173 – ʿAbd Allāh related to us; he said: Isḥāq ibn Ismāʿīl narrated to us; he said: Abū Muʿāwiyah narrated to us, from al-Aʿmash, from ʿAmr ibn Murrah, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith, who said:

“When Jonah left in anger he boarded a ship, yet the vessel would not move. The passengers said to one another, ‘Someone among us is disobedient; let us draw lots, and whoever is chosen we shall cast him into the sea.’ They drew lots and the lot fell to Jonah; they repeated it and again it fell to Jonah. Jonah said, ‘I am the one intended,’ and stood up to throw himself overboard. At that moment a male whale raised its head from the water two or three cubits high. When he saw it he turned to another side, but the whale faced him there as well; he turned to yet another side, and still the whale confronted him. He realized that this was a decree from Allah, so he cast himself in, and the whale swallowed him.

Allah—exalted is He—then revealed to the whale, ‘Do not crush a bone of his, and do not eat any of his flesh, until I command you about him.’ The whale dived with him until it pressed him against the seabed; the mud was glorifying Allah, the water was glorifying, and everything around him was in glorification. That moved him to do the same, so he said: ‘There is no god but You; glory be to You! I was indeed among the wrongdoers’ (Q 21:87).

He remained in its belly for three days. Then Allah revealed to it to release him, and it cast him upon the bank of the Tigris; the whale had left him utterly exhausted. Allah caused a gourd-vine—the pumpkin—to grow over him; he would suck sustenance from it and sit beneath its shade.

Allah revealed to him: ‘O Jonah, go to the potter on the Tigris and tell him, “Allah commands you to break your pottery.”’ Jonah went and conveyed the message, but the potter replied, ‘No, by my life, I will not break my pots; they are my livelihood.’ Allah revealed to Jonah: ‘O Jonah, that potter feels more secure about his pottery than you did about the one hundred thousand of your people whom you wished Me to destroy.’

Allah then sent a creature against the plant, it devoured it, and the vine withered. Jonah sat weeping, whereupon Allah revealed to him: ‘O Jonah, are you more protective of this plant than of the one hundred thousand people from your own nation whom you wanted Me to annihilate?’”