According to the Quran, Lot was a prophet and a nephew of Abraham. A group of angels visited Abraham as guests[8] and gave him glad tidings of a son "endowed with wisdom";[9] they told him that they had been sent by God to the "guilty people"[10] of Lot[11] to destroy them[12] with "a shower of stones of clay"[13] and deliver Lot and those who believed in him, except his wife saying "she is of those who lag behind".[14][15] The Qur'an also draws upon Lot's wife as an "example for the unbelievers" as she was married to a righteous man but cheated him by not believing in his message and was thus condemned to Hell.[16]
The people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the twin cities which Lot was sent to with God's message, transgressed consciously against the bounds of God. Their avarice led to inhospitality and robbery, which in turn led to the humiliation of strangers by mistreatment and rape. It was their abominable sin of homosexuality which was seen as symptomatic of their attitudes,[17][18] and upon Lot's exhorting them to abandon their transgression against God, they ridiculed him,[19] threatening with dire consequences;[20] Lot only prayed to God to be saved from doing as they did.[21]
Then two angels in the disguise of handsome young boys came to Lot, who became distressed knowing the character of the people, and feeling himself powerless to protect the visitors; he said, "This is a distressful day."[22] When the people – overjoyed at the news of new young boys in the village – came to snatch them away from Lot,[23] he tried to convince them to refrain from practising their lusts on the visitors, and offered his own daughters to them (to marry, according to the translation of Abdullah Yusuf Ali) in return for the boys' free release,[24][25] but they were unrelenting and replied "we have no need of your daughters: indeed you know quite well what we want!"[26] The Qur'an remarks "they moved blindly in the frenzy of approaching death".[27]
Lot was powerless to protect the boys, but they revealed to him that they were indeed angels sent by God to punish the people for their transgressions. They advised Lot to leave the place during the night and not look back, informing him that his wife would be left behind on account of her sinful nature and that they "were about to bring down upon the folk of this township a fury from the sky because they are evil-doers".[6] Keeping his faith in God, Lot left his home and the cities during the night with his family and others who believed in him, and only his wife stayed behind. When morning came, God turned the cities upside down, and rained down on them stones hard as baked clay,[28] putting an end to the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah once and for all.
