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I understand that it is understood that Noah was one of the earliest Prophets. He is particullarly famous for the contraversal flood event. That he lived at least 950 years.

My question is; When did Noah live?

I am willing to hear all theories that should be accepted in a islamic point of view. Preferable would be from islamic sources, such as history, tafsir or ahadith.

If there are no sources about a certain time he lived in, estimations based on when prophets lived after him and drawing a minimum timeline might be a last resort.

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    There isn't any mention in Quran or Hadith, any dating would be primarily drawn from Israelite traditions.
    – UmH
    Aug 16, 2017 at 3:00

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There's indeed no credible Islamic source giving an estimation or exact time frame for when Nuh or Naoh lived (except if we consider statements from the people of the book as such).

There's even a dispute among early scholars whether 950 refers to his age or only the time of his "active preaching", some say he reached the age of 950 while others say he bacme Prophet at the age of 40 and then preached 950 years etc. (For details see here on islamqa). So far some Muslim sources about Noah you could also take a look at this wikipedia article (with a reference list to his mentioning in the qur'an), but none of these sources give an estimation about a time periode where he was living as it was not relevant for the message of Islam!

However on this site they claime that he lived between 3900 BC and 2950 BC. They also pretend that he was an Arab Prophet() and say he was: Nuh son of Nuh son of Lamik son of Mutshawlah (?) son of Idriss son of Yarid (?) son of Mohlaail son of Qaynan son of Anoosh so of Sheet son of Adam (see also on both Arabic and English wikipedia, which seems the source for that)

هو نوح بن نوح بن لامك بن متشولح بن إدريس بن يرد بن مهلائيل بن قينان بن أنوش بن شيث بن آدم

From this we may conclude that he lived after Idriss or Idrees (mentioned in 19:56 and 21:85), according to ibn Ashur the Torah refers to him by Enoch or Akhnukh أَخْنُوخ, but we have no idea when he lived!

He was sent to spread the message to people we don't know about nany thing expect that they were the people of Nuh. On that site they also claime that according to a narration of 'Ikrimah on the authority of ibn 'Abbas the location he was sent to was India, an other narration presnets this location as the 'Iraq or the land between the two rivers or more explicitly al-Kufa (a mosque or place of worship there). While older "Persian" like the Gilgamesh sources say the location was Babilion. If we trusted the truth of the Gilgamesh we may at least say that the flood was before 2700 BC and Nuh lived at that time, and this may to some extent support the claime from above (but this certainly is not an islamic source).

In their tafsir books ibn Kathir and al-Qurtobi (who counted 7 different interprteations of the meaning of at-Tannur التنور in the following translated "oven") quoted some of these interpretations of possible locations Noah was sent to in the context of verse (11:40):

[So it was], until when Our command came and the oven overflowed, We said, "Load upon the ship of each [creature] two mates and your family, except those about whom the word has preceded, and [include] whoever has believed." But none had believed with him, except a few.

The extract of tafsir ibn Kathir (qtafsir) however only quoted one interpretation of at-Tannur (Which might be considered as a Muslim sources on Noah).

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  • Thanks for answering. It seems the only sentence that is answering my question somehow is the claim that he lived between 3900 BC and 2950 BC. Everything else seems pretty irrelevant.
    – Norlhoda
    Aug 16, 2017 at 12:11
  • @Norlhoda I disagree "There's indeed no credible Islamic source giving an estimation or exact time frame for when Nuh or Naoh lived (except if we consider statements from the people of the book as such)." is also answering your question there are no Islamic sources for that! And knowing his full name or the chain of his name is also helpful to give an estimation of time! As he certainly came after the time of the prophet Idriss (whom is mentioned in the Qur'an(!
    – Medi1Saif ♦
    Aug 16, 2017 at 14:59
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    @Medi1Saif Yes I agree that the statement of that "there is no credible islamic sources for an exact time frame for when Noah lived" also is relevant to the answer. However, everything else about the disagreement of his age and also his fullname isn't relevant! The age is not relevant at all. The names could be relevant but then we at least need to add a time frame of those names, i.e when did idriss live? I cannot see anything about that in the answer... The intepretation of tannur is also not related...
    – Norlhoda
    Aug 16, 2017 at 17:31
  • @Norlhoda I wanted to point at the issues which are indeed discussed in Muslim sources, while the date or time frame he lived at is irrelevant, as the purpose of quoting him is something else!
    – Jamila
    Aug 17, 2017 at 9:22
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If the Ark at the bottom of mount Judi is Carbon dated, we could gain sigma values between 1:100,000BC-2:150,000BC, Popular Mechanics Dec 1996 Salih Bayraktutan, head of geology at Turkey's Ataturk University-Pg ,40. Do not take a 6000BC approach, however the Tanak and Bible are credible on Abraham to Moses, and to Jesus, The timing of Adam to Noah is off scale.

There are other Biblical accounts and complete other things in the book.

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  • Radiocarbon dating is generally limited to dating samples no more than 50,000 years old, as samples older than that have insufficient 14C to be measurable. Also note that only confidence level for the result only is 68%. It has been summed up most succinctly in the words of American neuroscience Professor Bruce Brew: “If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely out of date, we just drop it.”
    – Ahmed
    Apr 21, 2018 at 14:23
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An interesting question.

Another line of investigation to give yourself an idea could be the iron age. Prophet Noah peace be upon him belongs to iron age as the ship was built with wooden planks and nails.

Please check 54:13

وحملنه على ذات الوح ودسر

And we carried him upon a thing of planks and nails.

It indicates that humans had developed tools like saw, hammer and nails by then.

I hope it helps!

Kind regards

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