and so they prostrated. He taught you the names of everything, for the Almighty says, “He taught Adam the names of them all” (Q 2:31); and He breathed into you of His Spirit, as He says, “When I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My Spirit, fall down before him in prostration” (Q 15:29).

All of this is known to creation—above all to the ummah of Muhammad, to whom Allah has granted knowledge He gave to no other nation. Yet Adam will excuse himself, saying, “My Lord is angry today with an anger the like of which He has never had before, nor will He ever have again.” He will then recall his sin: Allah had forbidden him to eat from a certain tree, but he ate from it. The Most High said, “Do not approach this tree, lest you become wrongdoers” (Q 7:19).

It was a tree in Paradise; we do not know what tree it was, its type, its size—large or small. Allah has left it unspecified, and we must believe in it as such. He forbade Adam to eat from it and made clear that, should he and his wife do so, they would be among the wrongdoers. But their enemy, Satan, deceived them, whispered to them, and swore to them, “I am truly a sincere adviser to you both.” He thus deluded them, and Adam forgot the covenant he had with Allah—“Adam disobeyed his Lord and so erred” (Q 20:121). He forgot and ate from the tree, and was punished by being expelled from the Garden to the earth, in accordance with a wisdom Allah willed.

So Adam will remember his sin and say, “Myself! Myself!”—meaning, “Perhaps I can save my own soul.” He will stress this and repeat it three times: “Go to someone else; go to Noah.” Noah is the second father of humanity, for Allah drowned all the people of the earth who denied him—“and only a few believed with him” (Q 11:40). Noah was