Hard, solid, and unyielding. “Layered,” that is, the stones followed one another in successive waves as they rained down upon them from the sky. “Marked,” meaning clearly identified: on every stone was written the name of the person on whom it would descend, striking him squarely, as He says, “marked by your Lord for the transgressors,” and as in His words, “We rained upon them a rain—how wretched was the rain of those who had been warned” (26:173).
The Exalted also says: “and the overturned towns He hurled down; then there covered them what covered” (53:53–54)—that is, He turned them upside-down so that their highest parts became lowest, and enveloped them in a storm of successive, inscribed stones of baked clay, each stone bearing the name of its destined victim, whether he was present in the city or away on a journey, resident, traveler, or wanderer.
Some maintain that Lot’s wife stayed behind with her people; others say she left with her husband and two daughters, but when she heard the cry and saw the town collapse she turned back toward her people, disobeying her Lord yet again, and exclaimed, “Alas for my people!” A stone then struck her and crushed her skull, uniting her with her people, for she was of their religion and acted as their informant regarding any guests who visited Lot.
Allah the Most High says: “Allah sets forth an example for those who disbelieve: the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. They were under two of Our righteous servants, yet they betrayed them; their husbands could avail them nothing against Allah, and it was said, ‘Enter the Fire with those who enter’” (66:10). Their betrayal was in matters of faith—they did not follow them. It is by no means implied that they committed lewdness—far be it! Allah would never decree that a prophet’s wife be unchaste. Ibn ʿAbbās and other scholars, early and later, stated: “No prophet’s wife ever committed adultery;” whoever claims otherwise has erred grievously.
When Allah revealed the innocence of the Mother of the Believers ʿĀ’ishah—may Allah be pleased with her—during the incident of the Slander, He rebuked and warned the believers, saying: “When you received it on your tongues and uttered with your mouths what you had no knowledge of, you thought it trivial, though in Allah’s sight it is tremendous. Why, when you heard it, did you not say, ‘It is not for us to speak of this. Glory be to You! This is a monstrous calumny’?” (24:15–16). In other words, Exalted are You—how could the wife of Your Prophet be like that? And His statement here—“and it is not far from the wrongdoers” (11:83)—means that such a punishment is near to anyone who behaves as they did.
For that reason many scholars—including al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and numerous imams—have ruled that a sodomite is to be stoned, whether or not he was previously married. They also cite the ḥadīth recorded by Imām Aḥmad and the compilers of the Sunan, transmitted by ʿAmr ibn Abī ʿAmr from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, in which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “When you find someone committing the act of the people of Lot, kill both the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.”
Abū Ḥanīfah held that the sodomite is to be thrown from a high place and then stoned, following the treatment meted out to the people of Lot, in light of the verse, “and it is not far from the wrongdoers” (11:83).
Allah turned the sites of those towns into a foul, scorched wasteland whose water is of no benefit, nor is any good obtained from the surrounding land.