128 – Abu al-Husayn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn Yahya al-Muqriʾ read this report to us. He said: Abu al-Husayn ʿAli ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Bishran al-Muʿaddal read it to us while I was listening, on Saturday, the tenth of Shaʿban, 409 AH. He was asked, “Did Abu ʿAli al-Husayn ibn Safwan al-Barzaʿi read it to you?” and he affirmed that, in Muharram, 340 AH. He said: Abu Bakr ⦗85⦘ ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Abi al-Dunya narrated to us; he said: ʿUbayd Allah ibn Saʿd al-Qurashi narrated to us; he said: my uncle narrated to us; he said: my father narrated to us, from Muhammad ibn Ishaq, who said:
“According to their reports, the first person to perceive what was inside the cloud and to realize that it was the wind was a woman of ʿAd named Mahd. When she understood what it was, she screamed and fell unconscious. When she came round she was asked, ‘What did you see?’ She replied, ‘I saw a wind like blazing meteors, and men were in front of it driving it on.’ So Allah—exalted is He—unleashed that wind against them for seven nights and eight days, husuman (continuous, unrelenting). It left not a single soul of ʿAd; every one of them perished. Hūd and the believers with him had withdrawn into an enclosure; none of the wind reached them save a breeze that softened the skin and delighted the soul. Meanwhile the wind swept through the people of ʿAd, snatching up their women between heaven and earth and crushing them with stones.”