أَفَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا۟ كَيْفَ كَانَ عَٰقِبَةُ ٱلَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ دَمَّرَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلِلْكَٰفِرِينَ أَمْثَٰلُهَا
A-fa-lam yasīrū fi'l-arḍi fa-yanẓurū kayfa kāna ʿāqibatu'lladhīna min qablihim; dammara'llāhu ʿalayhim, wa li'l-kāfirīna amthāluhā
"Have they not travelled the earth and looked at how the end of those before them was? God brought ruin down upon them. And for the deniers there are the likes of it."
1. يَسِيرُوا۟ — root س-ي-ر: to walk, to make one's way, to travel. From the same root sayr, sīra (a person's course, the way he lives), sayyāra (a caravan; in today's Arabic, a motor car). 2. يَنظُرُوا۟ — root ن-ظ-ر: to look. And the use of this root in the Qurʾān is not the same as "to see" (ر-أ-ي): naẓar is a deliberate and attentive looking; a look turned in a direction. From the same root naẓariyya (theory), intiẓār (waiting), munāẓara.
The fāʾ here announces causation and sequence: that they should walk and so look. That is, the looking is the result of the walking; without walking there is no looking.
This is a sentence about method: there is something that cannot be seen without getting up from where you are. Knowledge is taken with the foot.
And note: the second verb is jussive as well (yanẓurū, its nūn dropped) — that is, the effect of lam reaches the second verb too. Neither has happened: they have neither walked nor looked.
The أَ (hamza) at the head is the particle of interrogation, and here it is an interrogative of denial (istifhām inkārī): a question that expects no answer and conveys reproach.
That is, the sentence says not "do they not look?" but "have they not looked?" Past tense. The possibility was there; it was not used.
Root: ع-ق-ب. Its concrete sense is heel — ʿaqib. From the same root: ʿaqaba (to come after), taʿqīb (following up), ʿiqāb (punishment — what comes after), ʿuqbā (outcome), and the idiom عَقِب: inqalaba ʿalā ʿaqibayh — "he turned upon his heels", that is, he went back.
And the word ʿāqiba means exactly "what comes after": what follows on the heels of a thing, its end.
This gives the picture the root has chosen: an outcome stands behind the event. To see it one has to get behind the event — and this is the same idea as the تَدَبُّر we shall take up in the twenty-fourth verse (د-ب-ر: behind).
I record this connection as my own reading; that both roots carry the sense of "behind" is lexical data, the parallel between them is a connection I am making.
دَمَّرَ — root د-م-ر, Form tafʿīl: to destroy, to demolish, to lay waste. From the same root tadmīr, damār.
And a grammatical detail: the verb has been made transitive with the particle عَلَىٰ — dammara ʿalayhim. Yet the verb is normally transitive directly: dammarahum (He destroyed them).
The grammarians explain this usage thus: the particle ʿalā announces that the ruin came down upon them. That is, the verb takes on the sense not of "He destroyed them" but of "He brought ruin down upon them" — as though a building had collapsed on top of them.
And this is a picture the Qurʾān uses elsewhere. al-Naḥl 16/26: "…God tore out their buildings from the foundations, and the roof fell down upon them from above" (fa-kharra ʿalayhimu's-saqfu min fawqihim).
There is a problem of the pronoun, and the exegetes have dwelt on it: amthāluhā — "the likes of it". The pronoun هَا is feminine; what does it refer to?
| View | Referent | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | An elided word (al-ʿāqiba — the end) | "The likes of that end" |
| 2 | An elided word (al-tadmīr — the ruin) | "The likes of that ruin" |
And this is the second occurrence of the root م-ث-ل in the sūra (3, 10, 38). In the third verse God was giving people "their likenesses"; here for the deniers there are "the likes of it"; and the last word of the sūra will again be from this root.
The verse proposes looking at history as a source of knowledge — and it proposes it not as a reading but as a walking.
The distinction is worth noting. The verse does not say "have they not read the accounts of them?" It says "have they not travelled the earth and looked?" That is, what is proposed is that the ruin be seen in its place.
Why this makes a difference can be dwelt on — and this is my own reading: a ruin recounted leaves the hearer with a piece of information; a ruin seen leaves him with a measure. To stand before the remains of a city shows at one and the same time that the city once stood and that those who stood in it did not think of this.
What this verse says to the present is here, and there is no need to force it: archaeological sites, abandoned cities, museums — all of them are today's counterpart of the act the verse describes. And the verse does not command "take a lesson"; it asks "have they not looked?" That is, the act is already possible; what is not done is simply looking.