The Mansions of the Stars
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[85:5]
of fire fiercely burning [for all who have attained to faith]!

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* v.5 : Lit., “those responsible (ashāb) for the pit of fire abounding in fuel.” In order to explain this parabolic passage, the commentators interpret it – quite unnecessarily – in the past tense, and advance the most contradictory legends meant to “identify,” those evildoers in historical terms. The result is a medley of stories ranging from Abraham’s experiences with his idolatrous contemporaries (cf. 21:68-70) to the Biblical legend of Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to burn three pious Israelites in a fiery furnace (The Book of Daniel iii 19 ff.), or the persecution, in the sixth century, of the Christians of Najrān by the King of Yemen, Dhū Nawās (who was a Jew by religion), or the entirely apocryphal story of a Zoroastrian king who burnt to death those of his subjects who refused to accept his dictum that a marriage of brother and sister was “permitted by God”; and so forth. None of these legends needs, of course, to be seriously considered in this context. As a matter of fact, the very anonymity of the evildoers referred to in the above Qur’anic passage shows that we have here a parable and not an allusion to “historical” or even legendary events. The persecutors are people who, having no faith whatsoever, hate to see faith in others (see verse 8 below); the “pit of fire” is a metaphor for the persecution of the latter by the former a phenomenon not restricted to any particular time or to a particular people but recurring in many forms and in varying degrees of intensity throughout recorded history.