Is the chapter of Yasin the heart of the Quran?

- Can I know the reason why the chapter of Yasin is shown as the heart of the Holy Quran?

Dear Brother / Sister,

The chapter of Yasin is a chapter that is widely read by Muslims. It is more popular than other suras. There are several hadiths in which the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) mentioned this chapter and recommended its recitation. In some of those hadiths, as mentioned in the question, the following sentence is included: “Yasin is the heart of the Quran.”

“Everything has a heart. The heart of the Quran is Yasin. If a person recites Yasin, Allah will reward him as if he had recited the Quran ten times.” (Tirmidhi, Fadailul-Quran, 7; Darimi, Fadailul-Quran, 21)

“Yasin is the heart of the Quran. If a person recites Yasin desiring Allah and the Last Day, his past sins will be forgiven. Recite it to your dead.” (Abu Dawud Janaiz 20; Ibn Majah, Janaiz 4; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad V, 26, 27)

Indeed, this chapter is like a beating spiritual heart that continuously bestows life on the polluted spirits and souls with purified blood.

The chapter of al-Fatiha is called “Ummul-Kitab / Mother of the Book” because it is a summary of the Quran; similarly, the chapter of Yasin is called “the heart of the Quran”. One of the reasons why it is called like that is that it stirs the souls in an impressive style and saves them from stagnation.

In addition, just as the heart is the commander of the body, so too is Yasin the commander of the chapters of the Quran.

On the other hand, there are issues related to the remembrance of Allah, the Day of Judgment and the Resurrection in this chapter. Whoever reads or listens to them feels an affinity to those states and situations.

Fakhruddin Razi says, “In addition to sentence ‘Everything has a heart. The heart of the Quran is Yasin’, the fact that Yasin is asked to be recited to the person approaching death is a declaration of the following point:

“At that time, the strength of the tongue is weak; it is exhausted. However, the heart turns towards Allah with all its being. So, at that time, something that will increase the strength of his heart, strengthen his affirmation, and increase the strength of his belief should be recited to him. The chapter of Yasin has all these characteristics. because there are many subjects in it such as the resurrection, the states of the Day of Judgment, the state of the former nations, the declaration of their end, the proof of fate, the proof that superiority of the servants is based on Allah, the proof of the unity of Allah, the explanation of the fact that Allah has no opposite or partner, the signs of the Day of Judgment, the resurrection and the realization of the resurrection, the gathering in the presence of Allah in Arasat, the reckoning, the punishment, the places to go to after the reckoning. The recitation of Yasin, which contains all those and similar features, refreshes the memory of all those states in a person and warns him of the fundamental issues of religion, and reminds him of what awaits him in the grave and on the Day of Judgment.” (see Razi, Mafatihul-Ghayb, The interpretation of the chapter of Yasin)

We should not forget that the expressions of the Quran are very comprehensive; the same word indicates several meanings because the Quran reflects Allah’s endless knowledge. From this point of view, it is the necessity of a mysterious style for the mysterious letters at the beginning of the twenty-nine chapters to express several meanings. In this context, when used as the names of the letters of the alphabet, the abjad value of “YA=(Y- alif - hamza) is twelve; the abjad value of the letter “Sin” is a hundred and twenty. The total is a hundred and thirty-two, which is the abjad value of the words both “Muhammad” and “qalb (heart)”. This conformability supports the view of the scholars who say that those letters are related to Muhammad (pbuh); it also sheds light on the relationship between “qalb (heart)” and Yasin as it is stated in the following hadith: “The chapter of Yasin is the heart of the Quran.”

The hadith does not say “recite it to the people who are about to die”, it says “recite it to the dead”. The scholars generally understood the term “the dead” to mean those who are on the verge of death, but some of them took the literal meaning as the basis for reciting it to the dead. However, there are those who said, “The best way is to understand that both are meant.”

Based on this hadith, some Hanafis said, “A person can donate the rewards of his deeds of worship to another person. It does not matter whether it is reading the Quran, prayer, fasting, charity, pilgrimage, or any other kind of worship.”

Mutazilites objected to it by citing the verse, “That man can have nothing but what he strives for” (an-Najm, 53/39), but the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah rejected the view of Mutazilite by bringing other proofs against it. (see Munawi, Faydul-Qadir, 2/67)

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