۞ And remember (Hud) the brother of 'Ad, when he warned his people in Al-Ahqaf (the curved sand-hills in the southern part of Arabian Peninsula). And surely, there have passed away warners before him and after him (saying): "Worship none but Allah; truly, I fear for you the torment of a mighty Day." 21 They said, 'What, hast thou come to pervert us from our gods? Then bring us that thou promisest us, if indeed thou speakest truly.' 22 He said, "God alone knows when it will come, and I deliver to you the message with which I am sent, but I see you are a people who are ignorant." 23 When they saw the torment as a cloud proceeding to their valleys, they said, "This cloud will bring us rain." He said, "No, it is the torment which you wanted to suffer immediately. It is a wind bearing and painful torment. 24 It will destroy everything by the command of its Lord' And when morning came there was nothing to be seen except their dwellings. As such We recompense sinful people. 25 We had empowered them to an extent which We have not empowered you, [O people of later times]; and We had endowed them with hearing, and sight, and hearts: but neither their hearing, nor their sight, nor their hearts were of the least avail to them, since they went on rejecting God's revelations; and they were overwhelmed by the very thing which they had been wont to deride. 26