Al-Ahqaf · Makki · ayah 27 of 35

Al-Ahqaf 46:27

وَلَقَدْ أَهْلَكْنَا مَا حَوْلَكُم مِّنَ ٱلْقُرَىٰ وَصَرَّفْنَا ٱلْـَٔايَـٰتِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ

“And We have already destroyed what surrounds you of [those] cities, and We have diversified the signs [or verses] that perhaps they might return [from disbelief].”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ruined towns lay along Makkah's own trade roads, and the signs had been turned every possible way, all so that people might come back.

A reflection

Ruins on the road you travel for business

'We destroyed the towns around you.' A narration-based commentary names them for the people of Makkah. ʿAd at the sand ridges near Yemen, Thamud between them and Syria, Saba in Yemen, Madyan on their road to Gaza, and the lake of Lut's people. It adds that they used to pass by them. These ruins were not in distant history books. They were on the trade routes the merchants of Makkah travelled every year.

The speaker is We: the majesty of the One who raises and ends nations. And yet the ayah is not boasting. Its second half reveals the purpose of everything before it: so that they might return.

Picture a sales representative who drives the same motorway every Monday for twenty years. At one junction stands a vast derelict car plant, roof caved in, its famous name still faintly visible on the brickwork. It employed thousands; it was the pride of the region. He has driven past it a thousand times. One Monday, stuck in traffic beside it, he finally looks. He thinks about his own company, his own certainty that nothing will change. The ego that has been driving at seventy miles an hour feels suddenly small.

Is it vain for Allah to point at ruins He caused? A sceptic might say so. But the commentaries describe these ruins as warnings to those who pass, and the ayah's last words are a door left open. He needs nothing from Makkah's merchants or from us (35:15). The ruins are there for the travellers' sake, so that the ones still driving might turn while there is road left.

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.