The appearance of
Dabba
C
HAPTER NO
. 27 of the Quran mentions a sign called
dabba
which
will appear before Doomsday. “When God’s word is justly carried
out against them, We will produce a
dabba
from the earth which
will tell them that mankind had no real faith in Our signs.” (27:82)
Dabba
literally means a creeper. This word has been used in
the Quran both for man and animals (chapter 35), i.e. for living
creatures. It is most likely a human being and not an animal
which is meant here. This means that prior to Doomsday, God
will raise a human being who will warn man of God’s signs which
people had failed to understand, although they were already in
existence.
We find different narrations of traditions in the books of
Hadith and Tafsir on the subject of
dabba
. From these traditions
we learn that
dabba
will be an extraordinary creature. But for a
proper understanding of these traditions, we must take them as
being symbolic in style. That is why a group of commentators
have treated these traditions as such and have opined that by
dabba,
a human being, not an extraordinarily mysterious creature,
is depicted. According to these traditions,
dabba
will be a human
being like any other. And, by the special grace of God, he will
be a means of expressing God’s signs. A commentator of the
Quran, Al Qurtubi (671 AD), has expressed this opinion: ‘Some
later exegists have said that it is more understandable for
dabba
to be a human being. He will counter the false ideology of the
misguided, so that they may understand and relent’, and, in the
words of the Quran: “He who was to perish might perish after
clear evidence of the truth, and he who was to live might live in
clear evidence of the truth.” (8:42).
If, judging by this verse of the Quran,
dabba
means a human
being who appears at a later period of human history, why is the
word
dabba
used for a human being? The reason is traceable to
the law of doubt (element of doubt) which finds expression in
chapter 6, verse 9 of the Quran:
