The numbers that occur in the Qur'an and what each is said of: six days, seven heavens, twelve springs, forty nights, three hundred and nine years, a thousand years, fifty thousand years, a hundred thousand people. Fifty numbers in six groups with fifty six sources, with the inheritance fractions and the three hundred plus nine of Q 18:25 visualised. No pattern is drawn from counting letters or words.
Numbers in the Qur'an·The numbers that occur in the text, and what they are said of50 numbers · 6 groups · 56 sources←Home
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اِنَّا كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقْنَاهُ بِقَدَرٍ
"Indeed, We have created everything by measure."
— Kamer 54:49
This page gathers the numbers that occur in the text and shows what each is said of. It draws no pattern from counting letters or words.
THE NUMBERS IN THE TEXT
Numbers in the Qur'an
Six days, seven heavens, twelve springs, three hundred and nine years, fifty thousand years
MAGNITUDE AXIS
The axis runs from one to a hundred thousand, ordered from small to large. The criterion is this: numbers given in the wording, plus totals the verse states explicitly. Items tied to the same number stack up, which makes the recurring numbers visible. Tap a point to open its verse. The slots are evenly spaced, so the distance between them shows order and not proportion.
The axis carries 32 items. On a narrow screen the axis scrolls sideways. The forty of Q 7:142, the ten of Q 2:196 and the eight of Q 6:143 are on it, because the verse states the total itself. The three hundred plus nine of Q 18:25, the subtraction at Q 29:14 and the multiplication at Q 2:261 stay off it. Fractions, distributive patterns and grammatical forms hold no single quantity point either; they stand in full in the groups below.
The Creator and creation
The oneness of God, the layers of the heaven, the days of creation, the wings of the angels. Several of these numbers recur in the Qur'an in the same wording.
Q 2:163 uses the same number of the deity: "And your god is one God."
In most places the number one in the Qur'an states God's oneness, and there it names an attribute. It also appears as a counting numeral, as in "one ewe" at Q 38:23.
It is Allah who has created seven heavens and of the earth, the like of them.
With Q 65:12, the wording "seven heavens" occurs in seven verses in all: Q 2:29, Q 17:44, Q 23:86, Q 41:12, Q 67:3 and Q 71:15. Q 78:12 says "seven strong ones" and Q 23:17 "seven paths"; the word "samāwāt" does not occur in those two verses.
Seven is the number that recurs most often when the Qur'an describes the heaven. Q 65:12 speaks of "the like of them" for the earth without saying "seven earths". The count takes the verses where "sabʿ" and "samāwāt" occur together; five use the indefinite wording (sabʿa samāwāt), while Q 17:44 and Q 23:86 use the definite form (al-samāwāt al-sabʿ).
Bediüzzaman · Lem'alar (The Flashes), Twelfth Flash, First Important Matter
The explicit wording of the verse did not say "seven layered earths" […] It does not say, I created it as seven layers. […] Likeness here is a comparison in respect of being created and of being a dwelling for creatures.
Bediüzzaman separates what the verse says from what it does not: Q 65:12 gives seven for the heavens and says only "the like of them" for the earth, with no figure there. In the same passage he notes that a universal meaning may have more than one referent.
It is He who created the heavens and earth in six days and then established Himself above the Throne.
The same phrase recurs at Q 7:54, Q 10:3, Q 11:7, Q 25:59, Q 32:4 and Q 50:38.
The word "day" does not carry a twenty four hour sense everywhere in the Qur'an; Q 22:47 and Q 70:4 use the same word with quite different measures.
Bediüzzaman · Sözler (The Words), Fourteenth Word, First Matter
The exalted truth indicated by "He created the heavens and the earth in six days", by the days of the Qur'an, which may well consist of long stretches such as a thousand and fifty thousand years, and by which the human world and the animal realm will live out six days […]
The phrase "the days of the Qur'an" here sets the six days alongside the thousand year and fifty thousand year measures, so the Qur'anic word for day is not tied to a single length.
And the sea [was ink], replenished thereafter by seven [more] seas, the words of Allah would not be exhausted.
The seven here is the measure inside a parable: a countable quantity stands in for what cannot be counted. Al-Razi says so explicitly, see below.
CLASSICAL EXEGESIS
Al-Razi does not treat the seven in this verse as a limit: "Seven is not because they are confined to seven; what is pointed to is augmentation and abundance, even were it a thousand seas." He also gives reasons why seven is the numeral chosen: place is customarily reckoned in seven climes, time in seven days, and the wandering planets are seven, so seven became the number that customarily bounds multiplicity and came to be used for everything numerous. He closes with, "so when abundance is meant to be expressed, seven is mentioned."