things. It is possible that the Thamud were not one tribe, and that other tribes took on the name of Thamūd after the original tribe by that name had gone extinct. Islamic sources Arab Islamic sources state that the Thamud were an early Arab tribe that had gone extinct in ancient days. Thamud is mentioned twenty-three times in the Quran as part of a moralistic lesson about God's destruction of sinful nations, a central motif in the Quran. According to the Quran, the Thamud were the successors of a previous nation called the ʿĀd, who had also been destroyed for their sins. They lived in houses carved into the surface of the earth. God chose the prophet Salih to warn the polytheistic Thamud that they should worship the One God. The tribe refused to heed him, saying that Salih was merely a mortal, and demanded a sign from God. God sent down a milch camel as his sign, and Salih told his countrymen that they should not harm the camel and allow it to drink from their well. But the Thamud cut its hamstring or otherwise wounded it. God then destroyed the tribe, except for Salih and a few other righteous men. The means of God's destruction of Thamud include a thunderbolt, a storm, a shout, and an earthquake. The shout, which is an extremely loud sound, might have caused the earthquake, according to certain scholars. The account presented in Surah an-Naml also mentions nine evil people of Thamud who are immediately responsible for God's punishment of their people in a narrative reminiscent of Jewish descriptions of the demise of Sodom. To the Thamūd, We sent their brother, Ṣāliḥ. He said, "My people, worship God. You have no god other than Him. It was He who brought you into being from the earth and made you inhabit it, so ask forgiveness from Him, and turn back to Him: my Lord is near, and ready to answer." They said, "Ṣāliḥ, We used to have such great hope in you. Will you forbid us to worship what our fathers worshiped? We are in grave doubt about what you are asking us to do." He said, "My people, just think: if I did have clear proof from my Lord, and if He had given me mercy of His own, who could protect me from God if I disobeyed Him? You would only make