—a brazen, stubborn denier of what sights have testified to and what one generation after another has handed down. To reject it is no different from denying the very existence of the well-known kings, scholars, or distant lands.

Then the Almighty returns to establishing the Resurrection, saying: “Were We wearied by the first creation?” (Qaf 15). Concerning anyone who proves unable to do something, the Arabs say: ʿayiya bihi—“he was stumped by it,” or “So-and-so ʿayiya regarding this matter.”

The poet said (1):
“They were at a loss in their affair,
just as the dove is at a loss over her egg.”

Similarly He says: “and He did not grow weary in creating them” (Al-Ahqaf 33). Ibn ʿAbbas explained: “That is, were We rendered incapable?”—a view shared by Muqatil.

I say: this is an explanation by way of implication, whereas the word’s basic sense is broader. The Arabs say, “aʿyāni an aʿrifa kadha” and “ʿayītu bihi” when they cannot discover its direction or are unable to know or obtain it. They also say, “aʿyāni dawāʾuka”—“your remedy has baffled me”—when they cannot locate or identify it; inherent in this meaning is impotence.

The line of poetry they cited confirms this sense. The dove is not incapable of her egg; what bewilders her, when she wishes to lay, is where she should drop it. She circles and wanders until she releases it, and once she has laid it she is again bewildered about where to keep and deposit it so that it remains out of reach. She moves it from place to place, uncertain where to make its nest—just like someone who is ʿayiya (2) over his affair, not knowing from which direction to tackle it or how to approach it.

What is intended by iʿyāʾ in this verse is not fatigue, as supposed by one who has not understood