People who allah destroyed

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- kephas
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People who allah destroyed
OP - January 10, 2015, 09:41 AM

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?

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we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
- cosmicdancer
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Reply #1 - January 10, 2015, 11:18 AM

I always found it strange that God did a lot of destroying back in the good ol' days - never letting the iniquitous get away with their sinfulness - yet these days he doesn't get involved, even though there are far more unbelievers who are naughty in his sight.

Maybe he got bored.
- kephas
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Reply #2 - January 10, 2015, 02:43 PM

well to play Allah's advocate, the people who were destroyed were sent messengers from their own people. their rejection of the messengers is what caused allah to destroy them. since today there are no messengers being sent anymore, allah doesn't destroy the wicked.

"we stand firm calling to allah all the time,
we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
- kephas
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Reply #3 - January 10, 2015, 03:28 PM

well one interesting detail about the thamud is that the quran says that they carve their homes out of mountains. while reading this, I immediately thought of petra and the like, ie the nabateans. there's also a verse that refers to those who carve out mountains as people of al hijr. al hijr is of course, hegra ie madain saleh, which was also a nabatean city. and there were structures carved out of mountains there.

now, could the thamud be the nabateans in hegra? or at the least, the nabateans were the inspiration for tale of thamud?

"we stand firm calling to allah all the time,
we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
- Zaotar
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Reply #4 - January 10, 2015, 09:20 PM

It could be, but it is very hard to say since the names seem to be mangled.

Saba, I believe, refers probably to Sheba. I read a recent article on this, but I forgot where.

If you have ever read Gerd Puin's essay on who the people of the 'tanglewood' are, it gives some of the problem's scope.

As of yet I have seen no good or consistent explanation for the linguistic and orthographic deformations that you see various names go through when they are used in Qur'anic Arabic.
- three
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Reply #5 - January 10, 2015, 09:26 PM

Quote from: Abu Ali on January 10, 2015, 11:18 AM
I always found it strange that God did a lot of destroying back in the good ol' days - never letting the iniquitous get away with their sinfulness - yet these days he doesn't get involved, even though there are far more unbelievers who are naughty in his sight.

Maybe he got bored.

I think I remember hearing a Bible story on this when I was a kid. Something about the rainbow after the floods where God promised Nuh he wouldn't be interfering anymore. I don't think he kept that one. I might have this all mangled, because preschool was a confusing time and I was trying to pull my skirt down to hide my socks.

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Reply #6 - January 10, 2015, 09:38 PM

It is commonly believed that Thamud refers to the archaeological site of Madina en Saleh in Saudi Arabia. The others noone is really sure. But there is an interesting paper about them in the book "The Hidden Origins of Islam" edited by Ohlig and Puin.
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Reply #7 - January 10, 2015, 10:45 PM

Quote from: three on January 10, 2015, 09:26 PM
...I was trying to pull my skirt down to hide my socks.
- Zimriel
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Reply #8 - January 26, 2015, 05:11 AM

Quote from: kephas on January 10, 2015, 09:41 AM
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.
- kephas
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Reply #9 - January 26, 2015, 09:36 AM

Quote from: Zimriel on January 26, 2015, 05:11 AM
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.

that's another thing about madyan. when in sura 28, madyan is a place where moses went to. but in other suras, madyan is this place of the prophet shuayb, who were destroyed. are they the same madyan? or are they different madyans? or are they people who lived in different times, but lived in the same place: madyan?

about the conflict with the ishmaelites, I'm not familiar with that. what's that about?

"we stand firm calling to allah all the time,
we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
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Reply #10 - January 26, 2015, 04:25 PM

I'm a determinist so the concept of punishment and reward has never made any sense to me. However, I would assume that God's standard would be based off the amount an individual tries to be pious. For example, if someone is born into a time and place where theft, premarital sex, murder, etc is common, God's standard for them would be quite low and may even be pleased if the individual only commits murder once. If someone is born into a pious family and society with few negative influences on them, God's standard would be extremely high. Luke 12:48 sums this up really nicely: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required"
- Zimriel
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Reply #11 - January 27, 2015, 12:47 AM

Quote from: kephas on January 26, 2015, 09:36 AM
about the conflict with the ishmaelites, I'm not familiar with that. what's that about?

Some of the Arab tribes claimed descent from Ishmael: the Quraysh especially (through Ma'add). But other Arabs claimed descent from Qahtan. Especially during the tail-end of the Umayyad Dynasty, the tit-for-tat between these tribal groupings made the empire ungovernable.

I'm going to try linking again, but if this doesn't work then google it: Patricia Crone, "Were the Qays and Yemen of the Umayyad Period Political Parties?", Der Islam 71.1 (1994).
https://www.hs.ias.edu/files/Crone_Articles/Crone_Qays-Yemen.pdf

I was mooting whether there was an earlier conflict between other Arabs and Midian, considered another half-brother of Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham was kind of a dawg.
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