Early Idolatry of the People of Nuh (Wadd, Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq, Nasr)

Biography

The Quran names five idols worshipped by the people of Nuh: Wadd, Suwa', Yaghuth, Ya'uq and Nasr, which their leaders urged them never to abandon (71:23).

Ibn Abbas explained (Sahih Bukhari 4920) that these were names of righteous men from Nuh's people. When they died, Shaytan inspired their people to set up statues at the places where they used to sit and to name the statues after them. The statues were not worshipped at first; but when that generation passed away and knowledge was forgotten, they came to be worshipped. Ibn Abbas adds that the same idols later turned up among the Arabs: Wadd with the tribe of Kalb at Dumat al-Jandal, Suwa' with Hudhayl, Yaghuth with Murad and then Banu Ghutayf at al-Jurf near Saba, Ya'uq with Hamdan, and Nasr with Himyar (the family of Dhu al-Kala').

From the Islamic perspective this is the archetype of how monotheism decays: not by sudden rejection of God, but by excessive veneration (ghuluw) of the pious, image-making, and the loss of knowledge across generations. Scholars cite this pattern as the reason for the Prophetic prohibitions on taking graves as places of worship and on images of revered people.

Nuh was sent to call this people back to Tawheed (Surah Nuh, 71). How the names reached Arabia (continuity, rediscovery, or re-use of names) is not detailed in authentic texts; later historians such as Ibn al-Kalbi (Kitab al-Asnam) offer accounts of varying reliability.