Al-Ahqaf · Makki · ayah 26 of 35

Al-Ahqaf 46:26

وَلَقَدْ مَكَّنَّـٰهُمْ فِيمَآ إِن مَّكَّنَّـٰكُمْ فِيهِ وَجَعَلْنَا لَهُمْ سَمْعًا وَأَبْصَـٰرًا وَأَفْـِٔدَةً فَمَآ أَغْنَىٰ عَنْهُمْ سَمْعُهُمْ وَلَآ أَبْصَـٰرُهُمْ وَلَآ أَفْـِٔدَتُهُم مِّن شَىْءٍ إِذْ كَانُوا۟ يَجْحَدُونَ بِـَٔايَـٰتِ ٱللَّهِ وَحَاقَ بِهِم مَّا كَانُوا۟ بِهِۦ يَسْتَهْزِءُونَ

“And We had certainly established them in such as We have not established you, and We made for them hearing and vision and hearts [i.e., intellect]. But their hearing and vision and hearts availed them not from anything [of the punishment] when they were [continually] rejecting the signs of Allāh; and they were enveloped by what they used to ridicule.”

Saheeh International

Essence

ʿAd were given more power than Makkah ever had, and hearing, sight and hearts besides; none of it helped, because they used it to deny.

A reflection

Every strength was a loan

Makkannāhum: We established them. The verb is Allah's. ʿAd's strength did not grow out of themselves. The commentaries list what was given: abundant wealth, large bodies, great physical strength, long lives. One adds a note on the wording 'in what We did not establish you in'. Put negatively like this, it is sharper as a rebuke and stronger as a call to take heed.

The root of the verb has a homely picture. The lexicons say makn were a lizard's eggs, and a female carrying her eggs was makūn. The wider sense is a settled, secure place: to sit mutamakkinan was to sit firmly, going nowhere. The womb is called qarār makīn, a secure resting place (23:13). The image is established. ʿAd sat firmly in the world, as if nothing could move them. The firmness was a gift.

Picture a celebrated sound engineer, the best in his city, whose ears could pick out one wrong note in a hundred-piece recording. In his sixties his hearing begins to fail at the high frequencies. Specialists can do little. He sits in his studio, among the finest equipment money can buy, unable to trust the one instrument he never thought about: his own ear. For the first time in forty years, he prays for a sense rather than thanking himself for it.

The ego treats its gifts as possessions. This ayah calls them what they are: established, given, held on trust. Is it vain of Allah to remind us? He gains nothing from our recognition; He is free of all need (35:15). We gain everything. A strength held as a loan is used carefully and thanked for daily. A strength held as a possession becomes the very thing that blinds.

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.