Nuh · Makki · ayah 26 of 28

Nuh 71:26

وَقَالَ نُوحٌ رَّبِّ لَا تَذَرْ عَلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ مِنَ ٱلْكَـٰفِرِينَ دَيَّارًا

“And Noah said, "My Lord, do not leave upon the earth from among the disbelievers an inhabitant.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After nearly a thousand years of trying, Nuh finally says the hardest sentence of his life — and only after Allah Himself told him it was true.

A reflection

Not one single soul left moving

Dayyār is built from the same root as 'to move about, to dwell, to come and go' — and Arabic uses it, the commentators note, specifically inside total negation, the way a person says 'there was not a single living soul there', 'not one dweller, not one wanderer, not one sound of a passer-by'. It is a word that exists almost entirely to erase, completely, the possibility of anyone being left.

Nuh does not ask for most of the disbelievers to be removed, or the most dangerous ones, or the leaders who built the scheme two verses earlier (71:22). He asks, in this one intensified word, for there to remain, afterward, not a single one anywhere on the earth who still moves, still breathes, still comes and goes. The totality is in the word itself, not something this entry is reading into it.

That totality is worth sitting with honestly rather than softening. This is the furthest a human being's grief and exhaustion are shown reaching, anywhere in this surah — a request that nothing at all of what has opposed him be left standing. The Quran records it plainly, without flinching from how heavy a sentence it actually is, and without yet explaining, in this verse alone, the full weight of what led a man known across the surah for his patience to say it.

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.