Sūrah 88 · Āyāt 17–20

Al-Ghāshiya 17–20 — Four signs: camel, sky, mountains, earth

The address now pivots from the two destinies to a summons to reflect on creation: "Do they not look at the camels, how they were created? And at the sky, how it was raised? And at the mountains, how they were set up? And at the earth, how it was spread out?"

The present sources read this as an argument from design that grounds the whole sūra. al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān) frames it best: having finished with al-Ghāshiya and the two parties, God "follows it with a summary indication of the divine governance that discloses His lordship," which entails the duty of worship and its corollary — the reckoning. He asks whether the camel's fashioning "from a lifeless, senseless earth into this wondrous form," subservient in its riding, flesh, milk, hide, wool, "even its urine and dung," could be "a chance agreement, unsought in itself." Crucially, al-Mīzān explains why the camel heads the list: "the sūra is Meccan and the first addressed by it are the Bedouins, for whom keeping camels is a pillar of livelihood." He reads each further sign functionally — the sky adorned with sun, moon and stars and holding the air "the animal needs for breathing"; the mountains as "pegs preventing the earth's swaying," reservoirs of water and "keepers of minerals"; the earth "levelled and smoothed," fit for dwelling and man's industry.

al-Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān) supplies the human texture. He preserves Qatāda's occasion — that the marvel of the Garden made the misguided wonder, so God turned them to the camel of their own pasture and "the pure milk He brings forth from between dung and blood." He records the famous exchange with al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī: asked why the camel and not the more wondrous elephant, al-Ḥasan answered that the Arabs "have little acquaintance with the elephant," whose back is not ridden, flesh not eaten, milk not drawn — whereas the camel is "the most precious wealth of the Arabs," led by a child's hand "despite its bulk." al-Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān) reads the four signs in the same key: the camel subdued by a small child "by God's making it subservient," the sky's expanse "by which creation subsists," the mountains as "pegs and stabilizer," the earth spread so that settling and benefit are possible — closing that these graces are "unmatched by any benefactor's," demanding "the greatest gratitude."

The two hadith-sources are brief and, here, unpolemical. al-Baḥrānī (al-Burhān) and al-Qummī both carry a single ʿAṭāʾ–Ibn ʿAbbās report turning the verses into a challenge in God's own voice: "Can anyone create the like of the camel, raise the like of the sky, set up the like of the mountains, or spread out the like of the earth other than Me?" — the rhetorical question sealing the passage's monotheistic point that the Maker of these signs alone deserves worship. All six present sources thus read 17–20 as a ladder from the familiar creature to the Creator, and thence to the reckoning that the sūra has kept in view from its first word.