Ashab al-Ukhdud (the people of the trench)

Ashab al-Ukhdud, "those of the trench", is an expression at the beginning of the Qur'an, sura 85, which is difficult to understand. Verses 4-7 read: "Slain be those of the trench, of the fire fed with fuel, when they sat by it and were witnesses of what they did to the believers." ¹

The ancient commentators and historians refer the passage among other things to the persecution of the Christians of Najran by the Jewish king of South Arabia Dhu Nuwas, which, as far as history can establish, falls in 523. It is said that the Christian martyrs were burned alive in a trench specially dug for the purpose. Occasionally the passage is linked with a story that goes back to Daniel iii, the men in the firing-oven. ¹

The entry holds that the passage should be read in an eschatological sense, as Grimme recognised and Horovitz explained more closely: it is a scene of judgement typical of the Qur'an. The "people of the trench" are unbelievers who will enter the fire as punishment for what they did to the believers (verse 7). The objections of K. Ahrens and R. Blachere to this reading are not decisive. The word ukhdud remains hard to explain: A. Moberg thinks, with strong reservations, of an influence of Hebrew Ge Hinnom, the Hell of Hinnom. Another suggestion, that "the fellows of the pit" contain a sub-reference to the Quraysh slain at Badr, whose bodies were thrown into a well, is also questionable. ¹