The topic of human evolution from pre-existing hominids is indeed controversial among many Islamic circles. A significant number of Muslim scholars and believers view the theory of human evolution with skepticism, often regarding it as a myth lacking solid scientific grounding.

After winning tremendous fame from his work ‘On the Origin of Species’, Charles Darwin authored another book the titled ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’ which was published first in 1871. In the introduction of this book, Darwin lays out the purpose of this text:

“The sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is descended from some pre-existing form; secondly, the manner of his development; and thirdly, the value of the differences between the so-called races of man.” [1]

He concludes in Chapter VI (page 150) of the said work:

It would be beyond my limits, and quite beyond my knowledge, even to name the innumerable points of structure in which man agrees with the other Primates. Our great anatomist and philosopher, Prof. Huxley, has fully discussed this subject, and concludes that man in all parts of his organization differs less from the higher apes, than these do from the lower members of the same group. Consequently there “is no justification for placing man in a distinct order.” [2]

The Myth Of Human Evolution

Darwin’s hypothesis of ‘The Descent of Man’ was welcomed by biologists and they have been composing tales from the very day to support this hypothesis. The characters of these tales are the fragmented fossils of ancient apes. The human like species, taken as imperfect humans, were nothing but extinct species of apes, which are wrongly considered humans.

Creation of Man

Contrary to Darwinism, Islam believes that the first human couple was created especially by the Lord of the Worlds–Allah Almighty in the heavenly Paradise and sent down to the earth thousands of years ago. Scientifically speaking, it was the first couple of Homo sapiens, perfect in all human characteristics, including speaking and walking erectly. Adam (peace be upon him) and his wife Hawa (Eve) constituted the first human couple. They were the Prime ancestors of all the human beings, living today, the deceased and the going to be begotten in future.

Allah Almighty said:

 (Remember) when your Lord said to the angels: “Truly, I am going to create man from clay”.

So when I have fashioned him and breathed into him (his) soul created by Me, then you fall down prostrate to him.” So the angels prostrated themselves, all of them.[3]

This narrative has been dealt in details in Surah Al-Baqarah and Al-a’araf. Surah Al-Baqarah goes this way:

 And (remember) when your Lord said to the angels: “Verily, I am going to appoint a vicegerent on earth.” They said: “Will You place therein those who will make mischief therein and shed blood, – while we glorify You with praises and thanks (Exalted be You above all that they associate with You as partners) and sanctify You.” He (Allah) said: “I know that which you do not know.” And He taught Adam all the names (of everything) , then He showed them to the angels and said, “Tell Me the names of these if you are truthful.” They (angels) said: “Glory be to You, we have no knowledge except what you have taught us. Verily, it is You, the All-Knower, the All-Wise.” He said: “O Adam! Inform them of their names,” and when he had informed them of their names, He said: “Did I not tell you that I know the Ghaib (unseen) in the heavens and the earth, and I know what you reveal and what you have been concealing?” And (remember) when We said to the angels: “Prostrate yourselves before Adam.”. And they prostrated except Iblis (Satan), he refused and was proud and was one of the disbelievers (disobedient to Allah). And We said: “O Adam! Dwell you and your wife in the Paradise and eat both of you freely with pleasure and delight of things therein as wherever you will, but come not near this tree or you both will be of the Zalimun (wrong-doers).” Then the Shaitan (Satan) made them slip therefrom (the Paradise), and got them out from that in which they were. We said: “Get you down, all, with enmity between yourselves. On earth will be a dwelling place for you and an enjoyment for a time. Then Adam received from his Lord Words . And his Lord pardoned him (accepted his repentance). Verily, He is the One Who forgives (accepts repentance), the Most Merciful. We said: “Get down all of you from this place (the Paradise), then whenever there comes to you Guidance from Me, and whoever follows My Guidance, there shall be no fear on them, nor shall they grieve.[4]

These two accounts of human creation taken from the Holy Qur’an prove that the first human couple was sent down from heaven on earth. Humans have not evolved from apes as the Neo-Darwinists believe. The human-like species, taken as imperfect humans, were nothing but extinct species of apes, that are wrongly considered humans.

Sources of  Human Genealogy

The anthropologists have been trying to link the human races and classify them on the basis of similarities and differences. No doubt it is not a childish game to classify human beings and trace back their genealogy. Fortunately, there are five available sources that can help in this regard. Firstly, the recorded human history, folklore and oral traditions provide major raw material to sketch the whole human inheritance. Secondly, the history of languages, their origin, and evolution play an important role in linking the races together. Thirdly, the geographical distribution of human races is a key to classifying human beings on the basis of similarities and differences. Fourthly, modern scientific data resulting from the latest research on human genomes provide strong and bold colors to paint the human genealogy structure exactly. Last but not least, archeological discoveries and data collected from archeological sites give the finest tuning to human history and finally human genealogy. We use these sources to construct a human genealogy compendium.

The Muslims believe that the Qur’an is the Divine Revelation and the Ultimate Truth. It gives the guiding principles for tracing back and linking human genealogy. Fortunately, the Prophetic explanation of the Qur’an has been preserved in the form of Hadiths collections. In addition to these Islamic sources, the Jewish and Christian scriptures Old Testament and New Testament, serve as a tool for the comparative study.

Progeny of Adam (Peace be upon him)

Allah Almighty said:

O mankind! Be dutiful to your Lord, Who created you from a single person (Adam), and from him (Adam) He created his wife [Hawwa (Eve)], and from them both He created many men and women and fear Allah through Whom you demand your mutual (rights), and (do not cut the relations of) the wombs (kinship) . Surely, Allah is Ever an All-Watcher over you.[5]

Muhammad bin Ishaq reported that Hawa gave birth to forty kids for Adam (Peace be upon him) in twenty deliveries, each of the births consisted of a set of twin boys and girls. [6]

Adam (Peace be upon him) lived around 1000 years. In his last years of life, he moved to northern Arabia laid the foundation stone of Palestine, and constructed Masjid Ala-Aqsa.[7]

Among Adam’s progeny, three sons are well-known in Abrahamic religions, Shith (Seth), Habil (Abel), and Qabil (Cain). Muhammad bin Ishaq reported that all the humans living today are descendants of Shith (Peace be upon him). Abu Dhar (May Allah be pleased with him) reported from the Messenger of Allah that Shith (Peace be upon him) was the Prophet of Allah like his father and fifty scrolls were revealed to him.[8]

The most reliable report regarding Adam’s grave is narrated by Ibni Jarir At-Tabri which tells that Adam’s grave lies at Palestine in the Baitul Maqdas (Jerusalem).

Prophet Noah (Peace be upon him) and Deluge

After Adam’s death, the most eminent figure that appears in the Qur’an is the Prophet

Noah (Peace be upon him), who was a descendant of Shith bin Adam (Peace be upon them).

It is well known that Prophet Noah (Peace be upon him) preached monotheism for hundreds of years, but only a small number of people (40 to 80) responded to his call positively. Allah Almighty caused the Arabian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and the Red Sea to raise the ocean level in addition to continuous thunderstorms and downpours, resulting in a cataclysm that affected the whole human race, probably, that was confined to the Arabian Peninsula at that time. The believers got into Noah’s Arc and the disbelievers were wiped out from the surface of the earth. When the water level returned to its normal position, the believers settled again in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula.

The purpose of this paper is not the account of Prophetic stories, so I will mention only the incidents that are directly related to our subject i.e. human genealogy. An overwhelming majority of human beings believe in the Global Deluge, of which a very small number of people survived. They were the forefathers of the next generations. However, it is believed that all living human beings are descendants of Noah’s progeny.

Progeny of Noah

Allah Almighty said:

And indeed Nuh (Noah) invoked Us, and We are the Best of those who answer (the request). And We rescued him and his family from the great distress (i.e. drowning), And, his progeny, them We made the survivors.[9]

This Qur’anic narrative clearly mentions that only Noah’s progeny could survive to the day. In other words, all human beings living today are the progeny of Noah (Peace be upon him). This Qur’anic narrative is elaborated in a reliable Prophetic tradition as follows:

Samurah bin Jundub (May Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Prophet (ﷺ) said: “Sam was the father of Arabs, Ham the father of the Ethiopians (Africans), and Yafith the father of the Romans (Europeans).”[10]

This great Prophetic narrative is a key to sketching the human lineage. When we compare this Hadith with human history, the fossil record, and human genetics, we find that the Arabian Peninsula was the place where the earliest human activities were recorded, and it is the place from where humans migrated to neighboring lands (Europe and Africa), as Arabian Peninsula lies at the junction of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Though the Neo-Darwinist anthropologists claim that Africa was the place where ancestors of modern humans (Homo erectus) originated and then migrated to the Arabian Peninsula, in reality, the so-called Homo erectuswas an African human race, which descended from Yafith (Jafith). The fossil record is still imperfect and more mysteries are buried under the soil, especially under the sands of the Arabian desert.

Paleoanthropologists are forging stories, but myths, to prove their narrative of human origin from apes. They construct castles in the air, like the following:

Archeologists discovered a fragment of a skull and paleoanthropologists constructed a so-called human ancestor, that was nothing but an advanced chimpanzee.

Chimpanzees have three eminent anatomical differences as compared to human beings:

1.     Protruded eye-brow ridges

2.     Large teeth

3.     Flattened nose

We can note that the so-called primitive human ancestors shared more similarities with chimpanzees as compared to Homo sapiens. They were closer relatives to the chimpanzees.

From these facts, we can conclude that the paleontologists’ assumptions about human relations with chimpanzees are no more than a myth.

Descendants of Sam

As it has been mentioned in the Prophetic narrative, Sam was the forefather of Arabs. Historians, from ancient times, have been using the term Semite and Semitic people for the earliest Descendants of Sam.

Encyclopaedia Brittanica observes:

Semite, member of a people speaking any of a group of related languages presumably derived from a common language, Semitic (see Semitic languages). The term came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes. Mesopotamia, the western coast of the Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa have all been proposed as possible sites for the prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, but no location has been definitively established.

By 2500 BCE Semitic-speaking peoples had become widely dispersed throughout western Asia. In Phoenicia they became seafarers. In Mesopotamia, they blended with the civilization of Sumer.[11]

Famous historian Philip Khuri Hitti observes in The Arabia: A Short History:

The people of Arabia particularly Bedouins, have remained virtually the same throughout all recorded ages. And it was in Arabia that the ancestors of the Semitic peoples—the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, Amorites, Aramaeans, the Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabians, and the Assyrians — had their origin. Here they lived sometimes as one people.[12]

Migrations from the Arabian Peninsula to Neighbouring Lands

Darwinists claim that the prime ancestors of Homo sapiens (pre-human species) lived in Africa around 200000 years ago. They hypothesized two terms Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam. Though the core concept of this hypothesis is based on scientific facts, the inferences made from this hypothesis are wrong. They claim that Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam were living in Africa around 200000 years ago. While latest research on Tis al-Ghada (TAG) proves the theory proposed by Islamic literature. Adam and Hawa (Eve) lived in the Arabian Peninsula. This was the place where the first human settlement was established. From this subcontinent, they migrated to Africa, Europe, and Central Asia.

How do the scientists think? Look at this scenario:

The first Homo sapiens fossil discovery in Saudi Arabia, and the oldest directly dated fossil for modern humans outside Africa and the Levant, has been found in the Nefud Desert. It shows that our species had spread beyond Africa much earlier than previously thought.

The multinational Palaeodeserts Project has spent years combing the deserts of Arabia for evidence of early human occupation and ancient environment. Its efforts paid off when a team, excavated the site of Al Wusta and unearthed a Homo sapiens finger bone at least 85,000 years old. The finding is reported in a study published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The team was led by Michael Petraglia at the Max Plank Institute for Science of Human History, Jenna, describes the discovery as “a dream come true” and says it was “like finding the needle in the haystack.” [13]

Actually, relying on the ‘Out of Africa Migration Hypothesis’ they think humans migrated from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, whereas the reality is reciprocal of this hypothesis.

A deep genetic study of Arabian genomes and comparing it with other genomes inferred the following realities:

After entering the Arabian Peninsula, human ancestors entered South Asia and spread to Australia (Rasmussen et al. 2011), Europe, and eventually, the Americas. The individuals in these migrations were the most direct ancestors of ancient non-African peoples, and they established the contemporary non-African populations recognized today (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 2003).[14]

Elam the Son of Sam

Elamhas been reported as a direct descendant of Sam both in Islamic and Hebrew literature. In, pre-Persia history, Elamite was a dominant culture in Persia, which represents Sam’s descendants who migrated to the Near East, along the Northeastern side of the Zagros mountains (modern Iran).

Encyclopaedia Brittanica observes:

Elam, Elamite Ḥaltami, Akkadian Elamtu, also called Susiana, is an ancient country in southwestern Iran approximately equivalent to the modern region of Khūzestān. Four prominent geographic names within Elam are mentioned in ancient sources: Awan, Anshan, Simash, and Susa. Susa was Elam’s capital, and in classical sources, the name of the country is sometimes Susiana. Throughout the late prehistoric periods, Elam was closely tied culturally to Mesopotamia. [15]

This fact leads us to conclude that the Persian people are originally descendants of Sam.

Imam Hammam bin Munabbih and Sayeed bin al-Musayeb R.A did mention that Persians are descendants of Sam. [16]

So the Semitic peoples migrated from the Arabian Peninsula to inhabit other continents.

Kosh bin Ham

According to the aforementioned Hadith about Descendants of Noah (A.S), Ham was the chief ancestor of the African peoples. The descendants of Kosh bin Ham (a grandson of Noah) are said to be Koshites (also spelled as Cushites). We can prove that the Cushites migrated to Africa and they developed the Cushitic language which is said to be a subgroup of Semitic languages, due to its close relationship with Arabic.

The Cushitic peoples (or Cushites) are a grouping of people who are primarily indigenous to Northeast Africa (Nile Valley and Horn of Africa) and speak or have historically spoken Cushitic languages or Ethiosemitic languages of the Afroasiatic language family. Cushitic languages are spoken today primarily in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia), as well as the Nile Valley (Sudan–South Sudan and Egypt), and parts of the African Great Lakes region (Tanzania and Kenya) while the Ethiosemitic languages are spoken in the Horn of Africa and sparsely in the Nile Valley.[17]

Younan bin Yafith

A grandson of Noah (A.S) Younan bin Yafith is known as Yawan (Javan) by the Biblical scholarship. The well-known Jewish historian Yosef ben Matityahu (Titus Flavius Josephus) rightly believed that Younan (Yawan) was the ancestor of the Greeks.

According to Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews I.6):

Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais (Don), and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names.[18]

We can conclude from this quote that the descendants of Yafith (Japeth) migrated to the Anatolian region from the Arabian Peninsula and inhabited the Taurus Mountain (present Turkey). Later on, they moved to neighbouring islands located in the Ionian Sea including Greece and Cyprus.

Wikipedia observes:

Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age.[19]

It has been recorded that Greeks have used Abjad (Arabic alphabets) that were used to write Northwest Semitic languages, more specifically early Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Hebrew, and Old Aramaic.

This was a characteristic of the Bronze Age. Using Abjad for writing in Greece shows a close relationship between the Arabs and Greek people in ancient times. The well-known Greek language was derived from the same Abjad.

In Hebrew literature, Younan (Yawan) has been frequently used for Greece. Even the same practice has been recorded in Ancient Persian and Indian languages like Sanskrit.[20]All these facts prove the truthfulness of the Qur’anic narratives and the Prophetic Traditions.

In short, the Arabian Peninsula is not only the Cradle of humanity as well. From this subcontinent, people migrated to other regions and inhabited all the continents.