Hud, 123 Meccan verses, retells a chain of prophets who warned their peoples in vain, Noah and the Flood, Hud to the people of Ad, Salih to Thamud, Abraham's guests, Lot, and Shuayb to Midian. The Prophet is reported to have said this surah, with its weight of destroyed nations and its command to 'stand firm' (11:112), turned his hair grey.
The hadith in which Muhammad describes Hud and its companion surahs as having aged him is preserved by al-Tirmidhi and widely cited by commentators to explain the surah's severity, its repeated refrain of prophets destroyed peoples answering with mockery before sudden catastrophe, read as weighing on the Prophet precisely because he faced comparable rejection from his own people at Mecca. The account of Abraham's guests, three visitors who bring news of Isaac's birth before continuing to warn Lot's people, links Hud's chain of destroyed nations to the Abraham narrative treated at greater length elsewhere in the Quran, and al-Razi's commentary reads the juxtaposition of promised blessing (Isaac) and impending judgement (Sodom) within the same visit as a deliberate pairing of mercy and severity. The surah's repeated command to 'stand firm as you have been commanded' (11:112) is treated in the classical tradition as among the most demanding single verses addressed to Muhammad personally, later commentators noting his own report that no verse of the Quran troubled him more.