The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 3) — Page 154
CH. 11 HŪD changed and distorted into other tongues. It is also admitted that Samiri was spoken in the south of Arabia. But the truth is that the different languages spoken in Mesopotamia and Arabia are all offshoots of Arabic. The clause, He raised you up from the earth, does not mean that the people of Ṣāliḥ were created from the earth. It only means: "You were a lowly and despised people, no better than the earth. Then God raised you to a high position, granted you prosperity and eminence, gave you power and dominion and entrusted to you the task of bettering and improving the condition of the world. In view of your immense responsibility, you should pray for the forgiveness of your errors, so that if there has been any remissness on your part in the discharge of your duties, God may pardon it. In that case, you will receive additional grace from Him". The verse points to the fact that all things tend to revert to their original condition. Man has been created from the earth and so he tends to revert to it. He should, therefore, bear in mind that he is weak by nature and it is only through the grace of God that he can prosper. So he should repeatedly turn to God that he may be able to maintain progress. Otherwise, his connection with God will become severed and he will drift back to his original low condition. By saying that God is "nigh" the verse warns man that God is very near to him. If he rejects His Message, He can quickly punish him, for His forces do not take PT. 12 long to come. One must not think that though God is near to man, He does not interfere in his affairs. This is clearly wrong; for God does interfere in the affairs of men, answers the prayers of those who call on Him, and comes to their aid. A note on the tribe of Thamud will not be out of place here. This tribe has been mentioned by Greek historians. They place it in a period not long before the Christian era. Hijr or Agra, as they call it, is given as the home of these people, whom they call Thamudeni. They mention a place near Hijr which, according to them, the Arabs called (Fajjun- Näqqah). Ptolemy (~140 B. C. ) says that near Hijr is a place known as Badanata. Abū Ismā'īl, author of the Futūḥush-Shām, says: "The tribe of Thamud filled the land between Bosra (in Syria) and Aden and ruled there. Perhaps they were migrating to the north. " The tribes of Himyar and Sabā had gained ascendancy in Yemen. When the Thamud who ruled in the south of Aḥqaf were ejected from their land, they began to move northwards, first to the Hijāz, then to Tehama and lastly to Hijr. The author of the Tamadduni ‘Arab, however, says, "This is but a mere conjecture. ' See also Enc. Isl. under Thamūd. 1362 " In fact, the Arabs think that the Thamūd were a branch of the ‘Ād, and, like them, lived in Yemen, and when Himyar rose to power, they drove them towards the Ḥijāz. This view, however, is not supported by historical evidence, for no trace of them has yet been discovered in the south. Al-Hijr has also been known