ʿAbd al-Raz̤z̤āq relates—on the authority of Ibn Jurayj, from an unnamed transmitter, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās—as do Mālik from Ibn Rumān, Shaybān from Qatādah, and ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī, to the same effect: those who committed the stratagem were shunned by the rest of the town. The righteous among them admonished the sinners, but the latter refused to listen. Consequently the transgressors spent the nights by themselves, a gate barricading them from the others, for the townsfolk expected their doom. One morning the doors of their quarter remained closed; the sun had risen high. The people ordered a man to climb a ladder and look over the barrier. When he peered in, behold, they were apes with tails, yelping and leaping about. They opened the gate, whereupon the apes recognized their relatives, while the relatives did not recognize them. The apes clung to their kin, and the admonishers said to them, “Did we not forbid you from this deed?” The apes nodded their heads, “Yes.” ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās then wept and said, “We witness many evils yet we neither censure them nor speak about them.”

Al-ʿAwfī reports from Ibn ʿAbbās that the young men of the village were turned into apes and its elders into swine. Ibn Abī Ḥātim transmits through Mujāhid, from Ibn ʿAbbās, that they lived only for a brief instant—a fawāq—then perished, leaving no offspring. Al-Ḍaḥḥāk likewise narrates from Ibn ʿAbbās: no creature ever produced by metamorphosis lived longer than three days, and these ate not, drank not, nor did they reproduce. We have set forth the full corpus of reports on this in our commentaries on Sūrat al-Baqarah and al-Aʿrāf. All praise and thanks belong to Allah.

Ibn Abī Ḥātim and Ibn Jarīr also transmit—through Ibn Abī Najīḥ, from Mujāhid—that he said: “Their hearts were transformed, but they were not turned into apes and swine; rather, it is a parable Allah has set forth, like His saying, ‘The likeness of one who carries books is that of a donkey carrying tomes’ (al-Jumuʿah 62:5).” The chain of this report is sound, yet it is exceedingly unusual coming from him and contradicts the apparent wording of the Qur’an and the explicit statements of many scholars, early and late. Allah knows best.