Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

64 страница из 560

The extinction of these tribes, according to the Qurʾān, was miraculous, and a signal example of Divine vengeance. The posterity of ʿĀd and S̤amūd had abandoned the worship of the true God, and lapsed into incorrigible idolatry. They had been chastised with a three years’ drought, but their hearts remained hardened. To the former was sent the Prophet Hūd, to reclaim them and preach the unity of the Godhead. “O my people!” exclaimed the prophet, “ask pardon of your Lord; then turn unto Him with penitence, (and) He will send down the heavens upon you with copious rains, and with strength in addition to your strength will He increase you.” Few believed, and the overthrow of the idolaters was effected by a hot and suffocating wind, that blew seven nights and eight days without intermission, accompanied with a terrible earthquake, by which their idols were broken to pieces, and their houses thrown to the ground. (See Qurʾān, Sūrah vii. 63, xi. 53.) Luqmān, who, according to some, was a famous king of the ʿĀdites, and who lived to the age of seven eagles, escaped, with about sixty others, the common calamity. These few survivors gave rise to a tribe called the Latter ʿĀd; but on account of their crimes they were transformed, as the Qurʾān states, into asses or monkeys. Hūd returned to Ḥaẓramaut, and was buried in the neighbourhood, where a small town, Qabr Hūd, still bears his name. Among the Arabs, ʿĀd expresses the same remote age that Saturn or Ogyges did among the Greeks; anything of extreme antiquity is said to be “as old as King ʿĀd.”