۞ (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 answered: "Hast thou come to seduce us away from our gods? Bring, then, upon us that [doom] with which thou threaten us, if thou art a man of truth!" 22 'Allah alone has the knowledge' he said, 'I am sent to deliver to you the Message. But I can see that you are ignorant people' 23 And when they saw it as a sudden cloud heading for their valley they said: 'This is a cloud that will bring us rain' 'Rather' (he replied): 'it is that which you have sought to hasten, a wind in which there is a painful punishment. 24 It will destroy everything by the command of its Lord' And when morning came there was nothing to be seen except their dwellings. As such We recompense sinful people. 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