27وَلَقَد ضَرَبنا لِلنّاسِ في هٰذَا القُرآنِ مِن كُلِّ مَثَلٍ لَعَلَّهُم يَتَذَكَّرونَMuhammad AsadTHUS, INDEED, have We propounded unto men all kinds of parables in this Qur'an,1 so that they might bethink themselves; [and We have revealed it]As in many other passages of the Qur'an, the use of the term "parable" (mathal) immediately or shortly after a description of men's condition - whether good or bad - in the hereafter is meant to remind us that all such descriptions relate to something that is "beyond the reach of a created being's perception" (al-ghayb), and cannot, therefore, be conveyed to man otherwise than by means of allegories or parables expressed in terms of human experience and therefore accessible, in a general sense, to human imagination.