“When Our emissaries came to Lot, he was distressed and embarrassed on their account. They said: ‘Do not fear nor be distressed. We shall save you and all your household except your wife who is among those that will stay behind. We shall bring down upon the people of this city a scourge from the heaven because of their evil doing.’ And We have left a vestige of it in that city as a Clear Sign for a people who use their reason.”
(Al Qur’ān – 29:33-35)
“A Clear Sign” here refers to the Dead Sea which, owing to the association of Prophet Lot, is also called the Sea of Lot. Time and again the Qur’ān impressed on the Makkan unbelievers that a Sign of the chastisement that had visited the wicked people of Prophet Lot could still be seen. This was observable both in the morning and night along the highway in the course of people’s commercial journeys to Syria. The relevant Qur’ānicayahs are as follows: “The place (where the rain of stones occurred) lies along a known route” (al-Ḥijr 15:76), and “You pass by their desolate habitations in the morning and at night” (al-Ṣāffāt 37:137-38).
It is now almost universally recognised that what is presently the southern part of the Dead Sea became so transformed as a result of a terrible earthquake, which caused the land mass to cave in. It was in this part that the capital of the Prophet Lot’s people, Sodom, was locked. One can still find ruins of some submerged towns in the sea.