my loss greater. My people, this camel belongs to God, a sign for you, so leave it to pasture on God's earth and do not harm it, or you will soon be punished." But they hamstrung it, so he said, "Enjoy life for another three days: this warning will not prove false." And so, when Our command was fulfilled, by Our mercy We saved Ṣāliḥ and his fellow believers from the disgrace of that day. [Prophet], it is your Lord who is the Strong, the Mighty One. The blast struck the evildoers and they lay dead in their homes, as though they had never lived and flourished there. Yes, the Thamūd denied their Lord—so away with the Thamūd! The Islamic exegetical tradition adds detail to the Quran's account. Accordingly, the Thamud were a powerful and idolatrous tribe living in Hegra, now called Madāʼin Ṣāliḥ, the Cities of Ṣāliḥ—in northwestern Arabia. When Salih began to preach monotheism, the Thamud demanded that he prove his prophethood by bringing forth a pregnant camel from solid rock. When God permitted the prophet to do this, some of the tribesmen followed Salih, while many powerful leaders continued to oppose him. After giving birth, the camel drank all the water from a well every two days and then produced enormous amounts of milk for the people. But it was hamstrung and eventually killed by nine people of Thamud, who then attempted but failed to kill Salih himself. Having failed to save his people, Salih warned that they would be destroyed after three days. On the first day, their skin would turn yellow; on the second day, red; and on the final day of destruction, black. This came to pass, and Thamud was annihilated. The traditional Muslim view is that the destruction of Thamud occurred before the prophethood of Abraham. A hadith tradition preserved in the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī collection narrates that the Islamic prophet Muhammad called Hegra "the land of Thamud" and did not allow his troops to drink from its wells or to use its water, and to never enter its ruins "unless weeping, lest occur to you what happened to them." The stone constructions of Hegra are actually mostly from the Nabataean period, especially the first century CE. The ninth-century Muslim scholar Ibn Saʿd believed that the Thamud were the Nabateans. A poem attributed to Umayya ibn Abi-ṣ-Ṣalt, a Meccan contemporary of Muhammad who refused