Ghafir · Makki · ayah 21 of 85

Ghafir 40:21

۞ أَوَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا۟ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَـٰقِبَةُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَانُوا۟ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۚ كَانُوا۟ هُمْ أَشَدَّ مِنْهُمْ قُوَّةً وَءَاثَارًا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَأَخَذَهُمُ ٱللَّهُ بِذُنُوبِهِمْ وَمَا كَانَ لَهُم مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ مِن وَاقٍ

“Have they not traveled through the land and observed how was the end of those who were before them? They were greater than them in strength and in impression on the land, but Allāh seized them for their sins. And they had not from Allāh any protector.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Travel and look: nations stronger than you, who left deeper marks on the earth, were taken for their sins, and nothing shielded them from Allah.

A reflection

Stronger than you, and gone

Kānū hum ashadda minhum quwwatan wa-āthāran fī al-arḍ: they were greater than them in strength, and in the marks they left on the earth.

The commentaries fill in what those marks were. Buildings, landmarks and settlements that later peoples could not match. Fortresses, palaces and armies. One recalls the people the Quran describes carving homes out of mountains. The Quran says the same elsewhere. They ploughed the earth and built it up more than these have built it (30:9). And: We had established them in ways We have not established you (46:26).

The root of quwwa, strength, is a rope twisted strand upon strand until it holds a load. These nations had every strand: numbers, wealth, engineering, armies.

And then: fa-akhadhahumu Allāh, Allah seized them. One commentary says their great strength and their great bodies did not help them at all when His command came. Their dwellings stood empty.

Fly over a modern city at night. The skyline glitters for miles: towers, motorways, stadiums, a grid of light that seems permanent. It is easy to feel that a civilisation like this is too large to fall. That is precisely the feeling the ayah is written to puncture.

Every age believes it is the exception. Its technology is better, its institutions sounder, its towers taller. The ayah lists the earlier exceptions and their ends.

Pride at the level of a civilisation is still pride. The ego says: we are too strong to be taken. The ayah answers with the oldest evidence there is: the ruins of the strong. Strength is a loan. The One who lent it is still here.

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.