As the final surah, An-Nas closes the Quran on the note of refuge, moving from the outward harms named in Al-Falaq to the inward: 'the whisperer who withdraws,' the insinuation of doubt and temptation. Its threefold naming of God as Lord, King and God of mankind is read as a rising scale of divine authority, and with Al-Falaq it is among the most recited protective passages in Muslim daily life.
Al-Falaq and An-Nas together are traditionally called al-Muawwidhatan, the two surahs of refuge, and a hadith preserved by al-Bukhari describes Muhammad reciting both nightly, blowing their breath into his cupped hands and passing them over his body, a practice called ruqya still followed in ordinary devotion and in the treatment of what is described in the tradition as harm from the evil eye or sorcery. Because the surahs are so short, they are among the first passages taught to children learning the Quran, giving An-Nas an outsized role in devotional life relative to its six verses. Commentators also note that where Al-Falaq names external threats, the darkness, malicious blowers and the envious, An-Nas turns inward to a threat that operates through suggestion rather than force, completing the Quran's final pairing of outer and inner sources of harm.