The Quran

Preface

وَلَقَد مَكَّنّاهُم فيما إِن مَكَّنّاكُم فيهِ وَجَعَلنا لَهُم سَمعًا وَأَبصارًا وَأَفئِدَةً فَما أَغنىٰ عَنهُم سَمعُهُم وَلا أَبصارُهُم وَلا أَفئِدَتُهُم مِن شَيءٍ إِذ كانوا يَجحَدونَ بِآياتِ اللَّهِ وَحاقَ بِهِم ما كانوا بِهِ يَستَهزِئونَ

Yusuf Ali

And We had firmly established them in a (prosperity and) power which We have not given to you (ye Quraish!) and We had endowed them with (faculties of)¹ hearing, seeing, heart and intellect: but of no profit to them were their (faculties of) hearing, sight, and heart and intellect, when they went on rejecting the Signs² of God. and they were (completely) encircled³ by that which they used to mock at!

‘Ād and their successors Thamūd were more richly endowed with the faculties of the arts, sciences, and culture than ever were Quraish before Islam. “Hearing and seeing” refer to the experimental faculties; the word “heart” in Arabic includes intellect, or the rational faculties, as well as the instruments of feeling and emotion, the aesthetic faculties. The Second ‘Ād, or Thamūd, have left interesting traces of their architecture in the country round the Hijr: see n. 1043 to 7:73, and notes 2002-2003 to 15:80-82.
The highest talents and faculties of this world are useless in the spiritual world if we reject the laws of the spiritual world and thus become outlaws there###
See n. 4770 to 45:33. They used to mock at God’s Signs, but those were the very things which hemmed them in, and showed that they had more power and effectiveness than anything else.