destroyed them was no bigger than the space occupied by a signet-ring. It swept past the Bedouin, lifting them, their livestock, and their wealth high between heaven and earth. When the settled folk of ʿĀd saw the wind and what it carried they said, “This is a cloud that will bring us rain” (46:24). The wind then hurled the desert dwellers and their herds down upon the townspeople, obliterating them.

Al-Ṭabarānī also transmits this report: from ʿAbdān ibn Aḥmad, from Ismāʿīl ibn Zakariyyā al-Kūfī, from Abū Mālik, from Muslim al-Mallaʾī, from Mujāhid and Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) declared:

“Allah loosed upon ʿĀd no more than the measure of a signet-ring of that wind. It was then sent forth with the desert folk toward the settled areas. When the townspeople beheld it they said, ‘This is a cloud that will bring us rain, heading for our valleys,’ while the Bedouin were still inside it. The wind flung the desert dwellers down upon the town-folk until all were destroyed.”

He added, “The wind rebelled against its guardians until it burst out through the gates.” I say: another transmitter reported, “It emerged without measure.”

In short, the isnād of this ḥadīth, when traced back to the Prophet, is questionable. Furthermore, the report is transmitted with divergent chains from Muslim al-Mallaʾī, and there is a degree of disarray in it; Allah knows best.

The plain sense of the verse is that they saw an ʿārid—a bank or flash of cloud—as indicated by the ḥadīth of al-Ḥārith ibn Ḥassān al-Bakrī, if that ḥadīth is taken as an explanation of the episode.

Yet even clearer is what Muslim records in his Ṣaḥīḥ: Abū Ṭāhir related to us; Ibn Wahb related to us; I heard Ibn Jurayj narrate, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, from ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her), who said:

Whenever the wind blew violently, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) would say, “O Allah, I ask You for the good of it, the good that lies within it, and the good for which it has been sent; and I seek refuge in You from its evil, the evil that lies within it, and the evil for which it has been sent.”

She continued, “When the sky became overcast his complexion would change; he would go out and come back, pacing to and fro. But when rain began to fall, his worry lifted.” ʿĀʾishah noticed this and asked him about it, and he replied, “Perhaps, ʿĀʾishah, it is as the people of ʿĀd said: ‘Then, when they saw it as a cloud advancing toward their valleys, they said, “This cloud will bring us rain.”’” (46:24)

Al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasāʾī, and Ibn Mājah have also recorded this ḥadīth through the chain of Ibn Jurayj.