had taken them along, ground those grains on that very day, and painted their eyes with antimony to strengthen their sight after it had grown weak from the sudden brightness following the darkness of the Ark—none of this is sound. It rests only on disconnected Israelite reports that cannot be relied upon or taken as precedent; God knows best.

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq said:
When God willed to halt the Flood, He sent a wind across the face of the earth; the waters subsided, the fountains of the earth were sealed, and the water began to diminish, recede, and ebb away. According to the people of the Torah, the Ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of that month, and on the first day of the tenth month the summits of the mountains became visible.

Forty days later Noah opened the window he had made in the Ark and sent out a raven to see what had become of the waters, but it did not return. He then released a dove; it came back because it found no place for its feet, so he stretched out his hand, took it, and brought it inside. After seven days he sent it out again to learn what the waters had done; it did not return immediately but came back at evening with an olive leaf in its beak. Noah thus knew that the waters had receded from the earth. He waited another seven days and sent it out once more; this time it did not return, and Noah understood that the land had emerged.

When a full year had elapsed—from the time God sent the Flood until Noah dispatched the dove—on the first day of the first month of the second year, the face of the earth appeared, dry land came into view, and Noah removed the covering of the Ark.

What Ibn Isḥāq has related here corresponds exactly to the wording of the Torah held by the People of the Book.

Ibn Isḥāq also said: In the second month of that second year, on the twenty-sixth of the month, it was said:
“It was said, ‘O Noah, disembark in peace from Us and blessings upon you and upon nations descending from those with you; but other nations We shall grant enjoyment for a time, then a painful punishment from Us will touch them.’” (Hūd 48)

The People of the Book further relate that God said to Noah: “Leave the Ark—you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you—and all the beasts that are with you, so that they may multiply and increase upon the earth.” They went out, and Noah built an altar to God, took some of every lawful beast and every lawful bird, and sacrificed them as an offering to God. God then covenanted with him never again to send a Flood upon the inhabitants of the earth, and He appointed as a reminder of this covenant the bow in the clouds—namely the rainbow—regarding which we have already transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās that it is a protection against drowning. (1)

Some have said that it is a bow without a string, meaning that from these clouds no flood like the first will ever issue.

A group among the ignorant Persians and Indians denied that the Flood took place at all, while others acknowledged it but claimed that it was confined to the land of Babylon and did not reach them. They say, “We have passed the kingship down from forefather to forefather since the time of Kanūfarit (2)—that is, Adam—until this very day.” Such statements are made only by the heretics among the Magians, worshippers of fire and followers of Satan.

(1) Ibn ʿAbbās held that the rainbow is a divine assurance against another deluge.
(2) Kanūfarit: an ancient name they apply to Adam.