[concerning his heart]—so they say.

Ibn Isḥāq related: Yaʿqūb ibn ʿUtbah told me that he had heard that the first outbreak of measles and smallpox ever witnessed in the land of the Arabs occurred in that very year, and that it was also the first year in which the bitter shrubs—rue, colocynth, and milk-weed—appeared there.

Ibn Isḥāq further said: When God later sent Muḥammad—may God’s blessings and peace be upon him—one of the favors by which He reminded Quraysh of His grace and bounty was that He had driven the Abyssinians away, thereby preserving their authority and the duration of their rule. Concerning this He, exalted is He, said:
“Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the Men of the Elephant?
Did He not confound their stratagem,
And send against them birds in flights,
Pelting them with stones of baked clay,
So He made them like stalks of grain devoured?” (Sūrat al-Fīl 105:1-5).

Ibn Isḥāq and Ibn Hishām then commenced a commentary on this sūrah and the one that follows. We have already treated the matter at length in our book Tafsīr, which should suffice, God willing. To Him belong praise and grace.

Ibn Hishām said: Abābīl means “companies,” and, so far as we know, the Arabs never employed a singular form for it. Concerning sijjīl, Yūnus the grammarian and Abū ʿUbaydah informed me that among the Arabs it signifies something extremely hard and solid. Some exegetes claim that it is actually two Persian words that the Arabs merged into one: sanj, “stone,” and jil, “clay”—that is, stones made of these two substances, stone and clay.

He also said: al-ʿasf is the leaf of grain before it is cut.

Al-Kisāʾī said: I heard some grammarians say the singular of abābīl is ibbīl.

Many of the early scholars maintained that abābīl denotes flocks of birds, each group following another, coming from every direction.