George Sale, The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with Explanatory Notes, taken from the most approved Commentators. To which is prefixed A Preliminary Discource (1734)

they sent Lokmân (different from one of the same name who lived in David’s time) wich 60 others to Mecca to beg rain, which they not obtaining, Lokmân with some of his company staid at Mecca, and thereby escaped destruction, giving rise to a tribe called the latter Ad, who were afterward changed into monkeys. ¹.

Some commentators on the Korân ¹ tell us these old Adites were of prodigious stature, the largest being 100 cubits high, and the least 60; which extraordinary size they pretend to prove by the testimony of the Korân ³.

The tribe of Thamûd.
The tribe of Thamûd were the posterity of Thamûd the son of Gather ⁴ the son of Aram, who falling into idolatry, the prophet Sâleb was sent to bring them back to the worship of the true God. This prophet lived between the time of Hud and of Abraham, and therefore cannot be the same with the patriarch Selah, as Mr. d’Herbelot imagines ⁵. The learned Bochart with more probability takes him to be Phaleg ⁶. A small number of the people of Thamûd hearkened to the remonstrances of Sâleh, but the rest requiring, as a proof of his mission, that he should cause a she-camel big with young to come out of a rock in their presence, he accordingly obtained it of God, and the camel was immediately delivered of a young one ready weaned; but they instead of believing, cut the hamstrings of the camel and killed her; at which act of impiety God being highly displeased, three days after struck them dead in their houses by an earthquake and a terribe noise from heaven, which, some ⁷ say, was the voice of Gabriel the archangel crying aloud, Die all of you. Sâleh with those who were reformed by him, were saved from this destruction; the prophet going into Palestine, and from thence to Mecca ⁸, where he ended his days.

This tribe first dwelt in Yaman, but being expelled thence by Hamyer the son of Saba ⁹, they settled in the territory of Hejr in the province of Hejâz, where their habitations cut out of the rocks, mentioned in the Korân ¹⁰, are still to be seen, and also the crack of the rock whence the camel issued, which as an eye witness ¹¹ hath declared, is 60 cubits wide. These houses of the Thamudites being of the ordinary proportion, are used as an argument to convince those of a mistake who make this people to have been of a gigantic stature ¹².