Sūrat al-Zumar is the thirty-ninth chapter of the Quran and it was revealed in Mecca. It is apparently the fifty-ninth chapter that was revealed, after Sūrat Sabaʾ (34) and before Sūrat Ghāfir (40). It consists of seventy-five verses. Its name is obtained from verses 71 and 73, which are the only verses in the Quran that talk about people being driven in throngs toward either paradise or hell in the hereafter.
If we liken the Quran to a school or educational system that builds and fosters the human soul toward its perfection, Sūrat al-Zumar would be one of the advanced levels and classes of this school. It aims at a very deep and profound level of monotheism (tawḥīd). The one outstanding theme in this surah is the concept of ikhlāṣ: being purely and sincerely devoted to God. The surah involves several descriptions and contrasts between the believers and the disbelievers, the grateful and the ungrateful, and the good-doers and the wrongdoers; all of this emphasises the significance of the command: worship Allah, making religion pure for Him (verse 2). This relatively long chapter also talks about many other important topics such as the Quran, repentance, God’s mercy, death, and the stages of the hereafter. The surah is quite singular in terms of content; the two closest chapters to it would be chapters 6 (al-Anʿām) and 16 (al-Naḥl).
[1] Tamhid, 1/136.
[2] Alusi, 12/261.