Tafsir Ibn Abbas: Yaseen, Ayah 31

Have they — that is those inhabitants of Mecca who said to the Prophet ‘You have not been sent by God!’ Q. 1343 — 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.