Some months ago now, I released a new book on Qur'anic Geography. In this book we examine the people of 'Ad, Tham'ud, Midian, Medina, etc., as well as the original holy city of Islam.
May as well get two threads going at the same time.
What sources of information did you use to examine the people of 'Ad?
Well it's been a week now and you haven't yet engaged in a chat so I will detail the reason I asked. As far as I know the only source regarding the people of "Ad" is the Quran, and even you, yourself, recognize the difficulty of oral tradition.
It seems that most of the Qur'an was retained in oral fashion rather than written form. While the Arabs were
great memorizers and had the ability to retain the entirety of the Qur'an, the
retention of materials in an oral tradition suffers from two difficulties. First,
the accuracy of the memories of the individuals involved must be perfect. In
the case of the Qur'an, arguments arose over various verses, how they should
be rendered, and if they should or should not be included in the whole.
Second, the problem of transferring knowledge from the learned to the
novice is often a difficult step. In the case of the Qur'an, most of the men who
had memorized the sayings of Muhammad were also warriors. As is often the
case, warriors die in battle, and their knowledge of the Qur'an perished with
them. This is amply illustrated in the Battle of Yamama when an estimated
450 men who had memorized the Qur'an were killed.
Any record created in the 7th century AD, that pretends to speak about times that date back thousands of years all the way back to Noah, without reference to any actual historical record, cannot possibly be anything more than pure fiction. Even a far greater stretch for an oral tradition to have been transmitted through thousands of years for Muhammad's consumption, since his tribe the Quraish and Mecca were all given over to pagans and paganism and pagan tradition, that venerated 360 idols, before Muhammad invented his religion. It's obvious that no truth could have been transmitted through that haze.
From Dr. Rafat Amari
http://www.islamchristianforum.com/index.php?topic=1216.0"Enormous historical mistakes exist in the Quran, and the genealogies created after the rise of Islam, to support the Quran. Some examples are the genealogies regarding Thamud and Nimrod.
There are other serious historical mistakes in the Islamic genealogies regarding the tribe of Thamud. Thamud is an Arabic tribe which appeared in the 8th century B.C., as was attested at the time of the Assyrian King Sargon II through his Inscriptions. Thamud later lost its political power about the 5th century A.D. The Islamic genealogies attempted to back statements made in the Qur’an which placed Thamud and Ad – another Arabian tribe which appeared after Thamud-as tribes which came right after Noah. So they created a father for the tribe of Thamud and named him “Thamud.†Then they claimed he was the grandson of Shem, the son of Noah. All this was created just to fit the narration of the Qur’an.
The Qur’an claims that the tribe of Thamud was the third generation after Noah, ( The Qur’an made the Arabian tribe of Ad to be second generation after Noah’s generation; then Thamud as the third generation, See Surah 7:69; 23:31,32;14:8,9) and it was condemned by Allah to be punished by a wind. (The wind was the god who brought judgment in Zoroastrianism.
We know this is also an enormous historical mistake. Not only did Thamud not appear until the 8th century B.C., but the official history, as shown by Assyrian inscriptions, demonstrates that Thamud continued to exist during the 7th century B.C. Also, writings by various Greek and Roman geographers who wrote about Arabia, said Thamud continued until the 5th century A.D. as a politically-organized tribe which occupied a large part of northern Arabia. No wind destroyed the tribe, as the Qur’an claims.
This should be enough to convince us, but there’s yet another enormous historical mistake in the Islamic genealogies. This one concerns Nimrod. According to Genesis 10:8-11, Nimrod was the first builder of the old cities of Mesopotamia. He was the son of Cush, the son of Ham, the son of Noah.We can date him to between 5000 and 4500 B.C.
Islamic genealogies correctly state that Nimrod was the son of Cush, but incorrectly state that he lived around the time of Abraham. This false claim about Nimrod was made to conform to a mistake in the Qur’an, which made Nimrod reign at the time of Abraham. The Qur’an says Nimrod persecuted Abraham and cast him into a fire which did not harm him. We read this in Surah al-Anbiya’ 21:51-70 and Surah al-Safat 37:95. The narration of the Qur’an is taken from the Jewish book called Midrash Rabbah, chapter 17."
http://www.islamchristianforum.com/index.php?topic=1216.0If indeed your book does "examine the people of 'Ad" and the Quran and Islamic "tradition" is your sole source, I'm sure you can see the difficulty in that, and the scholarship it suggests.
