Alam yaraw kam ahlakna qablahum mina alqurooni annahum ilayhim la yarjiAAoona
English
Ahmed Ali
Have they not seen how many generations have We destroyed before them who will not return again?
31
Tafseer
'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : (have they not seen) have the disbelievers of mecca not been informed (how many generations) past nations (we destroyed before them, which indeed return not unto them) that is until the day of judgement;
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : have they — that is, those inhabitants of mecca who said to the prophet, ‘you have not been sent [by god]!’ [q. 13:43] — not seen, [not] come to know (the interrogative is meant [rhetorically] as an affirmative) how many (kam here is predicative [as opposed to interrogative], in other words [it is to be understood as] kathīran, ‘many’; it is operated by the statement that comes next [below] and it comments on the operative clause for the statement that preceded it); the meaning then is as follows: indeed, many, generations, communities, we have destroyed before them, [how] that they, the ones destroyed, never return?, to those deniers [who are now alive]? so will they not learn from their example? (from annahum, ‘[how] that they’, to the end [of the verse] is a substitution for the preceding clause [kam ahlaknā qablahum mina’l-qurūni], bearing in mind the aforementioned general meaning).
