As-Sajdah · Makki · ayah 26 of 30

As-Sajdah 32:26

أَوَلَمْ يَهْدِ لَهُمْ كَمْ أَهْلَكْنَا مِن قَبْلِهِم مِّنَ ٱلْقُرُونِ يَمْشُونَ فِى مَسَـٰكِنِهِمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَـَٔايَـٰتٍ ۖ أَفَلَا يَسْمَعُونَ

“Has it not become clear to them how many generations We destroyed before them, [as] they walk among their dwellings? Indeed in that are signs; then do they not hear?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ruins on your road were homes once; whoever walks past them without hearing their warning has not yet understood the road.

A reflection

Every generation thinks it is the exception

A couple buy a 1930s semi and plan a kitchen extension. Clearing the loft, they find a cardboard tube. Inside are an architect's drawings, dated 1987, for the very same extension. Someone stood in that kitchen, sure of the future, and drew it. It was never built.

That is a small, domestic version of what this ayah sets before its hearers. Kam ahlaknā min qablihim mina al-qurūn: 'how many generations We destroyed before them'. Kam here is not a question waiting for a number. It is an exclamation of abundance: so many.

The word for generations, qurūn, has a picture in its root. A qaran was the plaited rope that coupled two ploughing bulls, so neither could go its own way. A generation is the people roped together in one span of time. They rise together, and they go together.

Every generation feels like the exception. Ours has its technology, its medicine, its skylines. ʿĀd boasted that no one was stronger than them (41:15), and Thamūd carved homes out of mountains (26:149). The ego of a civilisation works like the ego of a person. It is the conviction that what happened to others will not happen here. The ayah answers with one plain verb in the first person plural. Ahlaknā: We destroyed. The builders' pride was real, and so was the end.

Someone may object that a God who announces how many nations He destroyed is boasting of His power. Look at how the ayah opens: a-wa-lam yahdi lahum, 'has it not guided them?' The ruins are offered as guidance. Allah gains nothing from anyone's rise or anyone's fall (35:15). He lays the ruins along the road of the living so that the living need not repeat them. A warning is the opposite of a boast. It is given for the sake of the one who hears it.

The couple may still build their extension. But they will build it more humbly, knowing they are not the first to plan a future in that kitchen. That humility is where this ayah wants every generation to begin.

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.