Surah Nuh, Noah

Surah 71 · 28 verses · revealed at Mecca

Nuh is given entirely to one prophet and is largely his own words, spoken first to his people and then to God.

His complaint is the part people remember. He says he called them night and day and it only made them run further; that whenever he called them so they might be forgiven they put their fingers in their ears and covered themselves with their garments and persisted and grew very proud. Then he says he called them openly, and then spoke to them in public and in private.

What he offered them was not frightening. He told them to ask forgiveness of their Lord, who would send rain in abundance, and give them wealth and children, and make gardens and rivers for them. It is one of the gentlest invitations in the Qur'an and it was refused.

The surah names the idols his people would not leave — Wadd, Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq and Nasr — and early accounts say these had originally been the names of righteous men whose images were made to honour them and were worshipped by later generations.

It ends with his prayer, and the prayer is hard. Muslim commentators have generally read it as the request of a man who had spent nine hundred and fifty years on the same errand and knew exactly what he was asking for.

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