Al-Waqia ('The Inevitable Event'), 96 Meccan verses, describes the Day of Judgement dividing humanity into three ranks: the foremost brought near, the companions of the right, and the companions of the left. It contrasts the gardens of bliss with the scorching wind, and points to the seed, water and fire of this world as signs (56:63-73).
A hadith attributed to Ibn Mas'ud, that reciting Al-Waqia nightly wards off poverty, circulates very widely in popular devotional literature, but hadith critics including al-Dhahabi, Ibn Hajar and, in the modern period, al-Albani have classed its chains of transmission as weak, a case regularly cited in Islamic scholarship as an example of a devotional practice outrunning its textual support. The surah's naming of a fourth group, in addition to the three ranks it sets out, the earliest believers as a class distinct from the general companions of the right (56:10-14), became a text later theological writing drew on when ranking the merit of the earliest generation of Muslims above later converts. Al-Waqia is traditionally recommended for regular recitation, particularly in the evening, a custom resting partly on the weak hadith concerning poverty and partly on a separate, more broadly transmitted narration describing it as a surah of 'the Hereafter,' cited alongside Yasin, described as a surah of 'the heart,' and Ar-Rahman, described as the 'bride' of the Quran, in a set of devotional groupings found across popular practice rather than in a single canonical ranking. Its threefold division of humanity at judgement is echoed structurally, though with different terminology, in the earlier Meccan surah Al-Balad.