Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 123 of 165

Al-An'am 6:123

وَكَذَٰلِكَ جَعَلْنَا فِى كُلِّ قَرْيَةٍ أَكَـٰبِرَ مُجْرِمِيهَا لِيَمْكُرُوا۟ فِيهَا ۖ وَمَا يَمْكُرُونَ إِلَّا بِأَنفُسِهِمْ وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ

“And thus We have placed within every city the greatest of its criminals to conspire therein. But they conspire not except against themselves, and they perceive [it] not.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every town has its big men who scheme, placed there for a season, and every scheme they twist winds back round their own hands.

A reflection

Big men, placed

In a hill town, the quarry owner's family ran everything for three generations. Their portrait hung in the town hall. Their name was on the cricket pavilion, the chapel roof fund and the bus shelter. When the quarry closed, a council clerk took the portrait down one Tuesday afternoon. She leaned it against a filing cabinet.

The ayah begins with a verb that belongs to Allah: jaʿalnā, We placed. In every town, it says, We placed its greatest criminals. The big men of Makkah thought they had made themselves. They had wealth, age, clan and the last word in every council. The ayah sets them down like pieces on a board.

Akābir comes from k-b-r, plain size, a thing too big to fit. The lexicons draw a line through the root. For Allah, greatness is His true state. In us, it is the self raised above what it deserves, because our state is small. The akābir are the town's large men, not its great ones.

The commentaries add why it is the large men. Their position makes them better able to deceive, to spread falsehood and to carry others with them. One commentator draws a cold conclusion. If wealth and rank had no other fault than this, he says, it would be enough.

This shrinks every ego that leans on position. Your title, your seniority, your name on a door: all of it was placed, and all of it can be lifted. The town will outlive you. Someone will lean your portrait against a cabinet.

Does Allah need to say this? He gains nothing from the humbling of the proud. The reminder is a mercy. A man who knows his size was given can still bow. A man who thinks he made himself has nowhere to bow to.

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.