ʿĀd
ʿĀd was an ancient tribe in pre-Islamic Arabia. The banū ʿĀd are is best known for being mentioned two dozen times in the Quran, often in conjunction with Thamud. Recently, it has been shown that 'Ad was a tribe that existed two millennia ago in the Wadi Rum region of the southern Jordan.
The tribe's members, the ʿĀdites, formed a prosperous nation until they were destroyed by a violent storm. According to Islamic tradition, the storm came after they had rejected the teachings of a monotheistic prophet named Hud. 'Ad is regarded as one of the original tribes of Arabia, "The Extinct Arabs".
Etymology
There is a possibility that the tribal name ʿĀd represents a misinterpretation of a common noun: the expression min al-ʿād is today understood to mean "since the time of ʿĀd", but ʿād might originally have been a common noun meaning 'antiquity', which was reinterpreted as a proper noun, inspiring of the tribe 'Ad in Islamic conception.History and location
As of 2012, the historicity of the tribe of ʿĀd was an unanswered question. The lines referring to 'Ad in pre-Islamic poetry were of disputed authenticity and while some nineteenth-century scholars suggested identifying 'Ad with the better known Iyād, or with a tribe allegedly mentioned by Ptolemy known as the Oadites, these suggestions have not been successful. Related issues pertain to the geographical location of 'Ad. In later folklore, multiple attempts have been made to identify the location of 'Ad, including based on the statement that they were at the "winding tracts of sands". The most common location proposed in traditional sources is in South Arabia, but alternative opinions have also proposed the Levant, near Damascus, or even in Alexandria, in many situations based on the assumption of a relationship with the location of Iram of the Pillars. According to Andrew Rippin, "some modern speculation has associated Iram—and thus ʿĀd—with the buried city referred to as Ubar, located at Shisur, Oman, because of the pillars found at that site."Recently, a secure identification has been made between Iram and a region in northern Arabia and Wadi Rum in the desert of southern Jordan. The place, in combination with the place-names found attested to by inscriptions from the region, are compatible with the al-ʾaḥqāf, "winding tracts" description of 'Ad in 46:21. Subsequently, it was also shown that three pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions mention the tribe of 'Ad in the same area. Therefore, it is now widely accepted that both Iram and 'Ad belonged to the Wadi Rum area of the southern Jordan.