۞ Say: 'Do you disbelieve in Him who created the earth in two days? And do you set up equals with Him? He is the Lord of the Worlds' 9 And He placed on the earth firmly set mountains over its surface, and He blessed it and determined therein its [creatures'] sustenance in four days without distinction - for [the information] of those who ask. 10 Thereafter turned He to the heaven and it was as smoke, and said unto it and unto the earth: come ye twain, willingly or loth. They said: we 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 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 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 so We let loose upon them a raging wind over several inauspicious days, so that We might make them taste the torment of humiliation in the life of this world, and surely the torment of the Hereafter will be more humiliating. They shall have none to help them. 16 As for the (tribe of) Thamud, We tried to guide them, but they preferred blindness to guidance; then they were seized by the torment of a humiliating punishment as requital for their misdeeds; 17 But We saved those who believed and took heed for themselves. 18