Is alternating group abelian?

Could you please clarify for me, why are we asking if the alternating group is abelian? As I understand, the alternating group is a subgroup of the symmetric group that consists only of even permutations. Abelian groups, on the other hand, are groups where the operation is commutative, meaning that for any two elements a and b in the group, the operation a * b equals b * a. So, are we exploring if the alternating group exhibits this commutative property? Or is there another specific reason we're posing this question?