Ar-Rum ('The Romans'), 60 Meccan verses, opens with the prophecy that the defeated Byzantines would be victorious 'within a few years' (30:2-4), read as fulfilled at the later Byzantine recovery against Persia. The rest points to the signs of God in creation, in the pairing of spouses, and in the diversity of tongues and colours (30:22).
The prophecy of Byzantine recovery is dated by the classical exegetical tradition to shortly after a Sasanian Persian victory over the Byzantines around 614, a defeat Meccan polytheists are reported to have welcomed as favouring their own preference for polytheistic Persia over Christian Byzantium, against which the surah's confident prediction of Byzantine victory within a few years, said by commentators including al-Tabari to be fulfilled around 624 or shortly after, was treated by early Muslims as a striking confirmation of revelation's foreknowledge. Companions are reported to have wagered on the outcome with the Meccans on the strength of the verse, a wager later hadith literature treats as originally against Islamic legal norms on gambling until a subsequent ruling permitted it once winnings were directed to charitable use. Beyond the prophecy, the surah's central argument moves through what commentators call ayat anfusiyya, signs within the self, sleep, the pairing of spouses, differences of language and colour (30:21-22), read as complementing the ayat afaqiyya, signs in the horizon, cited in other Meccan surahs, together forming the Quran's twin approach to argument from creation.