Muhammad · Madani · ayah 10 of 38

Muhammad 47:10

۞ أَفَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا۟ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَـٰقِبَةُ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۚ دَمَّرَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمْ ۖ وَلِلْكَـٰفِرِينَ أَمْثَـٰلُهَا

“Have they not traveled through the land and seen how was the end of those before them? Allāh destroyed [everything] over them,[1497] and for the disbelievers is something comparable.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The proof lies in ruins you have already passed: look at how the proud ended, and at Who ended them.

A reflection

Goats in the audience hall

"Allah destroyed upon them." The sentence is short, and its subject is Allah alone. No army is named, no earthquake, no enemy. The One who brought them low is named, and nothing else.

The commentaries spell out what went. Their selves, their children, their wealth. One concise commentary adds: their dwellings. Everything that had been theirs, everything they had used to feel secure, came down.

That is a hard picture for human pride. Every generation believes its achievements are permanent. Every powerful family assumes the name will last. The ayah answers without argument. It simply points at the ground.

Picture an old desert fort that was once the seat of a feared governor. Petitioners waited for days at its gate. Men were sentenced in its audience hall. Today goats shelter in that hall from the midday sun. A boy sells bottled water by the broken gate. The carved inscription over the doorway praising its builder is half sand.

Pride needs an audience and a future. Ruins take away both.

The ayah is not gloating. It is setting human greatness in its true proportion. Whatever strength a people gather, it is held on loan from the One who can bring it down in a sentence. That should humble anyone who feels untouchable: the rich, the clever, the admired, the secure.

And it answers a natural suspicion. Is Allah boasting of His power to destroy? He does not need to boast. He is pointing out what any traveller can see, so that the living may turn back before they become another ruin. The warning itself is a mercy. A ruin that could speak would beg the passer-by to listen.

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.