85: Constellations
These 22 Meccan verses were revealed
after The Sun 91 and before The Figtree 95.
The chapter is named from the starry
mansions in the sky called the signs
of the zodiac. It is rhymed, generally in -d.
The chapter concerns the Christians who lived in the Najran highlands to
the
south of the Hijaz, north of Yaman and east of the Red Sea before 151am;
they
were massacred by Dhu-Nuwas, a Jewish king of Yam an, by being burned alive
in
the year 570 A. D., when the Prophet had just been born.