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sakhkharahā ʿalayhim sabʿa layālin wa-thamāniyata ʾayyāmin ḥusūman fa-tarā l-qawma fīhā ṣarʿā ka-ʾannahum ʾaʿjāzu nakhlin khāwiyatin
which He clamped on them for seven gruelling nights and eight days, so that you could see the people there lying about prostrate as if they were hollow trunks of palm trees.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah al-Haqqa – Verses 7-8
7. Which Allah imposed the [raging gale] on them for seven nights and eight days in succession and had you been there you would have seen those men lying overthrown and dead, as if they were hollow trunks of date palms!
8. Do you see anyone of them remaining?
These blessed Verses make another depiction of the destructive gale, saying that God Almighty made it predominant over such people for seven nights and eight days consecutively. The Arabic adverb of manner husuman denotes destroying the remnants of something and at times it connotes cauterizing the wound. The contextual meaning of the blessed Verse 7 reflects that the raging gale shattered eradicated the prosperous habitation of such great people in seven nights and eight days consecutively in the manner of a rotten and hollow trunk of a palm tree.
The similitude is of interest since it implies their high stature as well as their being eradicated and the hollowness and vulnerability against Divine torments, such that the harsh gales could easily move them. The Arabic adjectival form khawiya originally denotes empty and it is employed in the sense of hungry people, the stars devoid of rain (according to pre-Islamic Arabs), and empty walnuts. The blessed Verse 8 poses a question:
There is no trace of the people of ‘Àd and the ruins of their prosperous habitations, majestic edifices, and fertile farms.