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With regard to the merit of sūrat al-Falaq, and sūrat al-Nās, it is narrated by ‗Uqbah ibn ‗Āmir that Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) said: What wonderful verses have been sent down today, the like of which has never been seen! They are: ―Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of the dawn,‖ and ―Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of men.‖ (Reported by Muslim, h.adīth no. 403).
In another h.adīth narrated by Uqbah ibn ‗Āmir, when he asked Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) whether he should recite sūrat Hūd or sūrat Yūsuf, he told him he could recite nothing more effective with Allah than "Say, I seek refuge in the Lord of the dawn." Ah.mad, Nasā'ī and Dārimī transmitted it. The text
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Asad: ―Say: ‗I seek refuge with the Sustainer of the rising dawn.‘ Pickthall: ―Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of the Daybreak.‖ A.Y. Ali: ―Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn.‖ The word falaq means ―crack, split‖ as well as ―daybreak, dawn‖. The verb falaqa means ‖to split, to tear asunder‖ as well as ―to break or to spell the shadows of night‖ There are six interpretations of the term falaq, as follows: 1. The dawn. This is the interpretation of Ibn ‗Abbās as reported by al‗Awfá, al-H.asan, Sa‗īd ibn Jubayr, Mujāhid, Qatādah, al-Qurz.ī, and Ibn Zayd. The philologist al-Zajjāj said that it is so called because the night breaks away from it. The Arabic expression means ―it is clearer than the dawn (daybreak)‖ to indicate something very clear. This is the interpretation of the Qur‘ānic commentators in the mass . The poet Dhū ‗l-Rummah in his poems explaining the wild bull also indicates this meaning, as follows: * …until dawn revealed its face its foreneck raised