You are already aware of those of you who broke the Sabbath. We said to them, “Be disgraced apes!”2:65

So We made their fate an example to present and future generations, and a lesson to the God-fearing.2:66

Allah mentions in the Qur'an the story of the Sabbath-breakers, a group of people from the town of Aylah. Abdullah Ibn 'Abbas and others explain that these people were strictly adhering to the Torah's teachings, which prohibited fishing on Saturdays. Yet, fish appeared abundantly on Saturdays and disappeared on other days, testing the people's obedience to Allah's command. The people of Aylah, succumbing to temptation, devised a trick to catch the fish on the Sabbath. They set up their nets and dug channels on Fridays, trapping the fish on Saturdays without directly fishing. On Saturdays, the fish swam into the nets and channels, and after the Sabbath, the people collected their catch. This deceit angered Allah, who cursed them for their trickery. The community was divided into three groups: those who participated in the deceit, those who opposed it and warned against it, and those who neither participated nor actively opposed it. The dissenters asked, "Why do you preach to a people whom Allah is about to destroy or to punish with a severe torment?" The preachers responded, "In order to be free from guilt before your Lord (Allah) and perhaps they may fear Allah." Allah eventually punished the deceitful group, saving only those who actively forbade the evil. The punishments were severe: He transformed the deceitful ones into monkeys, despised and rejected. The town's residents awoke one day to find that their deceitful neighbors had become monkeys, recognizing their relatives who no longer recognized them. Ibn 'Abbas wept over this, saying that the community's failure to reject wrongdoing had led to their transformation. He also mentioned that the young men turned into monkeys and the old men into pigs. These transformed beings did not live long, nor did they leave offspring. Some scholars debated whether the transformation was literal or metaphorical, but the general consensus is that it was literal.