At-Tawba ('Repentance'), 129 Medinan verses, is the only surah that does not open with the Bismillah. Revealed late, it addresses the dissolving of treaties with the polytheists, the expedition of Tabuk, and the exposure of the hypocrites and those who stayed behind from campaign, alongside verses on repentance accepted and on the sincere among the community.
At-Tawba's declaration severing treaty obligations with polytheists who had repeatedly broken their agreements (9:1-5) is one of the Quran's most extensively debated legal passages, cited by some later commentators, out of context, as a general call to war, and read by classical exegetes including al-Tabari as conditioned specifically on the polytheists' own violation of prior treaties rather than as an unconditional command. The account of the expedition to Tabuk, a costly and ultimately unopposed march to the Byzantine frontier in the ninth year after the emigration, occupies much of the surah's later material, exposing through its narrative those who made excuses to stay behind and contrasting them with those who set out despite hardship. The surah's closing verses on repentance accepted, including that of three companions who stayed behind and were shunned for fifty days before forgiveness was revealed (9:118), give the chapter its title despite the severity of its opening material.