Have they not seen how many nations before them did We destroy? Thereafter they never came back to them.1
Footnotes
[1]
That is, they were annihilated so completely that not a trace of them was left behind them. No one in the world even remembers them today. Their civilization as well as their race has become extinct.
[2]Qira’at: Hamza, Al-Kesa’i, Yaʻqub and Khalaf read it as: “. . . you would not return ?”