upon it stones of baked clay. Ibn Abbas and Said ibn Jubayr said: “sang u gil” (“stone and clay”); it is a Persian term that was arabicized.
Qatadah and Ikrimah said: sijjil means clay, as indicated by His saying: “that We might send down upon them stones of clay” (al-Dhariyat 51:33).
Mujahid said: (1) The first part of the word means stone, and the latter part means clay.
Al-Hasan said: The origin of the stones was clay, which was then hardened.
Al-Dahhak said: It means baked bricks.
It was also said that sijjil is the name of the lowest heaven. (2)
And it was said: They are mountains in heaven, as Allah Most High says: “And He sends down from the sky mountains containing hail” (al-Nur 24:43).
His saying, “layered one upon another”: Ibn Abbas said: Successive, each following the next. It is derived from the stacking of things, one on top of another.
“Marked”: this is an adjective describing the stones, in the accusative as a circumstantial qualifier. It means marked. Ibn Jurayj said: They bore markings unlike the stones of the earth.
Qatadah and Ikrimah said: They had red streaks resembling those of onyx.
Al-Hasan and al-Suddi said: They were sealed with marks like seals.
And it was said: The name of the person at whom each stone was cast was written upon it.
“With your Lord; and they”—that is, those stones—“are not far from the wrongdoers,” meaning the idolaters of Mecca. Qatadah and Ikrimah said: This means the wrongdoers of this community. By Allah, Allah has not granted protection from them to any wrongdoer ever since.
Some reports state: “There is no wrongdoer except that he is within reach of a stone which may be dropped upon him from one moment to the next.”
It is also related that the stones pursued their stragglers and travelers wherever they were in the land. One of them entered the Sacred Precinct, and the stone remained suspended in the sky for forty days, until he came out; then it struck him and destroyed him.
His saying: “And to Midian”: that is, We sent to the descendants of Midian,