۞ Say: 'What, do you disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days, and do you set up compeers to Him? That is the Lord of all Being. 9 He set firm mountains on top (of the earth) and He blessed it. And in four days He ordained in it many provisions, equal to those who ask. 10 Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, "Come [into being], willingly or by compulsion." They said, "We have come willingly." 11 Then He created several skies in two spans, and ingrained in each sky its function, decking the nearest heaven with lamps, and guarded it. This has been determined by the mighty and all-knowing. 12 But if they turn aside, then say: I have warned you of a scourge like the scourge of Ad and Samood. 13 When their apostles came to them from before them and from behind them, saying, Serve nothing but Allah, they said: If our Lord had pleased He would certainly have sent down angels, so we are surely unbelievers in that with which you are sent. 14 As for Aad, they behaved proudly in the earth without right. 'Who is stronger than us?' they would say. Could they not see that Allah, who created them, is stronger than they? But they disbelieved Our signs. 15 Then We loosed against them a wind clamorous in days of ill fortune, that We might let them taste the chastisement of degradation in the present life; and the chastisement of the world to come is even more degrading, and they shall not be helped. 16 And as for Thamud, We gave them guidance, but they preferred blindness to the guidance, so the bolt of the doom of humiliation overtook them because of what they used to earn. 17 But We delivered those who believed and practised righteousness. 18