The Thirty-Fourth Surah

Saba-(Sheba) Mecca 58 [54 verses]

The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:

فَأَعْرَضُوا...

34: 16. But they turned away (from Allah),

... فَأَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ سَيْلَ ...

and We sent against them the flood

C3812. Into that happy Garden of Eden in Arabia Felix (Araby the Blest) came the insidious snake of Unfaith and Wrongdoing.

- Perhaps the people became arrogant of their prosperity, or of their science, or of their skill in irrigation engineering, in respect of the wonderful works of the Dam which their ancestors had constructed.

- Perhaps they got broken up into rich and poor, privileged and unprivileged, high-caste and low-caste, disregarding the gifts and closing the opportunities given by Allah to all His creatures.

- Perhaps they broke the laws of the very Nature which fed and sustained them.

The Nemesis came.

It may have come suddenly, or it may have come slowly. The pent-up waters of the eastern side of the Yemen highlands were collected in a high lake confined by the Dam of Maarib. A mighty flood came; the dam burst; and it has never been repaired since. Ibis was a spectacular crisis: it may have been preceded and followed by slow desiccation of the country.

... الْعَرِمِ...

(released) from the Dams,

C3813. "Arim" = Dams or Embankments, may have been a proper noun, or may simply mean the great earth-works fined with stone, which formed the Maarib dam, of which traces still exist.

The French traveler T.J. Arnaud saw the town and ruins of the Dam of Maarib in 1843, and described its gigantic works and its inscriptions: See Journal Asiatique for January 1874: the account is in French.

For a secondary account in English, see W.B. Harris. Journey Through Yemen, Edinburgh, 1893.

The dam as measured by Arnaud was two miles long and 120 ft. high. The date of its destruction was somewhere about 120 A.D., though some authorities put it much later.

... وَبَدَّلْنَاهُم بِجَنَّتَيْهِمْ جَنَّتَيْنِ...

and We converted their two Garden (rows)

... ذَوَاتَى أُكُلٍ خَمْطٍ وَأَثْلٍ وَشَيْءٍ مِّن سِدْرٍ قَلِيلٍ ﴿١٦﴾

into "gardens" producing bitter fruit, and tamarisks, and some few (stunted) Lote trees.

C3814. The flourishing "Garden of Arabia" was converted into a waste.

- The luscious fruit trees became wild, or gave place to wild plants with bitter fruit.

- The feathery leaved tamarisk, which is only good for twigs and wattle-work, replaced the fragrant plants and flowers.

- Wild and stunted kinds of thorny bushes, like the wild Lote-tree, which were good for neither fruit nor shade, grew in place of the pomegranates, the date-palms and the grape-vines.

The Lote-tree belongs to the family Rhamnaceae, Zizyphus Spina Christi, of which (it is supposed) Christ's crown of thorns was made, allied to the Zizyphus Jujuba, or ber tree of India.

Wild, it is shrubby, thorny and useless. In cultivation it bears good fruit, and some shade, and can be thornless, thus becoming a symbol of heavenly bliss: 56:28.

ذَلِكَ جَزَيْنَاهُم بِمَا كَفَرُوا...

34: 17. That was the Requital We gave them because they ungratefully rejected Faith:

C3815. Kafar.- intensive form:

"those who deliberately and continuously reject Allah and are ungrateful for His Mercies, as shown by their constant wrong-doing.

... وَهَلْ نُجَازِي إِلَّا الْكَفُورَ ﴿١٧﴾

and never do We give (such) requital except to such as are ungrateful rejecters.

وَجَعَلْنَا بَيْنَهُمْ وَبَيْنَ الْقُرَى الَّتِي بَارَكْنَا فِيهَا قُرًى ظَاهِرَةً...

34: 18. Between them and the Cities on which We had poured Our blessings, We had placed Cities in prominent positions,

C3816. An instance is now given of the sort of covetousness on the part of the people of Saba, which ruined their prosperity and trade and cut their own throats.

The old Frankincense route was the great Highway (imam mubin 15:79; sabil muqim, 15:76) between Arabia and Syria. Through Syria it connected with the great and flourishing Kingdoms of the Euphrates and Tigris valleys on the one hand and Egypt on the other, and with the great Roman Empire round the Mediterranean.

At the other end, through the Yemen Coast, the road connected, by sea transport, with India, Malaya, and China. The Yemen-Syria road was much frequented, and Madain Salih was one of the stations on that route, and afterwards on the Pilgrim route: see Appendix No: 4 to Surah 26.

Syria was the land on which Allah "had poured His blessings", being a rich fertile country, where Abraham had lived: it includes the Holy Land of Palestine. The route was studded in the days of its prosperity with many stations (cities) close to each other, on which merchants could travel with ease and safety, "by night and by day". The close proximity of stations prevented the inroads of highwaymen.

... وَقَدَّرْنَا فِيهَا السَّيْرَ ...

and between them We had appointed stages of journey in due proportion:

... سِيرُوا فِيهَا لَيَالِيَ وَأَيَّامًا آمِنِينَ ﴿١٨﴾

"Travel therein, secure, by night and by day."

Asad’s Version:

34:16 But they turned away [from Us], and so We let loose upon them a flood that overwhelmed the dams, 24 and changed their two [expanses of luxuriant] gardens into a couple of gardens yielding bitter fruit, and tamarisks, and some few [wild] lote-trees:

(34:17) thus We requited them for their having denied the truth. But do We ever requite [thus] any but the utterly ingrate? 25

34:18 (18) Now [before their downfall,] We had placed between them and the cities which We had blessed 26 [many] towns within sight of one another; and thus We had made travelling easy [for them, as if to say]: "Travel safely in this [land], by night or by day!"

[[ Asad’s notes - 24 Lit., "the flooding of the dams" (sayl al-'arim). The date of that catastrophe cannot be established with any certainty, but the most probable period of the first bursting of the Dam of Ma'rib seems to have been the second century of the Christian era. The kingdom of Sheba was largely devastated, and this led to the migration of many southern (Qahtan) tribes towards the north of the Peninsula. Subsequently, it appears, the system of dams and dykes was to some extent repaired, but the country never regained its earlier prosperity; and a few decades before the advent of Islam the great dam collapsed completely and finally.

25 Neither the Qur'an nor any authentic had ith tells us anything definite about the way in which the people of Sheba had sinned at the time immediately preceding the final collapse of the Dam of Ma'rib (i.e., in the sixth century of the Christian era). This omission, however, seems to be deliberate. In view of the fact that the story of Sheba's prosperity and subsequent catastrophic downfall had become a byword in ancient Arabia, it is most probable that its mention in the Qur'an has a purely moral purport similar to that of the immediately preceding legend of Solomon's death, inasmuch as both these legends, in their Qur'anic presentation, are allegories of the ephemeral

nature of all human might and achievement. As mentioned at the beginning of note 23 above, the story of Sheba's downfall is closely linked with the phenomenon of men's recurrent ingratitude towards God. (See also verse 20 and the corresponding note 29.)

26 I.e., Mecca and Jerusalem, both of which lay on the caravan route much used by the people of Sheba. ]]