to withhold these blessings from us, if He is able.” (1) This is the meaning of His saying, “But they turned away, so We sent against them the flood of the dam.” ⦗88/a⦘ The term al-'Arim is the plural of 'urmah, a barrier by which water is impounded.

Ibn al-A'rabi said: “Al-'Arim is an irresistible flood.” It was also said that it was red water which Allah sent against them from wherever He willed. Another view is that al-'Arim means “the valley,” deriving from 'irāmah, meaning severity and strength.

Ibn Abbas, Wahb, and others said: That dam had been built by Bilqis. The people had been fighting over the water of their valley, so she ordered that their valley be dammed with an embankment—called al-'Arim in the Himyarite language. She sealed the space between the two mountains with rock and pitch, made three gates for it, one above another, and built below it a huge reservoir. She made twelve outlets in it, corresponding to the number of their streams, which they would open whenever they needed water and close whenever they had sufficient water. When the rains came, the waters of Yemen’s valleys gathered there, and the flood was held back behind the dam. She would then order the upper gate opened, and its water would flow into the reservoir. They would irrigate from the upper gate, then from the second, and then from the lowest, third gate; and the water would not run out before the water of the following year came. In this manner, she apportioned it among them.

They remained upon this arrangement for some time after her. Then, when they transgressed and disbelieved, Allah unleashed upon them a rodent known as the khuld, which burrowed beneath the dam. The water flooded their gardens and devastated their land. (2)

Wahb said: Among the things they claimed, and found in their lore and divinatory practices, was that a mouse would destroy their dam. Therefore, they left no gap between two stones without tying a cat beside it. But when its appointed time came, and Allah willed to drown them, a large red mouse, as they relate, approached one of those cats and attacked it until the cat retreated. The mouse then entered the gap beside which the cat had been stationed, worked its way into the dam, and bored and dug until it had weakened it for the flood—while they remained unaware of it. When the flood came, it found a breach and entered through it until it tore apart the dam. It overflowed their possessions, drowned them, and the sand buried their homes. They scattered and were dispersed until they became a proverb among the Arabs. They would say, “The people of so-and-so have become aydi Saba' or ayādi Saba',” meaning that they have scattered and dispersed. This is the meaning of His saying, “So We sent against them the flood of the dam.” (3)

“And We replaced their two gardens with two gardens bearing bitter fruit.” The majority recited it with an indefinite ending, while the reciters of Basra read it as a construct phrase, “fruit of khamt.” “Fruit” means produce, while khamt refers to the arak tree, whose fruit is called barīr. This is the view of most exegetes.

Al-Mubarrad and al-Zajjaj said: Every plant that has acquired such bitterness that it cannot be eaten is khamt. (4)