The Blighted Garden

Terraced orchard land in the green highlands of southern Arabia toward San'a, the kind of walled, irrigated garden that the rains and the mountain springs make possible above the desert.

The orchard is blighted and blackened, the trees withered and the fruit gone, as though it had already been stripped and reaped in the night (Q 68:20, fa-asbahat ka's-sarim).

By the Qur'an the owners had sworn to harvest the fruit at first light and to give nothing to the poor (Q 68:17-18, 24); a visitation from their Lord passed over it while they slept, and they came at dawn to find it ruined.

A parable of withholding the right of the poor and of swearing on the morrow without saying if Allah wills. The owners first thought they had lost their way, then knew they were deprived, and the most balanced of them said: did I not tell you, why do you not glorify Allah (Q 68:28); and they repented, glory be to our Lord, we were indeed wrongdoers (Q 68:29).

Empty harvest baskets lie overturned and a stone irrigation channel runs dry through the blackened trees; no figure is present, only the ruined garden in the morning light.

The narrative is Q 68:17-33 (Surat al-Qalam). The Sunni tafsir (Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, al-Qurtubi) places the garden near San'a in Yemen and connects it to a righteous owner whose heirs schemed to deny the poor; some reports set it after the time of Isa (peace be upon him). The Qur'an fixes neither the place nor the date.

The Qur'an, Surat al-Qalam (68:17-33): The parable of the owners of the garden, their oath, the ruin of the garden, and their repentance. The primary source.

Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim (14th c.): Standard Sunni exegesis; the narrative and the tradition of the garden near San'a (Darwan).

al-Tabari, Jami' al-Bayan: Standard Sunni tafsir for the parable and the reports of its setting.

al-Qurtubi, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an: Sunni exegesis for the lesson of the passage: the right of the poor, and saying if Allah wills.