Al-Mu'tafikah
Definition
Al-mu'tafikah — the overturned — is the Quranic term for the destroyed settlements of Lut's people, cities that Allah literally inverted: lifted from the earth, turned upside down, and then rained upon with stones of baked clay (sijjil). Ibn Kathir notes the theological precision of the term: the physical inversion mirrors the moral inversion the inhabitants practiced. A civilization that had inverted the natural order of human life was destroyed by an act of physical inversion. The stones that rained upon the overturned cities are described in the Quran as 'marked by your Lord' — specifically designated for this purpose, sent with intentional, individual precision rather than as a random geological event.
As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Kathir and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
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