﴿وَعَادًا وَثَمُودَ وَأَصْحَابَ الرَّسِّ وَقُرُونًا بَيْنَ ذَلِكَ كَثِيرًا﴾
﴿كَذَّبَتْ قَبْلَهُمْ قَوْمُ نُوحٍ وَأَصْحَابُ الرَّسِّ وَثَمُودُ﴾
Long before the memory of kings is lost to dust, before the roads were swallowed by sand and the rivers changed their names, there stood a land of twelve cities beside a river so clear and abundant that travelers believed it had been poured from heaven itself. In that land lived the People of Al-Rass, proud builders of walls, gardens, and towers, each city joined to the next by trade, ceremony, and a shared devotion that had slowly curdled into ruin. Their greatest treasure was not gold, nor water, nor grain, but a towering pine tree that they called sacred. It rose near a shining spring, and the spring was fed by channels the people had carved and guarded for generations. They said the tree had been planted by Yafith, son of Noah, and that its roots drank from the same hidden mercy that gave life to the earth. They worshiped it as though it could hear, answer, and save. They brought gifts to it, slaughtered animals before it, and believed that the smoke of their offerings carried their prayers upward. Every month, each city held a festival for the tree in its own way, but the largest and most extravagant gathering happened once a year in the greatest city of all, where the king himself received the people and where the tree stood before a grand pavilion of cloth and painted images. There, the people would bow in the dust while music thundered and wine flowed, convinced they were honored servants of a living power. Yet the spring they claimed as holy was denied to their own cattle and children. No one dared drink from it. If a poor man reached for its water, he was punished or killed, for they had turned the source of life into a prison of superstition. Still they celebrated, blind to the poison in their own hearts, blind to the mercy they were trampling beneath their feet, and blind to the judgment that was already moving toward them through the silence of the sky.
