Tafseer of The letter Saad · Saad · 38:13
And [the tribe of] Thamud and the people of Lot and the companions of the thicket. Those are the companies.
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
The most correct of the statements concerning this is that of the one who said: by it the tent-pegs (al-awtād) are meant, whether for torturing people or for amusement, with which he used to entertain himself; and that is because this is the well-known meaning of al-awtād (the pegs). And also Thamūd and the people of Lūṭ — we have already mentioned the reports about all these earlier in this book of ours. وَأَصْحَابُ الأيْكَةِ (And the dwellers of al-Ayka) means: and the dwellers of the dense thicket (al-ghayḍa).
Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ used to say — according to what was related to me on the authority of Maʿmar ibn al-Muthannā, on the authority of Abū ʿAmr —: al-Ayka is the dense wood of nabʿ-trees and lote-trees (sidr), namely the intertwined part of it. The poet said:
Is it perhaps because of the weeping of a dove in a thicket (ayka)
that your tears flow down upon the back of the carrying-strap hilt (al-maḥmil)? (9)
By it is meant the carrying-strap (maḥmil) of the sword.
And in accordance with what we have said concerning this, the people of interpretation (ahl al-taʾwīl) have spoken.
* Who said that:
Bishr related to us, he said: Yazīd related to us, he said: Saʿīd related to us, on the authority of Qatāda وَأَصْحَابُ الأيْكَةِ (And the dwellers of al-Ayka), he said: they were people of trees, he said: and the greater part of their trees were doum-palms.
Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn related to us, he said: Aḥmad ibn al-Mufaḍḍal related to us, he said: Asbāṭ related to us, on the authority of al-Suddī, concerning His statement وَأَصْحَابُ الأيْكَةِ (And the dwellers of al-Ayka), he said: the dwellers of the dense thicket (al-ghayḍa).
And His statement أُولَئِكَ الأحْزَابُ (Those were the confederates) — the Exalted, whose remembrance is exalted, says: these gathered groups and the confederates banded together in disobedience to Allah and disbelief in Him, to whom, O Muḥammad, the polytheists of your people belong, and with whom the same path is trodden as with them.
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The footnotes:
(9) The verse is by ʿAntara al-ʿAbsī (Mukhtār al-shiʿr al-jāhilī, with commentary by Muṣṭafā al-Saqqā, al-Ḥalabī edition, 387). It is the fourth verse of a poem in which he satirizes Qays ibn Zuhayr, the leader of Tamīm in one of their wars with ʿAbs. The commentator said: al-Ayka is the abundant, intertwined trees; and "your tears flowed" means: they streamed; and al-maḥmil is the carrying-strap of the sword. Abū ʿUbayda cited it as evidence in Majāz al-Qurʾān (folio 213-1) and said: al-Ayka is the dense wood of nabʿ-trees and lote-trees, namely the intertwined part of it; a man said, relying on ʿAntara: "Is it perhaps because of the weeping…" — the verse. By it is meant the carrying-strap of the sword; that is al-ḥimāla and al-ḥamāʾil, and the plural of maḥmil is maḥāmil. Some say "Layka" (without clipping the hamza), and they did not understand its meaning. End of quotation.
