At-Takathur ('Rivalry in Worldly Increase'), 8 Meccan verses, rebukes the competition to amass more that distracts people 'until you visit the graves' (102:1-2), warning that they will one day see the blazing fire with certain sight and be asked about every blessing enjoyed. Classical commentators read the surah's rebuke of rivalry in accumulation 'until you visit the graves' (102:1-2) as addressing a specific pre-Islamic Arabian custom of boasting rival tribes engaged in, counting up their dead ancestors as well as their living wealth and numbers to outdo one another, a practice some early sources describe literally as visiting burial grounds to tally the departed for competitive purposes. Its closing promise that everyone will be questioned that Day 'about the pleasures' enjoyed (102:8) is read by classical scholars as extending accountability even to ordinarily permitted enjoyments, not solely to sin, a reading that shaped later ascetic reflection on gratitude for worldly comfort.
Classical commentators read the surah's repeated formula, 'no! you will know,' stated twice in close succession (102:3-4) before the certainty of 'sure knowledge' is finally named (102:5), as a deliberate rhetorical delay, withholding the surah's central point until repetition has built the listener's expectation, a technique scholars of Quranic style treat as characteristic of the shortest, most incantatory Meccan material. Its final image of witnessing hellfire 'with the eye of certainty' (102:7) is read by commentators as distinguishing secondhand belief from a knowledge that will, on that Day, become direct and undeniable.