Surah 91:11–14:
Thamud denied by reason of their transgression, when the most wretched of them was sent forth. And the messenger of Allah said to them, 'the she-camel of Allah and her drink.' But they denied him and hamstrung her (fa-ʿaqarūhā). So their Lord brought down upon them destruction for their sin and made it equal.
The historical warning at the end of the Surah focuses on the sudden, catastrophic destruction of the ancient tribe of Thamud for the crime of hamstringing a specialized creature: "The messenger of Allah said to them, '[Look after] the she-camel of Allah and her drink.' But they denied him and hamstrung her."
The Folklore Pipeline: According to early Islamic historical biographies (Sira) and exegetical literature, this was not a normal animal. The "She-Camel of Allah" (Nāqat Allāh) was a giant, supernatural beast that miraculously burst out from the center of a solid rock face in response to a challenge from the pagan elders, and whose daily water intake was so immense that she would drink an entire valley's well water every alternating day.
The Anthropological Explanation: To a modern secular historian or archaeologist, this story represents a classic piece of pre-Islamic Bedouin oral mythology. The northwest region of Arabia (Hegra/Mada'in Salih) was littered with spectacular, monumental rock-cut tombs built by the vanished Nabataean civilization.
Later nomadic Arab tribes who moved into these abandoned stone ruins did not possess the historical literacy or engineering records to understand who built them. To explain these deep rock openings and empty monuments, they invented moralistic campfire legends about a race of wicked giants (Thamud) and magical animals. The Quran absorbs this local, unverified folk mythology face-value, elevating an ancient Arabian campfire tale into an objective historical reality used to justify a sudden divine genocide.