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The Quran names five idols of the people of Nuh (Noah): Wadd, Suwa’, Yaghuth, Ya’uq and Nasr. They appear in Surah Nuh, where Noah’s people refuse to give them up.
And they have said: Forsake not your gods. Forsake not Wadd, nor Suwa', nor Yaghuth and Ya'uq and Nasr.
Quran 71:23, trans. Marmaduke Pickthall, 1930
Noah’s people hold on to five named gods.
The Quran gives no ages, lineage or life events for the five. What we know comes from the hadith, the commentators and the historians of pre-Islamic Arabia. See also Idols.
From pious men to idols
The oldest account comes from Ibn Abbas, the cousin of Muhammad. Sahih al-Bukhari preserves it. These are short excerpts for review and study.
The names (of the idols) formerly belonged to some pious men of the people of Noah, and when they died Satan inspired their people to (prepare and place idols at the places where they used to sit …
Ibn Abbas, Sahih al-Bukhari 4920 (Book 65), trans. Muhsin Khan
The five were righteous men, and their statues became idols after their deaths.
The statues were first reminders of their piety. Ibn Abbas says the idols were not worshipped until the people who made them had died “and the origin of the idols had become obscure”. Later scholars such as Mujahid and Ibn Kathir repeat this account. In it, Shaytan whispered that the statues could be go-betweens to Allah or sources of blessing.
Where the Arabs worshipped them
Ibn Abbas also says that “all the idols which were worshiped by the people of Noah were worshiped by the Arabs later on” (Bukhari 4920). He names a tribe for each.
Wadd was worshipped by the tribe of Kalb at Dumat al-Jandal in northern Arabia. The name means “love” or “affection”. Hisham ibn al-Kalbi’s Book of Idols says Kalb worshipped Wadd in the form of a man.
Suwa’ was the idol of the tribe of Hudhayl, in the region of Mecca. Other accounts place its shrine near Yanbu. The name may come from a word for “shape” or “form”.
Yaghuth means “he who helps”. Bukhari names the tribe of Murad, a branch of Madhhij in Yemen, and then the Bani Ghutaif at Al-Jurf near Saba. Al-Kalbi and the commentators say it had the form of a lion, which points to a war god of protection.
Ya’uq, “swift”, was the idol of the Hamdan tribe in Yemen. The commentators link it with the horse.
Nasr, “victory” in the older reading of this page, was the idol of Himyar, the branch of Dhi al-Kala’, in Yemen. The word nasr also means eagle or vulture, and the commentators give it the form of an eagle.
Maulana Muhammad Ali sums up the commentators’ list of forms from the Tafsir al-Kabir of al-Razi: “Wadd was worshipped in the form of a man, Suwāʿ in that of a woman, Yaghūth in that of a lion, Yaʿūq in that of a horse and Nasr in that of an eagle.”
Before and after the Flood
Some scholars place the five among the early descendants of Adam, through Seth or Enoch (Idris). Nothing in the Quran or hadith confirms this. If they lived early in Noah’s mission, they lived in a long age. The Quran says Noah stayed with his people “a thousand years save fifty years” (29:14, Pickthall).
In Islamic tradition the worship went on after the Flood through the descendants of the survivors. Similar gods appear later in Arabia, Mesopotamia and the Levant. Wadd has been compared with Babylonian and Assyrian fertility gods, Nasr with the eagle images of Mesopotamia, and Suwa’ with Semitic water gods. These are comparisons, not proven links.
Digs at Dumat al-Jandal, Marib in Yemen and Yanbu have found relics that may belong to the worship of similar gods. Ibn al-Kalbi wrote down detailed accounts of the pre-Islamic gods, some of which may come from these five.
What the story teaches
For the Quran and Islamic teaching, the five show how faith goes wrong step by step. Honour for the dead becomes worship of their images. Go-betweens come between people and God. In the story of Nuh, this ends in the Flood.
