۞ قَالَ فَمَا خَطْبُكُمْ أَيُّهَا ٱلْمُرْسَلُونَ
He said, ‘O messengers, what is now your errand?’
قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّآ أُرْسِلْنَآ إِلَىٰ قَوْمٍۢ مُّجْرِمِينَ
They said, ‘We have been sent toward a guilty people,
لِنُرْسِلَ عَلَيْهِمْ حِجَارَةًۭ مِّن طِينٍۢ
that We may rain upon them stones of clay,
مُّسَوَّمَةً عِندَ رَبِّكَ لِلْمُسْرِفِينَ
sent for the transgressors from your Lord.
فَأَخْرَجْنَا مَن كَانَ فِيهَا مِنَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
So We picked out those who were in it of the faithful,
فَمَا وَجَدْنَا فِيهَا غَيْرَ بَيْتٍۢ مِّنَ ٱلْمُسْلِمِينَ
but We did not find there other than one house of Muslims,
وَتَرَكْنَا فِيهَآ ءَايَةًۭ لِّلَّذِينَ يَخَافُونَ ٱلْعَذَابَ ٱلْأَلِيمَ
and We have left therein a sign for those who fear a painful punishment.’
وَفِى مُوسَىٰٓ إِذْ أَرْسَلْنَٰهُ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ بِسُلْطَٰنٍۢ مُّبِينٍۢ
And in Moses [too there is a sign] when We sent him to Pharaoh with a manifest authority.
فَتَوَلَّىٰ بِرُكْنِهِۦ وَقَالَ سَٰحِرٌ أَوْ مَجْنُونٌۭ
But he turned away assured of his might, and said, ‘A magician or a crazy man!’
فَأَخَذْنَٰهُ وَجُنُودَهُۥ فَنَبَذْنَٰهُمْ فِى ٱلْيَمِّ وَهُوَ مُلِيمٌۭ
So We seized him and his hosts, and cast them into the sea, while he was blameworthy.
وَفِى عَادٍ إِذْ أَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمُ ٱلرِّيحَ ٱلْعَقِيمَ
And in ‘Ad when We unleashed upon them a barren wind.
مَا تَذَرُ مِن شَىْءٍ أَتَتْ عَلَيْهِ إِلَّا جَعَلَتْهُ كَٱلرَّمِيمِ
It left nothing that it came upon without making it like decayed bones.
وَفِى ثَمُودَ إِذْ قِيلَ لَهُمْ تَمَتَّعُوا۟ حَتَّىٰ حِينٍۢ
And in Thamud, when they were told, ‘Enjoy for a while.’
فَعَتَوْا۟ عَنْ أَمْرِ رَبِّهِمْ فَأَخَذَتْهُمُ ٱلصَّٰعِقَةُ وَهُمْ يَنظُرُونَ
Then they defied the command of their Lord; so the thunderbolt seized them as they looked on.
فَمَا ٱسْتَطَٰعُوا۟ مِن قِيَامٍۢ وَمَا كَانُوا۟ مُنتَصِرِينَ
So they were neither able to rise up, nor to come to one another’s aid.
وَقَوْمَ نُوحٍۢ مِّن قَبْلُ ۖ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا۟ قَوْمًۭا فَٰسِقِينَ
And the people of Noah aforetime. Indeed, they were a transgressing lot.
English translation: Ali Quli Qarai
Abraham’s question, “What is your errand, O messengers?”, opens the sombre second half of the pericope: the angels are bound for “a guilty people,” to rain “stones of clay marked” for the transgressors. Only “one house of muslims” is brought out, and a “sign” is left for those who fear. The verse then sweeps through the ruined nations — Moses against Pharaoh, ʿĀd and the barren wind, Thamūd and the thunderbolt, and the people of Noah — each an “āya,” a token of the same lesson.
On the Lot episode, Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān read closely and in harmony: the “marked” stones bear a sign the angels know (Ṭūsī adds the tradition that each carried the name of its target); the “house of muslims” proves, for Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī, that īmān and islām coincide; and the “sign left behind” is the overturned town, which al-Mīzān notes is passed over here by an eloquent ellipsis and detailed elsewhere. Baḥrānī supplies what the others compress into a phrase: a long hadith of al-Bāqir tracing the townsfolk’s sin to miserliness — they shamed their guests to drive travellers away — and Jibrīl’s vivid account of raising the towns until heaven’s angels heard their cocks and dogs, then overturning them and marking their site near Lake Tiberias. Here the Imāmī voice again inflects the text: Baḥrānī records al-Bāqir glossing “only one house of muslims” as “Āl Muḥammad,” and al-Ṣādiq naming submission, piety and certainty the rarest things to descend from heaven — given here as attributed traditions.
On the ruined nations, the four Arabic sources move almost in step. “He turned away with his court (bi-ruknihi)” is Pharaoh leaning on his troops as a wall on its pillar (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān), and al-Mīzān adds that he alone is called “blameworthy” because he was the imām who led his people to the Fire. All note the incoherence of calling one man both “sorcerer” and “madman.” The “barren wind” of ʿĀd is barren of every good — no cloud, no fertilising (Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, Qummī) — and Ṭūsī alone adds the Prophet’s word, “I was helped by the east wind, and ʿĀd was destroyed by the west wind.” Thamūd’s “Enjoy yourselves for a while” is Ṣāliḥ’s three-day respite after the she-camel (Ṭabarsī, al-Mīzān, and Qummī, who fixes the “while” at three days), and al-Mīzān carefully resolves the sequence of their defiance and respite. Noah’s people close the list as “transgressors.”
The distribution of coverage is itself notable: Baḥrānī’s narrations cluster almost entirely on Lot, and he refers the reader to Sūrat Hūd for the rest, while Qummī offers only two brief glosses — so on the Mosaic and ʿĀd/Thamūd/Noah material the weight falls on Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī and al-Mīzān, who read these as parallel “signs” all serving the sūra’s single argument for God’s oneness and the coming Requital.