Al-Ḥijr: The Houses of Thamūd

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧The carved city

On the way back the army passed al-Ḥijr, the land of Thamūd and the people of Ṣāliḥ. Their dwellings stand to this day, one of the oldest settlements known in Arabia, predating even Ibrāhīm ʿalayhi al-salām, because they were not built of wood or brick but carved into the mountain itself. To this day we do not fully know how it was done or with what instruments. You can walk into the rooms and chambers and see even the beds cut into the rock, and the well the she-camel used.

❧"Al-Ṣalātu jāmiʿah"

With an army of ten or twenty thousand, some of the men rushed in to look around the ruins. The Prophet ﷺ had them called back with the announcement الصَّلَاةُ جَامِعَةٌ, the call he used in place of the adhān to gather people, and still the Sunnah for ʿĪd, where no adhān is given.

Then he said: why would you enter upon a people upon whom Allāh's wrath descended? They answered, "We are amazed at it, O Messenger of Allāh." He replied: "Shall I not tell you of something more amazing than that? A man from among you, telling you of what has been and what will be", meaning your Prophet among you is a greater wonder than the ruins of the punished. So be firm, for Allāh loses nothing by punishing you.

And he said: do not enter upon a people who wronged themselves and were punished, lest what befell them befall you, unless you enter weeping. He himself covered his face with his turban, lowered his head, and أَسْرَعَ فِي السَّيْرِ, hastened his pace through that valley, and did not pause in it.

❧The wells and the she-camel

Some drew water from the wells, which still held water, and some had already mixed it into dough. He forbade them: whatever water you have taken, give it to the animals; and that dough, feed it to the animals, do not eat it. From this the books of fiqh rule that one may not even make wuḍūʾ from the water of Biʾr Thamūd. It is not that the water is najis; it is that the place is a punished place, and we do not take from it.

He told them not to ask Allāh for miracles, for the people of Ṣāliḥ asked and then hamstrung what they were given. He pointed out to them where the camel would come from and where it would go. It was a giant camel, carved out of the rock and walking out of the mountain before their eyes, Allāh answering their pride in carving rooms from mountains by bringing life out of a mountain. And as the Qurʾān says, لَّهَا شِرْبُ يَوْمٍ مَّعْلُومٍ: the camel had its day to drink and they had theirs, it would drink the water of the entire city in one day, and the next day its milk would feed the whole city. Still they cut its hamstring, and Allāh sent upon them the ṣayḥah, the Cry, which silenced every one of them beneath the heavens.

❧The night in the valley

When they camped for the night he told them not to leave their tents unless a companion was with them; some reports say he warned that a wind would come. Two men disobeyed, one went out to relieve himself, the other chased his camel when it ran off, and both were afflicted. The first, they say, lost his mind, and the Prophet ﷺ supplicated for him when he was found and he was cured. The second was carried off by the wind to a distant mountain and had to make his own way back to Medina afterwards.