Al-Baqara ('The Cow'), at 286 verses the longest surah, is the first major revelation of the Medinan period and reads as a foundational charter for the new community. Named for the episode of the Israelites and the sacrificial cow, it addresses the Children of Israel at length, sets out fasting, pilgrimage, marriage, divorce and the prohibition of usury, and defines the qualities of the God-fearing. It contains the Throne Verse (2:255) and 'there is no compulsion in religion' (2:256).
Al-Baqara opens the Quran's second surah with the mysterious detached letters Alif Lam Mim, one of twenty-nine surahs to begin this way, a feature classical exegetes from al-Tabari onward catalogued extensively without reaching a settled explanation of their meaning. Unlike the short, unified Meccan surahs, Al-Baqara was revealed piecemeal across nearly the whole of the Medinan decade, addressing specific occasions as they arose, which is why its 286 verses range so widely: the redirection of the prayer direction from Jerusalem to Mecca (2:142-150), the narrative of Abraham and Ishmael raising the foundations of the Kaaba (2:127), the account of Saul, David and Goliath (2:246-251), and legal material on fasting, divorce, bequests and commerce. Verse 2:282, on writing down debts and contracts, is the Quran's longest single verse and became a foundation for Islamic commercial and evidentiary law. Ibn Kathir's commentary treats the surah's opening address to 'those who believe' and its portrait of the hypocrites and disbelievers as establishing, in miniature, the three responses to revelation that recur through the rest of the Quran.