Thamud

Thamud was the powerful Arabian civilization to whom Prophet Salih was sent, renowned for carving magnificent dwellings directly into the rock of mountains — architecture so durable that their empty homes survive to this day in the region of al-Hijr (Madain Salih) in northwest Arabia. Despite their architectural genius and established civilization, they rejected Salih's message with deliberate collective defiance, most dramatically expressed in their killing of the miraculous she-camel. Destroyed by a single thunderous divine blast, they became the Quran's second major example of a civilization brought low not by external conquest but by its own refusal of the divine mercy that was offered to it.

As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Kathir and the scholars of his school.