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Have devised-ye And your fathers,Without authority from Allah? Then wait: I am Amongst you, also waiting."
72. We saved him and those Who adhered to him, By Our Mercy and We Cut off the roots of those Who rejected Our Signs And did not believe. SECTION 10. 73. To the Thamud people lll43 (We sent) ~iili~, one Of their own brethren: He said: "0 my people!
1043. The Thamiid people were the successors to the culture and civilisation of the 'Ad people. for whom see n. 1040 and vii. 65 above. 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 Thamiid was a son of 'Abir (a brother of Aram), the son of Sam, the son of Noah. Their seat was in the north-west corner of Arabia (Arabia Petraea), between Madinah and Syria. It included both rocky country (hijr. xv. 80), and the spacious fertile valley (Wadi) and plains country of Qurii. which begins just north of the City of Madinah and is traversed by the l;Iijaz Railway. When the holy Prophet in the 9th year of the Hijra led his expedition to Tabiik (about 400 miles north of Madinah) against the Roman forces, on a reported Roman invasion from Syria, he and his men came across the archaeological remains of the Thamiid. The recently excavated rock city of Petra, near Ma'an, may go back to the Thamiid, though its architecture has many features connecting it with Egyptian and Graeco-Roman culture overlaying what is called by European writers Nabata:an Culture. Who were the Nabata:ans? They were an old Arab tribe which played a considerable part in history after they came into conflict with Antigonus I in 312 B.C. Their capital was Petra, but they extended their territory right up to the Euphrates. In 85 B.C. they were lords of Damascus under their king l;liiritha (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 A.D. 105. The Nabatzans succeeded the Thamiid of Arabian tradition. The Thamiid are mentioned by name in an inscription of the Assyrian King Sargon, dated 715 B.C., as a people of Eastern and Central Arabia (Encyclopaedia of Is/am). See also Appendix VII to S. xxvi. With the advance of material civilisation, the Ihamiid people became godless and arrogant, and were destroyed by an earthquake. Their prophet and warner was ~ali4, and the crisis in their history is connected with the story of a wonderful she-camel: see next note.
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