Our Prophet Hood Peace Be Upon Him It was narrated in the explanation of the holy verse that the city of Iram, built by Shaddad bin Aad, was situated in Yemen between Hadhramout and Sanaa. The people of Aad were so huge in size, measuring at least six meters each! Aad had two sons, Shaddad and Shadeed, who ruled after their father, established themselves as rulers, and unfairly suppressed the country and forcibly oppressed its people. Yet, Shadeed soon passed away and Shaddad continued to conquer other countries until he dominated the earth and all its kings submitted to him. Shaddad was a tyrant, stubborn idolater who was fascinated with reading old books. Whenever he read about Paradise and what God had prepared for His fearing worshippers, such as the golden and silver palaces and the homes by which rivers flow, his evil- commanding-self would urge him to make a similar «Paradise» for himself on this earth; foolishly thinking that he could build something similar to what God had created. Hence, he sentenced himself to be an unjust blasphemer. As a result, he informed his princes, “I am building myself a city similar to Paradise.” So, to start with, he appointed one hundred men, assisted by a thousand men each, to search the land of Yemen, to select a piece of land that is known to have the finest soil and freshest air, as he supplied them with the needed finances. Shadeed also wrote to his kings, ordering them to write to the rulers of their distant provinces to gather all the gold, silver, gems, musk, amber, and saffron that their land contained and send them to him. In addition, he ordered his divers to deep-dive to extract the gems and pearls. So much was collected and sent to him! Similarly, he sent his miners to dig out great amounts of sapphire, emeralds and topaz and so they did. Accordingly, his agents found him a piece of land with good soil and healthy air, where he permitted them to start working to construct his alleged paradise. So he summoned the gold and silver to build walls out of them, which were then covered with gems, rubies and sapphire. Next, rooms were built on top of that, trying to mimic what he had heard about the description of Paradise. All that stood on wide marble pillars. After that, a great canal was dragged 106-km deep from different valleys. Then streams were branched out of the canal in specially-made rails, bringing clean water to the streets and alleys. Then Shaddad ordered that the rivers’ and streams’ banks be painted with red gold, and various kinds of yellow, red and green gems be scattered as the pebbles at their bottom. He also ordered the planting of golden trees with radiant sapphires for gems. Shaddad, accordingly, made the city at least 32km long and 32km wide. As for its fence, it was at least 140m high, made with wide rocks, painted with gold and decorated with the rarest minerals and dearest tinted gems. He had thousands of palaces built, which were decorated both internally and externally with a variety of ornaments. Finally, Shaddad built for himself, in the centre of that city, on the river bank, a grand palace overlooking all the others. Furthermore, he positioned the city gates to face the valley and built in two golden gates engraved with a range of trinkets. Moreover, to give a wonderful odour, nut-sized balls of musk and saffron were scattered on the streets of the city. Finally, he erected mountain-like hills enclosing thousands of highly-erected gold and silver towers, as living quarters for his soldiers, on the outskirts of his city. Understandably, it took him 500 years to build. When God willed to show Shaddad and his followers evidence on his wrongdoing, He chose to send our master “Hood”, may God grant him peace, who was amongst the elite of Shaddad’s people. Thus, Hood asked him to embrace Islam and testify that Allah is the one and only god and that nothing whatsoever resembles Him. However, Shaddad got so carried away with blasphemy that the devil glorified to him his accomplishment in building his unique city. So he didn’t listen to Hood and didn’t comply, after he had reigned for 700 years. Hence, he was threatened with suffering and warned of demolishment of his supremacy. Still, foolishly, he didn’t repent and didn’t accept Hood’s call. After Shaddad’s appointed men completed constructing the city, they returned to him and told him so. So he decided to check it out. So he went out in a great procession amongst his guards, followers, servants, entourage, ministers and princes, leaving his son Marthed Bin Shaddad in charge of Hadhramout and the rest of the Arabs’ land. Marthed was thought to be a Moslem, believing in Prophet Hood. As Shaddad was approaching the city, only a day and a night away, a great cry descended from the sky, shocking everybody and killing Shaddad, who was 900 years old at the time, and all his companions. In fact, all the habitants of the city passed away, the workers, handymen and appointed men. No one was left. The city became entirely deserted and hidden away from sight. After Shaddad bin Aad and his companions perished from the Cry, his son Marthed bin Shaddad succeeded him and ordered for his father’s corpse to be removed from that desert to be buried in Hadhramout. So a hole was dug for him amidst some rocks, and he was laid on a golden bed and he was covered with 70 gold woven garments. However, since Shaddad did not die as a Moslem, none of that or anything else will ever do him any good. A great golden plate was placed by his head, where a summary of his unfortunate tale was scripted: Be preached, you who are tempted to live without fright, I am Shadda bin Aad, with the city of great height, I ruled the east and the west with great might, Until Hood came, before whom we lived in ignorance as dark as night, So he called on us, had we accepted we would have done what was right, But we disobeyed him, so he called, “What’s wrong with you? There’s no way you can hide.” Thus we were attacked with a distant cry of enormous might And we fell as harvested crop and were entirely wiped.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 21:55:11 +0000
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