This ayat translates to “And he sent against them birds”.

This ayat is where we get interesting differences of opinions.

Meaning of Tairan

“Tairan” can refer to birds or vultures. In Arabic literature, the word “Tair” often refers to vultures. There were 2 kinds of vultures known in the region. The first ones were called Ossifrage (or the bone-breaker) vulture. These vultures don’t have the strength to kill the animal or the turtle because they are not predators themselves. So, they carry the animal as high as they can and then drop it. The drop kills the animal. The other type of vultures were particularly interested in ostrich eggs. The problem with ostrich eggs is that they are very hard to carry and hard to penetrate or break them. These birds, called “Rakham”, would take the rocks, fly very high and drop the rock on Ostrich egg to crack it. The rock they used to carry, according to some, was called “sijjeel”.

Possibly the image being painted here isn’t of the living army that came and attacked and the birds came thereafter. But possibly the disease started killing these people, and they are now dying and people in their shining helmets are just lying there on the floor, almost dead but moving around, and the birds think they are Ostrich eggs and they drop rocks on them. This is humiliation, on top of humiliation. The army is already dead and now hoards of vultures are coming and dropping their rocks on them, perhaps making them bleed more than they already have.

Abrahah was all about prestige, he built a new prestigious location. Soldiers and Kings want to be given an honorable burial. But if the funeral service was provided by vultures, then they were given a humiliating death and the only parade that came to honor the dead were these “tairan ababeel”.

Meaning of Abaabeel

According to some opinions “Abaabeel” are some strange kind of birds, neither land birds nor sea birds. They haven’t seen this kind of bird before. But “Abaabeel” from a linguistic point of view are huge bundles of birds (hoards upon hoards of birds i.e. endless birds that darken the sky) that look like one giant flock and then they break apart.

Meaning of Ayat #3

And he sent against them huge bundles of vultures (hoards upon hoards of birds i.e. endless birds that darken the sky) that look like one giant flock and then they break apart.