Mount Judi - Islamic Tradition

Islamic Tradition

The Qur'anic account of the Flood and Noah's Ark agrees with that given in Genesis, with a few variations. One of these concerns the final resting place of the Ark: according to Genesis, the Ark grounded on the "mountains of Ararat"; according to surah 11:44 of the Qur'an, the final resting place of the vessel was called Mt. Judi (the Arabic word mountain is not used rather the term Al-Judi, الْجُودِيِّ, is used which many translators preface with the word Mount often in parentheses)

"And the word was spoken: "O earth! swallow up thy waters! And, O sky, cease !" And the water sank into the earth, and the will was done, and the ark came to rest on Mount Judi. And the word was spoken: "Away with these evil doing folk!" (Quran, 11:44)."

Mingana, assumed that the Muhammad got the name Judi from a misunderstanding of the name Qardu as he heard it in the story from Syrian Christians. Nöldeke, on the other hand suggests that in the Quranic name is a confusion between the Mesopotamian Qardu and the Arabian Jabal al-Judi in the territory of Tayy mentioned by Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229), and celebrated in a verse by the pre-Islamic poet Abu Sa'tara al-Baulani. It would seem that the Quran imagined that the people of Noah like those of ʿĀd and Thamud were Arabs, and Judi being the highest peak in the central Arabia would be confused with the Qardes of the Judaeo-Christian story.

The 9th century Arab geographer Ibn Khordadbih identified the location of mount Judi as being in the land of Assyria (Al-Akrad), and the Abbasid historian Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī (c. 896-956) recorded that the spot where it came to rest could be seen in his time. Masudi also said that the Ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mecca, where it circled the Kaaba, before finally travelling to Judi. Yaqut al-Hamawi, also known as Al-Rumi, placed the mountain "above Jazirat ibn Umar, to the east of the Tigris" and mentioned a mosque built by Noah that could be seen in his day, and the traveller Ibn Battuta passed by the mountain in the 14th century.

The Arabic term Al-Judi (الْجُودِيِّ), such as used in the Qur'an 11:44, translates literally from Arabic as a generic "high place" or "hill" and thus does not necessarily have to be a specific place; although many Islamic exegesis do interpret it as referring to a specific place.

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