PROPHET NOAH AND HIS FLOOD (pbuh)

And We sent Noah to his people, and he lived among them for a thousand years, less fifty years, until the flood overtook them while they were still in wrongdoing.
(Surat al-Ankabut, 14) Noah's Flood, which we see taking place in almost every culture, is one of the most focused on stories told in the Quran. The fact that the people to whom Prophet Noah was sent did not heed the warnings and advice, their reactions and the occurrence of the event are described in detail in many verses.

Prophet Noah was sent to warn his people, who had turned away from the verses of Allah and associated partners with Him, to worship only Allah and to abandon their perversion. Although Prophet Noah repeatedly advised his people to follow Allah's religion and warned them many times about Allah's punishment, they denied Prophet Noah and continued to associate others with Him. The events that took place among the people of Noah are narrated as follows in Surah Al-Mu'minun:
And indeed We sent Noah to his people. So he said to his people: 'O my people, worship Allah. You have no other god besides Him. Will you not then fear Allah?'

Thereupon, the leading people among his people who had gone astray into disbelief said, 'This is no other than a mortal like you, who seeks to prevail over you. If Allah had willed, He would have sent down angels. And we have not heard this from our forefathers.'

He is nothing but a man in whom is a madness; so keep watch over him for a while. My Lord, he said, “Help me, for they have denied me.”[37]

As narrated in the verses, the leaders of his people tried to slander Prophet Noah with the simple accusation of trying to gain an advantage over them, that is, seeking personal interests, and wanted to brand him as a "madman." They decided to watch him and keep him under pressure. Thereupon, Allah informed Prophet Noah that those who disbelieved and did wrong would be punished by drowning in water, and those who believed would be saved.

When the time for the aforementioned torment came, water gushed out from the ground and these, combined with heavy rain, caused a giant flood. Allah commanded the Prophet Noah, "Put in it every pair, and your family, except those against whom the word has been passed" (Surat al-Mu'minun, 27) and all the people who boarded the Prophet Noah's ship, except for the Prophet Noah's "son" who thought he would be saved by taking refuge in a nearby mountain, were drowned. When the waters receded as a result of the flood and, as the verse puts it, "the matter was finished", the ship came to rest on Mount Judi, that is, on a high place, as reported in the Quran.

Archaeological, geological and historical studies show that the event occurred as described in the Quran. In tablets belonging to many civilizations that lived in ancient times and in many historical documents obtained, the flood event was described with great similarities, although the names of people and places differed, and "what happened to a perverted nation" was presented to contemporaries as a source of warning.

The flood event is told in very similar ways, outside of the Torah and the Bible, in Sumerian, Assyro-Babylonian records, Greek legends, the Satapatha, Brahmana and Mahabharata epics in India, some legends told in the Wales region of England, the Scandinavian Edna legends, Lithuanian legends and even in stories of Chinese origin.

How could such detailed and compatible information about the Flood have settled in cultures that were so geographically and culturally distant from each other and from the Flood region?

The answer to the question is clear: The fact that the same event is mentioned in the inscriptions of these societies, which could not have had any contact with each other in ancient times, is clear evidence that these people received information from a divine source. It seems that the Flood, one of the greatest destructive events in history, was told as an example by many prophets sent to different civilizations, and in this way, information about the Flood settled in various cultures.

However, although the Flood event and the Story of Noah are narrated in many cultural and religious sources, they have undergone many changes and have been removed from the original due to distortion of sources or incorrect transmission and intentions. From the research that has been done, we see that among the Flood narratives that basically tell the same event but have some differences between them, the only narrative that is in line with the scientific findings at hand is the one in the Quran.