"…And [Noah!], construct the Ark under our Our[Allah's] observation and Our inspiration and do not address Me concerning those who have wronged; indeed, they are [to be] drowned…And he constructed the Ark, and whenever an assembly of eminent of his people passed by him, they ridiculed him. He said, "If you ridicule us, then we will ridicule you just as you ridicule us...[So it was], until when Our command came the oven overflowed…We[Allah] said, "Lord upon it[Ark] take of each[creature] two per and your family…And[Noah], "Embark therein; in the name of Allah[are] its course and its anchorage…And it sailed with them through waves like mountains…" and Noah called to his son who was apart[from them], "O my son, come aboard with us and be not with the disbelievers." --- Qur'an chapter11 verse 37-42


A historian by name Zubair bun Bikar narrated that: Noah bun Malkan bun Mathub bun Iddris was a great grandson of Adam. And there was a gap of a thousand years between him and his grandfather, Adam. He was born 326 years after him. When he became an adolescent, his father told him: You know that, there was no body that had reached the position of prophethood, so do not follow any deviant [ummah] society. It was narrated that he was at the age of 350 when he was given prophethood. He was sent at a time when there was no one advocating for what is right and advising against what is wrong. They used to worship idols, and they would beat him severely as he advice them to worship Allah alone.
According to Ibn Abbass, in a hadith Imam Bukhari narrated from him: The gap between Noah and Adam was 20 centuries[which is equivalent to 2000 years], all those generation were on the path of Islam. So long after these centuries, they resorted to the worship of idols. This was evident in a hadith narrated by Bukhari on the authority of Ibn Jurain who obtained from Ibn Abbass that: There were idols such as; Wudda, Suwa'an, Ya'uqa and Nasran, which were names of pious and noble men among the people of Noah. When they perished, the devil[Satan] inspired their people to carve their statues in their images and put them at their sitting places and gave these idols names of these noble men, and since then, non worshipped Allah, but those idols. And Satan even convinced the successive and subsequent generations with the view that, their ancestors used to worship these idols because they invoke their names for rain water, so worship them…but these idols remained until the generation of the Arab of Jahiliyah[before the advent of prophet Muhammad{PBUH}].
He[Ibn Abbass] disclosed in another hadith that: No one was sent to his people to forbid evil and advocate goodness. Allah sent him when he was at 480 years of age. And was calling his people for 120 years, and he climbed on top of the Ark or Ship when he was 600 years of age…His people used to sow or plant crops twice every months. And a woman would give birth in the morning and her baby would walk behind her by the evening.[This is when we compare the length of their duration of time with ours].
Historians narrated that: Allah had mandated for Noah prayer[salat], halal and haram[lawful and unlawful codes]. And Allah commanded him to build an Ark. He first planted a three and cut it into pieces after it had matured. While he was working on his Ark, his enemies and non believers passing bye would be making mockery of him. A companion of Prophet Muhammad, Salmani Farisii narrated that: The tree that prophet Noah had planted for forty years is called Al-saj. And had worked on the Ark for 400 years. And Qatadah narrated that: its length was measuring 300 feet, its breath was 50 feet and its height was 30 feet.
As stated in the above quoted verse of the Qur'an, Allah commanded Noah to choose from each of the animals of earth, both male and female gender. And the wisdom behind that was, in the event of the anticipated great flood wiping out the entire human and animal life on that part of the earth, those that would remain in the Ark would reproduce new breed of human and animals.
It was also narrated in another source that its length was thousand feet and it was on three floors. There was a floor that had only beast and animals and another floor also contained human, there were also birds in another floor. It was narrated on the authority of Ibn Abbass that: There were 80 men, among them were Sam, Ham, Yafith[sons of Noah] and some women. And 73 among the passengers of the Ark were among the children of Sheeth.
History scholars further disclosed that: When Noah and all his passengers got on, Allah opened the sky with a heavy down poor, causing huge flood which floated the arch for 40 days. And the flood invaded the mountains and destroyed all life forms and trees on that geographic location, nobody survived except Noah and his entourage of people and animals inside the Ark.
Among those who perished was one of his sons [Kan'aana], who refused to join him. Narrating the story to prophet Muhammad[PBUH], Allah says in Qur'an chapter 11 verses 42-43 that: "…And Noah called his son who was apart[from them], "O my son, come aboard with us and be not with the disbelievers…[But] he said, "I will take refuge on a mountain to protect me from the water." [Noah] said, "There is no protector today from the decree of Allah, except for whom He gives mercy." And the waves came between them, and he was among the drowned." And in Qur'an chapter 25 verse 37, Allah says: "And Noah's people, when they denied the Messengers, We[Allah] drowned them, and We made them as a sign for mankind. And We have prepared a painful torment for the Zalimoon [polytheists and wrongdoers]."
According to Imam Malik bun Anas: A man at the time of Noah would relate to 15 fathers and grandfathers, and would still be alive, as he becomes an adult. Scholars are with the view that: Noah lived 350 years more after the flood, while he lived on earth for 950 years.
And Ibn Abbass narrated that: There were 80 men with their families inside the Ark and they lived for a 150 days. And Allah directed the Ark towards Makkah, after going round the "Holy House" [Ka'abah] for 40 days, and then re-directed its path towards mount "Judi"[A mountain in[Jazirat ibn Umar], town of Ibn Umar, south-east of Dajlah] and it got stuck on it. Noah then sent a raven to go and bring him news of the earth after the flood-making sure the rain had subsided. The raven saw a dead body and engaged on it and forgot her mission. Then he sent a pigeon and she came back with a leaf of zaitoon[olive] tree, while her legs were laden with clay or mud. So he got an hint with this mark on her legs that the rain and the flood had stopped. Then Noah and his eighty men passengers and their families disembarked from the Ark and built houses and established a community called: "Suku Thamaneen", or "Market of Eighty[People]". They ended up having 80 different languages, when some of them could not understand the languages of others, Noah was inspired by Allah to be able to cross-interpret all the languages to those who do not understand.
Just to have a faint idea of the geography of the place,[mount Judi, as mentioned in the Qur'an] the letters J.B. and K are philologically interchangeable, and Judi, Gudi, Kudi are sounds that can pass into each other. There is no doubt that the name is connected with the name "Kurd", in which the letter "r" is a later interpolation. For the oldest Sumerian records name a people called Kuti or Gutu as holding the middle Tigris region not later than 2000 B.C.[see E.B. Kurdistan].That region comprises the modern Turkish district of Bohtan, in Jabal Judi is situated[near the frontier of modern Turkey, modern Iraq and modern Syria], and the town of Jazirat ibn Umar[on the present Turco-Syrian frontier] and it extends into Iraq and Persia. The great mountain mass of the Ararat plateau dominates this district. The mountain systems "is unique in the Old World in containing great sheets of water that are bitter lakes without outlets, Lake Van and Lake Urumiya being the chief"[E.B, Asia].
Such would be the very region for a stupendous Deluge if the usual scanty rainfall were to be changed into a very heavy downpour. A glacier damming of Lake Van in the Ice Age would have produced the same result.
The region has many local traditions connected with Noah and the flood. The Biblical legend of Mount Ararat being the resting place of Noah Ark is hardly plausible, seeing that the highest peak of Ararat is over 16,000 feet high. If it means one of the lower-peaks of the Ararat system, it agrees with the Muslim tradition about Mount Judi[or Gudi, which was specifically mentioned in the Qur'an], and this is in accordance with the oldest and best local traditions. These traditions are accepted by Josephus, by the Nestorian Christians, and indeed by all the Eastern Christians and Jews, and they are the best in touch with local traditions.[See (Viscount) J. Bryce, "Transcaucasia and Ararat" 4th ed., 1896. p. 216].
And part of what the people of the book narrated was that: Allah had commanded Noah and his people to disembark from the Ark with his family and the entire animals, so they would grow and reproduce on earth. Upon exiting the Ark, Noah took only halal from the entire beasts and birds and slaughtered them as sacrifice, asking and praying to Allah not to ever let the "Great Flood" invade the earth again. And Allah then made [quas kazah] rainbow in the sky as a protection from drowning.
Another great and famous tabi'ee[next generation after the companions] scholar, Saeedu Bunul Mussayib revealed that: Noah had three children, such as Sam, Ham and Yafith. Sam was the forefather of the Arabs, Persians and Romans. Ham was the grandfather of the Sudanese, Berbers and Coptics. While Yafith's progeny were the Turkish, Suqalabahs, and Gogs and Mogogs[who were causing destruction on earth and a great wall/pillar was built by Zulqarnain, a powerful king[we will deal with his narrative at length in the coming weeks] to block them from attacking their victims.
Noah lived after the flood for 350 years. According Ibn Juraij: When he died he was buried, his grave was located around[the present] holy mosque of Makkah. And a hadith that authenticated this view was narrated by Abdul Rahman that, the prophet[PBUH] said: "Whenever people of the prophets we sent got perished, and those prophets and his pious disciples were saved, they would go with them to the Holy Mosque in Makkah to worship Allah continuously until they die. And verily, the graves of prophets Noah, Hud, Salih and Shuib were beneath the earth at the space in between zam zam ground and maqamu Ibrahim[the resting place of Ibrahim], when he and his son Ismael were raising the foundation of the Holy Mosque.

Place of Discovery of the Ark of Noah vindicated the Qur'an

In the 1990's, two geologists from Princeton University, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, were doing research on the floor of the Black Sea when they saw something that they couldn't explain. They saw "shorelines" on the bottom of the sea, indicating that at some time past there was a lake at that level surrounded by "dry land". Core
drillings confirmed that 6000 - 8000 years ago all the fossils consisted of
fresh water life, and that there was an event that changed it to marine life of
the salt-water variety, almost overnight. Where did it come from and why? The only logical explanation lay at the only physical inlet to the basin, the Bosporus Strait.
In the past, this had been a solid neck of land that separated the waters of the Mediterranean from the basin they were studying, and somehow it gave way. The Mediterranean Sea flowed into the basin with a force of 200 Niagara Falls.
They wrote a book entitled "Noah's Flood" in 1997 and offered evidence that this event was the source of the flood stories in the book of Genesis and the Sumerian "flood epics".
There was a problem. The Black Sea Basin is very large with 60,000 square miles, and the flow of water into it would not be fast enough to happen in the time given in
Genesis.
In another narrative; A mission headed by the scientist, Sir Leonard Wally, in which the British Museum and the American University of Pennsylvania were participants in 1920, had made excavations at Tal Abid in the northern part of the Iraqi city, Orr. This mission discovered deep layers of alluvial mud in which earthen vessels and statues were buried, as well as parts of mud that still had imprints of reeds on them. Through microscopical examinations performed on quantity of alluvial mud, Wally established that it consisted of materials swept by waters from the central region of the Euphrates in the form of a great flood whose height was not less than 25 feet. In Wally's opinion, the flood did not cover the entire world but it was a great overflow that overwhelmed the Tigris and the Euphrates. In swamped the entire inhabited region that lay between the mountains on the East and the hilly deserts on the West. That was the only region populated by the inhabitants of the then world.
After the flood, the inhabitants of the valley recorded the story of that flood on twelve earthen plates and mentioned the drowning of the entire inhabitants of that region with the exception of the pious man who built an Ark and put aboard it members of his family and some animals. It was only passengers of this Ark that were destined for safety.
The above accounts are in agreement with the tests of the Qur'an[as I already indicated] that were revealed[to the holy prophet Muhammad[PBUH]] after the flood…It mentioned the events and things related to it such as the mountain of Judi[which is the peak of the Ararat Mountains] in eastern Turkey. The Noah's Ark was actually discovered 10 kilometers from Mount Ararat.
With the agreement of these archaeological discoveries and the verses of the noble Qur'an, we can clearly see the Qur'an's scientific inimitability.
The verses of the Qur'an indicate that the flood covered only the people of Noah, peace be upon him. This does not mean that it covered the then entire world for there is no proof human beings were occupying the entire world at that time. They were only living in the part that was covered by the torrential flood.
In fact, one wonders why some people could not reflect and reason to accept the Qur'an as the most authentic and accurate among all other divine scriptures from Allah Almighty? It always reminds of the wisdom of the paragon of wisdom, Imamu Aliyu Bun Abi Talib, who used to say:"Inna fil-Qur'an la hayaat yuffasiruha zaman." That:"There are some verses in the Qur'an that get interpreted by the passage of time." So time will tell, as it begins to, through myriad of scientific and historic discoveries that emerge to authenticate this awesome and amazing book of Allah, par excellence!

Husseini Yushau BabalWaiz, is the Research & Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Media & Peace Initiatives Inc. New York, Author of three books, including "Islam Promotes Tolerance & Prohibits Terrorism-Reviving the Islamic Advocacy of Mercy and Magnanimity to Mankind" & Tutor in Arabic & Islamic Studies in New York, babalwaiz71@gmail.com

NB: Folks, this is the fifth in the new series entitled: "Delving Deep Inside the Islamic Historic Memory Lane", which will be running for months, even years. Aimed at showcasing the amazing historical phenomena that happened in the pre and post Islamic world. Next week, our discourse will dwell on prophet Hud or Ibrahim. And given the fact that, we are approaching the month of Hajj[Pilgrimage], look up for a special piece about Hajj in the course of next week or the eve of Arafah, which climaxes the end of this special journey of a life time. Follow me on facebook [husseini baba al-waiz] and twitter[@babalwaiz], weekly.

References:
Al-Bidayah Wal-Nihayah, [The Beginning & The End] by Abil Fadah, Imam Hafiz Ibn Kathir
Al-Muntazam-Fii Tareekhil Umam Wal-Mulook, [Periodical on the History of [medieval] Societies & Kingdoms] by, Abil Faraj, Abdul Rahman Bun Aliyi Bun Muhammad Ibnil Jawzi
The Holy Qur'an-English Translation of Meaning & Commentary, by Abdallah Yusuf Ali
The Unchallengeable Miracles of the Qur'an, by Yusuf Al-Hajj Ahmad
Qisasil Albiyah, by Abil Fadah, Imam Hafiz Ibn Kathir
http://blogs.christianpost.com/creationvsevolution/noahs-flood-what-really-happened-part-2-8721/