The Islamic Whale

The Islamic whale (in Arabic الحوت الإسلامي, al-hoot al-islami), is a mythological creature described in Islamic texts that carries the Earth on its back. It is also called Nun (نون), which is also the name of the Arabic letter "n" ن. Two alternative names of the whale are Liwash and Lutiaya.^[1] The details behind the mentioning of this creature is a unclear topic. There is little mention of Nun in the Quran, however there is further mention of it in other Islamic scriptures such has Hadith and Tafsir along with context verses.

Nun in the Qur'an

Nun is mentioned in the verse 68:1.^[2] Most respected scholars of Islam (Ibn Kathir, At-Tabari, Al-Qurtubi and others including Al-Jalalayn) agree that Nun refers to a whale that carries the Earth on its back:^[3]

Word-by-word translation:

• نٓ - noon - the name of the whale
• وَٱلْقَلَمِ - wal-qalam - by the pen (wa- prefix means "and" or "by")
• وَمَا - wa-ma - and what
• يَسْطُرُونَ - yasturoona - they write

There is not much information in the Qur'an ipso facto, but it is necessary to have an understanding of this idea in order to understand much of the traditional interpretation of the Qur'an. For example, in verse 21:87 Jonah is called "man of the Nun", which has been interpreted as meaning that he was eaten by a whale^[4][5]:

Relevant Quotations

Fish/Whale is mentioned in the same chapter as the letter nun:

Tafsir Ibn Kathir

ibn Kathir spends a good bit of text on this short verse, and attributes different explanations to the verse, all of them more or less agreeing with the following summary: In the beginning, Allah created the pen before all else. The pen asked "what do I write" and Allah told it to write the letter ن "nun" or "N" which is actually a whale upon whose back he balanced the entire world:

This is the definition of ن (Nun) in the Arabic tafsir:

Hadith from Ibn Abbas, the turjuman ul-Qur'an

Another variation of this hadith from At-Tabari:

The hadith (narration) by Ibn Abbas (collected by At-Tabari) is considered صحيح (sahih)^[7], which means it is considered to be an authentic narration in the traditional estimation of hadith. According to the tradition Ibn Abbas holds a special place in the scheme of hadith preservers, for Muhammad made du'a(prayer) for Ibn Abbas, so that Allah would teach him the true interpretation of the Qur'an. Ibn Abbas was also called turjuman ul-Qur'an (ترجمان القرآن), because he had deep knowledge about the interpretation (tarjama, literally translation) of the revelations.

His narration also explains why mountains are described as pegs in the Qur'an. It is because, according the traditional Islamic cosmology, the earth would fall off of the back of the whale without the pegs that hold it^[8]:

It also explains why Allah's throne is "on water" (because Allah created the heavens out of water):

Tafsir At-Tabari

At-Tabari had this to say:

In Islamic cosmology there are seven flat Earths, just like there are seven heavens:

They are placed on the whale like flapjacks on a plate, stacked one atop the other.

ِTafsir Al-Qurtubi

Another very respected tafsir of Al-Qurtubi is of the same opinion. The whale is under the 7th (lowest) Earth:

From his use of the word "tahat" or "under" it can be surmised that in Al-Qurtubi's cosmology the earth is seen as flat.

ِTafsir Al-Kabir (by Ar-Razi)

Al-Kabir here repeates the idea that there are multiple flat earths balanced on the back of the wall.

ِTafsir Fath Al-Qadir (by Shawkani)

This tafsir is from the 18th century:

Hadith Al-Kafi (shia)

We can also read about the Islamic whale from the Shia hadiths. This narration explains the connection between the whale and earthquakes:

Tafsir Al-Tusi (shia)

The first comprehensive Shia tafsir^[14] says this about the Nun:

As we see, Ibn Abbas and his narration is deeply respected by both sunni and shia Muslims.

Evidence

There is no scientific evidence suggesting that there is a big whale carrying the Earth on its back. We know today because of overwhelming evidence that the earth is round, or specifically oblate spheroid (there are no seven flat earths stacked one below the other). We also know that the earth is floating in space and is held in its orbit because of the gravitational force of the sun. There are no gigantic animals holding the earth as the tafsirs and hadith claim.

Also, mountains are not like pegs. For example volcanic mountains could be considered the opposite of pegs, because they have a flowing lava in the middle. The flowing lava with its high temperature cannot attach the Earth to a big whale.

Other interpretations of Nun

Although the turjuman ul-Qur'an Ibn Abbas explained that Nun is the whale which carries the Earth(s) on its back, there are also non-whale interpretations of Nun.

"ن is a letter of the alphabet"

ن ("n") is a letter of the Arabic alphabet called نون (Nun).

• This doesn't explain the verse at all. If anything, it would mean that Allah puts random letters into his revelation for mankind, for no reason.
• Muhammad was illiterate and he did not write the revelations. He recited them. "Qur'an" means recitation. Maybe it was not just the letter ن ("n"), but the whole name نون ("nun"). It's just a matter of writing it. So maybe it was not meant to be a letter of the alphabet at all. Maybe it was the three-letter word N-u-n.
• The verse 68:1 "نٓ وَٱلْقَلَمِ وَمَا يَسْطُرُونَ" could be translated as "Nun and the pen and what they write", since و usually means "and". It seems that Allah is enumerating 3 things (and enumeration usually donesn't mix things and letters):
  • Nun (ن or نون)
  • and (و) the pen (ٱلْقَلَمِ)
  • and (و) what (مَا)
  • they write (يَسْطُرُونَ)

"N" in "Ar-Rahmaan"

The word الرحمن, Ar-Rahman, "the gracious" is one of the names of Allah. The 13th sura starts with three letters الر, a few suras start with the letters حم. It we put together الر + حم + ن, we get الرحمن.

• The word Ar-Rahman is nowadays actually written as الرحمان, but in the old Uthmani script it was written without the ا (alif) before the ن. It was added later, to indicate the "aa" vowel.
• A lot of verses start on other letters and putting them together doesn't produce any interesting word. So choosing just three of them and getting an interesting word could be considered a cherry-picking.

Nun means "ink"

The verse 68:1 would mean "The ink and the pen and that which they write".

• The Qur'an used the word مِدَادًا (midaadan) for "ink" in the verse 18:109, while it used the word نون (nun) to mean "whale" in the verse 21:87. So it is more probable, that the meaning of nun here is "whale".
• According to this interpretation, this refers to the ink with which the Qur'an was written. Which is not very fitting, since the primary form of the Qu'ran is recitation. The word "Qur'an" itself means "recitation".

"Allah knows best"

"Allah knows best", in other words "the author knows what he meant", is not an interpretation at all. "Allah knows best" could be said about all Qur'anic verses. In fact, there could be a whole tafsir saying only "Allah knows best" to every verse. But it would be useless, because "Allah knows best" doesn't explain the meaning at all.

Apologetics

Some Muslims, who consider the whale hypothesis to be false ^[16] are embarrassed that this is a part of their religion and try to put forward arguments to prove that it is in fact not a part of their religion.

It's not in the Qur'an

This is questionable. Nun is mentioned in the Qur'an 68:1 and it was used in another verse 21:87 to mean "whale". It is not clearly stated in the Qur'an that Nun is the whale which carries the Earth on its back, but the Qur'an speaks about mountains being like pegs, which supports the "whale cosmology". If there is no whale under the Earth, then there is no reason for mountains to function as pegs.

Also when something is not in the Qur'an, then it doesn't mean it's not a part of Islam. The "5 pillars of Islam" are also not described in the Qur'an and they are considered to be a part of Islam. Islam (or at least the mainstream Islam) is derived from the Qur'an, hadith and sira.

The hadith is mawqoof

When a hadith (narration) is called mawqoof, it means that it is not a quote originally from Muhammad himself, but it is from someone from the Sahaba (his companions). In this case Ibn Abbas. But Muhammad asked Allah to teach Ibn Abbas the correct interpretation of the Quran, so why would Ibn Abbas need to trace his interpretation to Muhammad, when he was taught by Allah himself?

Besides that, there is a fatwa which says that a mawqoof hadith can be used as evidence if nobody protested against it:

• The whale interpretation spread widely among the scholars and none of them discredited this story in any way.
• The whale story is not a matter of the unseen. It should be observable if you look for it beneath the Islamic flat earth.
• Ibn Abbas was against taking information from People of the book ^[18]
• Muhammad asked Allah to teach Ibn Abbas the correct interpretation of the Quran, so the interpretation should be from Allah himself.

Only the early scholars believed it

As we've seen, the scholar Shawkani, who was born more than a thousand years after Muhammad's death, still wrote about the whale. So it's not just a matter of the early scholars.

• About a century later after Shawkani wrote about the flat Earth on the back of a giant whale, non-Muslims from Russia managed to escape the round Earth and land on the Moon.

It's from the Jews

The Quran was new to the Jews, so interpretation of the Quran couldn't be from the Jewish tradition. But there is a myth of a big sea monster called "Leviathan" in Judaism and Christianity:

It's not clear whether it is a whale or a dolphin or a crocodile. It was also described as a dragon and serpent. There are many different interpretations. In Judaism Leviathan is sometimes understood metaphorically as a great enemy of Israel. In Christianity Leviathan is sometimes understood as Satan. The Torah nor the Bible say that Leviathan holds the earth on its back, but there is a rabbinic text saying that Leviathan is a flying serpent who has "middle bar of the earth" between its fins:

So maybe the Islamic whale myth is based on one of the interpretations of the myth of Leviathan. But "It's from the Jews" is not an argument, because many Islamic teachings are inspired by Judaism. And Ibn Abbas, the turjuman ul-Qur'an, is the one who interprets the Quran in this way.

Ibn Abbas narrated it from Jews, but didn't believe it

There is a hadith telling Muslims to tell the stories of the people of Israel:

This hadith doesn't clearly say that Muslims should take the stories from the Jews. In the phrase "of Bani Israel" (عَنْ بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ), the word عن could mean both "from" and "about". And the beginning of the hadith says literally "convey from me" (بلغوا عني), so it looks more likely that it should be stories about Jews, but from Islamic sources.

We can read in a commentary on this hadith in Fath ul-Bari:

So the claim that Muslims should spread narrations from Jews is not supported by the hadith.

The hadith is often combined by apologists with another hadith from Sahih Al-Bukhari, from the chapter “Do not ask the people of the Scripture about anything.” (The name of the chapter says it clearly, but apologists still think that the hadiths in this chapter support telling false stories from Jews):

This hadith doesn't say that Muslims should spread the Jewish stories. The most likely interpretation is that Muslims should ignore the Jews, because some of the Jewish stories is right, some is wrong, but the only truth is from Muhammad.

Telling lies from Jews is forbidden, according to Imam Shafii:

من المعلوم أن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم لا يجيز التحدث بالكذب ، فالمعنى حدثوا عن بني إسرائيل بما لا تعلمون كذبه ، وأما ما تجوزونه فلا حرج عليكم في التحدث به عنهم [ ص: 576 ] وهو نظير قوله : إذا حدثكم أهل الكتاب فلا تصدقوهم ولا تكذبوهم ولم يرد الإذن ولا المنع من التحدث بما يقطع بصدقه 

And finally a quote from Ibn Abbas himself, also from the chapter “Do not ask the people of the Scripture about anything.”. Did he support taking interpretations of the Quran from the Jews? Let's see:

Scholars can be wrong

Everyone can be wrong. For example Muhammad could have been wrong when he assumed he is a prophet and Muslims can be wrong by believing in Islam. Since everyone can be wrong and this argument could be used against both sides, it is not a valid argument for any side.

This is also an act of shooting the messenger, an ad hominem fallacy. Muslims have traditionally regarded Islamic scholars as expert authorities on all religious matters. In fact, Islam split into many schools of law (madhhabs) over the centuries because each school considered specific scholars as the sole authorities. If Muslims now want to discredit their own scholars because of such embarrassing claims, they are putting the entire Islamic argument—that Islam is the only true religion, it is perfect and it is from God—on shaky ground. One may wonder, "What is the real history of Islam and what are the correct Islamic laws if the scholars are dismissed by their own followers? Were they all liars or fabricators? And why?"

Allah is never wrong

This doesn't mean that he didn't mean the whale which carries the Earth on its back. Maybe the Earth actually is attached to a big whale's back with mountains and all evidence against it is the work of Shaytan who tries to lead people to disbelief?

Also if the only one to be trusted is Allah, then we cannot trust the Qur'an, because it wasn't passed to us directly from him, but through many generations of fallible humans.

Belief in Islam has the prerequisite of belief in the people who passed its doctrine.

Conclusion

• Nun definitely means "whale", because Jonah (who was eaten by a whale) was called "man of the Nun".
• The turjuman ul-Qur'an Ibn Abbas, along with the most respected Islamic scholars, both sunni and shia, agree that Nun in the verse 68:1 refers to the whale which carries the Earth on its back.
• The Earth is supossedly attached to the whale with mountains. The mountains function as pegs.
  • So the Islamic whale also helps to explain the verse 78:7 about mountains being "pegs".
• The scholars who based their knowledge on reading the Arabic Qur'an and hadiths believed that the Earth is flat and it is attached with mountains (as pegs) to a big whale.

See Also

• The Masked Arab - Islam & the whale that carries the Earth on its back (video)
• The Islam Issue - The Nun Whale and the calamity of Ibn Abbas (blog)
• Scientific Errors in the Quran

Apologetics and responses:

• Zaify's article “The Islamic Whale” - debunked
  • "The argument attempts to prove that the Qur’an implies the Earth is carried on the back of a whale."
    • No, the main point is that Muslims understood it that way.
  • "...the matter at hand is a narration from Ibn Abbas rather than a direct claim made by a mufassir."
    • Ibn Abbas IS a mufassir.
  • "Ijtihad means independent reasoning."
    • The Quran and the hadiths are the basis for reasoning of a Muslim. In Islam the Earth is flat. So within this ideology, it IS reasonable to expect something to hold the Earth.
  • "...an example where Ibn Abbas narrates contradicting Isra’iliyat reports regarding the dimensions of Noah’s Ark..."
    • Why he didn't say both versions in both narrations? It seems more likely that he narrated one version, but one of the hadith was corrupted.
  • "Nobody is criticising Ka’b al-Ahbar - or Ibn Abbas for that matter - for narrating Isra’iliyat. Rather, we are castigating those present the Isra’iliyat as narrations from the Prophet (ﷺ) or opinions of the companions, and so say that they must be believed by Muslims."
    • But this is about the interpretation of the Quran and Muhammad made dua for Ibn Abbas, so that he can know the correct interpretation. Did the dua not work? And if it worked, why Ibn Abbas didn't oppose The Islamic Whale hypothesis if it was a wrong interpretation?
  • "Nun (ن), is known in Arabic as one of the muqatta’at... their meaning is only known to Allah."
    • So how can you be sure that it doesn't mean whale?
  • "The spelling of the two Nuns are different; they are only similar in pronounciation."
    • No. They are exactly the same in pronunciation. The letter ن ("n") standing by itself is read as نون ("nun").
  • "A comparison can be made with the English words hear and here. Although they sound identical, they have different meanings. It is not logical to claim that they have the same meaning because they have the same pronounciation."
    • But we do NOT have ن and نون written differently by Muhammad or Ibn Abbas and then claiming that these differently spelled words have the same meaning. It was transmitted orally and it was pronounced "nun" in both cases. And how some people, dozens of years later, chose to write these orally transmitted traditions, is irrelevant.

Translations

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References