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Have they - that is, those inhabitants of Mecca who said to the Prophet, 'You have not been sent [by Allahu ta’ālā]!' [Q. 13:43] - not seen, [not] come to know (the interrogative is meant [rhetorically] as an affirmative) how many (kam here is predicative [as opposed to interrogative], in other words [it is to be understood as] kathīran, 'many'; it is operated by the statement that comes next [below] and it comments on the operative clause for the statement that preceded it); the meaning then is as follows: indeed, many generations, communities, We have destroyed before them, [how] that they, the ones destroyed, never return?, to those deniers [who are now alive]? So will they not learn from their example? (from annahum, '[how] that they', to the end [of the verse] is a substitution for the preceding clause [kam ahlaknā qablahum mina'l-qurūni], bearing in mind the aforementioned general meaning).