O Muhammad, ask these Jews who are your neighbors, as a question of rebuke and reprimand, about the town that stood by the sea] (1)—that is, near it. Ibn ‘Abbas said: It was a town called Ayla, between Midian and Mount Sinai, on the seashore. Al-Zuhri said: It was Tiberias in Syria.

“when they transgressed regarding the Sabbath”: that is, they acted wrongfully therein and exceeded the command of Allah, exalted is He, by fishing. “When their fish came to them openly on their Sabbath day”: that is, appearing visibly upon the water in great abundance; it is the plural of shāri‘ (openly appearing). Al-Dahhak said: They came successively.

It is related in the account that, on the Sabbath day, they would come to them like fat white rams.

“But on days when they did not observe the Sabbath, they did not come to them”—as they came to them on the Sabbath day. Al-Hasan recited it as lā yusbītūna (“they do not enter into the Sabbath”), with the ya’ vowelled with u. The well-known recitation has the ya’ vowelled with a, and its meaning is that they did not venerate the Sabbath. “Thus We tested them”: that is, We put them to the test, “because of their defiance.”

Satan then whispered to them, saying: Allah did not forbid you from fishing; He only forbade you from eating. So fish. Or, it was said that he whispered to them: You have only been forbidden from taking the fish. So they made pools along the seashore, into which they drove the fish on the Sabbath day, then took them on Sunday. They did this for a time, then became emboldened to violate the Sabbath. They said: We see that the Sabbath has now been made lawful for us. So they caught, ate, and sold the fish.

The people of the town then became three groups, numbering approximately seventy thousand. One third forbade the wrongdoing; one third neither forbade it nor participated, but remained silent and said, “Why do you admonish a people whom Allah will destroy?” The remaining third were those guilty of the sin. When they did not desist, those who forbade them said: We will not live with you in one town. So they divided the town with a wall: the obedient believers had one gate, and the transgressors another. David, peace be upon him, cursed them.

One day, those who had forbidden the wrongdoing arose and found that none of the transgressors had come out. They said: Something must have happened to them; perhaps wine has overcome them. So they climbed the wall and found that they had become monkeys. The monkeys recognized their human relatives, but the humans did not recognize their monkey relatives. A monkey’s human relative would come to it, and it would smell his clothes and weep. He would say, “Did we not forbid you?” and it would nod its head, “Yes.” Thus, none were saved except those who had forbidden the wrongdoing, while all the rest perished.