Al-Fil الفيل
The Elephant
Al-Fil recalls an event from the year of the Prophet's ﷺ own birth — traditionally dated 570 CE — when Abraha, the Christian ruler of Yemen, marched an army with a war elephant toward Makkah to destroy the Kaaba. The surah's five verses don't narrate the campaign in detail; they simply ask, "Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the army of the elephant?" and answer with total reversal: their scheme was foiled, and flocks of birds pelted them with stone-hard pellets of baked clay until they were left like eaten stubble. Because this event was recent, well-known history to Al-Fil's first Meccan audience rather than distant legend, the surah functions as a shared reference point — a reminder, addressed to people who mocked the Prophet's ﷺ message, that the Kaaba had already been defended once by a power no army could match.
أَلَمْ تَرَ كَيْفَ فَعَلَ رَبُّكَ بِأَصْحَـٰبِ ٱلْفِيلِ
Do you [Prophet] not see how your Lord dealt with the army of the elephant?
أَلَمْ يَجْعَلْ كَيْدَهُمْ فِى تَضْلِيلٍ
Did He not utterly confound their plans?
وَأَرْسَلَ عَلَيْهِمْ طَيْرًا أَبَابِيلَ
He sent ranks of birds against them,
تَرْمِيهِم بِحِجَارَةٍ مِّن سِجِّيلٍ
pelting them with pellets of hard-baked clay:
فَجَعَلَهُمْ كَعَصْفٍ مَّأْكُولٍۭ
He made them [like] cropped stubble.
Arabic text and translation (M.A.S. Abdel Haleem) via the Quran.Foundation API.
Frequently asked
Five verses.
Meccan, revealed in Makkah.
Abraha's campaign with a war elephant to destroy the Kaaba, traditionally dated to the same year as the Prophet's ﷺ birth (570 CE) — his army was routed by flocks of birds pelting it with hard-baked clay.
Abraha's army famously included a war elephant, an animal unfamiliar to most of Arabia at the time, which is why the year and the surah are both remembered by that detail.