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Owners of The Ditch
God said: (Self-)destroyed were the owners of the ditch, Of the fuel-fed fire, When they sat by it, And were themselves the witnesses of what they did to the believers, They had naught against them save that they believed in Allah, the Mighty, the Owner of Praise..etc(Al-Buruj:4-8). In interpretations and narrations that are trusted, it is that God sent a prophet from Abyssinia  to call the people to the faith of God and to work with His laws and regulations according to the laws of the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary with what was there in the Gospel, and some of the people were pagans and some of them were jews, so this holy prophet started to call the people towards god, and he showed many miracles and so lot of people followed him and believed in him, and the king was a jew and most of the people were jews, so they met with him (the prophet) and fought against him (the prophet) and so many of his followers were killed and some others were captured, and then they made ditches for them into the ground and filled them with woods and sat the fire in them, and on the edges they put some witnesses to see how it's going to be and how the king's orders shall be done, and then they said to the people: whoever was along with the religion of the king and was a jew let him be away, and whoever followed this man let him drop himself into the fire and if anyone denied then push him by force, and so on until the number of those who were killed by the sword and fire reached twenty thousand. They say that then came a woman carrying a baby that was two months old only and she got scared of the fire and then the baby said to her: go ahead and don't be afraid and so she went into the fire with the baby. In another narration it is said that the baby was two months old and the woman wanted to throw herself into the fire but she had mercy upon her child and then God made him speak and he said to her: O mother, throw yourself and I into the fire for this is not so much for God.
They say about the interpretation of "(Self-)destroyed were the owners of the ditch", that it was because of the king of Abyssinia and it was Ða Nus, the last one to be a king from Himyar, and he turned to judaism and all of Himyar turned to judaism, and he was told that in Najrân in Yemen there were some people that still believe in christianity and their chief was `Abdullah ben Yâss, and they insisted that the king should march to them with his armies and make them get into judaism, and so he did and when he reached Najrân he gathered all the christians and he threatened them and warned them to leave christianity but they denied to do so and they chose to be killed instead of changing their religion and so he made ditches for them and sat the fire in them, and so some of them were thrown to the fire and some were killed by sword, and the numbers of the dead reached something around twenty one thousand men.
In a narration, the prince of belivers (PUH) was asked about the magii [fire worshippers] and their rules, and he answered: they were people that had a book, and once they had a king that got drunk one day and made an affair with his sister and his mother and when he got sober he regretted that, and he said to the people: this is allowed (by religion), and they denied that, so he started to kill them and made the ditches and threw them into them..etc. We say: we don't mind that many stories about this matter are available and the narration is true, because it is like a rule that runs among the wrong kings and they take from each other (the deeds), and Quran points out to the all because the reason for all of them is one and God sees His servants and He is the Knower.
 
 


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