Sūrah 91 · Āyāt 11–15

Thamūd: The Wages of a Soul Uncorrected (vv. 11–15)

The sūra clinches its argument with a historical case — a people who failed precisely the test of vv. 9–10. "Thamūd denied through their inordinate transgression (ṭaghwā)." Al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī record the two readings of ṭaghwā: their rebellion and disobedience drove them to denial (Mujāhid, Ibn Zayd — the preferred face), or ṭaghwā names the overwhelming punishment itself, so "they denied [the warning of] their punishment, and what they denied came upon them" (Ibn ʿAbbās). Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī adds the structural note that this whole closing passage is a "citation and confirmation" (istishhād) of the principle just laid down: the soul that betrays itself reaps Thamūd's end. (Al-Qummī is silent on this passage; its text on al-Shams ends at v. 10.)

The most wretched. "When the most wretched of them rose up" — every present source identifies him as the hamstringer of the she-camel, named Qudār ibn Sālif. Al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī observes that although one man struck, "his rising-up was by the whole people's instigation," as the plural pronouns ("they denied… they hamstrung") show. Here the commentaries converge on a famous prophetic ḥadīth, transmitted alike by al-Ṭabarsī and al-Baḥrānī from ʿUthmān ibn Ṣuhayb and ʿAmmār: the Prophet told ʿAlī that "the most wretched of the ancients" is the camel's hamstringer and "the most wretched of the latter ones" is ʿAlī's own assassin — "the one who will strike you on this," pointing to ʿAlī's head. Al-Burhān presses the parallel: Ibn Muljam was reckoned of Qudār's very stock, "their two stories one."

The she-camel and the destruction. On "the she-camel of God and her drink," al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān agree the construction is an accusative of warning — al-Farrāʾ's "Beware the she-camel of God," as one cries "the lion, the lion!" — and that her suqyā is her appointed share of the water (cf. Q 26:155). When they "denied him and hamstrung her," "their Lord crushed them (damdama) for their sin." Al-Ṭabarsī glosses damdama as bringing destruction down and "enclosing them in punishment"; al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān, that it "cut off their root and effaced their trace." All stress the collective guilt: the deed of one became the doom of all "because they all consented to it and urged it on." For sawwāhā ("levelled it") the sources offer the tribe levelled with the earth, the punishment spread equally so none escaped, or their dwellings flattened over them.

No fear of the outcome. On "and He does not fear its consequence," al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān give the dominant reading: unlike kings who dread the repercussions of their reprisals, God "fears no accounting against Him," for "He is not questioned about what He does" (Q 21:23); they note variants referring the pronoun to the hamstringer, or to Ṣāliḥ, secure in his deliverance. Al-Ṭūsī adds the grammarians' point that reading fa-lā yakhāf coordinates the clause with "they denied and hamstrung," while wa-lā yakhāf makes it a circumstantial qualifier. Al-Baḥrānī alone refracts the whole episode through the rajʿa (the eschatological Return), the she-camel becoming "the Imām who comprehends from God," the crushing falling "in the Return." The Enlightening Commentary draws the moral plainly: three days' respite was given for repentance, but a people who would not purify their souls only increased in defiance, until the nighttime blast levelled them in the very fortresses they had thought secure.