۞ (Muhammad), recall the brother of the people of Ad, when he warned his people in the valley of al-ahqaf saying, "There existed many warners before and after him. Do not worship anything other than God. I am afraid for you about the torment of the great Day". 21 They said: "Hast thou come in order to turn us aside from our gods? Then bring upon us the (calamity) with which thou dost threaten us, if thou art telling the truth?" 22 He said: the knowledge is only with Allah, and I preach unto you that wherewith I have been sent, but I see you are a people given to ignorance. 23 Then when they beheld it as an overpeering cloud tending toward their valleys they said: yonder is an overpeering cloud bringing us rain. Nay it is that which ye sought to be hastened: a wind wherein is a torment afflictive. 24 It shall annihilate everything by the command of its Lord. Wherefore they became such that naught could be seen save their dwellings Thus We requite a nation of the culprits. 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