Surah 71 of 114 · Makkah
سُورَةُ نُوحٍ
Nuh Noah
28 verses · revealed in Makkah
The context
Nuh is Makkan and is given over almost entirely to one man's report of his own work. It is not a narrative about Nuh so much as a transcript from him: he describes what he tried, in what order, over what period, and what came of it, and the reporting is unusually procedural.
It was revealed to a Prophet ﷺ who had by then spent years calling a city that would not answer. The surah hands him the account of a man who called for nine hundred and fifty years, tried every approach available, and finished with a handful of people. The consolation is not that Nuh succeeded. It is that Nuh did the work.
The name
Named simply for Nuh, and it is one of the few surahs given over to a single prophet's account almost without interruption. The naming is plain because the surah is plain: a man is named, and then he speaks.
How it moves
- 1-4The commissionWarn your people before a painful punishment comes to them. The instruction, and the offer that follows it: He will forgive you your sins and delay you for a specified term.
- 5-20What he actually didNight and day, in public and in private. The fingers in ears, the garments pulled over heads, and the argument he made from rain, from the seven heavens, from the moon, from their own creation in stages.
- 21-24The names of the idolsWadd, Suwa, Yaghuth, Ya'uq and Nasr, named in scripture, which is the only place these five appear.
- 25-28The end of itThe drowning, and the closing supplication, which asks for forgiveness for himself, his parents, and everyone who enters his house in faith.
The themes
Method, described in detail
The surah records how he called: at night and in daylight, openly and then privately, and it records that he changed approach when one did not work.
An argument from the visible world
He does not argue metaphysics. He points at rain, at the moon, at their own bodies formed in stages, and at the earth spread out for them.
Forgiveness offered before obedience
Ask forgiveness of your Lord, He is ever a perpetual forgiver, and then the promise of rain, wealth, children and gardens. The order is deliberate.
A prayer that widens
The closing du'a moves outward: himself, his parents, whoever enters his house believing, and then all believing men and women.
The heart of it
Recited slowly, the surah is oddly comforting to anyone who has tried to reach somebody and failed. Nuh's report contains no self-pity and no excuse. He states what he did, in order, and the fact that it did not work is stated in the same flat voice as everything else.
The passage about asking forgiveness is the one most readers take away, and it is worth noticing what it promises. Ask forgiveness, and He will send rain in abundance, and give you wealth and children, and make for you gardens and rivers. The reward listed for seeking forgiveness is entirely worldly, which is not what most readers expect.
Verses worth knowing
- 71:10-12Ask forgiveness of your Lord. He will send rain in abundance, and give you wealth and children, and make for you gardens and rivers.
- 71:13-14What is wrong with you that you do not attribute to Allah due grandeur, while He has created you in stages.
- 71:5-9Night and day, openly and privately. The most detailed account in the Qur'an of how a prophet actually worked.
- 71:28The closing prayer: for himself, his parents, and everyone who enters his house as a believer.
On reciting it
No authentic report establishes a specific merit for reciting Surah Nuh. Its distinctive value is documentary: it is the only place in the Qur'an where a prophet's method of calling people is set out step by step, and the only place the five idols of his people are named.
No virtue report
Read beside it
On the shelf
Surahs it travels with