Al-Fil

Have you not considered (an interrogative meant to provoke marvel, in other words, ‘marvel at’) the way in which your Lord dealt with the Men of the Elephant?, who was named Mahmūd, and the men were Abraha, King of Yemen and his troops. He had built a church in San‘ā’ in order to divert pilgrims away from Mecca to it. A man from among the Banū Kināna defecated in it and stained its prayer niche with a deflowered virgin’s blood, in contempt of it. Abraha then swore that he would knock down the Ka‘ba. So he approached Mecca with his troops riding Yemeni elephants with Mahmūd at the vanguard. But when they turned to destroy the Ka‘ba, God unleashed upon them what He relates in His words:

Did He not make — that is to say, He did [indeed] make — their stratagem, to destroy the Ka‘ba, go astray, [ending up] in failure and destruction,

and unleashed upon them swarms of birds, [birds] in droves, one following the next (it is said there is no singular form for it [abābīl], like asātīr; but some say that the singular is abūl or ibāl or ibbīl, similar [in constructed pattern] to ‘ajūl, miftāh and sikkīn),

pelting them with stones of baked clay,

thus making them like devoured blades?, like the leaves of crops which have been consumed, trampled and destroyed by animals. God destroyed each one of them with his own stone, inscribed with his name, larger than a lentil [in size] but smaller than a chick-pea, able to pierce through an egg, a man, or an elephant and go through the ground. This took place in the year of the Prophet’s birth (s).