If you were drinking, we would have brought you the most delicious drink, but we will carry mud and water for you." Thus, they carry it to it wherever it may be. Have you not seen the mud that is in the hollow of the wood? It is from what the devils bring to it in gratitude to it.

17885 - From Ibn Abbas: "A creature of the earth eating his staff," meaning his stick.

His saying, the Almighty: "Indeed, there was for Sheba in their dwelling-place—" an ayah.

17886 - From Ibn Zayd, may God be pleased with him, regarding His saying: "Indeed, there was for Sheba in their dwelling-place," he said: Mosquitoes, flies, fleas, scorpions, or snakes were never seen in their village. Even if a traveler were to arrive with lice or vermin in his clothes, he would only need to look at their houses, and those vermin would die. A person would enter the two gardens and hold a basket over his head, and by the time he left, that basket would be filled with various types of fruit, without him having picked a single thing by hand.

17887 - From Qatadah, may God be pleased with him, regarding His saying: "A good land and a forgiving Lord," he said: This land is good, and your Lord is forgiving of your sins. And regarding His saying: "But they turned away," he said: The people became arrogant toward the command of God and disbelieved in His favor.

17888 - From al-Suddi, may God be pleased with him, who said: The people of Sheba were given what no one else in their time was given. A woman would have a basket on her head and intend her need, and she would not reach the place she desired before her basket was filled with various types of fruit. They united upon that and then belied their messengers. A flood used to come to them from a distance of ten days' travel until it settled in their valley. The water was collected from those floods and mountains in that valley, and they had excavated it with a dam (musannah), and they called the dam "'Arim." They would open it whenever they wished to draw from that water and irrigate their gardens whenever they wished. When God became angry with them and permitted their destruction, a man entered his garden—he was 'Umar ibn 'Amir, according to what has reached us, and he was a soothsayer—and he observed a female rat moving its young from the bottom of the valley to the top of the mountain. He said: "This would not have moved its young from here unless a punishment had befallen the people of these lands." It is estimated that it breached that 'Arim, for it had been tapped, so that tap flowed as water into his garden. He ordered that