And that was ‘Ād — [this is] an allusion to their remains; in other words, go forth in the land and look at these [remains]. God then describes their case, saying: they knowingly denied the signs of their Lord and disobeyed His messengers (rusulahu is in the plural, because when a person disobeys a messenger he has [effectively] disobeyed all of them, since they share a common principle in that [Message] with which they come, namely, [the principle of] God’s Oneness); and they, that is, the riffraff, followed the command of every rebellious tyrant, [every] leader of theirs who is obstinate with regard to the truth.