Fatir ('Originator'), 45 Meccan verses, also called Al-Malaika ('The Angels'), praises God as the Originator of the heavens and earth who sends the angels as messengers. It draws lessons from the two seas, the sweet and the salt, and the varied colours of mountains, fruits and peoples, and warns that no soul bears another's burden (35:18).
Fatir's alternative title, Al-Malaika, the Angels, derives from its opening description of angels as God's messengers with wings 'two, three or four' (35:1), a verse classical commentators read alongside hadith descriptions of specific angels, including Gabriel seen in his true form with six hundred wings, to build the Quran's relatively sparse but consistent angelology. The surah's image of the two seas, one sweet and palatable, the other salt and bitter, yet both yielding fresh meat and ornaments to wear (35:12), parallel to a similar image in Ar-Rahman, is read by commentators as an argument from observable natural diversity for a single ordering Creator behind apparently unlike phenomena. Its statement that 'no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another' (35:18) is treated across Islamic theology as a foundational text against inherited or vicarious guilt, cited in classical discussions distinguishing Islamic teaching on individual moral responsibility from doctrines of original sin found in other traditions.