Surah Al-Fil

The name. Al-Fil means "The Elephant," from its opening question asking whether you have not considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant (105:1), a reference to an army that marched on Mecca bringing elephants with it, an animal unfamiliar in the region and remembered for that reason. It is Meccan, and the year of this event is commonly known as the Year of the Elephant, remembered as close in time to the Prophet's birth.

What it is known for. The surah is known for its short, complete account of that army's defeat — its plan turned to nothing, birds sent against it in flocks striking it with stones of hard clay, until it was left like straw that has been eaten and stripped bare (105:2-5). The surah names no army beyond "the companions of the elephant," but is understood to recall the failed attempt to destroy the Kaaba, told here as a demonstration that Allah defended His House without any human army standing in its defense.

Reading it. At 5 ayahs it is one of the shortest surahs, read in under a minute. Its five verses tell a complete story with a beginning, an attack, and a result, compressed further than almost any narrative elsewhere in the Quran, so a first-time reader should notice that nothing here is left implicit for a later verse to fill in — the whole episode, threat and defeat both, is contained in this one short surah.