فَأَمَّا ثَمُودُ فَأُهْلِكُوا۟ بِٱلطَّاغِيَةِ
This pattern was treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa: أَمَّا is the particle of tafṣīl (setting out in detail); it is used in dividing a whole into its parts, its clause must contain فَ, and the division it makes is absolute.
- 5-6: fa-ammā Thamūdu… wa ammā ʿĀdun… — two peoples, two modes of destruction.
- 19, 25: fa-ammā man ūtiya kitābahu bi-yamīnihi… wa ammā man ūtiya kitābahu bi-shimālihi… — two persons, two ends.
The sūra applies the same pattern once to history and once to the hereafter. And in both it does the same thing: it splits a mass in two. In the fourth verse "Thamūd and ʿĀd" were the shared subject of a single verb; in the fifth they are separated. In the eighteenth verse "you are brought forward" was everyone; in the nineteenth they are separated.
The movement of the sūra is the same as al-Qāriʿa's: one → two. Al-Qāriʿa did this once; al-Ḥāqqa does it twice, on two different planes.
Root: ط-غ-ي / ط-غ-و. The concrete sense of the root is to cross the limit, to pass the bound, to overflow. This root has been treated in two places in this commentary, and I shall rely on both:
The second item must be set beside this verse, because the same people, the same root, occurs in two different positions:
| Place | Word | The position of the root |
|---|---|---|
| Al-Shams 91/11 | بِطَغْوَاهَا | What Thamūd did — the cause of the denial |
| Al-Ḥāqqa 69/5 | بِٱلطَّاغِيَةِ | What destroyed Thamūd |
| View | Explanation | Its ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Their own overstepping | Ṭāghiya is a verbal noun — Arabic has verbal nouns on the fāʿila metre, such as ʿāfiya (well-being), ʿāqiba (outcome), kādhiba (a lie). The sense: "they were destroyed because of their overstepping" | The metre is used in Arabic for verbal nouns; it agrees exactly with ṭaghwā at al-Shams 91/11; the word ٱلْخَاطِئَة in verse 9 of this sūra is on the same metre and is read as a verbal noun in the same way | The particle bāʾ generally conveys instrument; "to be destroyed by overstepping" requires the causal bāʾ (which is, however, common) |
| A sound or a convulsion that passes all bounds | Ṭāghiya is the cry (ṣayḥa) or the thunderbolt (ṣāʿiqa) that destroyed them: a blow that crosses the limit, that loses all measure | The Qurʾān elsewhere describes the destruction of Thamūd as ṣayḥa (Hūd 11/67), as ṣāʿiqa (Fuṣṣilat 41/17), as rājifa (as rajfa at al-Aʿrāf 7/78); all of them sudden and violent | The word is not used in this sense anywhere else in the Qurʾān |
| An overstepping person | What is meant is the man who hamstrung the she-camel or who incited the people: "because of their overstepper" | In the story of Thamūd the Qurʾān brings one man forward: "the most wretched of the people rose up" (al-Shams 91/12) | Tying the destruction to a single person by means of bāʾ is forced linguistically; and besides, the punishment falls on the people |
The first and second views do not exclude one another, and both have been maintained in the classical sources. To my mind the text itself inclines a little more to the first, and my ground is inside the sūra:
The next verse destroys ʿĀd by a wind that is "ʿātiya" — and ʿātiya also means "that which passes the bound". Two verses in succession, two peoples, and both instruments of destruction named by words of crossing the limit. The sūra names the punishment of the two peoples with two different words but with the same concept: overstepping.
This shows that the punishment is named after the offence. A people that oversteps is destroyed by something that oversteps.
This preference is not binding; the second view is sound too, and the practical difference is limited — because on either reading the name of the thing that destroys shares a root with the name of the people's own act.
The agent is not named. This is a frequent choice in the Qurʾān's accounts of destruction, and it has two functions: on the one hand the agent is already known (so there is no need to name him), and on the other the emphasis shifts from the agent to the act. What the sentence is concerned with is not who destroyed them but that they were destroyed.
Note also: uhlikū is plural (they), whereas kadhdhabat in the fourth verse was singular feminine (that tribe). The sūra makes the tribe deny as a single whole, but destroys it one by one.
I record this grammatical shift as an observation; the twofold treatment of tribal names in Arabic already makes the transition possible, and I therefore draw no firm conclusion from it.