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.

From all of the earliest Sunni and Shi'a sources today available to us, it does appear that the earliest Muslims believed the letter "nun" in the Qur'an surah 68:1 refers to a giant whale upon whose back the entire earth rests. This belief is attributed by all of the trusted sources of Islamic jurisprudence to "tarjumaan al-qur'an" ibn Abbas and was reaffirmed thereafter by many trusted Islamic scholars all the way up until the 19th century. According to this cosmogony, the earth (actually the 7 earths are) is attached to the back of the whale by means of the mountains, which are pegs to balance the earth upon the Nun's back. This cosmogony fits in with a widespread ancient belief that the world was balanced upon the back of giant animals, and the even more primordial belief that the world is surrounded by a giant, unending body of water.

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 of the Qur'anic verse:

• 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

A 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) id est "translator of the Qur'an", because he had such a 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 whale.

ِTafsir Fath Al-Qadir (by Shawkani)

This tafsir is from the 18th century re-affirms the idea that the world is carried on the back of a whale:

Hadith Al-Kafi (shia)

Hadith Al-Kafi, one of the most prestigious Shi'ite hadith, also confirms that a whale carries the earth upon its back:

Tafsir Al-Tusi (shia)

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

There is thus attestation of Nun the whale in both the Sunni and Shi'ite tradition.

The Qur'anic Cosmology vis-à-vis Modern Science

The world view evinced in the tasfir is one fundamentally at odds with the modern, scientific understanding of cosmology, earth sciences and geology. The authors of the tafsir tradition and the Qur'an seem to have been operating on the assumption that the earth that the human race inhabits is flat, and moreover it is only one of many different earths. The belief that the world is balanced on the back of a giant cosmological animal is not peculiar to Islam--witness the Hindu tradition of Akupāra (Sanskrit: अकूपार), also know as Kurma and Chukwa, the giant tortoise who supports the 16 elephants who hold up the world, or the Chinese myth of the sea turtle Ao whose sawed off legs prop up the world. The idea of a giant animal holding up the world is a myth found in many pre-scientific cultures.

Other interpretations of Nun

Although many traditional tafsir explain 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). Many suwar in the Qur'an actually start with mysterious letters that don't have any immediate meaning. This does beg the question of what these letters mean in the first place, and from the perspective of a believing Muslim why Allah would start his revelations out with random letters, but considering it does fall into an accepted Qur'anic pattern it does at least offer an explanation for its presense. Another point is the word following the Nun, "walqalami" "by the pen." The Arabic formation for oaths and swears is to add و "wa" a particle meaning generally "and" to a noun in the majruur (genetive) case, producing the swearing oath: "والله" "wallahi" "by God!" "والشمس" "washamsi" "by the sun!" etc. Since the word "qalam" or "pen" is in the genitive case, it should be understood to be a swear, and this seems likely. It should however be remembered that the original "rasm" or consonantal text for the Qur'an lacked the vowel markings which in this case marks the word as being in the genitive. The original text thus might not have had this word in the genitive case, in which case the meaning would simply be "and the pen." It is thus possible that in the original the "wa" functioned simply as an "and" and the original meaning was thus simply "(the letter) nun, and the pen, and what they write."

"N" in "Ar-Rahmaan"

The word الرحمن, Ar-Rahman, "the gracious" is one of the titles of Allah. The 13th sura starts with three letters الر, and a few suras start with the letters حم (see the comment on random letters at the beginning of suwar above). Putting these together produces الر + حم + ن= الرحمن "Ar-rahmaan."

• 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 however and no convincing argument can be made for producing relevant words from most of them.

Nun means "ink"

A proposed solution for this is that the nun here means "ink" in the nominative case, in which case 68:1 would mean "The ink and the pen and that which they write". This solution suffers from some issues:

• 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 according to the traditional narrative. The word "Qur'an" itself means "recitation" in the traditional understanding. It should also be noted, however, that the word Qur'an may have a Syriac antecedent in the word "Qeryaanaa", meaning a lectionary, the book of scripture readings in traditional Christian masses. With this understanding the meaning of "ink" might make more sense.

"Allah knows best"

"Allah knows best", in other words "the author knows what he meant", is an explanation offered by some Muslim commentators, indicating that even with the traditional narrative understanding this verse is difficult.

Modern Muslim Scholarly and Apologetic Views

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 strength of the hadith mawqoof

A problem often mentioned in regards to this tradition is that it relies on Hadith rated as "mawqoof" or originating with a companion of the prophet. In traditional Sunni exegisis however this has not normally been seen as an issue:

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

Only the early scholars believed it

It's sometimes claimed that only early scholars believed this, a strange claim considering that antiquity usually validates rather than invalidates views and doctrines in Islamic theology and jurisprudence. This view is, however, not even true so far as it goes, as the idea of the earth-bearing whale was mentioned even by Shawkani writing in the year 1835 CE when he wrote about it in his commentary on this verse.

Jewish Origins

There are some modern claims that this story/doctrine comes from Judaism. Neither the Bible, Talmud, targums, Mishnah or any other Jewish text mentions the idea of the earth-bearing whale. There is, tho, a myth of a big sea monster called "Leviathan" in the Bible:

It's not clear whether it is a whale or a dolphin or a crocodile (although the word is construed in modern Hebrew to mean "whale", but this has no necessary implication for the word in the time of Isaiah). 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. Neither the Bible nor any extra-biblical Judaic text say that the 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:

Insofar as the Leviathan is interpreted as being a whale, it is possible that this was the origin of the myth. The entirety of the myth itself though does not appear to be Jewish in origin, rather being an obvious Islam accretion.

Ibn Abbas Receiving the Story from the Jews

Some modern believers and apologists as referenced above attribute this story to Jewish sources, basing this idea on the fact that ibn Abbas often took and retold Jewish stories. This practice though is actually attested to in sahih hadith:

This hadith seem to allow taking 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.

Fath ul-Bari says in his commentary:

So from the traditional sources it would not appear that there is anything particularly wrong with taking Jewish stories and retelling them for Muslims. In fact, the majority of the material in the Qur'an deals with either Jewish or Christian stories when a narrative is present.

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.”. This seems to cast doubt on the idea that ibn Abbas was even in the habit of taking stories from the Jews:

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

Translations

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References