105. Al-Fil

Have you not considered, [O Muḥammad], how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant?1

Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the people of the elephant

Are you not aware of how your Lord dealt with the Army of the Elephant

Did He not make their plan into misguidance?1

Did He not foil their strategy

Did He not bring their strategy to utter failure

And He sent against them birds in flocks,

and send against them flocks of birds

And sent upon them swarms of flying creatures

Striking them with stones of hard clay,

which pelted them with clay stones

Then you showered them with hard stones earmarked with requital. ('Sijjil' = Inscribed = Marked out)

And He made them like eaten straw.1

Thus He made them like stubble cropped by cattle

And made them like a field of grain eaten down to stubble