Al-Hajj · Madani · ayah 45 of 78

Al-Hajj 22:45

فَكَأَيِّن مِّن قَرْيَةٍ أَهْلَكْنَـٰهَا وَهِىَ ظَالِمَةٌ فَهِىَ خَاوِيَةٌ عَلَىٰ عُرُوشِهَا وَبِئْرٍ مُّعَطَّلَةٍ وَقَصْرٍ مَّشِيدٍ

“And how many a city did We destroy while it was committing wrong - so it is [now] fallen into ruin[930] - and [how many] an abandoned well and [how many] a lofty palace.[931]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Count them if you can: towns emptied while they did wrong, wells still full with no one at the rope, palaces gleaming white over nobody.

A reflection

White plaster over nobody

The ayah ends on a building. Qaṣrin mashīd: a palace, mashīd. The commentators give two readings, and both are about pride. One says it means lofty, raised high. The other says finished with shīd, gypsum, the white plaster smoothed over a wall.

One early teacher of the Qur'an was walking with a student past a brick wall finished in that glossy plaster. He laid his hand on it and said: this is the mashīd Allah meant. He did not point to a ruin far away. He touched a wall in his own street.

Plaster does not hold a building up. It is the finish, the part that faces the street and catches the sun. The lexicons say the root means raising a thing up, and the same root gives raising the voice to proclaim. A mashīd palace is a wall that announces its owner.

And the ayah leaves it standing with no one inside. The people were destroyed, not the palace. The plaster outlasted the plasterers.

Picture a brass plaque bolted beside the doors of a shopping arcade. It names the dignitary who opened it, in raised letters. Twenty years later the arcade is shuttered and pigeons sit on the empty shop signs. The plaque is still there, polished by the rain, announcing a name nobody in the street remembers.

This is where the ayah shrinks the ego. Everything we build to announce ourselves outlives our power to stand behind it. Pride assumes the building is about us. Ahlaknāhā, We destroyed it, says the building was always His to empty.

Some readers hear boasting in this line, a king counting the cities he has flattened. But a boasting king needs his subjects' fear to feel strong. Allah gains nothing from the count, and loses nothing if no one listens. The count is given to the listeners, while they still have time, the way a lifeguard points at the rip current before you swim.

So build, and finish your walls well. But know whose name is really over the door. The humble man's house can one day stand empty without shame. The arrogant man's palace stands empty as a witness.

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.