105- AL-FIL
THE ELEPHANT
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
# Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant? # Did He not make their scheming go astray, #and send against them birds in swarms, # pelting them with stones of baked clay, # such that He made them like devoured husks?
Commentary
# Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the masters of the elephant?
# Did He not make their scheming go astray,
1–2 Though elephant appears here in the singular, some say that Abrahah had eight or twelve elephants with his army (IK). According to the earliest histories, when commanded to approach Makkah, the elephant knelt and would not be moved, despite being beaten by the army. When turned in any other direction, it would rise and walk, but when turned toward Makkah, it would again kneel and refuse to move (IK; Ibn Isḥāq). The linguistic structure of the verse indicates that the story was well known to the Arabs. They are thus being asked how it is that, knowing the story of how God protected the Kaʿbah, they do not derive the proper lessons from it and believe in God (Sh). That God made Abrahah’s scheming go astray alludes to the manner in which God allowed them to plan the entire expedition and carry it out to their own demise, since from a Quranic perspective God is the best of plotters (3:54; 8:30), and the scheming of the disbelievers is naught but astray (40:25).
# and send against them birds in swarms,
# pelting them with stones of baked clay,
3–4 Swarms here translates abābīl, which is interpreted to mean “in groups,” “in successive groups,” “many,” or “coming upon them from every direction”. According to most authorities, God sent birds from the sea, such as swallows and herons, each carrying three stones the size of chickpeas or lentils, one in each claw and one in the beak. Every soldier that was hit by one was destroyed, though not all met this fate. They did not die instantly. Some are said to have lingered for many days as they tried to make their way back to Yemen. According to some, sijjīl, here translated stones of baked clay, is a contraction of two Persian words, sang (sanj in Arabic), meaning “stones,” and jīl, meaning “clay”.
# such that He made them like devoured husks?5 Devoured husks renders ʿāsfin maʾkūl, which indicates the remains of leaves eaten by animals. The whole of the sūrah thus likens what was the greatest army known in the recent history of Arabia to one of the most insignificant of things known to the Arabs.
(Source: The study Quran, by Sayyed Hossein Nasr and 4 others)
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