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Based on the historical research of modern European scholars and their archaeological discoveries, the book is a masterpiece and one of the best in this genre (i.e., geographical history of the Qur'an). Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi (d. 1953), a renowned Pakistani historian, biographer of Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) and scholar of Islam, establishes the compatibility of Qur'anic geographical proclamations with those of the modern research. For instance, physical geography of ashab al-ukhdud (the people of the ditch), ashab al-fil (the people of the elephant), ashab al-ra's (the people of the well), progeny of Qaydar, the son of Prophet Isma‘il, ashab al-aykah (the people of the forest), ashab al-Hijr (the people of Hijr) has been described with critical evaluation of the available research data.
As for the human geography of the Qur'an, Nadvi identifies many Qur'anic personalities, such as Prophet Ayyub, Luqman, and Shu‘ayb, with certain personalities of the Old Testament and verifies Qur'anic truth by supporting it with archaeological discoveries. He testifies the geographical information provided by the Qur'an about the queen of Saba' and Isma‘il, the eponym of the Quraysh; traces the human geography of twelve sons of Isma‘il and all the thirteen sons of Qahtan; establishes the historicity of Hijr, Nabit, and Qaydar; and thus confirms the chastity and purity of the genealogy of Prophet Muhammad. Moreover, he identifies ‘+d and Thamud tribes mentioned in the Qur'an with those of the first and the second Semitic Race mentioned in Greco-Roman literature.
Along with it, he highlights nomenclature and lingual and racial features of these tribes; dilates on commercial, cultural, and religious geography; elaborates on geopolitical and administrative structure of their empires; and provides graphic details of their pulsating lives. Thus, he raises the stature of the Qur'an from being a book of moral stories alone to an authentic and reliable source of history containing absolute truths compatible with the proved facts of modern sciences in general and of geographical science in particular. Not only does he fill up the gaps in geographical history of north Arabia from Thamud tribe (1800 BCE-1600 BCE) up to Islamic era, but also traces the geographical history of Yemen from ancient time to Islamic era. Thus, he displays that nations and peoples mentioned in the Qur'an are...