Asbabun Nuzul Surah Al Fil

What are the Asbabun nuzul Surah al fil? Asbabun Nuzul of surah means the reasons of revelations of a surah. Is there any cause of revelations of surah Al feel. Let’s us find it in this article.

Asbabun Nuzul Surah Al Fil

During a period of difficulty at the outset of Muhammad’s prophet hood, Allah reassured him with surah Al fil. It was also a warning to the disbelievers of Quraysh and a reminder of how Allah had protected His House from harm, while the polytheists and their revered idols were helpless to do so.

Similarly, Allah’s Messenger SAW would be protected by Him until his mission was complete. Abrahah al-Ashram was a Christian Abyssinian ruler of Yemen.

He had built a magnificent cathedral in Sanʽa’ and decided to compel the Arabs to make their pilgrimage to it rather than to the Kaʽbah in Makkah.

The Arabs in Yemen were extremely angered by this and some individuals committed acts of aggression against the cathedral. So Abrahah determined to destroy the Kaʽbah.

He commanded an army of 60,000 men led by a great elephant. 441 His army advanced unopposed until it reached the outskirts of Makkah. The Quraysh, powerless to resist, could only hide in the nearby mountains.

The way was now clear for the invading army to enter the city and attack the Ka‘bah. But Allah, the Almighty, had willed otherwise. Every time they urged the elephant toward Makkah, it refused to advance by command of its Lord.

Allah then sent flocks of birds carrying stones which they dropped on the aggressors, tearing their skins and infecting them with disease. Many of them perished on the spot; others fled in panic and died on the way back.

Abrahah was carried back to Ṣanʽā’ in agony, to die a terrible death witnessed by his people. Prophet Muhammad SAW was born later in that same year, which was known to the tribes as “the Year of the Elephant.”

While the polytheists assumed that Allah had saved His House for them, it later became clear that He had in fact preserved it for His final Messenger to restore the worship of Allah alone, without partners or intercessors.

The Subject-matter Of The Surah

This Surah refers to the story of the People of the Elephants who came with an army of elephants for the purpose of destroying the House of Allah in (The Holy Ka’bah) in Makkah.

But their plan backfired and the Divine scourge overtook them. Allah destroyed the army with a flock of ordinary birds.

Thus their plans were foiled and thwarted. When did the event take place? This event took place in the very year in which the Holy Prophet SAW was born at Makkah, according to some traditions and the popular view among the historians. [Ibn Kathir].

The scholars of hadith have taken this event as a special type of mu’jizah (miracle) of the Holy Prophet SAW, but the term mu’jizah, in its real sense, refers to an abnormal event shown by Allah to prove the claim of a prophet to having been sent by Him.

Therefore, a mu’jizah is shown after a prophet’s Divine commission. However, sometimes it happens that a miraculous event takes place before a prophet’s claim to prophet-hood.

This, in the parlance of the scholars of hadith, is called irhas which means ‘prologue or introduction’. The word rahs means a ‘foundation stone’ [Qamiis].

As the miraculous events taking place before the advent of prophets or before their claim to prophet-hood are meant to introduce and affirm that soon a particular prophet will be Divinely commissioned, they are referred to as irhas.

Many miraculous incidents of this nature occurred before the birth and the advent of the Holy Prophet SAW, and one of them was the incident of the ‘People of the Elephants’ who were miraculously prevented by the Heavenly scourge from destroying the House of Allah.