Was the Flood a Local Disaster or was It Global?

Those who deny the reality of Nuh's Flood, support their stance with the assertion that a worldwide flood is impossible. However, their denial of any flood whatsoever is also directed as an attack on the Qur'an. According to them, all the revealed books including the Qur'an, appear to defend the reality of a worldwide flood and are thus mistaken.

Yet this denial of the Qur'an is not true. The Qur'an was revealed by Allah and is the sole unaltered divine book. The Qur'an looks at the Flood from a very different viewpoint than do the Pentateuch and the other flood legends narrated in various cultures. The Pentateuch, a name for the first five books of the Old Testament, says that the flood was cosmic and that it covered the whole world. Yet the Qur'an does not offer such as assertion, indeed on the contrary, the relevant verses imply that the Flood was regional and did not cover the whole world but only drowned Nuh's people who had been warned by Nuh and so were punished.
When the Flood narrations of the Old Testament and the Qur'an are examined, this difference is plain. The Old Testament, which has been subject to so many alterations and additions throughout its history that it can truly be said that almost nothing of the original remains, describes how the Flood began as follows;

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD (Genesis, 6:5-8)

However, in the Qur'an, it is clearly shown that it was not the whole world, but only Nuh's people who were destroyed. Just as Hud was sent only to 'Ad (Surah Hud: 50), Salih was sent to Thamud (Surah Hud: 61) and all the other prophet prior to Muhammad were sent only to their own peoples, Nuh was sent only to his people and the flood caused only Nuh's people to disappear;

We sent Nuh to his people (with a mission): "I have come to you with a Clear Warning: That ye serve none but Allah: Verily I do fear for you the penalty of a grievous day." (Surah Hud: 25-26)

Those who perished were people who totally disregarded Prophet Nuh's proclamation of the message and persisted on rebellion. Relevant verses are explicit enough to leave no room for discussion:

But they rejected him, and We delivered him, and those with him, in the Ark: but We overwhelmed in the flood those who rejected Our signs. They were indeed a blind people! (Surat al-Araf: 64)

We saved him and those who adhered to him. By Our mercy, and We cut off the roots of those who rejected Our signs and did not believe. (Surat al-Araf: 72)

Besides, in the Qur'an, Allah remarks that He does not destroy a community unless a messenger has been sent to it. Destruction can only take place if a warner has already arrived among a particular people and the warner is belied. Allah states in Surat al-Qasas;

Nor was thy Lord the one to destroy a population until He had sent to its centre a messenger, rehearsing to them Our Signs; nor are We going to destroy a population except when its members practice iniquity. (Surat al-Qasas: 59)

It is not Allah's Way to destroy people whom He has not sent any messengers. As a warner, Nuh had been sent only to his people. Therefore, Allah did not destroy the communities who had not been sent a warner, but only Nuh's people.

From these statements in the Qur'an, we can be certain that Nuh's flood was a regional disaster, not a cosmic one. The excavations made in the archaeological region where the flood is supposed to have happened - which we will examine here below - show that the flood was not a cosmic event affecting the whole world, but a very broad catastrophe which affected a certain part of Mesopotamia.

Were all the Animals Taken on Board?

The interpreters of the Bible believe that Nuh took all animal species on earth on board the Ark and that animals were saved from extinction thanks to Nuh. According to this belief, a pair of every animals species on earth were brought together and put on board.

Those who defend this assertion doubtless have to face serious difficulties in many respects. The question of how the animal species taken aboard were fed, how they were housed on the Ark, or how they were isolated from each other are impossible to answer. Moreover, the question remains: how were animals from different continents brought together - mammals in the poles, kangaroos in Australia or the bison peculiar to America? Moreover, there follow more questions as to how very dangerous animals - venomous ones like snakes, scorpions and wild animals - were caught and how they could be sustained away from their natural habitats until the flood abated.

These are the questions which the Old Testament faces. In the Qur'an, there is no statement implying that all the animal species on earth were taken on board. As we have noted before, the Flood took place in a certain region. Therefore, the animals taken on board could only have been those living in the region where Nuh's people resided.

However, it is evident that it is impossible even to collect all the animal species living in that region. It is difficult to think of Nuh and a few number of believers beside him (Surah Hud: 40) going in all directions and setting out to collect two each of hundreds of animal species in their surroundings. It is even more highly improbable for them to have collected specimens of the insect species living in their region, and, moreover, to discriminate the males from the female! This is the reason why it is more probable that the animals collected were those that could easily be caught and sustained, and were, therefore, domestic animals especially useful to man. The prophet Nuh was most likely to have taken on board such animals as cows, sheep, horses, poultry camels and the like, because these were the primary animals that would have been needed for establishing a new life in a region which would have lost a great deal of its livestock because of the Flood.

Here the important point is that the divine wisdom in Allah's command to Nuh to collect the animals lies in its being directed to the collecting of the animals required for the new life to be established after the flood rather than to protecting the genus of animals. Since the flood was regional, the extinction of animal species could not have been a possibility. It is most likely that after the flood, animals from other regions would have migrated to that area in the course of time, and re-populated the region with its old liveliness. What was important was the life to be established in the region right after the flood, and the animals gathered would have been collected basically for this purpose.

How High Did the Waters Arise?

Another debate around the Flood is whether the waters rose high enough to cover the mountains. As acknowledged, the Qur'an informs us that the Ark came to rest on "al-Judi" after the flood. The word "Judi" is generally referred to as a specific mountain site, whereas the word appears to mean "high setting or hill" in Arabic. Therefore it should not be forgotten that in the Qur'an, "Judi" could have been used not as a name for a specific mountain site but to indicate that the Ark had come to rest on a high site. Besides, the aforementioned meaning of the word "Judi" may also show that the waters had reached to a certain height, but not as high as mountaintop level. That is to say that the flood most probably did not engulf the whole earth and all the mountains as described in the Old Testament, but only covered a certain region.

The Location of Nuh's Flood

The Mesopotamian Plains have been suggested as the location of the Flood. In this region were the oldest civilisations known to history. Besides, being between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, this region geographically is a suitable setting for a great deluge. One of the contributory factors to the effect of the flood is most probably that these two rivers overflowed their beds and overwhelmed the region.

The second reason why this region is regarded as the location for the Flood is historical. In the records of many civilisations of the region many documents are to be found referring to a flood that took place in the same period. Having witnessed the destruction of Nuh's people, these civilisations must have felt the need to record how this disaster came about and in what it resulted. It is known that most of the legends on the flood are of Mesopotamian origin. More important to us are the archaeological finds. These show that a big deluge did indeed once befall this region. As we will examine in detail in the following pages, this flood caused civilisation to be suspended for a period. In the excavations, apparent traces of such an enormous disaster have been unearthed.

The excavations made in the Mesopotamian region disclose that many times in history, this region suffered from various disasters as a result of deluges and the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. For instance around 2nd millennium BC, at the time of Ibbi-sin, ruler of the large nation of Ur situated to the south of Mesopotamia, a year is marked as "coming after a Flood that annihilated the borders between the heavens and the earth"1 . Around 1700 BC, at the time of the Babylonian Hammurabi, a year is marked as being that in which occurred the incident of "the ruining of the city of Eshnunna with a deluge".

In the 10th Century BC, at the time of the ruler Nabu-mukin-apal, a deluge occurred in the city of Babylon.2 After 'Isa (Jesus), in the 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries, important deluges took place in the region. In the 20th Century, the same happened in 1925, 1930 and 1954.3 It is clear that the region has always been subject to the disaster of flooding and, as indicated in the Qur'an, it is very likely that a massive flood could have destroyed an entire people.