THAMUD PEOPLE AND PETRA

Surah 7 - Al-A'raf 

73. To the Thamud people (We sent) Salih, one of their own brethren: he said: " O my people! Worship Allah: you have no other god but Him. Now has come unto you a clear (Sign) from your Lord! This she-camel of Allah is a Sign unto you; so leave her to graze in Allah's earth, and let her come to no harm, or you shall be seized with a grevious punishment.

74. And remember how He made you inheritors after the 'Ad people and gave you habitations in the land; you build for yourselves palaces and castles in (open) plains, and carve out homes in the mountains; so bring to remembrance the benefit (you have received) from Allah, and refrain from evil and mischief on the earth."

77. Then they hamstrung the she-camel, and insolently defied the order of their Lord, saying: "O Salih! Bring about your threats, if you are a messenger (of Allah)!"

78. So the earthquake took them unawares, as they lay prostrate in their homes in the morning!

The Thamud people were the successors to the culture and civilisation of the "Ad people. They were cousins to the "Ad, apparently a younger branch of the same race. Their story also belongs to Arabian tradition, according to which their eponymous ancestor Thamud was a son of "Abir (a brother of Aram), the son of of Sam, the son of Noah. 

Their seat was in the northwest corner of Arabia (Arabia Petraea), between Madinah and Syria. It included both rocky country, and the spacious fertile valley (Wadi) and plains country of Qura, which begins just north of the city of Madinah and was traversed by the Hijaz Railway. 

When the Holy Prophet in the 9th year of the Hijrah led his expedition to Tabuk (about 400 miles of Madinah) against the Roman forces, on a reported Roman invasion of Syria, he and his men came across the archeological remains of the Thamud. 

The excavated rock city of Petra, near Ma'an, may go back to the Thamud, though its architecture has many features connecting it with Egyptian and Graeco-Roman culture overlaying what is called by European writers Nabataen culture. 

Who were the Nabataeans? They were an old Arab tribe which played a considerable part in history after they came into conflict with Antigonus I in 312BC. Their capital was Petra, but they extended their territory right up to the Euphrates. In 85 BC they were lords of Damascus under their king Haritha (Aretas of Roman history). For some time they were allies of the Roman Empire and held the Red Sea littoral. The Emperor Trajan reduced them and annexed their territory in AC105. The Nabataeans succeeded the Thamud of Arabian tradition. 

The Thamud are mentioned by name in an inscription of the Assyrian King Sargon, dated 715BC, as a people of Eastern and Central Arabia. With advance of material civilisation, they became godless and arrogant, and were destroyed by an earthquake.