The Qur'an was not revealed all at once. It came to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, gradually, over roughly twenty-three years, delivered through the angel Jibril, beginning in the cave of Hira near Makkah.

His wife Aishah described how it began. In the English translation in Sahih al-Bukhari, number three: “The commencement of the Divine Inspiration to Allah's Messenger was in the form of good dreams which came true”. The experience of revelation itself was often physically intense. Companions described the Prophet sweating heavily, even on cold days, and needing to gather himself afterwards.

Scholars of the sciences of the Qur'an traditionally divide its one hundred and fourteen chapters into two broad categories. Makki chapters were revealed before the Prophet's migration to Madinah, and Madani chapters after it. This is not simply a matter of geography. A verse revealed in or near Makkah could still be classed as Madani, if it came after the migration. The classification is really about which phase of the Prophet's mission a revelation belongs to.

The two phases tend to have a noticeably different character. Makki chapters are usually shorter, with shorter verses, and focus heavily on the foundations of faith: the oneness of God, the Hereafter, the stories of earlier prophets, and moral character. They often address people generally, as all of mankind.

Madani chapters tend to be longer, with longer and more detailed verses, and increasingly address the practical life of an established Muslim community: family law, business dealings, criminal justice, and relations with other communities. They often address the believers directly.

Neither phase is more important than the other. Together they reflect a message that first met a small, persecuted community with the foundations of belief, and then met an established society with guidance for building a community on those foundations.

Recognising whether a passage is Makki or Madani matters for interpretation. It helps explain why some verses read as broad, universal moral appeals, while others read as specific legal rulings. These are general tendencies used across the scholarship, not a rigid rule for every verse, and they are one of the basic tools scholars use before drawing conclusions about what a verse is addressing.