The Dwellers of al-Ḥijr

We start with the story of Sayyidunā Ṣāliḥ.

Wa laqad kadhdhaba aṣḥābu al-Ḥijri al-mursalīn: and verily the dwellers of al-Ḥijr denied the messengers. Al-Ḥijr is the rocky tract. They used to live in a rocky tract. It's a very rocky area: solid rock. Wa ātaynāhum āyātinā fa-kānū ʿanhā muʿriḍīn: and We gave them Our signs, but they were averse to them. Wa kānū yanḥitūna min al-jibāli buyūtan āminīn: they used to carve out of mountains houses, feeling secure. Allah (swt) says they used to carve out these houses in the mountains — palaces in the mountains — āminīn.

In the tafsīr of Ibn al-Jawzī, he gives a few meanings of āminīn. One of them is that they were feeling secure and safe from the punishment. The second meaning is that they were feeling secure and safe that these buildings will never be destroyed. They're carving it out of solid bedrock. Imagine you have a solid rock like this masjid, and you carve into it a house. They were not building houses from bricks of stone. No, they were carving out houses in solid rock.

Allah (swt) says: a-tutrakūna fī mā hāhunā āminīn — will you be left secure in that which you have here? When you have a house carved in rock, what will destroy it? I mean, rock — solid rock. An earthquake cannot harm it. Wind cannot affect it; a hurricane, tornadoes. I mean, it's rock, solid rock. You're in the middle of a mountain. So they used to feel that they're secure from anything; nothing can harm them. Plus, they're in high ground, so if there are any floods, it will not affect them. They have a guaranteed safety: 100% sure — as they thought.