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[1] (In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful) |
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The meaning |
More explanation |
[2] 1. Have you [Mohammed] not known how your Lord dealt
with the 'host of the elephant' a ? [3] 2. Did He not frustrate their wicked planning b? [4] 3.
And send against them the [black] birds c in swarms, [5] 4.
Shooting them with sedimentary stones [: pebbles d], [6] 5.
So He made them like husk e:
eaten [and dropped by the cattle]? |
1 a
They were a folk from Abyssinia; they were Christians; their chief were Abraha the ‘cleft-lipped’; they came intending to
demolish the Kaaba at Mecca; they had an elephant
on which their leader mounted. So God – be glorified – sent
against them groups of birds, which were the black ravens, carrying pebbles
and shooting them with such pebbles, so He dispersed their mass and destroyed
them. The elephant sat in its place and could not stand, as in His saying –
be glorified – in the next aya: 2 b i.e. their purpose to destroy the
Ka’aba was frustrated and lost. 3 c Which carried the pebbles with
their claws and beaks and threw the pebbles on them; so the elephant sat on
the earth, and it could not walk whatever they drove
and beat it. And God cast terror in their hearts, so they ran away and
perished. 4 d Which the birds carried from a
valley near to Mecca. It has been explained about such
stones in the interpretation of the Quran 11: 82. 5 e This Arabic word in the aya which means ‘husk’, has been explained in the interpretation of the
Quran 55: 12 that is His saying – be glorified: (And the husked grain and the
scented herb.) When this soora was revealed,
concerning the story of the ‘Host of the Elephant’, none of the Meccans objected to the Prophet about it, because the Meccans were near in time to the event of the ‘Host of
the Elephant’. Moreover, during the reign of King
Ghazi (son of Faisal, son of King Hussein King of Hijaz
whom the English banished to Cyprus); so when Ghazi was king in Iraq, an
event happened - in the twenties of the twentieth century – similar to the
event of the ‘Host of the Elephant’ in respect to the birds: A plane returned to Baghdad and
when it intended to land in the airport, it was attacked by the swarms of
black raven birds, which started to peck it and to fly round about it, to the
extent that the plane was about to fall down on the ground, and the pilot
could only with difficulty manage to get rid of those birds, on account of
their large number. This news was announced in Baghdad
and was published by the local newspaper at that time. |
By
God's help, the interpretation of the soora 105 of the Quran is completed; So
(praise be to God: Lord of the worlds.) |