Al-Mutaffifin ('The Defrauders'), 36 verses usually placed at the close of the Meccan period, opens with a warning to those who give short measure and weight (83:1-3). It contrasts the record of the wicked, sealed in Sijjin, with that of the righteous in Illiyyun, and the mockers of this world with the vindicated of the next.
Classical commentators, drawing on hadith reported by Ibn Abbas, describe the Medinan grain-traders this surah addresses as having been notably lax in giving full measure while insisting on full measure themselves when buying, a specific commercial complaint the surah answers by projecting the same imbalance onto the cosmic scale of judgement. The two ledgers it names, sijjin for the wicked and illiyyun for the righteous, are read by classical exegetes as places or registers rather than mere abstractions, though the Quran itself gives no further physical description of either, and later cosmological elaboration of both terms comes chiefly from hadith and commentary rather than from the Quranic text alone. Al-Mutaffifin is generally dated by classical and modern scholars alike to the very end of the Meccan period or the earliest months in Medina, making it, on most reckonings, the last substantial surah revealed before the migration, a transitional position some commentators connect to its unusually direct address of ordinary commercial ethics rather than the cosmic and narrative material typical of earlier Meccan material. Its warning that the deniers will be 'veiled from their Lord' on that Day (83:15) became an influential proof-text in later Islamic theological debate over whether the righteous will see God directly in the Hereafter, read by many scholars as implying, by contrast, that the righteous are not so veiled.