76 Preface وَإِنَّها لَبِسَبيلٍ مُقيمٍYusuf AliAnd the (cities were) right on the highroad.1The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed, and even their precise position cannot be identified. But the brimstone plain of the tract still exists, right on the highway between Arabia and Syria. To the traveller in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, the whole locality presents a sense of dismal desolation which truly suggests the awful punishment for unspeakable crimes. (Cf. 37:137).