In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful
“Have you not regarded how your Lord dealt with the army of the elephants? Did He not make their stratagems go awry, and send against them flocks of birds pelting them with stones of shale, thus making them like chewed-up straw?” (Qurʾan 105:1–5).
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In the Name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful
“[In gratitude] for solidarity among the Quraysh, their solidarity during winter and summer journeys, let them worship the Lord of this House, who has fed them [and saved them] from hunger, and secured them from fear” (Qurʾan 106:1–4).
The meanings: (tadlil), that is, leading astray, not being guided to the goal; (ababil): scattered groups; (sijjil): petrified clay; (ʿasf): the leaves of crops, or the husk of grain.
We take up Surat al-Fil and Surat Quraysh together, because they are closely connected, as a proof is connected with its conclusion—so much so that, as has been narrated from the Ahl al-Bayt (a), one who prays can recite them together in his prayer after Surat al-Fatiha, as though they were a single surah. And because the surahs of the Qurʾan are interconnected in their order, each one having a relation to the one before it and the one after it, Surat Quraysh came after al-Fil, and we see the connection between them as clearer than that of any other surah.
Allah's Care
Among the established and widely known facts is the story of the army of the elephants and the miraculous punishment that befell them. This event spread among all people, so much so that they dated their events by it and that year was called the Year of the Elephant; and no one denied it, not even those who had not seen it with their own eyes. So “Have you not regarded” (Qurʾan 105:1) is a cognitive seeing, not a visual one, because the Messenger (s) was born in that year and did not see the event with his own eyes; rather, he saw it as something accepted among people. “how your Lord dealt with the army of the elephants” (Qurʾan 105:1), who came to demolish the Sacred House of Allah: this is the accepted fact that people witnessed—that it was Allah the Exalted who did to them what He did, not people. “Did He not make their stratagems go awry” (Qurʾan 105:2): it was Allah, Almighty, who prevented them from demolishing the Sacred House. And to show that this act was not one of the acts of human beings but came from heaven, like the punishment of the people of Lot, it was He, the Exalted, who repelled them: “and send against them flocks of birds pelting them with stones of shale” (Qurʾan 105:3–4)—a divine punishment from heaven, by weak creatures, and with stones of clay like that on which they walk, and just as Allah created them from clay. Here three truths become manifest:
1/ That the method of deterrence was a divine method which our Lord, Almighty, had sent down on the people of Lot before, in His saying, the Exalted: “and We made its topmost part its nethermost, and rained on them stones of shale” (Qurʾan 15:74).
2/ That the material with which Allah, Majestic is His Majesty, pelted them is the basic material of creation, which is clay. The Exalted said: “It is He who created you from clay” (Qurʾan 6:2). So “stones of shale” (Qurʾan 105:4) means of clay, as in Surat al-Dhariyat: “that We may rain upon them stones of clay” (Qurʾan 51:33), and they are the very same that He expressed as sijjil in another place.
3/ “thus making them like chewed-up straw” (Qurʾan 105:5): their end was annihilation on the one hand, and He placed them in a distinctive form, so that this end would be fixed in the mind and people would not forget it.
In this event there is harmony and correspondence between it and the punishment that Allah, Almighty, sends down on the peoples who denied the prophets and barred from His way. From here we derive the depth that Surat al-Fil wanted to convey to the Messenger (s), and through him to all human beings until the Day of Resurrection, in the word (Have you seen) at the beginning of the surah. For this surah is, in one of its aspects, as it were, the speech of Shuʿayb to his people, Midian, after they had seen what Allah did to the people of Noah, Hud and Salih, where Allah the Exalted said on his tongue: “O my people, do not let your defiance toward me lead you to be visited by the like of what was visited on the people of Noah, or the people of Hud, or the people of Salih, and the people of Lot are not distant from you” (Qurʾan 11:89).
So Surat al-Fil is not merely a truncated historical incident; the Qurʾan mentioned it in order to argue through it for the rightful standing of the Sacred House, the starting point of the Islamic Mission, and at the time of the birth of our noble Prophet (s). Those kindnesses with which Allah, exalted is His station, cared for the Sacred House and Quraysh are a glaring proof of Allah's power and of His preservation of the Sacred House, so that it would be the starting point of the Muhammadan Mission, which is of the same essence as all the divine missions.
The Homeland of the Mission
Allah the Exalted, by the punishment He sent down on the army of the elephants, preserved His Sacred House, which is the holy place and the axis of the worship of Allah. And there is another reason, which is “for solidarity among the Quraysh” (Qurʾan 106:1), who are the ones who dwell in honored Mecca. By repelling the army of the elephants, who had come with their stratagem to demolish the Kaʿba, He preserved for Quraysh what Allah the Exalted had given them and granted them success in, namely al-ilaf and al-iʾtilaf, which means bringing about familiarity (al-inas). So what is that familiarity?
The Truth, Almighty, answers: “their solidarity during winter and summer journeys” (Qurʾan 106:2). And this familiarity, with which Allah the Exalted was gracious to Quraysh and which He preserved for them, has two traits and two aspects:
1/ The material aspect, represented in the trade journey to which Quraysh had become accustomed, going to Yemen in the winter season and to Syria in the summer season; they would take the best of what was in Yemen and the best of what was in Syria to sell it in the season of the Hajj and of visiting the Sacred House, so that it would bring them wealth, and thereby material prosperity was achieved.
2/ The psychological aspect, which we derive from the description of the journey as “winter and summer journeys” (Qurʾan 106:2): there is a psychological aspect in that journey, through choosing the winter season to go to warm regions, and in the summer to mild regions.
In this verse there is information about the causes of the divine kindnesses, through a reminder of the lived reality in general terms. Therefore, “let them worship the Lord of this House” (Qurʾan 106:3), and this is the purpose of creation; the Exalted says: “I did not create the jinn and the humans except that they may worship Me” (Qurʾan 51:56). And to bring the creatures to be persuaded to worship, He reminded them and attributed the House to Himself, the Exalted, for memory was still not devoid of the story of the army of the elephants and what befell them because of their aggression against the Sacred House.
Civilizational Security
Among the most important conditions that should be met in a civilization that aspires to man's progress: it must answer two important questions, which represent the factors of human stability and the primary basis for man's setting out. They are:
1/ Has it achieved food security for man?
2/ Has it achieved psychological security for him?
These two aspects are what have embarrassed every (non-divine) civilization that claims that the salvation of the world, and the ability to bring it out of its problems, are in its hands: has it achieved those two tasks or not? Here we find Western civilization, which claims that, incapable of answering them; indeed, its effect is the opposite of that. It has contributed to the drifting apart of the worlds from one another, so that the poor grow poorer and the rich grow richer, through the policy of the World Bank in managing international economic affairs; the result is the worsening of famines. Likewise in the psychological aspect: despite the claims of the United Nations that it preserves the security of the world and saves it from wars, wars grind peoples down while it sees and hears, and it does not intervene except when there is an interest!
People worship Allah, Almighty, because He is the One “who has fed them [and saved them] from hunger, and secured them from fear” (Qurʾan 106:4): He achieved food security and guaranteed every creature its sustenance and its food; and likewise He achieved psychological security and guaranteed freedom from fear to everyone who fears Allah—“Whoever fears Allah, Allah makes everything fear him; and whoever does not fear Allah, Allah makes him fear everything”, as in the hadith.
As for what we see of imbalance and lack of security, it is because of the doings of people's hands; had they followed Allah and His Messenger, He would have provided for them from above them and from beneath their feet. Imam al-Sadiq (a) says: “People have not become poor, nor fallen into need, nor gone hungry, nor gone unclothed, except through the sins of the rich; and it is right for Allah the Exalted to withhold His mercy from whoever withholds Allah's right in his wealth.”
Insights for Life
1/ Allah the Exalted shows us His divine kindnesses so that we may comprehend His power and worship Him as He truly deserves to be worshipped.
2/ That worship must be a conscious worship whose causes and aims we grasp; the hadiths have emphasized that the worship of one who knows is better than the worship of one who is ignorant.
3/ Among the conditions of a civilization is that it guarantees man material security and psychological security. This is an important scale by which we must measure any civilization that claims to bring happiness to man, even if it is our own civilization that we attribute to Islam.
4/ Allah, Almighty, created the creation and guaranteed them material and psychological security, by providing sustenance for every human being, or through the divine legislation that placed in the wealth of the rich a right for the beggar and the deprived, and forbade aggression against others; but man, through his poor management, spread fear and hunger.
5/ The effort that man has successfully exerted in his life to secure happiness for himself goes back fundamentally to Allah, the Lord of all the worlds, because He granted him success in it, prepared the circumstances for him and smoothed the difficulties for him; so it is incumbent upon him to worship Him.
