۞ SAY: "Would you indeed deny Him who has created the earth in two aeons? And do you claim that there is any power that could rival Him, the Sustainer of all the worlds?" 9 For He [it is who, after creating the earth,] placed firm mountains on it, [towering] above its surface, and bestowed [so many] blessings on it, and equitably apportioned its means of subsistence to all who would seek it: [and all this He created] in four aeons. 10 Thereafter turned He to the heaven and it was as smoke, and said unto it and unto the earth: come ye twain, willingly or loth. They said: we come willingly. 11 and in two Days He formed seven heavens, and revealed to each heaven its functions; and We adorned the lower heaven with brilliant lamps [stars] and guarded it. That is the decree of the Almighty, the All Knowing. 12 If they ignore (your message), tell them, "I have warned you against a destructive blast of sound like that which struck the people of `Ad and Thamud. 13 When their messengers came unto them from before them and behind them, saying: Worship none but Allah! they said: If our Lord had willed, He surely would have sent down angels (unto us), so lo! we are disbelievers in that wherewith ye have been sent. 14 So those who were 'Ad turned insolent unjustly in the land, and said: "Who is stronger than us?" Did they not see that God who created them was greater far in power than they? Yet they refused to believe Our signs. 15 Then We loosed against them a wind clamorous in days of ill fortune, that We might let them taste the chastisement of degradation in the present life; and the chastisement of the world to come is even more degrading, and they shall not be helped. 16 As for Thamood, We (offered) them Our Guidance, but they preferred blindness to guidance. So a thunderbolt of the humiliating punishment seized them because of what they had earned; 17 We saved those who had attained to faith and were God-fearing. 18