Abasa ('He Frowned'), 42 Meccan verses, opens with a gentle reproach of the Prophet for turning from a blind man who came seeking guidance while he was engaged with the notables of Mecca (80:1-11), a striking self-correction in the text. It goes on to the signs of provision and the Day when each flees from kin. Classical commentary identifies the blind man of the opening verses as the companion Abdullah ibn Umm Maktum, who interrupted the Prophet while he was engaged with Meccan notables he hoped to persuade toward Islam; the surah's self-correcting rebuke, addressed to the Prophet in the third person rather than as direct speech, is treated across the exegetical tradition as a uniquely candid moment of Quranic self-criticism, and the Prophet is reported thereafter to have shown Ibn Umm Maktum particular honour, on occasion appointing him to lead prayers in Medina during his own absence.
The surah's contrast between the Prophet's attention toward the wealthy Meccan notables and his momentary inattention to Ibn Umm Maktum is read by classical commentators not as a moral failing in an ordinary sense but as a lapse against the very highest standard the Quran itself sets for its Prophet, a reading later theological writing on prophetic infallibility (isma) used to argue that prophets remain human and correctable in matters of judgement even while protected from error in conveying revelation itself. The surah's closing catalogue of a single meal's ordinary ingredients, grain, grapes, olives, palms and pasture (80:24-32), is cited by commentators as deliberately mundane evidence of providence, chosen for its very ordinariness.