Angelika Neuwirth. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an. Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Volume 3, Brill Academic Publishers, 2003.
Scripture and Myth
Scripture as a medium of the demythification of the world
Myth, in the narrow sense of a narrative about personified or demonized supernatural powers working in individual or collective human life, is of course incompatible with the scriptural concept of one exclusive divine agent in nature and history. In fact, scripture as such has been credited as the medium of demythification par excellence. It has been noted of the three monotheistic religions that their scriptures do not, in the way mythic thinking does, refer back to an archaic sacred order, anchored in a primordial beginning that needs to be restored, but refer to events that themselves are part of an extended continuous nexus of happenings. This is particularly true for Christianity and Islam, two religions that are based on events that are understandable only in view of what preceded: neither initiates traditions but rather presupposes them. It is noticeable that in both religions human history receives a new evaluation through the central event that necessarily judges the preceding era to be of inferior quality and that promises to have an imprint on all further history. The basic structure of past, present and future thus cannot be viewed in a symmetrical way since the theological evaluations are unequal (Zirker, Christentum).
The fact that scripture dissolves premonotheistic, iterative or circular patterns of memory (q.v.), that it tends to “historicize” memory, becomes most evident from its re-interpretation of the myth-imprinted “pagan” world submitted to ever repeating cyclical processes of seasonal change. In contrast, the scriptural world-view reflects the process of an evolution in linear time. Monotheistic scripture marginalizes cosmic experience, the impact of the powers of nature as manifest in the seasonal cycle, in favor of historical experience, presenting decisive communal events as unique manifestations of divine power. Scripturally institutionalized feasts thus no longer serve to mark the yearly changes of seasons (q.v.) but commemorate outstanding events worked by the divine agent in the community in the past. Scriptural demythification thereby touches a realm of human life that is vital for the coherence of a society: i.e. rituals and feasts. Once having placed a taboo upon viewing spirits and demons as potent agents in the drama of the seasonal cycles, scripture has to provide etiological substitutes to give meaning to the feasts as well as to inspire the effervescence and the perception of renewal that make up the festal atmosphere (Assmann, Fest). This reconstruction has been, in the Islamic context, carried out in a particularly rigorous way. Whereas the two other monotheistic religions kept the time frame of older seasonal feasts and co-opted their essential symbols, enriching and reshaping them according to the new salvation-historical meaning of the individual feast — thus preserving a mythic subtext to be reclaimed whenever desired, Islamic festivals have fared differently. Though strikingly conservative in terms of ritual procedure, i.e. continuing many of the ancient pre-Islamic ritual performances clearly informed by the symbolism of changing seasons (Wellhausen, Reste), Islam has strictly dissociated them from their ancient Arabian precedents through a new calendar (q.v.) which bears no relation to the seasonal cycle, thus dismissing any mythic association emanating from that source (Neuwirth, Three religious feasts). Moreover, the Islamic rites were given new meanings commemorating historical events crucial to the community’s identity, or were reinterpreted as mere acts of worship (q.v.) divinely imposed through the words of earlier prophets.
But myth is not exclusively about supernatural powers working in nature; it is also about extraordinary human figures, excelling in strength, courage (q.v.), shrewdness, endurance and other heroic faculties. In the Hebrew Bible not a few characters of heroic standing have survived scripturalization, i.e. integration into a vision dominated by divine will: they appear to act autonomously rather than being directed by a divine force behind them. Although not consistently designated as heroic but responding to diverse challenges of human acting and suffering, and never totally severed from divine will or providence, major biblical figures, primarily Moses (q.v.) and David (q.v.), and to a lesser degree also Abraham (q.v.), Jacob (q.v.), Joseph (q.v.) and Solomon (q.v.) as well as more episodic figures like Samson, Ehud and Judith have retained a heroic image. As against that, few heroic figures would be found in the Qurʾan. Not only are the protagonists of narratives from the ancient Arabian lore absent, but also most of the biblical figures that do play a role in the Qurʾan are not represented as heroes either. Their appearance has been changed: as they do not receive a consistent portrayal, nor are their stories continuously followed over a span of time long enough to display character development, but are, rather, presented episodically in very diverse contexts, these figures are not developed enough to impress as heroes (see the discussion of Solomon and David below). Others, like the Arabian Hud (q.v.), Ṣaliḥ (q.v.) and Shuʿayb (q.v.), do not act autonomously but remain throughout performants of the divine will, so that their actions seem to lack momentum, making it difficult for the reader to associate them with those key figures contained “in kindred structures and symbolic systems that range from Gilgamesh and the Hebrew Bible to Homer and Vergil” (Stetkevych, Golden bough, ix). Still, in the Qurʾan some figures do acquire heroic dimensions such as Noah (q.v.; Nuḥ), Abraham (Ibrahim), Joseph (Yusuf) and, most especially, Moses (Musa).
Qurʾanic scripture and story-telling
Scriptural demythification, which is particularly strong in the Qurʾan, also touches upon another vital need: the transmission of knowledge, particularly the practice of story-telling. Qurʾanic narrative has hitherto usually been considered as a continuum. Its continuous treatment of prophetic episodes with similar, sometimes identical, messages led scholars to the conclusion that there is something like “the qurʾanic narrative,” attesting a cyclical concept of revelation (Paret, Geschichtsbild). Although Horovitz, in his ground-breaking study on qurʾanic narrative, strictly committed himself to Nöldeke’s periodization, scholars after him have ordinarily failed to acknowledge, or even rejected, any substantial development in the qurʾanic representation of prophets and messengers except in terms of increasing detail. In general the Qurʾan has been judged to evidence no serious interest in history. Fred Donner (Narratives of origin, 84) states:
The purpose of stories in the Qurʾan, then, is profoundly different from their purpose in the Old Testament; the latter uses stories to explain particular chapters in Israel’s history, the former to illustrate — again and again — how the true Believer acts in certain situations. In line with this purpose, qurʾanic characters are portrayed as moral paradigms, emblematic of all who are good or evil…. [The Qurʾan] is simply not concerned with history in the sense of development and change, either of the prophets or peoples before Muḥammad, or of Muḥammad himself, because in the qurʾanic view the identity of the community to which Muḥammad was sent is not historically determined, but morally determined.
This view, which relies on a macro-structural reading of the Qurʾan, not surprisingly conforms with the image of the Qurʾan that became dominant in Islam itself after the official canonization of the corpus by ʿUthman b. ʿAffan: the Qurʾan was no longer perceived as a communicational process but as the time-transcending divine word transmitted by the prophet Muḥammad, the final figure in a series of impeccable superhuman messengers bearing an identical message. This a-historical perception has recently been adopted by a number of modern scholars, inspired by postmodern methodological approaches no longer concerned with philological-historical problems. To view the Qurʾan in such a “holistic” way — in accordance with its later Islamic reading — is, however, only one possible way of reading it, since the a-historical image of the Qurʾan covers another, more complex, layer of understanding that can be laid bare only through an acute micro-structural reading.
To do justice to qurʾanic narrative, one has to look for earlier narrative traditions familiar to the community that may have influenced the qurʾanic narrative style. Given the fact that the early suras (q.v.) display a linguistic and stylistic character very close to the enunciations of pre-Islamic soothsayers (q.v.; kahin, pl. kahana) whereas later suras come close to monotheistic liturgies with pericopes of scriptural readings in their central part (for further discussion, one arrives at the conclusion that qurʾanic narratives partake in diverse discourses and thus constitute at least two distinct groups: texts that still mirror the principle of a highly emphatic, succinct and sometimes enigmatic presentation current in sajʿ al-kahana on the one hand, and texts more inclined towards a lively episodic presentation displaying sophisticated narrative strategies, on the other. The former genre is more formalized and thus limited in its narrative range, relying strongly on repetition, parallelism and anaphors, etc.; the latter is flexible, tending towards detail and diversity. Whereas the former drives home one particular message, there are far more complex intentions behind the second.
Due to the new qurʾanic worldview, which staged past and present events as part of the drama of a series of divine interventions in human interactions, the orally transmitted scenarios of Arabian memory, whose protagonists were committed to worldly, often heroic, aims were widely marginalized — if not dismissed as a whole — or re-interpreted to fit the new paradigm. In the words of Stetkevych (Golden bough, 10):
The knowledge of the communal Arabian past and its inheritors’ creative and re creative self-knowledge within it were definitely not furthered by the concrete, a-historical and anti-mythical doctrinal stance that relegated mythic materials to anecdotal and “catechistic” functions…. The problem with a number of (these) nuclei of myth was that in their survival in the new code, that is, through their cooptation by the Qurʾan (and the subsequent dogmatizing tradition), they were put to the service of a rhetoric that was almost inimical to “narrative” itself — this despite the qurʾanic claim that there they are being told in the best of narrative ways. That is, in the Qurʾan, narrative and indeed everything else is subordinated to the overarching rhetoric of salvation [q.v.] and damnation…. Rarely do we sense in the Qurʾan a self-sufficient and self-justifying joy in storytelling, indeed, rarely, if at all, does the Qurʾan allow for the formation of “themes” in the literary terminological understanding, that is, of descriptive (of imagist) units that possess their own formal and thematic circumscription and “sufficiency” and are not intruded upon by a stylistically disruptive rhetoric. Rather than themes in the literary sense, the Qurʾan, therefore, knows primarily rhetorically subordinated motifs.
What Stetkevych has labeled “rhetorics” is, however, deeply rooted in the qurʾanic message as such and thus from a different perspective should be viewed as complementary. It is true that qurʾanic storytelling does not express an authorial stance such as is that which Alter finds realizable in biblical narrating (Biblical narrative, 184):
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the role played by the narrator in the biblical tales is the way in which omniscience and inobtrusiveness are combined…. In the Bible… the narrator’s work is almost all r’cit, straight narration of actions and speech, and only exceptionally and very briefly discourse, disquisition on and around the narrated facts and their implications. The assurance of comprehensive knowledge is thus implicit in the narratives, but it is shared with the reader only intermittently and at that quite partially. In this way, the very mode of narration conveys a double sense of a total coherent knowledge available to God (and by implication, to His surrogate, the anonymous authoritative narrator) and the necessary incompleteness of human knowledge, for which much about character, motive, and moral status will remain shrouded in ambiguity.
As against the meticulous shaping of personages and the sophisticated coding and decoding of their motives, which characterize biblical narrative, qurʾanic narrating pursues complex “para-narrative” aims. Narratives, at least insofar as they are unfolded to some extent and recall plots already known from biblical literature, are presented as excerpts or messages from the book (q.v.; al-kitab), which is clearly taken to be a corpus of literature apart from the rest of the known stories that are currently available through oral tradition. This remoteness of “kitab -generated” narrative certainly has a strong bearing on the style of the stories presented as kitab readings. It forces on them a distinct linguistic code that, on the one hand, confers on the diction a highly stylized form (rhymed prose resulting in somewhat forced syntactic structures), serving to distinguish it from profane narrative. On the other hand, it implants these narratives with the new message of the imminent eschatological catastrophe, which brings the narrative close to an exhortative appeal or, later, a sermon. It is exactly the discursive elements so marginal in biblical narrative that matter primarily in the qurʾanic narrative: the explicit presentation of the moral or theological implications for the community that can be deduced from the narrated facts or speeches. To fulfill this purpose, a stylistic device unknown to the Bible has been created to accommodate the particular moral or theological deductions from the qurʾanic discourse, the clausula (see Neuwirth, Studien). This stylistic device consists in a particular closure of the long verses of late Meccan and Medinan times: the last sentence of a verse does not partake in the main strand of communication, but presents a comment on its contents indicating divine approval or disregard of the fact reported, e.g. “Truly you are of the faulty” (innaki kunti min al-khaṭiʾin, Q 12:29). It may also refer to one of God’s attributes, e.g. “Truly he is the hearer, the seer” (innahu huwa l-samiʿu l-baṣir, Q 17:1), which, in the later stages of qurʾanic development, have become parameters of ideal human behavior. This comment is clad in a widely formalized shape and is thus easily identifiable.
Qurʾan and History
How does the Qurʾan view prior history? Keeping the canonical process in mind, we have to ask the question on two different levels, distinguishing between two subsequent paradigms. The Qurʾan, in the beginning of its development, encodes history in the discourse of the umam khaliya, the accounts about the dispatchment of messengers to previous communities who called their people to worship and obey one God but who failed to convert their communities. Here, the Qurʾan “pans over a landscape where time is less a chronology than a continuum” (Khalidi, Arabic historical thought, 8). The scenarios are mostly, though not exclusively, Arabian. The early qurʾanic messenger stories have replaced a previously existing culturespecific, coherent pre-Islamic Arabian myth. In Stetkevych’s words (Golden bough, 3):
Arabia and the Arabia-nurtured and Arabic-speaking world has most stubbornly denied itself the acknowledgment of a “mythological conditioning.” An earnestness, and even somberness, of rigorous theological dogma came to reign with an almost puzzling… march through more than a millennium of history. It succeeded from the first qurʾanic moment in almost suppressing or banishing into unusually reclusive layers of subconsciousness that part of the counter-dogmatic Arabian cultural “self” which, under conditions of a less stable doctrinal rigor, would have had the strength to lead that culture to its remythologizing, or to an awareness of its “mythological conditioning.” In this respect even more inhibiting than the suppressions and condemnations that came forth from the doctrinal apparatus which had formed itself around the newly-arrived Arabian sacred text and which soon succeeded in forming its own cultural code was the co-optation by that new code of much of the most centrally autochthony-determining materials of the old code.
The significance of the stories about the Arabian messengers lies in their endurance (ṣabr) and obedience in calling humans to accept divine guidance: every community should have been warned through a revelation in order to be spared temporary or eschatological punishment. It is noteworthy that the qurʾanic virtue is no mere endurance, but presupposes triumph. It is an outlasting of evil, rather than its transmuting. Its task is to outstay all opposition so that the good of prophecy is not overcome by the enmity of unbelief. Its endurance keeps the cause from capitulation, so that it may anticipate the victory other factors will achieve. It is not, broadly, a suffering which in itself and of itself makes the fabric of the triumph that is to be. This calls for other forces whose opportunity tenacity ensures (Cragg, Event, 158).
It is sober, pragmatic thinking and acting, ḥilm, self-denying dedication to the divine message, islam, that is portrayed here — the reversal of jahl, heroic unrestraint. In fact, jahl in the Qurʾan itself was to become the label of the pre-Islamic epoch that was termed jahiliyya.
Thus jahl/jahiliya had to have been a singularly important concept (or state) in archaic Bedouinity to have deserved such a stupendous “transfer” into its new terminological prominence — and into its paradoxical semiotic self-denial. We must, therefore, entertain the strong notion that its denial by the new Arabia that emerged with Islam also meant Arabia’s denial of myth as its cultural, autochthony-defining ingredient. For myth, all myth, is hardly conceivable without the presence of jahl somewhere near its very core. This jahl, however, also in its archaic Arabic understanding, is above all that kind of heroism that also contains its own tragic flaw (Stetkevych, Golden bough, 10).
The predicament of the ancient messengers whose message is rejected is shared by the Prophet himself. The contents of revelation in the umam khaliya discourse (i.e. the stories of earlier nations destroyed because of their unbelief) thus does not have a history; the bearers of the revelation and their addressees do not form a chain of succession. History and revelation repeat each other following the same pattern.
This discourse has, however, to be differentiated from a grand narrative that emerges at a later stage in the Qurʾan. What is usually upheld to apply to the Qurʾan as such: the renunciation of a chronological frame for the events of prequrʾanic history, the repetitiveness of the qurʾanic narrative — “events are arranged in clusters, repetitive in form” (Khalidi, Arab historical thought, 8) — as a sign of the insistence of an identical message, the total disregard for mythic primacy, etc., on closer gaze, does not hold true except for the first paradigm. Here, “the whole history is present at once to God.” But the situation successively changes substantially when a new paradigm is adopted, switching the focus from the deserted sites of the real homeland to the orbit of the messengers of the People of the Book (q.v.; ahl alkitab), the prophets (anbiyaʾ), whose discourse as intermediaries between God and man is much more sophisticated. Overtly, they form a prophetical succession and their activities taken together not only constitute a scenario of historical episodes, but, more and more, betray a tendency to chronology. Their communications and actions prove rich in experiences and fit to exert a mythopoeic impact on the self-understanding of the emerging community itself; indeed, these activities not seldom provide the matrix for the prophet’s and his community’s behavior in certain situations of crisis, and more often the matrix of their understanding of their own predicament (Neuwirth, Erzählen). It is no longer the projection of present experience onto the image of the past that was representative for the earlier discourse, but the converse: experiences of the past provide a model for the understanding of the present. The entrance of the qurʾanic community into the orbit of those earlier societies endowed with a scripture is presented as an event of seismic proportions: “If we sent down this Qurʾan upon a mountain, you would see it humbled, shattered by the fear of God” (Q 59:21; Khalidi, Arab historical thought, 7). This degree of self-confidence would not have been feasible in the earlier stages; it marks a caesura in arranging history that should not be ignored.
The wide canvas from Adam to Jesus [q.v.] depicts for Muḥammad’s people the meaning and destiny of their own cause. Biblical material, in independent shape, is rehearsed in lively corroboration of qurʾanic authority. All prophecy accumulates towards it, so that revelation may culminate. Other Scriptures are mentors, not masters. It is the ruling theme of prophecy as crisis which they consistently serve. The patriarchal retrospect witnesses to a continuity of truth and multiplies the signs by which the Meccan/Medinan situation must be read both in conflict and prosperity (Cragg, Event, 171).
Consequently, it is little surprising to find a particular hermeneutic trait familiar from the Hebrew Bible and especially the Gospels (q.v.) prominent again in qurʾanic narrative: typology (Busse, Herr-schertypen). “Types” are exemplary representations in scripture of still more momentous events or more significant figures yet to come. Thus the divine trials of the past are to be considered “types” of the last judgment (q.v.) that will supersede everything preceding it, the dispatch of earlier prophets in a way “prefigures” Muḥammad’s activities. This device is crucial for the qurʾanic image of history:
It is this historical review of the past in the present which gives to the Qurʾan and Islam the characteristic quality of Jihad [q.v.], or struggle, in the deepest and nontechnical sense of that term. The very sequence of the prophets is a sequence of law and claim, of insubordination and nemesis. The logic within it is the unremitting necessity of struggle and the necessary sinews of strength. To bring a divine message is to incur a human enmity and so, in turn, to enter a trial of stamina and resolve, of the will and the means to outstay the opposition…. In this logic, suffering is present as a preliminary to its redress. It is that which has to be endured before it can be terminated. It bears the odds until they can be evened and reversed. The successful eventuality is held open by the refusal to be denied it, and this demands persistence and non-compromise…. Existence is poised, so to speak, between prophecy and eschatology, in that the prophetic address to humanity must have, in token and in fact, that writ of success which eschatology brings to final authenticity in the last judgment. The utter unambiguity of the eschatological must belong suitably and surely with the interim evidence of prophetic standing in time and in power (Cragg, Event, 171-2).
Reflexions of Myth and Mythopoiesis in the Qurʾan
Virtual myths of history
In the following an attempt will be undertaken to classify myths and legends in the Qurʾan as to their cultural contexts. (Myths and legends are not taken to be mutually exclusive: viewing the stories about earlier prophets as legends does not preclude taking note of their mythical elements.) A historical classification following the biblical succession of “scripturalized myths” does not appear too promising in view of the non-historical disposition of the Qurʾan and the absence of the notion of a linear historical process leading up to the present of the listeners. The “atomism of time” that underlies the qurʾanic vision of history, “which is typological in nature and focused on the history of the prophets,” has been noted (for more, see Böwering, Chronology, 319 f.). The myth of man’s first transgression, the story of Adam (Gen 1:3), in the Qurʾan does not serve to initiate history as an unpredictable and ambiguous process of divine-human interaction, but rather constitutes one exemplary episode of the “anthropological constant” of human vulnerability to being seduced. Except for the expulsion from the garden, however, this does not bear grave consequences for the fate of humankind. The myth, which is introduced at a rather late stage of qurʾanic development and is presented in diverse contexts, serves to demonstrate changing insights into the nature of evil: it is less a myth of beginning than a debate about evil. The account will therefore be treated in its typological context (see “Transgressions” below).
Noah
Similarly, the biblically prominent myth of the renewal of the world after the flood (Gen 6:5-8) in the Qurʾan does not appear in its mythical-historical setting as the closure of a period of immediate divine interventions into creation (q.v.) as a whole. This story is related (or alluded to) within the two discourses of the destroyed peoples (umam khaliya) and of the prophets (anbiyaʾ). First conveyed as the initial account of a chain of punishment legends in Q 54:9-17 (followed by stories about ʿ Ad [q.v.], Thamud [q.v.], Lot [q.v.], and the people of Pharaoh [q.v.; Firʿawn]) and, subsequently as a story filling a complete sura, Q 71 (Surat Nuḥ, “Noah”; Q 71:1-28), the legend of Noah is introduced in isolation from a particular salvation-historical beginning, although the event is obviously imagined as preceding all the other stories in time. It is shaped after the pattern of the punishment stories that emerge during the first Meccan period. Accordingly, both the flood and the ark (q.v.) are devoid of mythical dimensions, being reduced to mere instruments of individual punishment and salvation respectively. The story continues to be remembered through the entire Meccan period, not only in extended lists of punishment stories (Q 7:69; 11:89; 14:9; 38:12; 50:12; 51:46), but also in narrative form. In Q 37:75-9 it is followed by a story about Abraham’s confronting his unbelieving community and other episodes of the history of the Children of Israel (q.v.; Banu Israʾil); in Q 26:105-22 it is followed by stories about ʿ Ad, Thamud, the people of Lot, the “People of the Thicket” (q.v.; aṣḥab al-ayka), always presenting Noah as a member of his people (akh, Q 26:106) who tries to convert them. None of these reports, however, dwell on the mythical dimension of the story as the first major caesura in history.
Noah receives new momentum after the change of paradigm and the new orientation to the kitab tradition of the Children of Israel. The viewing of the prophets as a chain of succession within the orbit of scripture gives each one an individual significance. This change is reflected in a particularly extensive version of Noah’s story in Q 11:25-49, followed by kindred stories of ʿAd and others. Here, both the preparation of the ark (fulk) and the selection of the animal species are mentioned. The cosmic dimension of the flood is alluded to, the final blessing on Noah sounding as if the event was meant as a caesura in salvation history (an echo of this version appears in Q 10:71-4). At this later stage of the canonical process, when the world of the book has replaced the scenario around the sanctuary of Mecca (q.v.), Noah ascends from his stance as a mere warner (rasul) to become a prophet (nabi) in the line of Adam — (Noah) — Abraham — Jesus. In this context, the longevity (Noah remained among his people 950 years; Q 29:14) and genealogical relations in general occasionally gain momentum: thus the Children of Israel are presented as the “seed of those whom we carried with Noah” (dhurriyyata man ḥamalna maʿa nuḥ, Q 17:3; cf. 19:58). In still later, Medinan saras, like Q 33:7, when the Prophet himself has entered the rank of the prophets (anbiyaʾ) and prophets are viewed as partners in a covenant (q.v.), Noah appears here as the first: (wa-idh akhadhna mina l-nabiyyna mithaqahum wa-minka wa-min nuḥ). A structuring of prophetical history is in the making and it is this period of time into which Q 19:58 fits: “These are those whom God blessed from the prophets from the seed of Adam and of those we carried with Noah [on the ark]” (ulaʾika lladhina anʿama llahu ʿalayhim min al-nabiyyina min dhurriyyati adama wa-mimman ḥamalna maʿa nuḥ… ). This development reaches its climax in Q 3:33: “Truly God preferred Adam and Noah and the family of Abraham and the family of ʿImran above all the creatures” (inna llaha ṣṭafa adama wa-nuḥan wa-ala ibrahima wa-ala ʿimrana ʿala l-ʿalamina). Accordingly, the divine commandments (q.v.) have been transmitted through that line of succession: Q 42:13, “He ordained for you the religion (q.v.) that he commended to Noah and which we inspire in you” (sharaʿa lakum mina l-dini ma waṣṣa bihi nuḥan wa-lladhi awḥayna ilayka).
Still, Noah remains part of two traditions, that of an episodic warner (in Medinan saras; Q 9:70; 22:42) — one of many — whose people (qawm) vanishes and who thus would have no spiritual survival and that of a prophet (nabi) whose reception is secured through his participation in a succession of prophets who belong to the scriptural, i.e. biblical, tradition. What is most striking in the Noah-legend is the lack, or at least the fading appearance, of the essentially mythical characteristics of the story. Thus, the catastrophic uniqueness of the event, the vehemence of the divine wrath inducing the creator to annihilate humankind, the universality of the catastrophe, are nowhere expressed. The historical dimension, the total renewal after the drowning (q.v.) of humankind is not dramatized, the divine re-acceptance of humankind being only partial (Q 11:48; to say nothing of the conclusion of a new covenant between God and man). Not surprisingly, the age before the diluvium is not marked as it is in the Bible and in later Islamic historiography (al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldun) by particular physical anomalies, such as the existence of fabulous creatures and miraculous qualities in humans, thus appearing as an epoch which does not yet partake of the historical period proper, but demands a new, a second beginning. In the Qurʾan the flood has no such function.
David and Solomon — virtual cultural heroes?
Nor does the “Solomonic mythic florilegium”, which in the Qurʾan reflects post-biblical rather than biblical knowledge, constitute a consistent story. It focuses on the two heroes’ power over the animal and spirit world, as well as natural phenomena: David is lord of the birds (Q 38:17-9), he commands the mountains (Q 38:18; 34:10); Solomon understands the language of the birds (Q 27:16) and of the ants (Q 27:18-9), he commands the wind (Q 21:81; 34:12; 38:36), and is in control over the demons (shayaṭin) and jinn (Q 21:82). At the same time, both are in the rank of prophets (anbiyaʾ), a merit that in David’s case is underlined by his receiving the psalms (q.v.; zubur, Q 17:55), his competent judgment (q.v.; Q 38:21-6; cf. 2Sam 2:1-15) and his just government, which qualifies him to be called a khalifa on earth (Q 38:26). In Solomon’s case this rank is evidenced by his being granted command over nature and demons. Yet, both remain symbolic figures, Solomon’s essential fame being due to his miraculous relationship with animals and demons with particular supernatural faculties — a privilege that, however, does not distract him from his devotion to the one God. His faithfulness is particularly manifest in the episode with the Queen of Sheba. When her throne is transferred to his palace by the ʿifrit (q.v.), he understands the miraculous act not as his personal triumph but as a trial (fitna) to prove his gratefulness (Q 27:40). His aesthetically stunning palace (ṣarḥ) with fittings so fine that they produce a “trompe d’oeil” — the Queen takes the brilliant floor to be a water pool — becomes the reason for the conversion of the Queen to the worship of the one God, thus constituting an “antitype” to the building erected by Pharaoh (also ṣarḥ) with the blasphemous intent to have a view on the God of Moses. There are some hints at the conception of both figures as innovators: David is instructed to make coats of mail (Q 21:80; 34:10-11), and Solomon is knowledgeable about a source of metal (Q 34:12); yet their story is hardly apt to serve as an etiology for the human attainment of control over material resources and individual technical inventions; nor do the related facts mark initial achievements sufficient to portray the protagonists as cultural heroes.
Moses’ exodus (israʾ)
The only qurʾanic narrative that could be viewed as a myth of history is the report of the exodus of Moses, which, in Jewish tradition, signifies the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery; for the Muslim community, this exodus becomes a prototype for the believers’ taking refuge from oppressive unbelieving rulers. The event of the exodus (israʾ) has certainly effected a strong influence on the Prophet’s own experience of his emigration (q.v.; hijra); moreover, before that event, it served as a pattern of finding spiritual relief (israʾ) in a situation of social suppression in Mecca that had become unbearable to the believers (Neuwirth, Remote temple). Still, the story is not reflected through a full-fledged narrative but is only briefly evoked (i.e. Q 20:77; 26:15-7; 37:115-6). It does not, moreover, represent the decisive turn in the history of Moses’ people. It is worth noting that in the qurʾanic story of Moses, the exodus is rivaled by another solution for the oppressed Children of Israel since the salvation of Moses’ people is also portrayed in terms of a typological reprise of the flood story (Busse, Herrschertypen, 75). Thus, the invitation to Noah and his family to settle after the flood (Q 23:29) finds its analogy in Q 17:104, where the Children of Israel are given (cf. also Q 7:137; 26:59) the land of Egypt (q.v.) with all its gardens, springs, fields and treasures (Q 26:57-8; 44:25-8). It is perhaps not the change of real place (as in the exodus) that matters. In the qurʾanic view the promised land may be anywhere that it is possible for the believers to live uncompromised — whether the place is purged of unbelievers through a divine trial, or whether the unbelievers have no further access to the believers after the latter have found refuge by an emigration (hijra). Indeed, an “exodus,” an israʾ, may even be performed spiritually, as shown in the example of the Prophet’s night journey — his nocturnal translation to the Jerusalem (q.v.) temple (Q 17:1).
Power and Violence
Local history inscribed with God’s terror:al-umam al-khaliya
There appears to be one single — though variegated — archetypal paradigm in the Qurʾan that has retained its cathartic power throughout the development of the corpus: the story of the annihilated nations, al-umam al-khaliya. This archetypal topic, which in the Qurʾan has taken the place of the biblical myth of the destruction of the Babylonian tower, is about human hubris resulting in a divine retaliation that annihilates the community and destroys their ambitious project of self-sufficient existence. In the Qurʾan it is not one event but a cycle of similar happenings that demonstrates this pattern. Repeatedly, ancient communities have waxed proud in view of their social success, their wealth, sometimes their luxuriously built residences, their security and fame. Being reminded by a divine messenger of God’s claim to worship and thanksgiving they defy and mock the warning. They are then overtaken by God’s punishment and destroyed. The enigma of the still visible ruins and the vague memory of formerly flourishing communities in the broader neighborhood of the listeners have thus been given an explanation: Not unfavorable social conditions (as presupposed for the deserted living spaces recalled in the amatory introduction of the pre-Islamic qaṣida) or changes in the area’s balance of power, but a dramatic divine intervention, an outburst of divine wrath, caused the disappearance of the once glorious cities. The two most expressively presented concepts in these punishment stories are human hubris on the one hand, unfolded in “quotations” of the unbelievers’ words of rejection, and divine wrath on the other, manifest in the rapidity, the suddenness of destruction often initiated by a divine sign, a seismic scream, or brought about by a vehement storm, an earthquake and the like.
Horovitz (KU), who first examined the punishment stories, classified them as “legends.” They deserve, however, to be considered as archetypes: human hubris, entailing blasphemy, leads to divine retaliation. What is missing from the stories is the expression of a fatal human intent to rival God — as is characteristic of the biblical tower-builders. The qurʾanic city-dwellers do not seek a confrontation with God: not being monotheistic believers they treat the divine warning rather indifferently, reacting (if at all) with arrogance and annoyance. The qurʾanic narrative, thus, as far as the contest between the peoples and their messengers is concerned, remains largely devoid of dramatic effects. The ever-recurrent typological pattern is overwhelming; it is due to an interpretation of history informed by the experience of the Prophet and his community: “Just as the qurʾanic emphasis on the atomism of time had frozen the flux of time into that of reiterated instants of God’s action, so its typology of history had collapsed the rich variety of past events into a regularly recurring pattern” (see Böwering, Chronology, 319). This certain loss in terms of quantitative knowledge of historical facts may be viewed, however, as a gain in expressiveness in the process of conveying the message. It is God’s role that retains highly dramatic traits; the divine figure appears sometimes strikingly close to that of a mythic agent: “And their [i.e. the Thamud’s] lord doomed them for their sin and razed [their dwellings]” (fa-damdama ʿalayhim rabbuhum bi-dhanbihim fa-sawwaha, Q 91:14), “and your lord poured on them the disaster” (fa-ṣabba ʿalayhim rabbuka sawṭa ʿadhab, Q 89:13). This highly metaphoric speech is made possible by the linguistic medium of sajʿ, which would be ill-suited to accommodate complex narratives. One has to keep in mind that the historical and temporal scope of the Qurʾan cannot be viewed in isolation from the Qurʾan’s rhetorical tradition, whose kahin -speech models are undeniable. Kahin speech is shrouded in mystery; rather than revealing facts, it encodes them. Since the situation in antiquity is typologically close to that of the believing group around the Prophet, the vacuum is filled with rejoinders from their experience. Thus the current situation acquires surplus meaning by being underscored with an archetypal dimension whose pattern even appears inscribed into the landscape of the broader homeland.
Although the stories about the flood, on the one hand, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the punishment of Pharaoh, on the other, are not geographically associated with the Arabian peninsula (belonging, rather, to the cycle of biblical stories situated in the Holy Land or its surroundings, a cycle which at a later stage of the qurʾanic development becomes dissociated from the punishment stories), they reveal in the early saras the pattern of the Arabian retaliation (q.v.) legends. In summary, one may note that the punishment stories provide a pattern for the initial lack of success experienced by the Prophet and his community in Mecca. Worldly values held by the unbelieving elites and an endangered and isolated stance on the part of the messenger, make up the ever-repeated pattern without generating a linear relation between them (for a reconstruction of the pre-Islamic myth wrought about the ancient people of Thamud, see Stetkevych, Golden bough).
Trangressions of Boundaries
The first act of disobedience as a double etiology: Man’s exile from paradise, Satan’s representation of evil
An explicit divine interdiction was violated by the first man, Adam, and his unnamed wife: despite a divine injunction not to approach a particular tree in paradise (q.v.), they both tasted the forbidden (q.v.) fruit. Through this act they became aware of their nakedness. Shocked by this new awareness that is felt as shameful exposure, they feel the need to cover themselves. Soon afterwards, they are called on by God to render account for their transgression. Instead of being cursed and condemned to hard work and painful childbearing as in the biblical precedent, they are treated rather gently. They are sent “down” from paradise (ihbiṭu) to settle on earth (q.v.) — not, however, to their fatal detriment, since this punishment is immediately followed by a new offer of divine guidance (Neuwirth, Negotiating justice). Nor is the news of their mortality, which is disclosed to them together with the news of their exile (Q 20:117), momentous since it is alleviated by the simultaneous assurance of their ultimate resurrection (q.v.).
It is true that the story serves inter alia to explain the existence of humankind on earth; this is not, however, in any striking contrast to their sojourn in paradise since, in the qurʾanic understanding, their terrestrial habitat is decent if not luxurious. More often, the story is adduced to demonstrate the dangerous nature of Satan — his obsequiousness exposing man’s nakedness (Q 7:27), his insincerity in promising benefits he will not deliver (Q 7:22). Satan, who from the beginning of the qurʾanic reception of the story (Q 20) is instrumental in the couple’s transgression, is only in the last report (Q 7) ultimately to blame. It is obviously not the etiological dimension that caused the story to be repeatedly presented in the Qurʾan, since a few virtual etiologies (which, in the biblical report support the significance of the narrative as a cultural myth) remain undeveloped in the Qurʾan, such as the fact of the first couple’s achieving a mature perception of themselves, their learning about their sexuality and their inventing the custom of clothing (q.v.). The telos of the story, rather, points to theodicy. It is true, the first couple were not substantially blamed and punished for their disobedience (q.v.), yet the pattern of “transgression followed by rendering account” — a particularly effective archetype — has been established as the primordial pattern of human-divine interaction. In the qurʾanic understanding the regret of the perpetrator saves him from a hard punishment.
Satan, under the name of Iblis, was viewed in the beginning as the tester, the agent of legitimate challenge to humans. He was delegated to perform this task during a debate with God that arose after he had shown his defiance of blind obedience (q.v.), refusing to bow down before a being — namely Adam (Q 15:33) — other than his divine lord (q.v.). Indeed, the transition of created beings from submissive creatures to autonomous agents in the interaction with the Divine, belonging to Adam in biblical tradition, in the Qurʾan is Iblis’ achievement whose tragic consequences he takes upon himself. It is only through his work that the elect community, who is not liable to fall victim to his seduction, becomes distinguishable from the unbelievers. Whereas God himself in the first debate scene agreed to the project proposed by Iblis (Q 15:41), in the further development of the community Iblis’ image — once his persona has merged with that of Satan (al-shayṭan) — darkens considerably: in the end he appears as the enemy of humans, the personification of evil par excellence. He and his escorts will therefore be annihilated in hellfire so as to re-establish justice at the end of times. Iblis is, however, rehabilitated in later Islamic tradition. Although the qurʾanic account of creation does not culminate in human acquisition of knowledge as a fruit picked from the forbidden tree at Iblis’ instigation, still Iblis is raised — in the profane tradition — to the rank of the seducer, the permanent agent of provocation through whom a substantial broadening of horizons of experience becomes possible. He enjoys an equally unique position in at least one branch of Ṣufi tradition that has strongly influenced literature, where Iblis is acknowledged as the sole figure possessing knowledge about the true will of God. His ongoing influence — not only as an ambivalent, but as a tragic figure as well — continues to manifest itself in diverse forms (Awn, Satan’s tragedy; Shaikh, Der Teufel).
The elect space: From Mecca to Jerusalem
The mythical notion of a space that excels over all other space is traceable in the Qurʾan, though it is widely modified to suit the framework of a religion of revelation. While there is a strong notion of Mecca’s excellence in the early saras (Q 90:1; 95:3; 105; 106), the focus during the Meccan era switches to Jerusalem, which first enjoys the unique rank of being the point of orientation in the prayer (q.v.) of the early Muslim worshippers. Although the Qurʾan itself does not explicitly mention Jerusalem by name, the adoption of the rite to pray towards it clearly presupposes its high rank in the community. The night journey (israʾ) of the Prophet in a miraculous way transferred him temporarily to the “remote temple” (Q 17:1, al-masjid al-aqṣa), the destination of the prayers of the community. During the later Meccan activities of the Prophet, Jerusalem with its temple becomes the prototype of a holy city. In Medina (q.v.) it served as the model for the perception of a religious center, after which the new Islamic holy city was shaped. Mecca, which takes over as the space of origin for Islam, is thus not only a place from which the Islamic ritual originated, but also — in analogy to Jerusalem (cf. Isa 2:3: For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem) — the birthplace of Islamic verbal worship, as indicated in Q 2:129: “Our lord! And raise up among them a messenger from them who will recite to them your signs and teach them the book and the wisdom and enrich them. Truly you are the mighty, the wise” (rabbana wa-bʿath fihim rasulan minhum yatlu ʿalayhim ayatika wayuʿallimuhumu l-kitaba wa-l-ḥikmata wayuzakkihim innaka anta l-ʿazizu l-ḥakim; see Neuwirth, Spiritual meaning). As the place at which all Muslim prayers converge, Mecca is the center of the earth, the omphalos mundi.
Love and Sexuality
Joseph and Zulaykha
The myth of the woman who, through her seduction of the man, brought mischief into the world does not exist in the Qurʾan. Eve was not instrumental in Adams’s transgression and is thus not considered responsible for Adam’s predicament. Still the notion of a devious behavior innate in women is confirmed in the Qurʾan, labelled kayd al-nisaʾ, which is explicitly and par excellence attributed to the unnamed wife of Potiphar, the Egyptian official in whose house Joseph (q.v.) was lodged. Although she does not succeed in seducing Joseph and leading him astray from his way as a chosen one of God, she does exercise some power over him. Being sexually attracted to her and thus distracted from his exclusive devotion to God, he finds the strength to resist her only through divine intervention (Q 12:24). Still, she is not categorically derogated in the Qurʾan; rather, unlike the situation in the biblical story, she is given the opportunity to repent and acknowledge her moral failure. This opens the way for her post-qurʾanic rehabilitation and elevation to the rank of Joseph’s beloved and, later, wife. It is worth noting that though her behavior in the Qurʾan appears to be an attempted act of zina, she is not actually accused of such a transgression of the limits set to female freedom. In view of her positive image in the Qurʾan, it is not surprising that she could be accepted in Ṣufism as a female icon.
The virgin mother: Mary
A reverse projection of the seductress is the virgin mother, Mary (q.v.; Maryam). She, again viewed from the outward appearance of her fate, manifests a case of transgression of the limits of female freedom, although is herself innocent. Having borne a child outside of marriage, she is rescued from the wrath of her relatives by a miracle: her baby son is endowed with the power of speech (q.v.) and speaks on her behalf. He presents himself as God’s elect, a rank also enjoyed by John (Yaḥya, the son of Zechariah (q.v.; Zakariyya), whose birth was likewise accompanied by miraculous circumstances. Mary is the only female figure in the Qurʾan presented by name; she also has the privilege of being personally addressed by God’s word through an angelic messenger. In the Qurʾan, Mary is not presented as a suffering woman as she is in Christianity since she does not have to see her son suffer. In Islam the prototype of the suffering woman is, in later tradition, embodied in Faṭima (q.v.), the daughter of the Prophet. Thus, the role that, according to Christian understanding, Mary plays in the eschatological realm is, in Islam, taken over by Faṭima, although with a marked difference:
Only Mary has a necessary role in the scheme of redemption. Fatima plays a more active role at the End of Days than does Mary, but there is no suggestion in Islam that redemption would be impossible without her. According to the (Shiʿite) Islamic view of redemption as the fulfillment of human life through suffering, Fatima, as the greatest sufferer on earth, will enjoy the greatest rewards on the day of resurrection (Sered, Rachel, Mary, Fatima, 136).
Paradisiacal distributions of the genders
What is not stressed in the narratives is, however, presupposed in the qurʾanic worldview: it is male dominance that “informs life on earth and life in heaven…. While the Qurʾan assures women of faith that they will go to heaven [Q 4:124; 16:97] it offers them no insight as to what their place in heaven will be” (Combs-Schilling, Sacred performances, 61). Paradisiacal space — this has been lamented over and over by Muslim feminists — seems to be equipped solely for the believer of the male sex. It is true that the depictions of paradise, which appear in the early suras and portray banquet scenes with the believers being served by beautiful youths and enjoying the company of (or being married to) beautiful young girls, labeled ḥur ʿin for the striking beauty of their eyes, reflect a purely male imagination of ultimate happiness (Q 55:56-8; 44:54). These descriptions of the qurʾanic janna (lit. “garden”) have been discussed in detail by Horovitz (Koranische Paradies), who suggests that they reflect magnifications of festal banquets familiar in the circles of tribal elites and well-known to the listeners of the Qurʾan from their representation in ancient Arabic poetry. They may thus be understood as static tableaux of both natural and sensual consummation and spiritual bliss. Andrew Rippin (Commerce of eschatology, 134), in contrast, has viewed these images as a “fundamental appreciation of ideal human nature as the monotheistic tradition conceives it.”
The images of the garden have been interpreted by anthropologists, — who view them through their exegetical am plifications — however, primarily under the aspect of sexual satisfaction:
With the ḥuri, sexual satisfaction is never ending, and not marred by fear as it is on earth. Men have nothing to fear from the ḥuris, for they have no personalities, no individual desires, no chance for roaming; the Qurʾan guarantees their virginity, that they will not have been touched by man nor jinn when the believing male enters them, and they will be permanently attached to the man to whom they are given (Combs-Schilling, Sacred performances, 95).
Whereas earlier suras insist on these projections into the eternal sphere of earthly bliss understood on the basis of male experience, later texts modified the image. Their explicit mentioning of female participation in paradisiacal recompense (Q 43:70-3) reflects a new understanding of earthly and heavenly life on the side of the listeners. Meanwhile, a community had been established, where women — not least in the Prophet’s own household — played vital roles. The issue of transcendent happiness was no longer taken as part of a symbolic realm, but debated in its details and fleshed out to form a reference text for the believers. The “impressionist,” somewhat enigmatic and highly symbolic text of the old janna- descriptions was transformed into a reference text where, ritually and legally, in terms of justice and morals, everything should be spelled out unambiguously.
It may be helpful for understanding the contextuality and historical conditions for the qurʾanic descriptions of janna, to remember that the Prophet himself may have had a more complex and positive appreciation of women.
Early Islam exhibits much the same trajectory in the definition of the female as does early Christianity… Islam has its ʿAʾisha just as Christianity has its Mary Magdalene. Both are highly charged sexual and sensual females — the one suspected of adultery in the desert, the other confirmed of prostitution — and yet each is valued as somehow intrinsically pure and good in the eyes of the founder of the faith, Muhammad or Jesus. It seems plausible that these founders did not dichotomize sexuality and spirituality in the ways that their followers did, and in fact found them persuasively combined in these women. Yet their esteem for that combination was not to endure. Neither ʿAʾisha nor Mary Magdalene became the dominant image of the proper female in the respective cultural traditions that arose out of the two faiths. Muslims on the whole find blasphemous the notion that it might have been good for ʿAʾisha… to have become a public model for other women, while Christians on the whole find blasphemous the notion that Jesus might have exchanged sexual tenderness with Mary Magdalene…. Yet it could be argued that the founders of the two faiths were broader in their understanding of the possible combinations of faith, womanhood, and sexuality than the majority of their followers, and that they made that acceptance clear — Muhammad by dying in ʿAʾisha’s arms and Jesus by first appearing after his crucifixion to Mary Magdalene, whom he authorized to go and tell the male disciples the earthshaking news that he still lived. These events are recorded in the hallowed texts. Yet the dominant cultural perspectives that have developed in the contexts of these faiths for the most part leave by the wayside these two women as embodiments of proper womanhood and instead concentrate the collectivity’s attention and definitions on immaculate conception and virginal mothers (Combs-Schilling, Sacred performances, 91-2).
Fates of the hero
There are a few figures in the Qurʾan who acquire heroic dimensions, the most prominent being Abraham, Joseph, Moses (see for his appearance in Q 18, Jung, Four archetypes), and Jesus (see Bauschke, Jesus). Their stories are not devoid of archetypal traits as the following selected examples may illustrate.
Abraham, destroyer of idols
Abraham is the protagonist of a most diversified narrative reported in several qurʾanic texts (Q 6:74-84; 19:41-50; 21:51-73; 26:69-86; 29:16-27; 37:83-98; 43:26-7; 60:4). The earliest achievement in his career is the smashing of the idols, i.e. the destruction of the old order, thus making a new order possible. The incident, which is not biblical but midrashic, portrays him as a cultural hero. A debate with an unbelieving ruler usually identified with Nimrod (q.v.; Q 2:258-60) and the destruction of the idols of his father (Q 6:74-84; 19:41-50; 21:57-8; 26:16-27; 37:93), which is followed by his being sentenced to be burnt alive — a fate from which he is saved by God (Q 21:68-9; 29:24; 37:97-8), leads to his expulsion from his homeland. Abraham performs a hijra, a secession from his father and his homeland to encounter God in a new land where he will raise his family (Q 19:48-9; 21:71; 29:26). Though a number of further encounters with God are recalled in the Qurʾan (his intimate relationship with the divine lord earns him the title of a friend of God, khalil Allah, it is his early identification as a monotheist (ḥanif, q.v.) in a pagan world, that elevates him to his unique rank, in the Qurʾan and later in Islam, as the founder of monotheistic worship. With his emigration he sets an example for the believer who, when living under persecutors of religion, chooses emigration. He becomes the prototype of the prophet Muḥammad and, as such, rightly figures prominently in the text of the Muslim ritual prayer.
Abraham and sacrifice
The subverted approach to the problem of succession: not by the son’s replacing the father, but the father’s preparedness to annihilate his son is reflected in the Qurʾan in the episode of Abraham’s sacrifice (q.v.) of his son (Q 37:102-13). Unlike the biblical case, in the Qurʾan the son voluntarily sacrifices himself (Q 37:102) but the father is spared the enactment of the sacrifice through divine intervention. The story, which is the central etiology of the Islamic pilgrimage (q.v.; ḥajj), a ceremony believed to have been initiated by Abraham, has been interpreted by anthropologists in terms of a corroboration of patriarchy (q.v.).
The Ibrahim myth powerfully undergirds the rightful domination of father over son, of senior men over junior men, of all males over females and children — of patriarchy. Ibrahim (Islam’s archetypal father) submitted to God’s demand even to the point of trying to kill his own son, and the son, because he was faithful and loyal (Islam’s archetypal son) actively cooperated with the father’s attempt at his own sacrifice; the son knowingly submitted to what was to be his death at this father’s hands…. Islam’s myth both transcends and reinforces patrilineality, the inheritance [q.v.] of goods and position through the male line. Transcendence comes because, as told in the Qurʾan, the prophet Ibrahim had to deny his own father in order to remain faithful to the one God (Ibrahim’s father rejected monotheism and forced the fissure between father and son). Yet the Qurʾan also reinforces patrilineality by portraying the ultimate sacrifice that God demands of humans as the sacrifice of the most precious tie on earth… the fundamental patrilineal connection. The myth of sacrifice ennobles that bond over all others. So at the same time that the Qurʾan underlines the limits of patrilineal affiliation (Muslims must deny it if it threatens the faith), it reinforces patrilineality, for it was the father in connection with the son that made for connection to the divine and won for father and son — and by extension also humanity — long life on earth and eternal life thereafter. According to tradition, Ibrahim and his son walked away from the place of sacrifice and went on to establish some of the holiest places in Islam (Combs-Schilling, Sacred performances, 57 f.).
Moses — prophet and leader of his people
The closeness of the Islamic Prophet to Moses is attested already in early suras. Q 52 and Q 95 start with an oath by Mount Sinai (q.v.) and the sanctuary of Mecca, the scene of Muḥammad’s own activity. Moses is evoked in Meccan suras more than 120 times, more often than any other biblical figure. This is not surprising since Moses is the Israelite prophet par excellence. To him God had spoken with an intimacy unrivaled by any other messenger. He had been granted the Torah and, by leading the exodus out of Egypt, had shaped the destiny of the Israelites in most significant ways. It is worth noting that Moses is portrayed first as a messenger sent to an unbelieving ruler, Pharaoh. But unlike the rest of the early warners, he is uniquely equipped for his task: he was called by God at a sacred place (al-wadi l-muqaddas ṭuwan, Q 20:12; cf. 79:16) where he was allowed to hear the voice of God himself — a point elaborated in later reports (Q 20:13) — and was ordered to perform (and endorse) the ritual prayer (q.v.; aqimi l-ṣalata, Q 20:14). It is this particular authorization and his subsequent delivery from fear (q.v.) and anxiety (ishraḥ li ṣadri, Q 20:25) that give him the strength to speak out in front of Pharaoh, the stubborn denier of the oneness of God. Moses is thus a prefiguration of the Prophet himself, who also was granted an intimate encounter with God, experiencing a vision — according to one interpretation — of God himself seated on his throne (Q 53:6-7: dhu mirratin fa-stawa wa-huwa bi-l-ufuqi l-aʿla), a supernatural experience which, like Moses’, was staged in a particularly exalted place, near “the garden of promise” (jannat al-maʾwa, Q 53:15). Like Moses, Muḥammad experienced a widening of the breast (Q 94:1: a-lam nashraḥ laka ṣadraka) during the early phase of his prophetic activity.
Later portrayals of Moses complement his fate before his divine call to prophet-hood without embellishing his ambivalent personality: while still in Egypt, he unintentionally killed a person, and is thus obliged to hide. It is on his way back from his refuge in Midian (q.v.) that he receives the divine call. The emphasis remains on his debates with the powerful ruler, Pharaoh, whom he is unable to convince, and who prevails over the messenger. Not unlike other stubborn unbelievers, Pharaoh is punished in this world and awaits punishment in the next. As in previous retaliation legends, in this case, too, the believers are saved, with a miraculous passage through the sea. The exodus (israʾ), which typologically resembles the hijra, is, however, not compared to that latter event. Moreover, it serves as a prototype for the Prophet’s and the Meccan believers’ spiritual exodus (Q 17:1) out of their local situation of distress; i.e. by imagining the Holy Land and orienting themselves in their prayers towards Jerusalem. Moses’ role as a leader and lawgiver of his people is often evoked but rarely presented — his trial of the culprits of the blasphemous veneration of the golden calf (Q 2:51-4; 20:87 f.) is the only example of his practicing the ethical injunction to command the good and forbid the wrong (al-amr bi-l-maʿruf wa-l-nahy ʿan al-munkar).
Moses has also left traces in Islamic ritual, since his receiving the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai became significant for the Islamic festal calendar, with Ramaḍan (q.v.) having its prototype in the Mosaic Day of Atonement.
In the Medinan Surat al-Baqara (“The Cow”; Q 2), the sura that contains the promulgation of the fast of Ramaḍan (Q 2:187-90), one of the main themes carries the motifs of the Moses story connected with the Day of Atonement. “Moses’ stay on Mount Sinai, the sin of the golden calf, God’s forgiveness [q.v.] and bestowal of the book… are repeated in sura 2 with much emphasis” (cf. Goitein, Ramaḍan, 190). There is also a hint as to the time of the implementation of the Mosaic rule of fasting: the mention of the bestowal of the revelation together with that of al-furqan (lit. “decision, redemption, liberation”) in Q 2:185 (bayyinatin mina l-huda wa-l-furqani; cf. Q 44:1-4) — recalls the text commemorating the battle of Badr (q.v.; Q 8:41: wa-ma anzalna ʿala ʿabdina yawma l-furqani yawma ltaqa l-jamʿan, “what we revealed to our servant on the day of discernment, the day the two groups met”). In this latter context, furqan connotes a decisive, liberating victory over threatening enemies. It is both experiences — as K. Wagtendonk (Fasting) has concluded — the decisive military victory of the Muslim community and the bestowal of the book upon them, that have given rise to the institution of the month of fasting in Islam. This is very much in accordance with the case of Moses (Q 2:53: wa-idh atayna musa l-kitaba wa-l-furqana, “when we gave Moses the book and the criterion”), the central figure of the founding legend of Jewish fasting on the Day of Atonement, who likewise brought his people a twofold blessing, political liberation and divine revelation.