Al-Kahf · Makki · ayah 59 of 110

Al-Kahf 18:59

وَتِلْكَ ٱلْقُرَىٰٓ أَهْلَكْنَـٰهُمْ لَمَّا ظَلَمُوا۟ وَجَعَلْنَا لِمَهْلِكِهِم مَّوْعِدًا

“And those cities - We destroyed them when they wronged, and We made for their destruction an appointed time.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verb for their destruction has a sandgrouse under it, flinging itself away from the falcon into the drop between two mountains.

A reflection

He points rather than argues

The verse opens with a gesture, not an argument.

Those towns. One commentary explains the demonstrative by saying the hearers knew them well, so they are treated as something in plain sight. Another says the towns were shown to them so that they would take the lesson.

No case is made. Nothing is proved. A hand goes up and points out of the window.

That is a particular kind of authority, and most people only meet it from the other side. A man who has to persuade you is a man with something at stake in your agreement. A man who points is not negotiating.

And what he points at are not armies. They are towns: the root means a gathering, and one lexicon says the word names the people as much as the place.

So the thing being pointed at is a crowd that chose to collect in one spot, and built, and is not there.

The ego has a particular trouble with this, and it is not the fear of punishment. It is the loss of scale. Every one of us carries a quiet sense that our own time is the real one and earlier people were a rehearsal. Their towns feel small because we see them in summary.

They were not small. Each one had a market with its own gossip, children who were spoiled, builders who were proud of a particular wall.

In one maritime museum the house flag of a shipping line hangs in a glass case. It covered forty vessels and three generations of a family who thought in decades. It is now a rectangle of cloth with a label beside it, and almost nobody stops.

The verse hands you a whole civilisation in a pronoun and three words. Those towns, We destroyed them.

Pride cannot survive being summarised that efficiently, and the summary is the point.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.