Prophet Nuh (AS) – The Ark and the Flood حضرت نوح علیہ السلام – کشتی اور طوفان

For generations after Adam (AS), human beings worshipped Allah alone. The Quran says: “Mankind was one community; then Allah sent the prophets as bringers of good tidings and warners” (Al-Baqarah 2:213), and Ibn Abbas explained that between Adam and Nuh there were ten generations, all upon Islam. How, then, did the first idols come into the world? The Quran names them – “Wadd, Suwa’, Yaghuth, Ya’uq and Nasr” (Nuh 71:23) – and the explanation given by Ibn Abbas, recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari, is one of the most important lessons in the entire story.

He said: “These were the names of righteous men among the people of Nuh. When they died, Shaytan inspired their people to set up statues in the places where they used to sit, and to name them after those men. They did so, and the statues were not worshipped – until those people died and knowledge was forgotten; then they were worshipped” (Sahih al-Bukhari 4920). Idolatry, in other words, did not begin with evil intentions. It began with love and grief for good people, with the wish to remember them, and with images that were at first only reminders. Then a generation passed, then another, and what had been a memorial became a god. This is why Islam guards the boundary around the graves of the righteous so strictly, and why the Prophet ﷺ in his final illness warned: “May Allah curse the Jews and the Christians; they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship” (Sahih al-Bukhari 435; Sahih Muslim 531).

Into this world Allah sent Nuh (AS). He holds a unique position among the prophets. In the hadith of intercession, on the Day of Judgement people will go to him and say: “O Nuh, you are the first of the messengers to the people of the earth, and Allah named you a grateful servant” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3340, 4712; Sahih Muslim 194). Adam was a prophet, but Nuh was the first messenger sent to a people who had turned away. Allah Himself gave him the title “a grateful servant”: “Indeed, he was a grateful servant” (Al-Isra 17:3). Commentators report that he thanked Allah whenever he ate, drank, dressed or relieved himself, and that this is why he earned the title.

His lineage, as recorded by Ibn Kathir from the genealogists, goes back through Lamak, Mattushalakh, Akhnukh (Idris, according to the common view), Yared, Mahlalil, Qaynan, Anush and Shith to Adam. These names come from the earlier scriptures and are not from the Quran or hadith; what the Quran tells us is simply that he was one of his people, sent to them as their brother in humanity.

The Quran also tells us that his mission was long: “And We certainly sent Nuh to his people, and he remained among them a thousand years minus fifty years” (Al-‘Ankabut 29:14). Nine hundred and fifty years of calling – longer than the whole history of many nations. Whether this was the length of his prophetic mission alone, or of his life among them including before his call, is discussed by the scholars; the most apparent meaning of the verse is that he called them for that whole period. His age at death is not given in any authentic text; reports from the People of the Book put it at over a thousand years.

So the stage was set: a people who had slipped from remembering the righteous to worshipping them, who had forgotten the covenant of their father Adam, and a single man, one of their own, commanded by Allah to warn them before a painful punishment came.

The message of Nuh (AS) was the message of every prophet, stated in its simplest form: “O my people, worship Allah; you have no deity other than Him. Indeed, I fear for you the punishment of a tremendous Day” (Al-A’raf 7:59). He did not claim to be anything more than a man: “I am not but a clear warner” (Hud 11:25). He asked for nothing: “O my people, I ask not of you for it any wealth. My reward is not but from Allah” (Hud 11:29). And he made no claim to hidden powers: “I do not tell you that I have the depositories of Allah or that I know the unseen, nor do I tell you that I am an angel” (Hud 11:31).

Surah Nuh, the only surah of the Quran named after him and devoted entirely to him, records in his own voice how he worked. “My Lord, indeed I invited my people by night and by day. But my invitation increased them not except in flight. And indeed, every time I invited them that You may forgive them, they put their fingers in their ears, covered themselves with their garments, persisted, and were arrogant with great arrogance. Then I invited them publicly. Then I announced to them and I confided to them secretly” (Nuh 71:5–9). Every method a caller can use – public preaching, private conversation, persistence through the hours of the day and the night – he used.

His arguments were not only warnings. He reasoned with them from the world around them. He told them that if they sought Allah’s forgiveness, “He will send rain from the sky upon you in continuing showers, and give you increase in wealth and children, and provide for you gardens and provide for you rivers” (Nuh 71:10–12). He asked them why they did not attribute to Allah due grandeur, when He had created them in stages, made the seven heavens in layers, made the moon a light and the sun a lamp, caused them to grow from the earth and would return them to it (Nuh 71:13–18). He pointed, in short, to the rain, the sky, the sun and moon, and their own bodies, as proofs of the One who deserved their worship.

He also spoke to them with tenderness. “I convey to you the messages of my Lord and advise you” (Al-A’raf 7:62). The word he uses, nasiha, means sincere counsel, the kind a father gives to a child. He was not seeking victory over them; he was seeking to save them.

Most of them refused, but not all. A small number believed, and the Quran tells us something striking about who they were: they were the poor and the lowly, the people without status. The chiefs said to Nuh: “We do not see you followed except by those who are the lowest of us, at first suggestion” (Hud 11:27). They demanded that he drive these believers away if he wanted the leaders to listen. Nuh refused absolutely: “I am not one to drive away those who have believed. Indeed, they will meet their Lord, but I see that you are a people behaving ignorantly” (Hud 11:29). “And I am not going to drive away the believers” (Ash-Shu’ara 26:114). The same demand would be made of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ by the chiefs of Quraysh about Bilal, Suhayb, Khabbab and the other poor believers, and Allah gave him the same answer: “And do not send away those who call upon their Lord morning and afternoon, seeking His countenance” (Al-An’am 6:52).

Ibn Kathir observes that the whole of Nuh’s preaching, spread over nearly a thousand years, can be read in a few minutes in the Quran, and yet it contains everything: the call to tawhid, the warning of the Hereafter, the proofs from creation, the promise of worldly blessing for repentance, the humility of the caller, and his refusal to compromise with the powerful at the expense of the weak.

The response of Nuh’s people followed a pattern that would be repeated against every prophet after him. First they belittled the messenger: “The eminent among his people said: Indeed, we see you in clear error” (Al-A’raf 7:60). Then they belittled his humanity: “This is not but a man like yourselves who wishes to take precedence over you” (Al-Mu’minun 23:24). Then they belittled his followers: “We do not see you followed except by the lowest of us” (Hud 11:27). Then they appealed to tradition: “We have not heard of this among our forefathers” (Al-Mu’minun 23:24). And finally they accused him of madness: “He is only a man possessed with madness, so wait concerning him for a time” (Al-Mu’minun 23:25); “they denied Our servant and said: A madman – and he was repelled” (Al-Qamar 54:9).

They also turned the argument of the lowly against him in another way, saying that if the message were true, the noble and wealthy would have accepted it first: “Do we see that you are followed by the lowest of us… and we do not see in you over us any merit; rather, we think you are liars” (Hud 11:27). To this Nuh replied that he had a clear proof from his Lord, and that he could not force guidance on anyone: “Shall we force it upon you while you are averse to it?” (Hud 11:28).

The mockery grew into threats. “They said: If you do not desist, O Nuh, you will surely be of those who are stoned” (Ash-Shu’ara 26:116). When he would not stop, they challenged him to bring the punishment he kept warning of: “O Nuh, you have disputed with us and been frequent in dispute of us. So bring us what you threaten us with, if you should be of the truthful” (Hud 11:32). His answer was calm: “Allah will only bring it to you if He wills, and you will not cause Him failure” (Hud 11:33).

All of this went on not for years but for centuries. The verse that gives the length of his stay among them is placed, significantly, in a surah addressed to the persecuted Muslims of Makkah: “And We certainly sent Nuh to his people, and he remained among them a thousand years minus fifty years, and the flood seized them while they were wrongdoers” (Al-‘Ankabut 29:14). The message to the companions of the Prophet ﷺ, who had suffered a few years, was clear: Nuh bore it for nine hundred and fifty.

And yet, during all those centuries, fathers passed their hostility to their sons. The Quran records Nuh’s own description: “And indeed, they have led many astray” (Nuh 71:24), and his assessment at the end: “My Lord, indeed they have disobeyed me and followed him whose wealth and children will not increase him except in loss” (Nuh 71:21). The wealthy and powerful, those with the most to lose by abandoning the old ways, led the resistance, and the rest followed them.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ told his companions one more detail about Nuh’s preaching: like every prophet, he warned his people of the Dajjal, the false messiah who will appear at the end of time: “There was no prophet but warned his people of the one-eyed liar. Nuh warned his people of him” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3337; Sahih Muslim 2933). The scope of his mission, then, included even the trials of the last days.

At last Allah told Nuh what He had decreed: “And it was revealed to Nuh that: No one will believe from your people except those who have already believed, so do not be distressed by what they have been doing” (Hud 11:36). Those words closed the door of hope for the disbelievers and opened the door of the next stage. The man who had refused to curse his people for nine centuries now turned to Allah with the prayer the Quran preserves in his own words: “My Lord, do not leave upon the earth from among the disbelievers an inhabitant. Indeed, if You leave them, they will mislead Your servants and not beget except every wicked one and disbeliever” (Nuh 71:26–27). “He called upon his Lord: Indeed, I am overpowered, so help” (Al-Qamar 54:10). It was not a prayer of anger but of exhaustion and of concern for the generations to come.

Allah’s command came: “And construct the ship under Our observation and Our inspiration, and do not address Me concerning those who have wronged; indeed, they are to be drowned” (Hud 11:37). Nuh (AS), the preacher of nine centuries, became a shipbuilder. He was building something no one had ever seen, in a place where – according to the commentators – there was no sea, for a flood that had never happened, on the instruction of a Lord his people denied.

The Quran describes the ridicule: “And he constructed the ship, and whenever an assembly of the eminent of his people passed by him, they ridiculed him. He said: If you ridicule us, then we will ridicule you just as you ridicule. And you are going to know who will get a punishment that will disgrace him and upon whom will descend an enduring punishment” (Hud 11:38–39). Ibn Kathir and other commentators report that they mocked him by saying: “After being a prophet you have become a carpenter!” and that they laughed at the idea of a boat on dry land. These details are reasonable inferences; the Quran itself records only that they ridiculed him and that he answered them with the certainty of a man who knew what was coming.

What was the Ark like? The Quran calls it “a thing of planks and nails” (Al-Qamar 54:13), and refers to it as al-fulk (the ship) and as-safinah (the vessel). The reports that give its exact dimensions – that it was three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, that it had three decks, one for animals, one for people and one for birds, that it was made of teak wood and took decades to build – come from the People of the Book and from early narrators such as Qatadah and Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Kathir records them with the note that their source is the earlier scriptures. What is established is that it was large enough to carry the believers and pairs of the animals, and that it was built under Allah’s direct observation and instruction.

While he built, Nuh continued to warn. The Quran names those who would be saved: “Load upon it of each creature two mates and your family, except those about whom the word has preceded, and whoever has believed. But none had believed with him, except a few” (Hud 11:40). How few? The Quran does not say. Reports range from seven or eight people to eighty; Ibn Abbas is reported to have said eighty, including the women. None of these numbers rests on an authentic hadith, and the Quran’s own phrase – “except a few” – is the only certain statement.

The building of the Ark is also the subject of a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ in a different context. When his companions asked him about the best thing to do in a time of widespread trial, he said nothing about Nuh, but his words about Nuh elsewhere make the lesson clear: the man of faith does what he is commanded even when the whole world finds it ridiculous, and his vindication comes from Allah, not from the opinions of people.

There is a moving report, found in Musnad Ahmad (6583) from Abdullah ibn Amr and graded sahih by al-Albani, of the advice Nuh gave his son when death approached him long after the Flood. He said: “I command you with two things and forbid you two things. I command you with La ilaha illallah (there is no god but Allah), for if the seven heavens and the seven earths were placed on one side of a scale and La ilaha illallah on the other, it would outweigh them. And I command you with Subhanallahi wa bihamdihi (glory and praise be to Allah), for it is the prayer of every created thing and by it creation is sustained. And I forbid you shirk (associating partners with Allah) and kibr (arrogance).” These were the two things his people had died of: shirk in their idols and arrogance in their refusal. He did not want his own descendants to repeat them.

Allah had given Nuh a sign by which he would know the hour had come: “until when Our command comes and the oven overflows” (Hud 11:40; Al-Mu’minun 23:27). The word tannur is usually understood as a baking oven; when water gushed up from an oven – the last place anyone would expect it – the Flood had begun. Some commentators understood tannur to mean the surface of the earth, and others gave other meanings, but the common understanding of the early scholars is the oven, and Ibn Kathir leans towards it.

Then Nuh said to the believers: “Board it. In the name of Allah is its course and its anchorage. Indeed, my Lord is Forgiving and Merciful” (Hud 11:41). The water did not come from one direction. “So We opened the gates of the heaven with rain pouring down, and caused the earth to burst with springs, and the waters met for a matter already predestined. And We carried him on a construction of planks and nails, sailing under Our observation, as reward for he who had been denied” (Al-Qamar 54:11–14). The rain from above and the water from below met, and the Quran says in another place: “Indeed, when the water overflowed, We carried your ancestors in the sailing ship, that We might make it for you a reminder and that a conscious ear would be conscious of it” (Al-Haqqah 69:11–12).

“And it sailed with them through waves like mountains” (Hud 11:42). In the middle of this, the most painful scene of Nuh’s life took place. One of his sons had not boarded. He had remained a disbeliever, keeping his unbelief hidden perhaps, and now stood apart as the water rose. The father called to him across the waves: “O my son, come aboard with us and be not with the disbelievers.” The son replied: “I will take refuge on a mountain to protect me from the water.” Nuh answered: “There is no protector today from the decree of Allah, except for whom He gives mercy.” Then: “the waves came between them, and he was among the drowned” (Hud 11:42–43).

The Quran does not name this son; reports call him Yam or Kan’an, and these names are from the earlier traditions. Nor does it say that Nuh’s wife was on the Ark. Elsewhere the Quran names Nuh’s wife as one of two examples of disbelief: “Allah presents an example of those who disbelieved: the wife of Nuh and the wife of Lut. They were under two of Our righteous servants but betrayed them, so those prophets did not avail them from Allah at all, and it was said: Enter the Fire with those who enter” (At-Tahrim 66:10). Her betrayal was not immorality but disbelief and siding with the enemies of her husband’s message, as the commentators explain.

Nuh, overwhelmed, turned to his Lord: “My Lord, indeed my son is of my family; and indeed, Your promise is true; and You are the most just of judges.” Allah replied: “O Nuh, indeed he is not of your family; indeed, he is one whose work was other than righteous, so ask Me not for that about which you have no knowledge. Indeed, I advise you, lest you be among the ignorant.” Nuh immediately submitted: “My Lord, I seek refuge in You from asking that of which I have no knowledge. And unless You forgive me and have mercy upon me, I will be among the losers” (Hud 11:45–47). Here Allah taught Nuh, and through him every believer, that family in the sight of Allah is defined by faith, not by blood. A prophet’s son who disbelieves is not of the prophet’s family in that sense; a stranger who believes is closer to him than his own child.

The Flood destroyed every disbeliever. Whether it covered the entire earth or only the inhabited lands of that time is discussed by the scholars; the Quran says the people of Nuh were drowned and that his descendants were made the survivors (As-Saffat 37:77), and Ibn Kathir holds that no disbeliever on the earth survived it, in accordance with Nuh’s prayer that none should remain. The reports that the water rose fifteen cubits above the highest mountain and lasted one hundred and fifty days are from the People of the Book and are not established.

When the purpose of the Flood was complete, the end came as swiftly as the beginning: “And it was said: O earth, swallow your water, and O sky, withhold [your rain]. And the water subsided, and the matter was accomplished, and the ship came to rest on al-Judi. And it was said: Away with the wrongdoing people” (Hud 11:44). Scholars of the Arabic language have long admired this verse as among the most eloquent in the Quran; in a few words it commands the earth and the sky, describes the receding water, the settling of the Ark and the final verdict on the drowned.

Al-Judi is a mountain. The Quran names it but does not locate it, and the early commentators placed it in the region of Mosul in northern Iraq, in the Jazirah; the mountain still called Judi lies near the modern border between Turkey and Iraq. Ibn Kathir records this identification, and some narrations add that remains of the Ark could still be seen in the early Islamic period; these are reports, not established facts. The earlier scriptures speak instead of the mountains of Ararat; the Quran’s word is Judi, and that is what a Muslim affirms.

Then Allah said: “O Nuh, disembark in security from Us and blessings upon you and upon nations descending from those with you. But other nations We will grant enjoyment; then there will touch them from Us a painful punishment” (Hud 11:48). This verse looks forward across all of history: from those who left the Ark would come nations, some blessed with faith and some, after enjoying the world for a while, falling again into disbelief and facing punishment.

The Quran states that it was Nuh’s descendants specifically who repopulated the earth: “And We made his descendants those remaining” (As-Saffat 37:77). The Prophet ﷺ, according to a hadith in at-Tirmidhi (3231, graded hasan), explained the verse “We made his descendants those remaining” by saying that Sam was the father of the Arabs, Ham the father of the Africans, and Yafith the father of the Romans (the peoples of the north). The identification of Nuh’s three sons by these names comes from the earlier scriptures and the hadith; their descendants’ exact distribution among the nations is a matter of reports rather than certainty. The other believers who were on the Ark, according to the commentators, left no surviving lineage.

The day the Ark came to rest was, according to several reports, the day of ‘Ashura, the tenth of Muharram, and Nuh fasted it in gratitude. This is mentioned in a hadith in Musnad Ahmad (8717) whose chain is weak; the fast of ‘Ashura is established in Islam by other, authentic narrations connected to Musa (AS) (Sahih al-Bukhari 2004; Sahih Muslim 1130), not by the story of Nuh.

And so the earth that had drowned was dry again, and a small community of believers stepped onto it: a prophet nearly a thousand years old, his believing family, and the few who had endured mockery beside him for centuries. There were no idols left on the earth. There was no disbeliever left on it. For the second time in history, as at the descent of Adam, humanity began from a believing household. Allah says of this: “And We saved him and his family from the great affliction, and We made his descendants those remaining, and left for him [favourable mention] among later generations: Peace upon Nuh among the worlds. Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good. Indeed, he was of Our believing servants” (As-Saffat 37:76–81).

Nuh (AS) is one of the five prophets whom the scholars call Ulul-‘Azm, the possessors of firm resolve, named together in the Quran: “And when We took from the prophets their covenant, and from you [O Muhammad], and from Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa and ‘Isa son of Maryam” (Al-Ahzab 33:7). He is mentioned by name forty-three times in the Quran, in twenty-eight surahs, and his story is told at length in Al-A’raf, Hud, Al-Mu’minun, Ash-Shu’ara, Al-Qamar and Nuh. No prophet before Muhammad ﷺ is referred to more often except Musa and Ibrahim.

His story was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ and the Muslims of Makkah at the height of their persecution, and Allah stated its purpose plainly: “That is from the news of the unseen which We reveal to you. You knew it not, neither you nor your people, before this. So be patient; indeed, the outcome is for the righteous” (Hud 11:49). The Quraysh were being told, through Nuh, exactly what awaited them if they persisted, and the believers were being told that their small number and low status meant nothing against the promise of Allah.

How long Nuh lived after the Flood, and where and when he died, is not told in any authentic source. The reports that he lived for a further sixty years, or three hundred and fifty, or that he died in Makkah, or that his grave is in Lebanon or in Iraq, are all from the People of the Book and later popular traditions; Ibn Kathir reports them and does not rely on them. What we know with certainty is that, like every prophet, he died, and that he died having fulfilled his mission.

The Quran also preserves the prayer he made for himself and his household, which believers still recite: “My Lord, forgive me and my parents and whoever enters my house as a believer, and the believing men and believing women. And do not increase the wrongdoers except in destruction” (Nuh 71:28). The Prophet ﷺ gave Nuh a special place in the hadith of intercession. After Adam excuses himself, people will go to Nuh and say: “O Nuh, you are the first of the messengers to the people of the earth, and Allah named you a grateful servant. Intercede for us with your Lord.” And Nuh will remember that he once made a prayer against his people – the prayer that brought the Flood – and will say, “Myself, myself; go to Ibrahim” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3340, 4712; Sahih Muslim 194).

Another hadith describes a scene from the Judgement that concerns him directly. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Nuh will be called on the Day of Resurrection and he will say: Here I am, at Your service, O my Lord. Allah will say: Did you convey the message? He will say: Yes. Then his nation will be asked: Did he convey to you? They will say: No warner came to us. Allah will say: Who are your witnesses? He will say: Muhammad and his nation. So they will testify that he conveyed the message, and the Messenger will be a witness over you” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3339, 4487). This is the meaning of the verse “Thus We have made you a just community, that you will be witnesses over the people” (Al-Baqarah 2:143). Every Muslim who learns the story of Nuh is, in a sense, preparing to bear that witness.

The Prophet ﷺ also left us the knowledge that Nuh, like every prophet, warned against the Dajjal, and that he commanded his son at his death with La ilaha illallah and forbade him shirk and arrogance. These two warnings – against associating partners with Allah and against pride – sum up the entire nine hundred and fifty years. His people did not drown because they did not know of Allah; they drowned because they gave His right to statues of dead men, and because they were too proud to follow a man they considered beneath them.

Allah closes His own account of Nuh with words that are both a prayer and a verdict: “Peace upon Nuh among the worlds.” May the peace of Allah be upon him.