Back 
Surah 69. Al-Haqqah
Ayah 4 - 8
4 كَذَّبَتْ ثَمُودُ وَعَادٌۢ بِٱلْقَارِعَةِ
5 فَأَمَّا ثَمُودُ فَأُهْلِكُوا۟ بِٱلطَّاغِيَةِ
6 وَأَمَّا عَادٌ فَأُهْلِكُوا۟ بِرِيحٍ صَرْصَرٍ عَاتِيَةٍ
7 سَخَّرَهَا عَلَيْهِمْ سَبْعَ لَيَالٍ وَثَمَـٰنِيَةَ أَيَّامٍ حُسُومًا فَتَرَى ٱلْقَوْمَ فِيهَا صَرْعَىٰ كَأَنَّهُمْ أَعْجَازُ نَخْلٍ خَاوِيَةٍ
8 فَهَلْ تَرَىٰ لَهُم مِّنۢ بَاقِيَةٍ
[4-8] Thamud3 and `Ad belied the coming of the sudden calamity.4 Thamud were destroyed by a violent catastrophe5 As for `Ad, they were destroyed by a furious windstorm; Allah imposed it on them for seven nights and eight days continuously. (Had you been there) you would have seen them lying prostrate as though they were hollow trunks of palm trees. Now do you see any of them still surviving?
3As the disbelievers of Makkah denied Resurrection and took the news of its coming lightly, they have been warned at the outset, as if to say: "Resurrection is inevitable: whether you believe in it; or not, it will in any case take place. Then, they are told: "It is not a simple and ordinary thing that a person accepts the news of the coming of an event, or not, but it has a deep relationship with the morals of the nations and with their future. The history of the nations, which lived before you, testifies that the nation which refused to believe in the Hereafter and thought this worldly life only to be the real life and denied that man would have ultimately to render an account of his deeds before God, corrupted itself morally until the punishment of God overtook it and eliminated it from the world."
4The word al-qari ah is derived from qar', which means to hammer, to beat, to knock and to strike one thing upon the other. This other word for Resurrection has been used to give an idea of its terror and dread.
5In Surah Al-A'raf: 78, it has been called ar-rajfah (a terrible earthquake); in Surah Hud: 67 as-sayhah (a violent blast); in Surah Ha Mim As-Sajdah: 17, it has been said: "They were overtaken by sa`iqa-tul-'adhab (a humiliating scourge); and here the same punishment has been described as at-taghiyah (a violent catastrophe). These words describe different aspects of the same calamity.