. Meccan surahs tend to be shorter and urgent in tone, and they speak of God’s oneness, the Last Day and the stories of earlier prophets. Medinan surahs are longer and deal with the laws and affairs of the new community. The distinction helps readers place a verse, and it is part of the study of the occasions of revelation.
Often misunderstood as
It is easy to take the division as purely geographic, when most scholars count it by whether the verse came before or after the move to Medina.
What the sources say
The scholars discuss which surahs belong to each group, and they differ on a few. The classification is drawn from the reports of the Companions and their students and not from any marking in the text of the Quran.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 48, listed as AL MAKKĪ, AL MADANĪ. The definition is restated here.