Shelah

Shelah is ( Salih the prophet ) The Thamud were a tribal confederation in the northwestern region of the Arabian Peninsula, mentioned in Assyrian sources in the time of Sargon II. The tribe's name continues to appear in documents into the fourth century CE, but by the sixth century they were regarded as a group that had vanished long ago.

According to the Quran, the city that Saleh was sent to was called Al-Hijr, which corresponds to the Nabataean city of Hegra. The city rose to prominence around the 1st century AD as an important site in the regional caravan trade. Adjacent to the city were large, decorated rock-cut tombs used by members of various religious groups. At an unknown point in ancient times, the site was abandoned and possibly functionally replaced by Al-'Ula. The site has been referred to as Mada'in Salih since the era of Muhammad and was named after his predecessor Salih.

Saleh is not mentioned in any historical texts or in any of the Abrahamic scriptures that precede the Qur'an, but the account of Thamud's destruction may have been well known in ancient Arabia. The tribe's name is used in ancient Arabian poetry as a metaphor for "the transience of all things".