so in the quran we find people like ad, thamud, iram, madyan, saba', ar rass, etc. and all of them got rekt by allah after rejecting his messengers. are these people just made up, or do they correspond to actual communities that existed in history? if the latter, then who are they?
The Thamud story looks like the folktale we (well, semi-we in my case) Germanic Europeans tell about the Goose Who Laid The Golden Eggs. A goose lays golden eggs. Some guys think, hey, let's gut this goose and get ALL the gold! And then - you can probably guess - no more goose; no more money, no more guys. If you take the prophet and the miracles out of Thamud, you get a camel that gives milk until it's hamstrung and slaughtered. No more milk; no more dairy products and no more Thamud.
Madyan is Biblical Midian in sura 28... but we're not exactly told as much in the earlier suras like 7, 11, and 26. Honestly I think a lot of
that is made-up. Some tribal conflict in the early 600s with (claimed) Ishmaelites picking fights with (claimed) Midianites?
My instincts tell me a lot of the Qur'an's subtext is like this.