Qāf 50:12-14

Kadhdhabat qablahum qawmu Nūḥin wa aṣḥābu'r-Rassi wa Thamūd — wa ʿĀdun wa Firʿawnu wa ikhwānu Lūṭ — wa aṣḥābu'l-Aykati wa qawmu Tubbaʿ; kullun kadhdhaba'r-rusula fa-ḥaqqa waʿīd

"Before them the people of Noah (Nūḥ), the people of al-Rass and Thamūd denied. And ʿĀd, and Pharaoh, and the brethren of Lot (Lūṭ). And the people of al-Ayka and the people of Tubbaʿ. All of them denied the messengers, and My threat came true."

I shall not expound at length, because the verses themselves do not expound at length.

Eight peoples are listed in three verses with no detail given at all. Not who they were, not what they did, not what befell them. Only names.

And this shows the function of the list. The Qurʾān tells the stories of these peoples at length in other sūras — al-Aʿrāf, Hūd and al-Shuʿarāʾ are full of them. Here there is no narrative; there is a count.

The function of the list is this:

One. To show that the objection is not new. In the second verse it was said "an astonishing thing". The list shows how many times the same astonishment has been repeated. What is said to the addressee, that is: what you are saying is not being said for the first time.

Two. To build multiplicity where a single instance could be called coincidence. If one people has been destroyed, the reason can be argued about. If eight peoples have come to the same end, what is being argued about is a pattern.

Three. To make the passage from the section of proofs to the section of verdict. Verses six to eleven brought their proof from nature. Verses twelve to fourteen bring it from history. Both are fields of observation: one is looked at today, the other happened in the past.

Four. Geographical and temporal breadth. The list contains Mesopotamia (Noah), Egypt (Pharaoh), northern Arabia (Thamūd), southern Arabia (Tubbaʿ), the Jordan-Palestine line (Lot). The examples, that is, are not from a single region.

The list is not chronological. Thamūd, for instance, is named before ʿĀd — whereas the Qurʾān generally counts ʿĀd before Thamūd.

And there may be a reason for this: the verse-ending. The twelfth verse ends with Thamūd (ū + d), the thirteenth with Lūṭ (ū + ṭ). Since every verse of the sūra ends with a long vowel plus a single consonant, the placing of the names has to fit that pattern of sound.

I record this as an observation, not as a ruling. I cannot say for certain that the sound pattern settled the order; but that the two names at the end of the two verses sit exactly on the sound pattern stands in the text.

This expression is striking. The Qurʾān generally names this people qawmu Lūṭ (the people of Lot). Here ikhwān (brethren) is used.

What might the function of the word be?

In Arabic akh (brother) is used not only for a blood tie but also for membership of the same community. The Qurʾān uses this word when it sends prophets to their peoples: "To ʿĀd [We sent] their brother Hūd" (al-Aʿrāf 7/65), "to Thamūd their brother Ṣāliḥ" (al-Aʿrāf 7/73).

The word, that is, conveys the closeness between a messenger and those he addresses.

And it has a link with the second verse: there it was stressed that the warner was minhum (from among them). Here the same closeness is named from the other side: they denied one who was their brother.

I give this as my own reading; other explanations of the expression are also transmitted in the classical commentaries.

Here honesty is required: there is no certain knowledge about this people.

They occur in two places in the Qurʾān (here and al-Furqān 25/38), and in both places only the name is given. Who they were, where they lived, which prophet they denied, what befell them, is not stated.

The lexical sense of the word is known: rass — a well, especially one not lined with stone; and a dug pit. As a verb, rassa — to bury a thing, to put it in a pit.

Many explanations are transmitted in the commentaries: that they took this name because they threw their prophet into a well, that they lived in a particular region, that they were addressed by a particular prophet, and so on. I do not transmit any of these explanations as reports, because I cannot issue a ruling on their soundness and they conflict with one another.

What can be said is this: the root of the name calls up a pit or a well; the rest is unknown.

Here too the same honesty is required.

تُبَّع is not a proper name but a title. In historical records it is known as the title borne by the Ḥimyarite rulers who held sway in southern Arabia (Yemen). The word is from the root ت-ب-ع: to follow, to come after — that is, "the one who is followed".

The Qurʾān names this people in two places (here and al-Dukhān 44/37) and gives no detail in either. In the occurrence in al-Dukhān there is an expression comparing the people with those who came before them.

Who Tubbaʿ was, which Tubbaʿ he was, how his people were destroyed, is not stated. In the commentaries and the histories there are accounts about the rulers who bore the title Tubbaʿ; some of these carry favourable judgements about Tubbaʿ himself and unfavourable ones about his people. Since I cannot vouch for the soundness of these accounts, I do not transmit them.

What can be recorded is this: Yemen is the southern end of the Meccans' trade route, and the great kingdoms there are history they knew. The list, that is, names the great power both to the north and to the south of the addressee.

أَيْكَة — a dense thicket, scrub, a grove. The Qurʾān names this people in several places (such as al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/176 and Ṣād 38/13) and associates them with the peoples to whom Shuʿayb was sent.

Whether they are the same people as Madyan or a different one is disputed, and I adopt no preference in this commentary. The Qurʾān sometimes names the two by separate names.

This clause has a point of word order, and it matters.

Each of the eight peoples listed had denied one messenger: the people of Noah denied Noah, Thamūd denied Ṣāliḥ, ʿĀd denied Hūd.

But the clause uses the plural: ar-rusul — "the messengers".

In the classical commentaries the explanation is given thus: whoever denies one messenger has denied the institution of messengership, because all of them brought the same thing. To reject one is to reject the measure.

And this has a consequence: instead of charging the peoples separately, the verse ties them to one common act. Eight different places, eight different times, one single act.

حَقَّ — root ح-ق-ق. To be established, to come to pass, to be true. The verb here means "it found its place, it became real".

وَعِيد — root و-ع-د. To promise. Waʿd is generally used of something good, while waʿīd is a word given about something bad — a threat.

And the final yāʾ of the word has dropped: waʿīd instead of waʿīdī (my threat). This is an elision frequently seen in the Qurʾān for the sake of the verse-ending, and it is dealt with in the sources on the variant readings.

The word occurs five times in the sūra (waʿīd in 14, 20, 28 and 45; tūʿadūn in 32), and its first and last occurrences come in the same form, without the yāʾ:

In the fourteenth verse the threat is named as something already fulfilled in the past; in the forty-fifth as something still to be feared. The same word, once history, once future.

I record this as an observation.