LessonsSupplementary Practice 26 — Comparative Rhetoric of Sūrat al-Qāriʿah and Sūrat al-TīnQuiz

ثُمَّ رَدَدْنَاهُ أَسْفَلَ سَافِلِينَ
Then We brought the human to the lowest state. (95:5)

Thumma signals an ordered transition with distance or delay. After the excellence of creation, the discourse introduces a sharp reversal. The pronoun in radadnāhu refers back to humankind, and asfala sāfilīn expresses an extreme state of lowness.

Tafsīr offers more than one explanation, including frailty in extreme old age and a moral or eschatological fall. These alternatives shape how the next exception is construed. It is unsound to treat one interpretation as linguistically mandatory without acknowledging the others.

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Thumma and the debated meaning of the descent

Supplementary Practice 26 — Comparative Rhetoric of Sūrat al-Qāriʿah and Sūrat al-Tīn

ثُمَّ رَدَدْنَاهُ أَسْفَلَ سَافِلِينَ
Then We brought the human to the lowest state. (95:5)

Thumma signals an ordered transition with distance or delay. After the excellence of creation, the discourse introduces a sharp reversal. The pronoun in radadnāhu refers back to humankind, and asfala sāfilīn expresses an extreme state of lowness.

Tafsīr offers more than one explanation, including frailty in extreme old age and a moral or eschatological fall. These alternatives shape how the next exception is construed. It is unsound to treat one interpretation as linguistically mandatory without acknowledging the others.