۞ Say: Is it that ye deny Him Who created the earth in two Days? And do ye join equals with Him? He is the Lord of (all) the Worlds. 9 And He placed therein mountains firmly rooted rising above it, and blessed it, and ordained therein the sustenance thereof, all this in four days, complete; this for the inquirers. 10 Then turned He to the heaven when it was smoke, and said unto it and unto the earth: Come both of you, willingly or loth. They said: We come, obedient. 11 So He ordained them seven heavens in two periods, and revealed in every heaven its affair; and We adorned the lower heaven with brilliant stars and (made it) to guard; that is the decree of the Mighty, the Knowing. 12 But if they turn away, say: 'I have given you warning of a thunderbolt similar to that which overtook Aad and Thamood' 13 [That occurred] when the messengers had come to them before them and after them, [saying], "Worship not except Allah." They said, "If our Lord had willed, He would have sent down the angels, so indeed we, in that with which you have been sent, are disbelievers." 14 As for the tribe of 'Aad - they grew stiff-necked on the earth without justification, and said: who is mightier than we in strength? Saw they not that Allah who created them, He was Mightier than they in strength? And Our signs they were wont to gainsay. 15 and thereupon We let loose upon them a storm wind raging through days of misfortune, so as to give them, in the life of this world, a foretaste of suffering through humiliation: but [their] suffering in the life to come will be far more humiliating, and they will have none to succour them. 16 As for Thamood, We (offered) them Our Guidance, but they preferred blindness to guidance. So a thunderbolt of the humiliating punishment seized them because of what they had earned; 17 and We saved [only] those who had attained to faith and were conscious of Us. 18