The Cave
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[18:91]
thus [We had made them, and thus he left them]; and We did encompass with Our knowledge all that he had in mind.

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* v.91 : This is Rāzī’s interpretation of the isolated expression kadhālika (“thus” or “thus it was”) occurring here. It obviously relates to the primitive, natural state of those people who needed no clothes to protect them from the sun, and to the (implied) fact that Dhu ’l-Qarnayn left them as he had found them, being mindful not to upset their mode of life and thus to cause them misery.
* Lit., “all that was with him” – i.e., his resolve not to “corrupt [or “change”] God’s creation” (cf. the second half of my note 141 on 4:119) – which, I believe, is a further ethical lesson to be derived from this parable.