Adh-Dhariyat ('The Winnowing Winds'), 60 Meccan verses, swears by the scattering winds that the Judgement is true. It recounts the guests of Abraham announcing Isaac and the destruction of Lot's people, and states the purpose of creation: 'I did not create jinn and mankind except to worship Me' (51:56). The surah is traditionally classed among the unanimously Meccan chapters (al-Suyuti counts eighty-two surahs on which the classical authorities agree as Meccan, twenty as Medinan, and twelve genuinely disputed), and its opening cluster of oaths by scattering winds and speeding clouds is typical of the rhythmic, oath-led rhetorical style scholars of Quranic chronology associate with the middle Meccan period.
The guests of Abraham episode it recounts (51:24-37) parallels Genesis 18 in its broad shape, angelic visitors, the announcement of Isaac, the mission against Lot's people, while telling the story in the Quran's own compressed, dialogue-driven idiom rather than as sustained narrative. The roasted calf the guests are served (51:26-27) closely matches the meal Abraham prepares in Genesis 18:7-8, a shared detail of ancient Near Eastern hospitality convention scholars read as evidence of common narrative inheritance rather than direct literary borrowing in either direction. The surah's closing address, warning the Quraysh they face 'a portion like the portion of their predecessors' (51:59), ties the ancient destroyed peoples named earlier directly to the surah's own contemporary audience.