“In that is surely a sign, yet most of them were not believers; and indeed your Lord—He is the All-Mighty, the All-Merciful.” (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:121–122)

He, exalted be He, also says: “He stayed among them for a thousand years save fifty; then the Flood overtook them while they were doing wrong. Yet We delivered him and those who were in the ship, and We made it a sign for all peoples.” (al-ʿAnkabūt 29:14–15)

And He says: “Then We drowned the others.” (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:66)

And He says: “We left it as a sign—so is there any who will take heed? How terrible were My punishment and warnings! And We have made the Qur’an easy to remember; so is there any who will take heed?” (al-Qamar 54:15–17)

And He says: “Because of their sins they were drowned and made to enter a Fire, and they found none to help them against Allah. And Noah said, ‘My Lord, leave not upon the earth a single dweller from among the disbelievers. For if You leave them they will mislead Your servants, and they will beget none but a wicked ingrate.’” (Nūḥ 71:25–27)

Allah—praise and bounty are His—answered that supplication, so not one of them remained whose eye could blink.

Imām Abū Jaʿfar Ibn Jarīr (1) and Abū Muḥammad Ibn Abī Ḥātim, in their commentaries, transmit—through Yaʿqūb ibn Muḥammad al-Zuhrī, from Fāʾid, the client of ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Abī Rāfiʿ, from Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Rabīʿah, from ʿĀʾishah, Mother of the Believers—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“If Allah had shown mercy to anyone from the people of Noah, He would have shown mercy to the child’s mother.”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ also said:

“Noah remained among his people for one thousand years—meaning minus fifty. For a hundred years he planted trees; they grew tall and spread in every direction. He then felled them and fashioned them into the Ark. People would pass by him and mock him, saying, ‘You are building a ship on dry land—how will it sail?’ He would reply, ‘Soon you shall know.’ When he finished it and the water gushed forth and ran through the streets, the child’s mother, who loved him dearly, feared for him. She went out with him to a mountain until she reached one-third of its height; when the water reached her, she climbed with him until she stood atop the mountain. When the water reached her neck she raised him above her with her hands, and both of them drowned. Had Allah shown mercy to any of them, He would have shown mercy to the child’s mother.”

This is a strange (gharīb) ḥadīth.

A similar account has been narrated from Kaʿb al-Aḥbār, Mujāhid (2), and others. It is more fitting to regard this report as mawqūf, taken from someone like Kaʿb al-Aḥbār—and Allah knows best.

The upshot is that Allah left not a single household among the disbelievers. How, then, can some commentators claim that ʿAwj ibn ʿAnq (3)—also said to be Ibn ʿAnāq—was alive from before Noah until the time of Moses? They assert that he was a defiant, tyrannical unbeliever; that he was illegitimate, his mother ʿAnāq, daughter of Adam, having conceived him through fornication; that, owing to his height, he could reach down into the ocean depths, seize fish, and roast them in the glare of the sun; that he said to Noah while the latter was in the Ark, “What is this little bowl of yours?”—mocking him; and that his stature was three thousand three hundred and thirty-three and one-third cubits, along with other such absurdities which, were they not written down in many works of exegesis, history, and popular lore,