Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 160 of 227

Ash-Shu'ara 26:160

كَذَّبَتْ قَوْمُ لُوطٍ ٱلْمُرْسَلِينَ

“The people of Lot denied the messengers”

Saheeh International

Essence

A new story opens with its verdict: a people remembered only by the name of the man they rejected denied the messengers.

A reflection

Known for ever by the name they tried to drive out

Look at how this people is named. Not by a tribe, as ʿĀd and Thamud are in the stories just told. Not by a place, as the next story will name the companions of the thicket (26:176). They are qawmu Lūṭ: Lut's people.

Across the whole Quran, this pattern holds. Seven times they are called the people of Lut. Once, the brothers of Lut (50:13). Elsewhere, simply his people. The Quran never gives them a name of their own.

Now set that beside what they wanted. A few ayat on, they threaten him: if you do not stop, Lut, you will be among those driven out (26:167). Elsewhere they say to one another: drive the family of Lut out of your town (27:56). Your town, they said, as if he did not belong to it. They wanted him gone and forgotten. Instead, every reference to them for fourteen centuries has carried his name.

A small hospital once dismissed a ward nurse. She had kept reporting the state of the wards: dirty linen, missed checks, a sluice room nobody cleaned. The board called her difficult. Thirty years later, a new wing opens. It bears her name, because her reports turned out to be right, and what changed afterwards saved lives. Today, people know that hospital mainly through her.

History has a way of keeping the name of the one who told the truth, and losing the names of those who silenced him. It is worth asking what our own names will be attached to. And whose name we might one day be remembered beside, for better or worse.

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.