How Do We Understand Reports About the Number of Years Between Adam and Nuh?

Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch

Question

How do we reconcile reports stating 1,000 years between Adam and Nuh, and between Nuh, and Ibrahim with scientific evidence suggesting human fossils date back hundreds of thousands of years?

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

Many of the narrations that assert a date of time between Adam and Nuh are based on Biblical narrations, which are speculative and can only be used for tangential details of history.

Additionally, Qarn (translated as century) is a speculative term with many meanings. Some said it means a century and others deemed it a generation of people.

General Principle

In addition, science does not yield certainty; it yields probability. This is because science is inferred knowledge, not deductive knowledge (like logic or mass transmission) which yields certainty.

This is the lens through which we should look at science.

Hope this helps
Allah knows best
[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Abdul-Rahim Reasat 

Shaykh Yusuf Weltch teaches Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he completed four years at the Darul Uloom Seminary in New York, where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences.

He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he studied for three years in Dar al-Mustafa under some of the most outstanding scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib.

In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Quran and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Quranic exegesis, Islamic history, and several texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.