Facilitator guide

Keep the drowning in ayah 64 and the end of ʿAd in ayah 72 with the text and its tafsir. Nobody reads a present-day flood, storm, hurricane or disaster, or any place or people today, as a punishment. Someone in the room may have lived through one; if it is brought up, acknowledge it kindly and come back to the passage. The hadith page’s narration on the wind is about the Prophet’s ﷺ own humility before a wind, and the optional one gives a du'a, not a reading of anyone’s fate. The tafsir page's notes on ayat 64 and 72 say the same.

People often ask how many were saved, how big the ship was, how far the flood reached, how old Nuh was, or how tall the people of ʿAd were. This passage does not say. The commentators carry reports on some of these, and the reports differ. None of them is graded, so they are not on the pages. Al-Jalalayn gives a height for ʿAd in cubits; it rests on nothing established and the tafsir page says it was dropped. One number is Qur'an: Nuh stayed among his people “a thousand years minus fifty years” (29:14). Nuh's son is in Surah Hud (11:42–46), not in this passage. Ayah 69 says ʿAd were given stature; the Qur'an elsewhere says they asked “Who is greater than us in strength?” (41:15). That is as far as the pages go.

Some in the room will know a long story: the drought, the men ʿAd sent to Makkah to pray for rain, the three clouds, the one that was chosen. Al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir carry it from Ibn Ishaq, and a form of it is in Jamiʿ at-Tirmidhi 3273, graded Hasan on Sunnah.com. The sample circle tells it in two sentences and says what it is: a story the commentators carry, not a narration from the Prophet ﷺ. Then it turns to the Qur'an’s own account, 46:21–26, the cloud they thought was rain. The other pages do not teach it, because in that narration a Companion is telling the Prophet ﷺ a story from before Islam, which he listened to; nothing in it is his own teaching. If it is brought up, say the same, and keep the circle on what the ayat say.

Nuh is the Noah of the Bible. If a guest asks, say so plainly. This passage tells the call and the answer; it leaves out the size of the ship, the animals and the extent of the flood. There is no need to compare the two accounts in the circle. Hud and the people of ʿAd are not in the Bible; a guest may simply not know them. One sentence is enough: a prophet sent to a strong people in the south of Arabia, after Nuh, with the same message.

Ibn Kathir and al-Jalalayn take the "tremendous Day" as the Day of Resurrection. Al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi do not name it. None of the four reads it as the day of the flood, so do not add that reading.

Ibn Kathir: “This, indeed, is the attitude of evil people, for they consider the righteous people to be following misguidance.” It is a strong line. Turn it toward ourselves: how quickly any of us calls the person who corrects us wrong. Never point it at a group of people today. The same goes for ayah 66: the leaders call Hud foolish. Q6 asks how to answer that charge; it is about ourselves, never about anyone who has said it to us.

Q3 asks what we have inherited that carries the truth and what might be only what our fathers did. In a diaspora circle this lands close to home: food, language, customs, how the parents prayed. Say before the question that no one’s parents are being judged, and that the point is to tell two kinds of inheritance apart, not to drop one. Someone who came to Islam as an adult can answer it from any inheritance at all. If a particular custom is named and someone wants a ruling on it, that goes to a scholar they trust.

Q5 rests on Ibn ʿAbbas's account in Sahih al-Bukhari 4920, which the tafsir page gives. Keep to his words: the names belonged to pious men; when they died, Satan prompted their people to set up images where they used to sit, named after them; and the images were worshipped only after the reason was forgotten. Ibn Kathir's abridged English adds places of worship over graves; al-Bukhari's wording does not, so use al-Bukhari's. The names of ʿAd’s idols, which Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari report from Ibn Ishaq, are not on the pages. Q5 is about how good things can slowly take the wrong place in our lives. It is not a ruling on pictures, photographs or visiting graves. If someone wants a ruling, send them to a scholar they trust.

A guest may ask this about ayah 63, or ayah 69, which asks the same question. The answer, in the commentators' words and the Qur'an's. Al-Qurtubi says the messenger was one of their own kind, whose family they knew; had he been an angel, they might have shrunk from him. The Qur'an answers the same question elsewhere: “And if We had made him an angel, We would have made him [appear as] a man” (6:9), and “If there were upon the earth angels walking securely, We would have sent down to them from the heaven an angel [as a] messenger” (17:95). The people at 25:7 ask: “What is this messenger that eats food and walks in the markets?”

In Sahih al-Bukhari 7, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius questions Abu Sufyan about the Prophet ﷺ and observes: “all the Apostles come from noble families amongst their respective peoples.” That is Heraclius's observation, not a saying of the Prophet ﷺ. It is on no other page.

The Qur'an names al-Ahqaf (46:21), and the commentators place ʿAd in the south of Arabia. The pages give no modern site name, nothing about Iram as a lost city, and nothing about the grave of Hud, which the commentators report from Ibn Ishaq and which the tradition itself places in more than one spot. If the talk turns to places or travel, bring it back to the passage.

Q1 (a reminder from someone close) is new to this passage. Q2 (the adviser you trust) is near Q3 of 7:19–25, telling real advice from false; here the angle is the trust that makes advice receivable, built over time. Q3 (what we inherit) is near Q3 of 7:73–84, a skill as a favour; here it is what succession asks of the one who inherits. Q4 is about how we answer when we are called wrong; Q1 of 7:11–18 asked about accepting correction. Q5 (a good thing taking the wrong place) is near Q1 of 7:37–43, what we lean on. Q7 (waiting well) is new. Ayah 62's anṣaḥu continues an-nāṣiḥīn, the word Iblis claimed at 7:21, and ayah 69’s “remember the favors” is the word 7:73–84 carded.

The audio for this passage is a sample circle: a teacher with four members, Salma, Yu, Viraj and Victor. They are not real people, and their voices are made with AI; the Listen page says so. The same recording is on the Watch page as a video. It takes the passage as six short stories of two or three ayat: 59–60, 61–62, 63–64, 65–67, 68–69 and 70–72. In each story an AI voice reads every ayah in Arabic, a member reads its translation, and the teacher explains the story as one piece. Before the first ayah the same voice says the isti'adhah, seeking refuge with Allah from Satan, as 16:98 asks before reading the Qur'an. This is a reading, not a recitation: for the recitation, play Alafasy on the Verses page, as in the plan above. Most of the members’ talk is kept for the end. You can take the passage the same way, or in the seven units of the plan above. The two questions the members bring at the end, Viraj’s on amīn and Victor’s on why Hud waits with his people, were written for it, not asked by a real person. The AI voice also says the opening du'a.

Besides the two core narrations, the teacher tells two from Sahih al-Bukhari. In 4770 the Prophet ﷺ calls the clans of Quraysh from as-Safa, and they answer that they have never found him telling anything but the truth; it is not on the hadith page. 4105 is the narration of the two winds, which the hadith page gives as 1035; al-Bukhari places it again among the battles, at the Trench, and the teacher reads 33:9 with it. He also brings 29:14 for Nuh’s nine hundred and fifty years, 71:7, and 69:7 for the seven nights and eight days.

The opening du'a has three parts: the khutbat al-hajah in its common composite wording (Sahih Muslim 868; Sunan Abi Dawud 2118, Grade: Sahih (Al-Albani), as listed on Sunnah.com), Musa's words from Ta Ha 20:25–28, and a plain du'a for knowledge that claims no source. “Sadaqallahul ʿAzim” after a recitation is a custom, not a narrated sunnah; some scholars, among them Ibn Baz and the Saudi Permanent Committee, hold that making it a fixed habit has no basis. The sample circle does not use it, and your circle need not.

The closing du'a, for the end of a gathering, is said by Salma. Abu Dawud 4859, from Abu Barza, that the Prophet ﷺ said it when he was about to rise from a gathering, and called it an expiation for what happens in the gathering (Grade: Hasan Sahih (Al-Albani), as listed on Sunnah.com); also Tirmidhi 3433 (Grade: Sahih (Darussalam), as listed on Sunnah.com). It is not one of the readings on this session's hadith page.

The full-ayah transliteration edition has four slips the Verses page corrects, and says the corrections are ours: qawmiheee at 7:60, fa anjainaahu at 7:64 and aabaaa'unaa at 7:70, each printed as one word, and ʿameen at 7:64. That last one matters: written without the ʿayn it reads like āmīn, amen, and it is not the amīn of ayah 68, trustworthy, which begins with a hamzah. At 7:64 the word gloss follows Saheeh, "Our signs", not the word-by-word source's "Our Verses". Saheeh's "[Noah]" in 7:61 and "[Hud]" in 7:67 and 7:71 are the translators' own. Its quotation marks are shown as the translation gives them: Nuh's words that open in ayah 61 close at the end of ayah 63, and Hud's that open in ayah 67 close at the end of ayah 69.

Not on any other page, and why. That Nuh's three sons were the fathers of the peoples of the earth (Jamiʿ at-Tirmidhi 3230 and 3231): both are graded Daʿif on Sunnah.com. That there were ten generations between Adam and Nuh, all on Islam (in Ibn Kathir's Arabic, from Ibn ʿAbbas): not found on Sunnah.com. Nuh's advice to his son at his death (al-Adab al-Mufrad 548): it has no grade on Sunnah.com. Reports on how Nuh got his name, and on his age when he was sent; the family lines of Nuh, of ʿAd and of Hud, which Ibn Kathir and al-Qurtubi give after Ibn Ishaq; the height of ʿAd in al-Jalalayn; how the bodies of ʿAd fell, in Ibn Kathir and al-Tabari; the story of the delegation of ʿAd (above). The narration of ʿAisha on the Prophet's ﷺ face at a cloud or a wind (Sahih al-Bukhari 4829) is not on this hadith page because 7:52–58 taught it from Sahih Muslim 899a; it fits ayah 72 well, and you may bring it from there. If any of these is brought to you, say where it is from and why it is not on the pages.

Yasir Qadhi, The Message of The Quran - Part 7: Surah al-A'raf, his own channel, 1:02:23. From 28:51 he shows how the stories of Nuh, Hud, Salih, Lut and Shuʿayb follow one another from ayah 59, and what they share. Stop at 33:34: what follows is outside this passage. It is not on the lecture list, because it does not recite these ayat. No talk on Hud’s story has been checked for this page yet.

"Has a child or someone younger ever reminded you of something true? How did you take it?"

"Think of advice you ignored from one person and took from another, when it was the same advice. What was different about the two people?"

"Name one thing your parents did that you still do without knowing why. Is it worth finding out?"

If the discussion is still going at 0:50, close it kindly. Say the question can stay open for next time, and move to the reflection. Ending on time is part of keeping the circle.