Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 137 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:137

إِنْ هَـٰذَآ إِلَّا خُلُقُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ

“This is not but the custom of the former peoples,”

Saheeh International

Essence

ʿAd's whole defence fits in one line: we are only doing what the ancients did, and your message is only what the ancients made up.

A reflection

One word, read two ways, two charges

This short ayah carries two accepted readings, and each one exposes a different habit of the heart.

Most readers recite khuluqu al-awwalīn. Khuluq is custom, way, character. Read like this, ʿAd are defending themselves. Our towers, our strongholds, our heavy hand: this is simply how our forefathers lived. One major classical commentary prefers this reading. It notes that Hud had rebuked them for their building, their brutality and their ingratitude. Their answer was: we do what those before us did.

Other readers recite khalqu al-awwalīn. Here the word means fabrication. One Companion explained it as the inventions of the ancients. Read like this, ʿAd are attacking the message. What you bring is old fiction, recycled.

The lexicons show why one root can carry both. Khalq begins with measuring. Khuluq is the inner form a person takes on and holds to by a set measure, until it becomes like his very make. And ikhtilāq, from the same root, is kept for lies alone: speech measured so that it seems true. The image is established in the lexicons.

A third explanation, reported from an early commentator, adds a darker shade. This is just how the ancients were made: they lived and died, and so shall we. Nothing follows.

Put the readings side by side and you have the full anatomy of refusal. Defend your own habits as heritage. Dismiss the challenge as invention. Then deny that anything comes after. The same three moves are still made today, often in a single conversation.

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.