Texts of Islam

The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Sâlih:...

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This is a religious/hagiographic text from the Islamic tradition recounting the story of the Prophet Sâlih and the tribe of Thamud, drawing on Quranic passages and hadith traditions attributed to Imams Al-Bâqir and Al-Sâdiq (indicating a Shia scholarly perspective). The central narrative follows Sâlih's century-long mission to convert his people from idol worship, culminating in a public contest where he challenges their seventy idols to respond to prayer — they fail — and then miraculously produces a she-camel from a rock as proof of God's power. The she-camel becomes a divine test: allocated alternating days at the water source, she provides miraculous milk, but the tribe eventually conspires to kill her and her foal, with a notorious outcast carrying out the slaughter. Sâlih warns them of a three-day countdown to destruction, marked by their faces turning yellow, then red, then black — and on the third night the angel Gabriel's cry kills them all, followed by divine fire. A distinctive scholarly note closes the account: the author distinguishes between what the Quran itself states (the camel's miraculous significance and prohibition against harming her) and the narrative details about her emerging from a rock, which come only from prophetic traditions and Imami commentary, with the author privileging the Household of Muhammad as the most authoritative interpretive source. The text will interest readers studying Islamic prophetology, Quranic exegesis, or Shia hadith tradition as applied to pre-Islamic prophetic narratives.

The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Sâlih:...

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