Surah Al-Qadr

The name. Al-Qadr means "The Power," or "The Decree," from its opening verse announcing that the Quran was sent down during Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Decree (97:1), a name that gives the whole night its identity rather than describing anything else in the surah. It is Meccan, and consists entirely of a description of that one night, without narrative or address to any other subject.

What it is known for. The entire surah is known for describing Laylat al-Qadr — better than a thousand months (97:3), the night the angels and the Spirit descend by their Lord's permission for every matter (97:4), and one of peace until the emergence of dawn (97:5). The night itself is customarily sought during the last ten nights of Ramadan, and this surah is the Quran's own account of why: no other night is credited in the Quran with an outcome better than a thousand months of ordinary time.

Reading it. At 5 ayahs it is one of the shortest surahs in the Quran, read in well under a minute, and its brevity mirrors its subject — a single night, described in five short lines rather than developed at length. A first-time reader should notice that the surah never explains which night of the year this is; it names the night by what happens in it, not by a date, which is part of why the search for it during Ramadan has remained an active practice rather than a settled fact.