And that is 'Aad, an indication of their graves and their traces. It is as if he said: Travel through the earth and look at it and take heed. Then he resumed describing their conditions by saying: They denied the signs of their Lord and disobeyed His messengers. For when they disobeyed their messenger, they disobeyed all the messengers of Allah. We do not differentiate between any of His messengers. It is said that only Hud was sent to them. Every tyrant and obstinate person refers to their leaders, their great ones, and their callers to deny the messengers.

The meaning of following their command is obedience to them. Since they were followers of them rather than the messengers, the curse was made to follow them in both abodes, throwing them on their faces in the punishment of Allah. And the repetition of 'away' with the calling out to their disbelief and the invoking of curses upon them is to emphasize their matter and to make it dreadful, and to incite reflection upon them and caution against a similar state.

If you say: 'Away' is a call for destruction, what is the meaning of invoking it upon them after their destruction? I say: Its meaning is to indicate that they were deserving of it. Do you not see to His saying:

'Oh my brothers, do not stay away forever... Yes, by Allah, they have stayed away.'

'How bitter is life after you... Every life after you is hardship.'

'If only I knew how your drink was... For my drink after you is a trickle.'

This is for Fatimah bint al-Ahjam al-Khuzai. The Arabs say: 'Away' with a dammah means the opposite of nearness, and with a kasrah means destruction. The present tense of the first is with a dammah, and the present tense of the second is with a fatha. What is in the verse is from it. 'And what a command' is an expression of astonishment, and life, which is existence or what is lived by, is likened to something bitter in a figurative way. The assertion of bitterness is imaginative, or it is a metaphor for deficiency in a literal way. And hardship is:

The difficulty and distress that is bothersome. And a trickle is: the little water that has no source and runs out quickly. A person is described as 'thamd' if he is frequently asked for knowledge or wealth until what he has runs out. The meaning is: My joy after you is cut off like the little water, and I expressed it in this way to match what came before.

It is narrated for her after the first verse:

'If their clan had cherished them... They would have acquired honor or offspring.'

'What is lessened by some calamity or... What is lessened by some of what I find.'

'Everything that lives, even if they commanded... Is destined, and the basin that they reached.'

The meaning of 'cherished them' is that they lived with them for a long time. And 'from' was inserted with the exclusion of 'some' from it, to indicate the intensification of hatred.

And 'what' is an insertion, building every living thing as an exaggeration in generality. And 'commanded' with a kasrah means they increased. And the basin is a metaphor for death.]]

'The people of Hud' is an apposition to 'Aad. If you say: What is the benefit in this clarification? [[Mahamud said: 'If you say what is the benefit in this clarification and making the people of Hud an apposition to 'Aad... etc.' Ahmad said:

There are also two great benefits in it. One of them is the attribution by mentioning Hud, for they only deserved destruction because of him due to the invocation against them. It is as if it was said: 'Aad, the people of Hud whom they denied.' The other is the correspondence of the verses with that, for before it is: 'And they followed the command of every tyrant and obstinate person,' and before that is 'guardian' and 'harsh,' and other things that are on the pattern of 'fa'il' suitable for 'fa'ul' in the rhymes, and Allah knows best.]] And is the clarification achieved without it?

I say: The benefit in it is that they are branded with this invocation and made a matter established without any doubt in any way, and because 'Aad' is two: the first is the ancient one which is the people of Hud and the story concerning them, and the other is Iram.