Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus and Titus

There were several instances in which this happened, and the prominent ones may be mentioned quickly, this being a point of interest. Allāhu akbar. They had a long history of deviation by that time, and that is what the Qur'an refers to.

Which, then, are the two events the Qur'an refers to? It speaks of two events here, and then says that if you do it again We shall do it again as well — so it is not restricted to two events. But before the Qur'an was revealed, which events are these?

The first must probably be the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, a tyrant of Babylon. He came in, and subḥānAllāh, this took place in the time of the Prophet Jeremiah, who tried his utmost to bring the people back to the straight path; but it was not working. And then at last, in 587 BC — five hundred and eighty-seven years before ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) — this Nebuchadnezzar comes and invades Jerusalem, demolishes the Bayt al-Maqdis in Jerusalem, and annihilates a great number of the Israelites. And he took the rest as captives to Babylon, to Babylon in Iraq, that region. They learned a lesson from it, of course. And after a long period in exile, Cyrus, one of the rulers, the emperor of Persia, conquers Babylon and allows the Israelites to return to Jerusalem, and they build the Bayt al-Maqdis again.

And the second event — to what does that refer? Allah knows best; but there is another, an invasion by Antiochus Epiphanes, as it seems to be pronounced, the Greek tyrant. He invades Jerusalem in 175. That is another four hundred years later, when the Israelites had gone back to their misdeeds. And again a similar fate befell them as they had suffered before.

The one that has been read of came after ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and of it a whole history has been read. It is the one which, possibly, according to other exegetes, they hold to be the second. That is by the emperor Titus, whose father was Vespasian. Vespasian was a Roman emperor, and had sent Titus; Titus then became emperor himself. This was in 70 CE — seventy years after ʿĪsā (peace be upon him). And subḥānAllāh, that was a destruction. That was a destruction. And he carried off so much of the treasure of Jerusalem.

People have tried to find where exactly it is. Is it in Carthage in Tunisia? Is it in Rome? For in Rome there is an arch of victory built by Titus, or by Vespasian, under which the whole procession is depicted. Nobody is allowed to pass through it at present, by instruction of the Israeli government, because it glorifies the destruction of the Jerusalem of that time.

But it may be any of these. The main thing to be understood here is that Allah (swt) says, in verse 8:

Wa in ʿudtum ʿudnā wa jaʿalnā jahannama li-l-kāfirīna ḥaṣīrā. If you carry on and do it again, if you return to it, then We shall do the same again. And this, of course, is something for all of us to take a lesson from.