Al-Fil, "The Elephant," is the 105th surah — five verses revealed in Mecca that recall an event from living memory: the Year of the Elephant, traditionally placed around the year the Prophet ﷺ was born.1
What it is about
The surah opens as a rhetorical question: "Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant?" It recalls an army — led, tradition holds, by the Abyssinian governor Abraha and fronted by a war elephant — that marched on Mecca to destroy the Kaaba. "Did He not make their plan into misguidance? And He sent against them birds in flocks, striking them with stones of hard clay, and He made them like eaten straw." The mighty expedition was undone without a battle.
Why it matters
For the Meccans, this was recent history, not legend. The surah uses it to make a point they could not deny: the House they honoured was defended by its Lord. That sets the stage for the next surah, which calls the tribe to worship Him in return. To read Al-Fil in Arabic with translations and recitation, open it on Quran.com.