Which are the longest and shortest surahs in the Quran, and how does surah length vary across it?

The longest surah is al-Baqarah ("The Cow"), the second surah, containing 286 verses and covering an enormous range of legal, spiritual, and narrative material — it also contains the Quran's longest single verse, Ayat ad-Dayn ("the verse of debt," 2:282), which alone runs to roughly a full page on contracts and honest record-keeping. The shortest surah is al-Kawthar ("Abundance"), just three brief verses in which Allah reassures the Prophet of a granted abundance and instructs him to pray and sacrifice in gratitude, promising that it is his enemy, not him, who will be truly cut off (108:1-3). More broadly, the Quran's 114 surahs are traditionally grouped by length into four rough categories: the seven long surahs (as-sab' at-tiwal) at the beginning, the hundred-or-so "repeated" surahs (al-mi'un) that follow, the shorter mathani surahs, and finally the mufassal, the many brief surahs concentrated toward the end of the mushaf, most of which were revealed in Makkah and are often the first surahs children memorize because of their length and rhythmic style.

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