فَلَمَّا جَآءَ أَمْرُنَا جَعَلْنَا عَٰلِيَهَا سَافِلَهَا وَأَمْطَرْنَا عَلَيْهَا حِجَارَةً مِّن سِجِّيلٍ مَّنضُودٍ · مُّسَوَّمَةً عِندَ رَبِّكَ وَمَا هِىَ مِنَ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ بِبَعِيدٍ
fa-lammā jāʾa amrunā jaʿalnā ʿāliyahā sāfilahā wa amṭarnā ʿalayhā ḥijāratan min sijjīlin manḍūd · musawwamatan ʿinda rabbik, wa mā hiya mina'l-ẓālimīna bi-baʿīd
"When Our command came, We turned the place upside down and rained upon it stones of baked clay, layer upon layer · — marked with your Lord. And it is not far from the wrongdoers."
And the construction occurs once more in the Qurʾān: al-Ḥijr 15/74 — that sūra has not yet been treated in this series.
سِجِّيل — the lexicographers differ over the origin of the word. Some count it an Arabic derivative; some record that it is a word that came from Persian (seng + gil — stone and clay). Both views are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.
The word occurs in three places in the Qurʾān: here, al-Ḥijr 15/74 and al-Fīl 105/4. It was treated in al-Fīl, and I rely on that treatment.
The root ن-ض-د: to lay one thing on another, to stack. Manḍūd — laid in layers, stacked. The word occurred at Qāf 50/10 (ṭalʿun naḍīd).
The root س-و-م: to put a mark on a thing, to brand it; and to turn an animal loose to graze. Musawwama — marked.
And the work of the word here must be recorded, and I give it as an observation about the word order: the stones are not at random; they are marked. The destruction, that is, is told not as an indiscriminate ruin but as a targeted work.
And the same word occurs, besides Āl ʿImrān — not yet in this series — at al-Dhāriyāt 51/34 as well (musawwamatan ʿinda rabbika li'l-musrifīn) and the same scene is told there. The identical construction in two sūras: musawwamatan ʿinda rabbik. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text.
As was tabulated in the section on the backbone, the Lot narrative takes none of the sūra's closing patterns — neither alā buʿdan, nor ka-an lam yaghnaw, nor najjaynā.
| Reading | What hiya is |
|---|---|
| 1 | The stones — those stones are not far from the wrongdoers |
| 2 | The towns / those settlements — geographically not far, they lie on the road |
| 3 | That punishment / that event — its like is always possible |
And what is striking is this: at the closing, in place of buʿdan (away with them) comes bi-baʿīd (not far) — the same root, in the opposite direction.
| Narrative | The closing | How the root ب-ع-د is used |
|---|---|---|
| Noah (44) | buʿdan li'l-qawmi'l-ẓālimīn | Putting far off |
| Hūd (60) | buʿdan li-ʿĀd | Putting far off |
| Ṣāliḥ (68) | buʿdan li-Thamūd | Putting far off |
| Lot (83) | wa mā hiya mina'l-ẓālimīna bi-baʿīd | Bringing near |
| Shuʿayb (95) | buʿdan li-Madyana kamā baʿidat Thamūd | Putting far off |
In four of the five narratives the root reports a putting far off; in Lot's it reports a nearness. This is one of the finest structural data in the sūra, and it is read wholly from the text.
I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: four of the closings look to the past ("away with them"), the closing of Lot looks to the present ("it is not far"). And immediately after this sentence the sūra moves to Shuʿayb — and Shuʿayb will say exactly this to his people: wa mā qawmu Lūṭin minkum bi-baʿīd (89).
The two sentences are in word-for-word the same pattern, and they stand eight verses apart. This is a repetition that can be verified from the text.