Sam ibn Nuh (Shem)

Sam (Shem) was a son of Prophet Nuh AS and one of those who boarded the ark along with his father and the small group of believers. He is not mentioned by name in the Quran but is well-established in Islamic tradition through hadith and the writings of classical scholars including Ibn Kathir in al-Bidaya wal-Nihaya. He is identified as a righteous man who believed in his father's message and survived the flood. Islamic tradition holds that Sam is the ancestor of the Semitic peoples — the Arabs, the Israelites, and other related nations. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is reported in some narrations to have said that the Arabs are from the progeny of Sam. Ibn Kathir and other historians trace the genealogy of the Prophet ﷺ back through Adnan to Sam ibn Nuh. This makes Sam a direct ancestral figure of the Arabian peninsula's people and ultimately the chain of Abrahamic prophecy. The division of humanity after the flood into three broad family groups — the descendants of Sam, Ham, and Yafith — is a framework shared between Islamic tradition and the Biblical genealogies of Genesis. Sam is consistently presented in the Islamic tradition as the most blessed of Nuh's sons, the one who carried forward the line of monotheism and prophecy.