هَلْ أَتَىٰكَ حَدِيثُ ٱلْجُنُودِ · فِرْعَوْنَ وَثَمُودَ
Hal atāka ḥadīthu'l-junūd · Firʿawna wa Thamūd "Has the tidings of the armies come to you? Of Pharaoh and Thamūd."
This form is used in the Qurʾān in opening a narrative, and it is striking: hal atāka ḥadīthu Mūsā (Ṭāhā 20/9; al-Nāziʿāt 79/15), hal atāka ḥadīthu'l-ghāshiya (al-Ghāshiya 88/1), hal atāka ḥadīthu ḍayfi Ibrāhīm (al-Dhāriyāt 51/24).
In the section on Sūrat al-Fīl the form "a lam tara" (have you not seen) was treated, and this was recorded: the formula is used to say "look at this thing everyone knows"; the source of the knowledge is not the eye but widespread report.
هَلْ أَتَىٰكَ is a little different. The verb atā is "to come"; the tidings, that is, are something that has reached the addressee. The question probes not the existence of the knowledge but whether it has been dwelt upon.
Root: ح-د-ث. To be new, to come to pass. Ḥādith — that which comes to be afterwards; ḥudūth — coming into being; ḥadīth — both "new" and "a saying that is told".
The idea of "newness" in the root is noteworthy: when an event is told, it happens again. Tidings are what make the event fresh.
Root: ج-ن-د. Jund — an army, a gathered crowd; its plural is junūd. The explanation the lexicographers transmit: the origin of the word is "hard, thick ground"; from there it passed into the sense of "a gathered, compacted mass".
The choice of the word is meaningful. The verse does not say "peoples" or "nations"; it says "armies".
What is mentioned, that is, is the dimension of power of those communities. Pharaoh was a state, Thamūd a people; but here both are mentioned as "military force".
And this connects directly with the context of the sūra: those seated at the edge of the fire had an army too. To dig a trench, to gather people, to feed a fire — these require organised force.
When the Qurʾān speaks of communities that were destroyed it can give long lists: the people of Noah, ʿĀd, Thamūd, the people of Lot (Lūṭ), Madyan, the companions of al-Rass, Tubbaʿ. Here only two names are mentioned.
| Pharaoh | Thamūd | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | An empire; Egypt | An Arab people; north-west Arabia |
| Distance from the addressee | Far, foreign | Near, on the road |
| Kind of power | State, army, organisation | Settled wealth, mastery in carving stone |
| Place in the Qurʾān | The most often mentioned wrongdoer | The most often mentioned Arab people |
The two examples, that is, are chosen from two different scales: one the greatest state, the other a people from the addressee's own country.
This is another form of the method recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl: the Qurʾān brings its proof both from far off and from near at hand.
On Thamūd a detailed examination was made in this commentary in the section on Sūrat al-Shams: what the Qurʾān gives, the records in the external sources (the Assyrian records, the Greek and Latin geographers, the "Thamūdic" inscriptions) and the caution that the rock-cut structures in the region of al-Ḥijr belong to the Nabataean period were given there; I do not repeat them. I content myself with recalling the basic finding there: Thamūd was not a distant and legendary name for the addressees of the Qurʾān; the Syrian caravan road passed through that region.
In the section on al-Shams it was also recorded that Thamūd's denial came after its transgression (kadhdhabat Thamūdu bi-ṭaghwāhā): first the bound was crossed, then the word that recalled the bound was counted a lie. The nineteenth verse of Sūrat al-Burūj will repeat the same order.
A small detail: the word Thamūd here takes no tanwīn (not wa Thamūda, not wa Thamūdin). This shows that the word is being used as a diptote (ghayr munṣarif) — that is, it has been taken as the name of a tribe and counted feminine and a proper name.
In the Qurʾān the word comes sometimes with tanwīn and sometimes as a diptote; this is explained by whether the word is counted the name of a tribe or the name of an ancestor. It does not change the sense.
Pharaoh and Thamūd are two communities of whom the Qurʾān says openly that they were destroyed in this world. Pharaoh was drowned in the sea, Thamūd was wiped out by a convulsion.
| Reading | Explanation |
|---|---|
| A warning by way of analogy | "They too were strong and they were seized; you too will be seized." The examples are the proof of the baṭsh verdict in the twelfth verse |
| That the addressees are the Meccans | The verse is now looking not at the companions of the trench but at those doing the same work in Mecca. The nineteenth verse supports this: "Rather, those who disbelieve are in denial" — the imperfect describes a state continuing at that moment |
The second reading is more in keeping with the context, and the tense of the nineteenth verse supports it. But the sūra does not say this openly; neither reading is contrary to the text.