{When the word went forth: ‘O earth swallow up thy water and O sky withhold (thy rain)!’ and the water abated and the matter was ended. The Ark rested on Mount Judi and the word went forth: ‘Away with those who do wrong!’} (Quran 11: 44)

This will of Allah for Noah’s Ark to rest at Mount Judi, whose story Muslims know very well and understand its lessons, but they still have little information about where Mount Judi is. Though the matter is of less significance than the story itself, people are curious to know where the Ark is.

According to The Observer newspaper, 16 January 1994, a team of scientists said that they had found Noah’s Ark on the Turkish-Iranian border, 32 kilometers from Mount Ararat, according to the leader of that team who had been investigating the site for six years.

The Turkish government was so convinced by the findings that, after years of intransigence, it had designated the site one of special archaeological interest and agreed to its excavation later. The remote site contained a buried, ship-like object, resting at an altitude of 2,300 meters. At 170 meters long and 45 meters wide, it conformed almost exactly to the 300 cubits by 50-cubit boat that God told Noah to build, according to Genesis 6 in the Bible.

On the surrounding terrain, the American and Middle Eastern scientists had identified huge stones with holes carved at one end that they believed were “drogue-stones,” dragged behind ships in the ancient world to stabilize them. Radar soundings indicated unusual levels of iron-oxide distribution.

Salih Bayraktutan, head of geology at Turkey’s Ataturk University, estimated the age of the ‘vessel’ at more than 100,000 years! “It is a man-made structure and for sure it is Noah’s Ark”, he said. The site was directly below the mountain of Al Judi, named in the Qur’an as the Ark’s resting place.

David Fasold, an American shipwreck specialist with no religious affiliation, had led the investigation. He said that subsurface radar surveys of the site had produced “very good pictures.” “The radar imagery at about 25 metres down from the stern is so clear that you can count the floorboards between the walls, he added. He believed the team had found the fossilised remains of the upper deck and that the original reed substructure had disappeared. But the findings had infuriated the scores of Christian Ark-hunters who traveled to Turkey, convinced the Ark would only be found on Mount Ararat.

Fasold, who called himself an “Arkologist,” also argued that it was not just a great flood that pushed the Ark into the mountains. He said it was “an astronomical event that caused a tectonic upheaval, a tidal bore which caused gravitational pull in the ocean waters that forcing the boat into the mountains!”

Some of Fasold’s team of geophysicists and geologists were reserving final judgement until the excavation and carbon-dating. But in a British TV series on the environment, team member Vendyl Jones, a Middle East archaeologist and inspiration for film character Indiana Jones, said it was “between maybe and probably” that they had found Noah’s Ark.

However, the previous speculations were the result of studies by American and European scientists. The question now: Are these proofs enough for us to confirm the location of Noah’s Ark?

Source: islamweb.net