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Surah 105 - Elephant

Haven't you reflected on how your Master dealt with the Elephant battalion?
Didn't he make their plans go awry?
He sent hoards of birds against them
shooting at them with stones of clay.
And so he made them like straw that has been flattened. 

Commentary
There is some peculiar vocabulary in this surah that has stumped most translators. I've played around with the meanings of different words slightly to form a coherent overall image (e.g. 'companions' becomes 'battalion'). The impression appears to be the triumph over a heavy land-based army that included an elephant by multiple lighter small airborne forces (birds). The imagery thus has something of a supernatural David-and-Goliath feel playing with several kinds of opposites (single/multiple; heavy/light; land/air).

The 'stones of clay' are very odd - the word might even derive from that used to describe a baked clay writing tablet, i.e. something small and hard. The final image I have reworked as 'flattened' straw; the original is 'eaten up' (perhaps harvested or destroyed?). I've gone for the image of a hail-storm devastating crops.

There is a significant degree of rhyme here: the first four verses all end with a long -eel sound (elephant, astray, hoards, clay), then the final verse shifts to -ool (flattened or eaten).

Also unusual, this surah is spoken in the second person singular, rather than to a group of people. The battle itself is supposed to be that which took place around the year of Muhammad's birth in 570 between the Christian Yemeni king Abraha against the Quraish of Mecca. One could imagine that the account might have drawn on volcanic imagery: falling rocks...?

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