Al-Qalam · Makki · ayah 15 of 52

Al-Qalam 68:15

إِذَا تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِ ءَايَـٰتُنَا قَالَ أَسَـٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ

“When Our verses are recited to him, he says, "Legends of the former peoples."”

Saheeh International

Essence

After everything else about him, this is how he actually answers the truth: not an argument, just a label.

A reflection

The punchline of a whole character sketch

This ayah is nearly identical to 83:13, where the fuller treatment of this exact dismissal, 'legends of the former peoples,' is given its full weight: what the phrase actually meant to its first hearers, why a label can function as a way of refusing to listen rather than a verdict on what was heard, and how the same convenient dismissal still echoes today whenever truth is filed away as old news rather than engaged with. That entry is where this ayah's content is explored in full.

What is worth noticing here, specific to this exact placement, is what the line closes rather than opens. In Al-Mutaffifin, this same dismissal sits among general warnings to those who deny the Day of Judgment. Here, it arrives as the final beat of a long, specific character study: the habitual swearer, the slanderer, the obstructor of good, the transgressor, the man emboldened by wealth and sons. After eleven ayat cataloguing exactly how this particular man conducts himself, the surah finally shows what happens when the truth itself reaches him. He does not argue with it. He does not even really reject it. He simply reaches for the same tired label every closed mind before him has reached for, and considers the matter finished.

That placement makes the line land differently here than in Al-Mutaffifin. It is not describing a general category of disbeliever in the abstract. It is the inevitable final move of the specific character just spent eleven ayat describing: a man who had already shown, trait after trait, that he preferred shortcuts to honesty everywhere else in his life. Dismissing revelation with a borrowed phrase, rather than actually weighing it, is simply the last shortcut in a man built entirely from them.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.