Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
9 Indeed We have sent down the Reminder,1
and indeed We will preserve it.
10 Certainly We sent [apostles] before you
to former communities,
11 and there did not come to them any apostle
but that they used to deride him.
12 That is how We let it pass
through the hearts of the guilty:
13 they do not believe in it,
and the precedent of the ancients has already passed.
14 Were We to open for them
a gate of the sky,
so that they could go on ascending through it,
15 they would surely say,
‘Indeed a spell has been cast on our eyes;
rather we are a bewitched lot.’
16 Certainly We have appointed houses 2 in the sky
and adorned them for the onlookers,
17 and We have guarded them
from every outcast Satan,
18 except someone who may eavesdrop,
whereat there pursues him a manifest flame.3
19 And We spread out the earth,
and cast in it firm mountains,
and We grew in it
every kind of balanced thing,
