Al-Anbya · Makki · ayah 95 of 112

Al-Anbya 21:95

وَحَرَٰمٌ عَلَىٰ قَرْيَةٍ أَهْلَكْنَـٰهَآ أَنَّهُمْ لَا يَرْجِعُونَ

“And it is prohibited to [the people of] a city which We have destroyed that they will [ever] return[906]”

Saheeh International

Essence

For a town Allah has destroyed, there is no way back, neither to this world nor, while their hearts stay as they were, to Him.

A reflection

The houses stand; the people do not

'Barred is it for a town that We destroyed.' Notice the word qaryah, town. Every classical commentator stops to say that the town here means its people. The houses are not what is being spoken of. The lexicons picture the root as water gathered into one basin. A town is where people have collected, and it means the people as much as the place.

That matters for how the ayah lands. The Quran is full of towns that thought themselves permanent. They had walls, wells, markets and confidence. Then: ahlaknāhā, We destroyed it. One verb, spoken in the first person by the One who decides.

Picture a family walking through an abandoned mining village high in the hills. The chapel still stands. The school has its bell. A row of stone cottages has kept its chimneys. Their guide stops by a doorway with a worn step. 'The village didn't die when the mine closed,' he says. 'It died when the last family left.' The children go quiet. They had assumed a place was its buildings.

The ayah says the same, but about a power far greater than economics. Allah removes the people, and the town is gone, whatever stones remain. And then the hardest phrase: they will not return.

This is humbling for any community that measures itself by its monuments. Our cities feel like fixed points. Our institutions feel like they will outlast us. The ayah reminds the ego that every gathering of people exists by permission. It continues by permission. It can end with one word.

He needs no town to exist, and no people to praise Him. The towns needed Him. Walk through any ruin with that in mind, and the stones start to speak.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.