Surah 37. As-Saffat, Ayah 142

In all the three instances where Jonah's "great fish" is explicitly mentioned in the Qur'an (as al-hut in the above verse and in 68:48 , and an-nun in 21:87 ), it carries the definite article al. This may possibly be due to the fact that the legend of Jonah was and is so widely known that every reference to the allegory of "the great fish" is presumed to be self-explanatory. The inside of the fish that "swallowed" Jonah apparently symbolizes the deep darkness of spiritual distress of which 21:87 speaks: the distress at having "fled like a runaway slave" from his prophetic mission and, thus, "from the presence of the Lord". Parenthetically, the story is meant to show that, since "man has been created weak" ( 4:28 ), even prophets are not immune against all the failings inherent in human nature.

 For abandoning his city without Allah’s permission.

The rivers of Mesopotamia have some huge fishes. The word used here is Hat, which may be a fish or perhaps a crocodile. If it were in an open northern sea, it might be a whale. The locality is not mentioned: in the Old Testament he is said to have taken ship in the port of Joppa (now Jaffa) in the Mediterranean (Jonah, i. 3), which would be not less than 600 miles from Nineveh. The Tigris river, mentioned by some of our Commentators, is more likely, and it contains some fishes of extraordinary size.

See n. 4120.