۞ Say thou: are ye indeed those who disbelieve in Him who hath created the earth in two days, and set up unto Him peers? That is the Lord of the worlds. 9 And He made in it mountains above its surface, and He blessed therein and made therein its foods, in four periods: alike for the seekers. 10 Then He turned to the heaven while it was all smoke. He said to the heaven and the earth: “Come (into being), willingly or unwillingly.” They said: “Here we come (into being) in willing obeisance.” 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, then say: I warn you of a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt (which fell of old upon the tribes) of A'ad and Thamud; 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 So We sent against them a furious Wind through days of disaster, that We might give them a taste of a Penalty of humiliation in this life; but the Penalty of a Hereafter will be more humiliating still: and they will find no help. 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 and We saved those who believed and feared Allah. 18