Myth and History in Islamic Religious Thought

Maria M. Dakake

George Mason University

And those who disbelieve say, “What? When we and our fathers are dust, shall we indeed be

brought forth? Indeed we were promised this, we and our fathers, before. This is naught but

fables of those of old!” Say, “Journey upon the earth and behold how the guilty fared in the end!”

(27:68-69)1

To examine the concept of “myth” as a phenomenological category and the role that it plays in

the context of Islam seems, to some extent, a case of misplaced focus. As a working definition,

we will here consider myth to be a narrative or set of events that is purported to take place

outside of time, and is therefore not historically verifiable and lacks even a conceivable historic

“footprint” as it were, that might bear later investigation. Its “reality” as Eliade might say, lies in

the foundational role and tangible influence its repeated retelling plays on a particular religious

tradition’s worldview, self-conception, and ritual life.2 Both Eliade and Ricoeur make it clear

that the role of myth is primarily etiological, concerned with the origins of the cosmos, or of the

human being. Even myths that relate to final ends are usually framed as the realization of an end

present or foreshadowed ab initio3. Eliade further points out that in some traditions, key ritual

performances entail reenactments of these myths, which are believed to preserve the

cosmological order or renew it through a dramatic and symbolic “re-creation.” In Judaism and

Christianity, foundational and to some extent “mythologized” or mythologically understood

historical events—including the exodus and liberation from Egypt, recounted every year at

Passover, and Christ’s sacrifice and liberation of humanity from sin and death (expressed in the

Gospels with a clear typological connection to the original exodus from Egypt) reenacted every

1 See also Qur’an 6:25; 8:31; 16:24; 25:5; 46:17; 83:13. 2 See, in general, Eliade, Mircea, Myth and Reality, Harper and Row, 1975. 3 Ibid.; see also Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, Beacon Press, 1986.

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Sunday, and more dramatically every Easter, play a similar role in the founding narratives and

ritual life of each community. It is notable, however, that Eliade and Ricoeur rarely cite Islamic

examples of these phenomena.

Myth in Islam

The question to examine here is what role, if any, myth plays in the Islamic worldview and ritual

life. Does Islam have “myths”? If you asked most Muslims themselves, they would like say

claim that Islam is a religion that is not founded on “myths.” Rather, Islam is based upon the

simple idea that human beings, are the most noble of God’s creatures—knowledgeable and pure

in origin—but are nonetheless given to certain inherent moral flaws, which are no mystery to

anyone. These flaws make the human being arrogant, selfish, easily distracted by ephemeral

things, and above all forgetful, thus obstructing proper human gratitude and worship toward their

Creator, and making them insensitive and unjust toward other human beings. Islamic sacred

history is constituted by God’s repeated sending of messengers and prophets to remind people

about the need to worship only the one God, and treat others justly and charitably. The messages

brought by the prophets are clear, purely didactic in nature, and concerned above all with human

moral destiny, not with origin stories or etiological explanation.

While certain revisionist scholars have argued at times that the entire founding narrative

of Islam is a “myth” created to justify the Arab conquests of the Near East in the 7th century,4

Islam was born in the full light of history, and thus its origins are, at least conceivably,

historically verifiable—even if they have not been to everyone’s satisfaction. But Islamic belief,

and its sacred scripture, the Qur’an, entail an entire prophetic pre-history that must also be

4 See, e.g., Michael Cook and Patricia Crone, Hagarism, Cambridge University Press, 1977; Gerard Hawting, The

Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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examined. While Arabic has no word that very specifically means “myth”, the Qur’an on several

occasions recounts that when the Prophet or other prophets attempted to warn disbelievers by

reminding them of the destruction that visited bygone peoples or their own inevitable

resurrection and judgement after death, the disbelievers dismissed their words as mere “fables of

the ancients” (asatir al-awwalin). This Arabic word usturah (pl. asatir), translated here and often

as “fables”, can also mean myth, legend, or even just “tall tale.” The dismissive way the word is

used by disbelievers in the various Qur’anic instances of these encounters, indicates that they

considered such stories to be either untrue, or else meaningless with regard to their own fate. The

response of the Prophet (as above) was to invite his detractors to “journey through the earth” and

to see the traces and remnants of destroyed peoples—a sober reminder (perhaps found in many

places in ancient Arabia) of the impermanence of both human and communal life that was, it

seems, historically and empirically verifiable. In other words, the Prophet’s response is not a

direct chastisement for not believing, but an invitation for the skeptics to see for themselves the

presumably tangible traces of the history of human error and corruption all around them.

But the question remains, does Islam have “myths” that function in the typical way that

religious studies theorists posit that they do across other religious traditions? The Islamic

scriptural tradition has little by way of cosmogonic narrative, and as many have observed, seems

much more focused on final ends—with its constant reminders of death, scenes of the final

judgment, and the repeated and detailed descriptions of paradise and hellfire. The Qur’an does

tell us in more than one place that God created the world in six days,5 but the assertion is always

cursory and no elaboration on this is found in the various verses in which it appears. This

repeated assertion entails nothing of the drama or detailed structure, say, of Genesis 1. However,

5 Qur’an 7:54; 10:3; 11:7; 25:59; 32:4; 50:38; 57:4.

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we do find in the Qur’an a significant anthropogonic narrative, centered primarily around the

figure of Adam. Adam is created of clay, with God’s “two hands”, breathed into by God’s spirit,

endowed with knowledge that surpasses that of the angels (which makes him ideally superior to

them). As in the Biblical account, however, shortly after his creation and placement in the garden,

Adam and his wife (whose creation process is not recounted) are tempted by Satan (starring as

himself, not as a snake), and eat from the tree that God had forbidden them. Unlike the Biblical

account, however, Adam and Eve immediately repent, and although exiled to earth, are given no

additional divine “punishments” that explain and justify particular (and gendered) forms of

human earthly suffering, as we have in Genesis. Rather they are given words of guidance and a

promise of return if the guidance is followed.

Adam’s pre-history and his spiritual endowments, spiritual errors, and earthly exile are

understood be those of every human being in Islam (as in Judaism and Christianity as well),

while elsewhere in the Qur’an, human beings as a collective are said to have accepted

responsibility for a “trust” (amanah) from God that even the heavens and the earth and the

mountains refused to bear—a trust understood to be the gift of free will and the concomitant

burden of moral responsibility. As the account of Adam’s creation and fall, as well as the human

acceptance of the amanah take place outside the realm of ordinary history, they can properly be

described as “mythological” in nature. They are etiological to some extent—they explain human

moral responsibility, human purpose on earth, and the origin of prophecy (Adam is considered

not only the first man, but the first prophet, and the “guidance” he receives, the first “revelation”

as such). But their etiological aspects are less dramatic than in the Genesis telling, which

provides an explanation for the origin of pain in childbirth, the difficulties of horticulture, the

footlessness of the snake, etc. (although some of more etiological elements do enter early Islamic

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exegetical elaborations of the story, through the influence of Jewish and Christian sources).6 But

more significantly, the etiological aspects of the narratives in the Islamic context seem less

concerned with “explaining the origin of things” than they do with the establishment of regular

guidance in the form of direct revelation between God and humanity as the means by which

human beings may escape their earthly exile and return to God. It is, like all other prophetic

stories in the Qur’an, primarily didactic in nature and soteriological in orientation.

While the Qur’anic elements of the Adam story have no connection to Islamic ritual life,

certain exegetical and hadith material (not found in the Qur’an) does identify the Ka`ba in Mecca

as a building sent down from heaven for Adam to go round, in order to appease his yearning for

the Divine Throne and the angels thronging around it.7 Some scholars have also pointed out that

elements of the pilgrimage rites to the Ka`ba in both the pre- and post-Islamic period may indeed

symbolically recall the mythology of Adam in the garden. For example, pre-Islamic pilgrims

completed the rites around the Ka`ba while naked (and post-Islamic male pilgrims do so wearing

only “unsewn” pieces of cloth), which may be meant to represent (more modestly) the sacred

nakedness of Adam and Eve in the garden, who only begin to “sew” clothes after their act of

disobedience. One can also note that the prohibition on killing animals (or deliberately harming

any living thing) during the pilgrimage seems to recall an antediluvian time, before human

beings are given the license to eat meat (given only after the flood in the biblical account).8 The

first has a basis in Qur’anic Adam narratives (Adam and his wife do sew leaves together to cover

themselves upon realizing their error), 9 but the second does not—since the flood of Noah in the

6 See, for example, Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Jami` al-bayan `an ta’wil ay al-Qur’an (15 vols.), Beirut, 1995, v.

1, pp. 336-246. 7 Ibid., v. 4, p. 12. 8 Wheeler, Brannon. Mecca and Eden: Rituals, Relics, and Territory in Islam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2006, pp. 64-67. 9 See Qur’an 7:22.

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Qur’an is not represented as a universal event changing the course of history between God and

man, but only as one of many instances in which God’s warnings through the prophets were

disregarded and a particular people or town consequently destroyed. Mythological elements in

the Adam story, as found to some extent in the Qur’an, but more extensively in legendary

accounts found in hadith, exegetical, and more popular narratives may be read as explaining the

sacredness of Mecca and the Ka`ba and the origin of key rites associated with pilgrimage to it,

but they are certainly not uppermost in the mind of Muslims performing the hajj, and are only

quite peripherally related to Islamic religious consciousness and self-identity.

The same cannot be said, however, for Abraham and his connections in the Islamic

tradition both to the Ka`ba in Mecca, and to the more central rites of the hajj itself (rather than

conditions pertaining to the purity rules enjoined upon pilgrims). Abraham is a pivotal figure in

Islamic sacred history, and his deep connection to the Ka`bah, and the tradition of

circumambulation round it do have a basis in the Qu’ranic narratives about him. Moreover, the

significant and universal role that he plays in human religious history is further amplified in the

exegetical and hadith traditions associate with him and the pilgrimage to Mecca. All of the rites

of the pilgrimage—from the circumambulation (enjoined by God upon Abraham in Qur’an

22:26), to the running between the hills of Safa’ and Marwa (reenacting Hagar’s desperate search

for water),10 to the standing at Arafat (where it is believed Abraham was going to sacrifice his

son), the stoning of the pillars (representing Abraham’s resistance to Satan’s attempt to dissuade

them from sacrificing his son)11 and the closing animal sacrifice (representing God’s substitution

10 A story told in the hadith literature, but not in the Qur’an. See al-Bukhārī, Sahīh, Liechtenstein: Thesaurus

Islamicus Foundation, 2000, v. 2, pp. 657-61, in “Kitāb ahādīth al-anbiyā’,” h. 3399, 3400. For exegetical

connections between this rite and the story of Hagar see, e.g., Ibn Kathir, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-`azim (4 vols.)

Damascus, 1998, v. 1, pp. 11 See Tha`alibi, al-Kashf wa’l-bayan, commentary on Qur’an 37:102 (accessed via altafsir.net).

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of a ram for his son)—are directly connected to events in the life of Abraham as found either in

the Qur’an or the hadith.

Abraham and his connection to the Ka`ba plays a crucial role in connecting this

foundational figure from the Jewish and Christian traditions to Arabia, and to Islam’s holiest site

therein. Stories found, not in the Qur’an, but in other Islamic literature connect Abraham not

only geographically to Arabia, but also genealogically to the Arabs, indicating that at least some

Arab tribes, including the Quraysh, are descended from Ishmael, who came to reside with his

mother, Hajar in the Meccan “wilderness” after they were taken away by Abraham at Sarah’s

request.12 In this way, Abraham is not only a patriarch of the Jews, and through them, of the

Christians, but he is also among the forefathers of the Arabs—and particularly the Arabs of

Mecca and the Arab tribe of Muhammad. At the same time, some Islamic sources suggest that

Jews and Christians in Arabia prior to Islam also made pilgrimage to the Ka`ba in Mecca, and an

early (if somewhat suspect) account in the earliest biography of the Prophet Muhammad reports

that when Muhammad entered the Ka`ba to cleanse it of its idols, he found iconographic

drawings on its interior walls of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, and one of Abraham and his sons

(evidence of Jewish and Christian participation in the hajj at least at some point)—and directed

his followers not to destroy them.13 Thus the combination of Qur’anic and legendary accounts in

Islamic sources make Abraham as a person, and the Ka`ba as a place, a central point of

connection between the Judeo-Christian and pre-Islamic Arab worlds. Even beyond the

important connection these stories illustrate between these two worlds, however, the Qur’anic

accounts and exegetical sources present both Abraham and the Ka`ba as truly universal in

significance:

12 See reference in n. 9. 13 See compilation and translation of the Sirah of Ibn Ishaq in A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, Oxford

University Press, 2002.

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Truly the first house established for mankind was that at Bakkah, full of blessing and a guidance for the

worlds. Therein are clear signs: the station of Abraham, and whosoever enters it shall be secure. Pilgrimage

to the House is a duty upon mankind before God for those who can find a way. For whosoever disbelieves,

truly God is beyond need of the worlds (3:96-97)

Although today, and reportedly since the very end of the Prophet’s life, the pilgrimage has been

exclusive to Muslims, the verse here identifies the “first house” at Bakkah—understood by all to

be the Ka`ba in Mecca14—as a sacred site “established for mankind (al-nas), to which pilgrimage

is, accordingly, a duty for all mankind. The universality of the Ka`ba and the pilgrimage to it are

reinforced by exegetical traditions that assert that when Abraham was first told to “proclaim the

pilgrimage to mankind,”15 God caused the mountains to lower themselves so that the

proclamation would reach to all of the earth, such that even those not yet born (that is, those still

in the “wombs and the loins” of their parents) would hear.16 Other exegetical traditions

mythologically describe the entire earth as unfolding from beneath the Ka`ba as it is sent down

from heaven,17 or as having been created 1000 years before the earth, and existing, for a time in a

purely angelic world18; moreover, hadith traditions about the end times report that Mecca will be

impervious to the destructive force of the Dajjal (or the Antichrist).

The fact that many traditional Islamic narratives and beliefs with mythological or

legendary elements are oriented around Mecca and the Ka`ba have no doubt given rise to

14 See al-Tabari, Jami` al-bayan `an ta’wil ay al-Qur’an, v. 4, p. 11 ; al-Zamakhshari, al-Kashshāf (4 vols., ed. M.A.

Shahīn, Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-`Arabiyyah, 1995, v. 1, p. 378. 15 See Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-`azīm, (4 vols.) Damascus: Maktabat Dār al-Fīhā’, 1998, v. 3, p. 290. See also,

Qurtubī, Tafsīr, (10 vols., ed. A. Minshāwī), Cairo: Maktabat al-Īmān, n.d., v. 7, p. 95. 16 See Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-`azīm, v. 3, p. 290. See also, Qurtubī, Tafsīr, v. 7, p. 95. 17 Al-Tabarī, Jāmi` al-bayān, v. 4, p. 12; see also Qurtubī, Tafsīr, v. 3, p. 54, where a tradition asserts that the

Ka`bah was created and sent down at the time of the creation of the earth itself; and another asserts that the Ka`bah

existed prior to the creation of Adam, and that the angels themselves used to circumambulate it; and al-Zamakhsharī,

al-Kashshāf (v. 1, p. 378), where it is also said that the Ka`bah was created 1000 years before the earth. 18 Al-Tabarī, Jāmi` al-bayān, v. 4, p. 12; see also Qurtubī, Tafsīr, v. 3, p. 54, where a tradition asserts that the

Ka`bah was created and sent down at the time of the creation of the earth itself; and another asserts that the Ka`bah

existed prior to the creation of Adam, and that the angels themselves used to circumambulate it; and al-Zamakhsharī,

al-Kashshāf (v. 1, p. 378), where it is also said that the Ka`bah was created 1000 years before the earth.

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revisionist theories suggesting that the Qur’an and consequently the Islamic tradition emerged

outside of Mecca, somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, that their origin was only belatedly located

in Arab Mecca (an otherwise historiographically obscure location), as the Arabs sought to

legitimate their conquest of the Fertile Crescent, and that they were produced by a process of

Arab nationalist myth-making between the 7th and 8th centuries. There is much to discredit these

theories, and they have been criticized by many in the field. While I do not accept these theories

for a variety of reasons, including textual evidence from the Qur’an itself, it is clear that the

traditions about Mecca and the Ka`ba are indeed mythological in nature; their purpose is to

demonstrate the importance of Mecca as a primordial site of the meeting of heaven and earth, or

even as the origin of “earth” itself, as well as to the Ka`ba as the original site of earthly human

worship, and as a site that brings together the stories of Adam, Abraham, and Muhammad, in the

Islam’s understanding of itself as a religion that encompasses both the origin and the culmination

of all of prophetic history. Mecca and the Ka`ba are the focus of the pilgrimage; and the

pilgrimage rites—from purity requirements to specific ritual components—seem to hearken back

to mythological and historical elements in the accounts of all three figures, as noted above. Yet it

is important to note that the ritual of the hajj itself does not have as its primary purpose the

reenactment or embodiment of this sacred history as it is consciously conceived in Islamic ritual

law, or in the minds of the pilgrims themselves. The focus is much more directly and personally

on the pilgrims’ own spiritual purification, on their fulfillment of one of the pillars of Islamic

practice, on the proximity to the Divine itself afforded by the Ka`ba as a “pole” connecting

heaven and earth, and on the way in which the massive crowd of pilgrims draped only (for

males) in unsewn cloth (which will later become their burial shrouds)—much more directly

evokes the final resurrection and judgment, when all of humanity will be brought together,

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“naked”, for a final accounting before the Throne of God itself, of which the Ka`ba is an earthly

reflection.

We can say that there are clearly elements of the Islamic tradition that fit the working

definition of “myth”, as provided at the beginning of this paper, and like examples of myths

found in other traditions, they do serve certain etiological purposes, play an important role in

communal self-understanding (although less so in cosmogony, proper), and are reflected in the

ritual practice of the hajj. But we can also say that to consider these mythological elements of the

tradition to be foundational to Islamic ritual or liturgical life would be to misunderstand the way

in which Muslims regularly and consciously conceive of their own religious teachings and

practices. Indeed many of these more mythological elements of the tradition are not found

directly in the Qur’an, but rather in exegetical sources, and to a lesser extent in the hadith, which

in their officially compiled forms remain relatively obscure, if not entirely inaccessible to the

majority of Muslims themselves.

Sacred and Prophetic History in Islam

While Muslims seem generally uninterested in “myth” and would not readily recognize it as part

of their religious tradition, they have shown themselves to be interested in the sacred history that

preceded the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as in the history of Muhammad himself,

the founding of the Muslim community, and history of the early generations of Muslims.

Moreover, they seem to be interested in these things primarily as history, that is, in a manner

designed to critically discern the “truth” of these events through the critical evaluation of

multiple sources, and to situate spiritually significant events chronologically, geographically, and

genealogically. The unassailable, if not complete, source of sacred history for Muslims is found,

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of course, in the Qu’ran. The Qur’an is not a book of history, however, and the stories it tells of

the past are not intended to provide historical information, but rather moral lessons, cautionary

tales, and demonstrations of divine power. In fact, the contextualization of its verses within the

historical narrative of the rise of Islam and the founding of the Muslim community required the

consultation of other sources, from Jewish and Christian texts (with regard to pre-Muhammadan

prophets), to the asbab al-nuzul and sirah literature that helped situate the revelation of particular

verses of the Qur’an within the chronology of the life of the Prophet.

The Qur’anic retelling of the human religious past, however, does serve a theological

purpose, and intends to make it clear that God is in control of human history, as He is in control

of the natural world—He brings both into being and removes them at will, and repeatedly if He

so desires. It makes the point through repeated examples that the human defiance of God is futile

and serves only to demonstrate human beings’ pathological ingratitude and arrogance, their

forgetfulness of the past and their heedlessness of the inevitable future reckoning. Their rejection

of God’s messages and messengers are displays of petty hubris, as effective as shouting at the

wind. And winds of destruction do come to those who refuse to heed the call to worship the one

God.

The various “chapters” of human religious history mentioned in the Qur’an, and defined

by their prophetic messengers, are not recounted in chronological fashion, however. Rather parts

of different stories—from very different time periods—are often juxtaposed in the same passage

or surah in order to make a common moral point. In other words, unlike the Bible, the Qur’an

does not present history in a linear fashion—moving chronologically from one event to another,

with the world or the human relationship to God substantially changing as time goes along. Its

emphasis seems rather to be the perennial nature of human religious struggle and failure, with

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peoples of different time periods and locations succumbing repeatedly to their inherent moral

flaws, and in constant need of Divine reminders. It does acknowledge that these “reminders” in

the form of prophets and revealed scriptures emerge in the course of time, and in succession, but

the various accounts of these prophets and revelations are sometimes presented in an almost

formulaic series of very similar narratives, juxtaposing figures that lived hundreds or thousands

of years apart, and seeming to offer the reader/listener a transhistorical and omniscient view of a

human religious history that constantly repeats itself—a somewhat “cyclical” view of history that

might seem to seem some to be more “mythological” in nature, and at odds with the more

“historical” orientation of Islam as an Abrahamic tradition, as well as with its own conception of

itself as a religion fully embedded in history and not based on “myth.”

However, I would argue here that there are, in fact, three conceptions of religious history

present in the Qur’an—the linear, cyclical and circular—superimposed upon one another and

operating simultaneously. This juxtaposition and superimposition of various conceptions of the

movement of history imparts to the listener/reader the clear sense that they are being offered a

view of history “from above” so to speak, from a God’s-eye view that is able to survey the whole

of human history and invoke a variety of patterns and connections that are more difficult to see

from “below.”

Linear and cyclical conceptions of history are not entirely mutually exclusive, of course,

but are rather matters of perspective or emphasis. Both are compelling in that they are rooted in

the common human experience of time as both a linear sequence of transformative events, from

birth to death, and as a series of cycles—seasons, generations, etc. The juxtaposition of linear

and cyclical conceptions of history may suggest a movement that is “spiral” in nature—progress,

but through a series of cycles in which similar or analogous human religious efforts and errors

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unfold. Some have suggested that this is useful way of describing the movement of history in the

Qur’anic narrative,19 and in many ways it is. But I also want to suggest a third way of looking at

the movement of sacred history in the Qur’an, one that is circular in nature—circular in the sense

that it has a defined point of beginning and a defined ending point, that are one and the same—a

mabda’ and a ma`ad, but also a dominant center. Rather than history conceived of as an

indefinitely repeated series of cycles, this circular conception suggests a history with a distinct

beginning and end that, from the vantage point of the circumference of the circle (which

represents the experience of human beings moving through chronological time), unfolds as a

distinct set of sequential events, but from the center (which is the Qur’anic perspective) it can be

surveyed as a whole, without regard to chronology or sequence.

Linear conception of history and time

Qur’anic theology, like that of Judaism and Christianity asserts as a matter of scriptural principle

that while God is eternal, creation is not—it has a beginning and it will have an end (an

apocalypse). Qur’anic sacred history is structured largely around successive prophets sent by

God to warn and bring good news to people, and this series of prophets similarly has a beginning

(Adam) and an end (Muhammad). This means that the Qur’an, although perhaps less

dramatically than Jewish and Christian scripture, suggests that sacred history is constituted of

events that fundamentally change the relationship between God and human beings. In Judaism,

the story of the Israelite people is the story of a people’s progressive journey toward a faithful

relationship with God and fulfillment of His covenant. Historical events transform this

relationship and the way in which it is manifested—first there is no law (with Abraham), then a

19 Wadad Kadi, “The Primordial Covenant and Human History in the Qur’an” in Proceedings of the American

Philosophical Society, v. 147, n. 4, December 2003, p. 335. See also Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an

(2nd ed.), University of Chicago Press, 2009.

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law and a priesthood comes with Moses and Aaron; at first they are a collection of clans, later,

they are a kingdom, and then two; there is exile and a return from exile—but the community has

changed. There is a first Temple, a second, and then a diaspora. The rites change, the laws

change, the authorities change, the people’s geographic and social organization changes—

constant change and transformation that takes place as a result of historical events. In the

Christian case, the notion of a transformative and linear history is equally clear. With the

historical incarnation of Christ, according to Christian doctrine, the very relationship between

human beings and God changes—no longer based on law but on love—and salvation after death

becomes possible for the first time. In both cases, the forward, linear movement is irreversible,

and suggests that there is way in which God too is traveling with human beings, transforming, if

not Himself, then at least His relationship to them alongside their own transformation.

Not so in Islam, one might argue. And in doing so one would be mostly correct. The

Qur’an presents God’s relationship with humanity as more or less constant—no distinction is

made between the messengers sent at various points throughout history, they all bring the same

message, face analogous forms of struggle and resistance, and ultimately prevail. The Prophet

Muhammad’s only distinction is that he is the last of this long line of messengers. This is a

meaningful distinction, however, for the question of whether historical events are transformative

of the human relation to God. The finality of Muhammad’s prophethood means that God, in

Islamic theology, no longer speaks to human beings directly, bringing about a new era in human

history, from a religious perspective—nonetheless one less dramatic than is witnessed in Jewish

or Christian conceptions of sacred history.

Linear conceptions of the movement of sacred history, however, also lend themselves to

supersessionist readings—as new religions come, the old ones become defunct, or at least, less

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spiritually efficacious. Those who continue to adhere to them might receive some benefit

therefrom, since they are religions that were also divinely ordained, but to continue to do so in

the face of a new religion can only be explained by their adherents’ attachment to religious habit,

a desire for stasis, a fear of change, a nostalgia for the traditions of one’s forefathers. In other

words, it is an ultimately irrational rejection of the new, and clearly better, religion that has come

to replace it, even if the continued existence of the older religion(s) can be considered a

providential in some way. This until quite recently, is how Christianity tended to view Judaism,

and how traditional Islamic commentators and theologians tended to view Judaism and

Christianity before it.

There is some significant basis for reading the movement of Qur’anic sacred history in

this way. The Qur’an is clear that Judaism and Christianity have fallen away from the purity of

the messages brought by their major prophets (Moses and Jesus, respectively), that the religion

brought Muhammad has come to clarify matters, to make lawful what had been unlawful (as

indeed Christ does for Jews both in the Gospel and in the Qur’an), and to bring a religious

message that would, quite literally, herald the end of prophethood as such—that is God’s final,

incorruptible, unalterable statement to humanity. There are plenty of Qur’anic verses that suggest

such a reading. For example, there is the triumphant tone and finality of Qur’an 5:3, reportedly

delivered by the Prophet on Mount `Arafat at the conclusion of the Farewell Pilgrimage:

This day those who disbelieve have despaired of your religion, so fear them not but fear Me! This day I

have perfected for you your religion, and completed My blessing upon you and have approved for you, as

religion, Islam.

Although the term “islam” is often used in the Qur’an to refer to the monotheism of those who

preceded Muhammad—specifically to the religion of Abraham and his progeny, the disciples of

Jesus, e.g.—traditional commentators understand “Islam” in the above verse to refer specifically

16

to the religion brought by Muhammad. Islam in its confessionally specific sense is thus viewed

as a completion of sacred history, from which there can only be decline, if there is any change at

all. Islam might be said to represent (for Muslims, of course) the “end of religious history”—a

system that holds out the singular hope for human peace and happiness, even if it has not yet

been realized everywhere. The notion of a progression of divine messengers moving

unidirectionally and providentially toward the coming of Muhammad was supported by the

attempts of the classical commentators to “historicize” the prophetic narratives in the Qur’an—

by linking the prophets to one another genealogically, and so locating them, at least relative to

one another in time. Early Islamic historians, as is well known, also supported this conception of

history by invoking a succession of past prophets as a prologue to the history of Islam,

teleologically leading up to Muhammad and the founding of the Muslim community.20

Even if the coming of Islam represents the end of God’s communication to human beings,

according to Islamic belief, and thus the imparting of a final, perfect, path to human spiritual

realization, this does not necessarily mean that human beings themselves have been transformed.

They remain individually prone to error and corruption in themselves, even if the Qur’an itself is

not. Other parts of the Qur’an suggest that human history is marked by a tragic repetition of

20 Ibn Ishaq is the author of the first extant biography (sirah), which was divided into three sections or “books,”

which he called “The Beginnings (al-Mubtada’)”, “The Sending Forth (al-Mab`ath), and “The Military Campaigns

(al-Maghazi).” While the second and third books contain the earlier and later parts of Muhammad’s life and

prophetic career, the book of “Beginnings” purports to recount a universal sacred history told as a succession of

stories about the pre-Muhammadan prophets—the majority of whom are mentioned in the Qur’an, but some of

whom are not. The “Beginnings” (eliminated in Ibn Hisham’s fully extant redaction of Ibn Ishaq’s sirah), eventually

became separated from the other two parts of the work, which alone survive in the manuscripts of Ibn Ishaq’s sirah.

Although the “Beginnings” only survive only in quotations in later sources, these have been able compiled and the

book reconstructed by Gordon Newby in The Making of the Last Prophet, University of South Carolina Press, 1989.

See also al-Tabarī, Muhammad b. Jarir, Ta’rīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk (Annales, ed. M.J. De Goeje), Leiden: E.J. Brill,

1964, v. 1-3, where the author attempts an even more comprehensive universal “pre-history” to the coming of Islam

than Ibn Ishaq, integrating Jewish and Christian Biblical history with stories of ancient Iranian kings. In al-Mas`udi,

Abu’l-Hasan `Ali b. al-Husayn b. `Ali, Muruj al-dhahab wa ma`adin al-jawhar (4 vols., ed. Muhammad Muhyi’l-

Din `Abd al-Hamid), al-Maktabah al-Tijariyyah al-Kubra, 1948, esp. v. 1), al-Mas`udi attempts the most

comprehensive of all pre-histories, following a geographical rather than chronological order, and covering the

ancient history of the Israelites, Indians, Abyssinians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Nabateans, Persians, Greeks, Romans,

Byzantines, Egyptians among other smaller, local civilizations of the ancient Near East.

17

religious and moral errors among succeeding generations and communities, and that an

awareness of this sad history seems to have little effect on preventing these same errors among

future peoples. Indeed, a well-known hadith attributed to the Prophet warns that his community

would fall into the same errors of previous communities.21 It is this theme found in the Qur’an

(and to a lesser extent, the hadith) that suggests an alternate, cyclical conception of history at

work in the Qur’an.

A cyclical conception of history in Islam

A cyclical conception of history is seen most clearly in those surahs, particularly A`raf and Hud,

where one finds serial presentations of a succession of communities that had fallen into disbelief

and sin and had been sent messengers to bring them back to belief in the one God. Surat al-A`raf

(Surah 7), which I will focus on here, is structured around a selective rehearsal of Islamic

prophetic history with a focus on successive human failures to heed the guidance they have been

given by God. The prophetic accounts begin with a narrative of the fall of Adam and end with an

account of Moses’ struggle against the religious error of Pharaoh’s people and subsequently his

own. A key concept and term found in these prophetic narratives is khilafah (or the office of

khalifah), a term that refers both to the vocation of human beings as representatives/stewards or

“vicegerents” of God on earth, and to the idea of succession, that is, to the idea that human

communities and generations succeed one another in this vocational role. The term khalifah is

first connected with the notion of stewardship or vicegerency in the story of Adam’s creation at

the beginning of Surat al-Baqarah (Surah 2), where Adam (representing all humanity) is

implicitly identified as God’s khalifah or representative on earth. Other Qur’anic verses refer to

21 See Bukhari, Muhammad b. Isma`il, Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith n. 3456; Abu’l-Husayn b. al-Hajjaj Muslim, Sahih

Muslim, Riyad, 1998, hadith #2669.

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human beings generally as khala’if (pl. of khalifah), for example, 6:165, the final verse of surah

6, al-An`am, reads:

He it is Who appointed you vicegerents (khala’if) upon the earth and raised some of you by degrees above

others, that He may try you in that which He has given you.

There is some debate about what the meaning of khala’if is in this verse, with many

commentators considering it to relate primarily to the idea of generations succeeding others,

although the more theological idea of human vicegerency may also be intended. Whether

considered a reference to generational succession or to vicegerency, however, it is widely

understood by exegetes as a specific address to Muslim believers. Read in this way, it supports a

supersessionist (and thus linear) reading of religious history that considers the Muslim

community to have inherited (uniquely) the position of God’s representatives on earth22

I would suggest, however, that the concluding verse in Surah 6, which mentions

“vicegerents or successors in the earth” (khala’if) can be read as a frame-setting prologue to the

sacred history recounted in surah 7, in which a succession of communities follow one upon the

other along a similar tragic path: God’s messengers are sent to them to reform their religious

beliefs and practices, they reject and in some cases threaten these messengers, and are then

punished or destroyed for their rejection, suggesting a more cyclical than linear conception of

sacred history, and one that is likely to continue, rather than coming to an end with any particular

divine revelation—after all, the account in Surat al-A`raf recalls that even after Moses has

delivered the Israelites from Egypt, they almost immediately fell back upon idolatry. Although

chronologically surah 6 is considered by most to have been revealed just after, rather than before,

22 An interpretation that found favor with al-Zamakhshari and al-Razi, among others, see M. Dakake, “Commentary

on Surat al-An`am”, in S.H.Nasr, C. Dagli, M. Dakake, and J. Lumbard (eds.), The Study Quran, HarperOne, 2015,

p. 403.

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surah 7,23 if the Qur’an is read in its standing textual order, the last verse of surah 6 referring to

human beings as “vicegerents/successors of one another in the earth (khala’if fi’l-ard)”,

anticipates the narrative accounts in surah 7, which offers a cyclical (and less optimistic) view of

human sacred history, and one that should not necessarily give Muslims any comfort regarding

their own future susceptibility to religious error as a community.

The account of sacred history in Surat al-A`raf

Surat al-A`raf, a Meccan surah, has as its central concern the human need to follow divine

guidance that comes to them through both prophetic messengers and the revelations they bring. It

warns that direct and explicit rejection of the messengers in the past has brought terrible divine

punishment and annihilation down upon earlier human communities, with these warnings most

pointedly directed at the Meccans who, at the time of the surah’s revelation,n were intensifying

their rejection and persecution of Muhammad and his followers. But in the surah’s account of

the Israelites after their deliverance from Egypt and receipt of the Torah, the is an implied

warning that accepting a divine messenger and revelation nominally, but not sufficiently

observing its guidelines, might also lead to destruction, even without the explicit rejection of

messenger or message—a warning to all future religious communities, including the Muslim

community perhaps. The surah is composed of an alternating combination of direct divine

admonition to the reader/listener and a series of cautionary tales regarding the fate of earlier

communities that suggest a cyclical understanding of human religious history.

The first such account in the surah is that of Adam who, despite all the gifts and favors

bestowed upon him by God, almost immediately fall to Satan’s temptation in the garden, and is

23Ibid., p. 405.

20

consequently exiled to earth (vv. 11-27); this account is then followed by a warning directly

addressed to the “Children of Adam” to heed the prophets who will be sent to them (v.35). After

a pericope about the men on the Heights (for which the surah is named) and another divine

admonition, the surah recounts the tragic stories of Noah’s people destroyed by flood; Hud’s

people destroyed (by a mighty wind)24; Salih’s people destroyed by an earthquake; Lot’s people

destroyed by a rain of stones; and Shu`ayb’s people who are described as being “seized suddenly”

and destroyed. In several of these brief, somewhat formulaic accounts, the prophet reminds his

people that they are the “successors” of previous peoples who had been destroyed for their

rejection of God’s messengers, and that they should be careful not to make the same mistake.

After a brief section offering a summary conclusion of the above accounts and a warning

that no people should feel secure from the possibility of God’s wrath, the surah presents an

account of Moses’ confrontation with the Pharaoh. Pharaoh refuses to heed Moses’ message,

despite Moses’ vanquishing of Pharaoh’s sorcerers and his bringing down multiple plagues upon

Pharaoh’s people; Pharaoh is eventually destroyed, along with his hosts and, it is suggested, his

people (vv. 103-137)—whose lands the Israelites “inherit” (again echoing the theme of

successorship). From here, the narrative recounts Moses’ receiving the Torah on the mountain

and the Israelites’ impatience and reversion to idolatry with the making of the calf, followed by

an account of Moses successfully beseeching God to have mercy upon them (vv. 138-156).

Immediately following this account, the surah jumps forward to Muhammad’s contemporary

audience, noting that the mercy of God shown to the Jews in the preceding verses is (now)

conditional upon their acceptance of the Prophet Muhammad, who is described as “the

Messenger of God unto you all”, that is, unto all humankind, and understood to include the Jews

24 The manner in which Hud’s people (the people of `Ad) were destroyed is not mentioned here; but elsewhere the

Qur’an mentions that it was a terrible, destructive wind that was the means of their destruction, see Qur’an 41:15-16;

46:21-25; 54:18-20; 69:6.

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and Christians, whose very scriptures, the Torah and the Gospel, make mention Muhammad,

according to these verses (vv. 157-158). The surah then resumes the story of the Israelites,

recounting the punishment that befell later Israelite communities who failed to observe the

Sabbath and other prohibitions found in the Torah.

Thus we can discern a clear, cyclical pattern at work in the prophetic accounts in this

surah: Adam is granted much favor and a warning to avoid Satan, but to no avail; Noah, Hud,

Salih, Lot, and Shu`ayb are sent as prophets to their people, only to face rejection and to watch

helplessly as their people are destroyed; Moses is sent both as a warner to Pharaoh, (who rejects

the message and is destroyed), and as a guide to the Israelites, who do indeed accept the favor

shown to them through Moses, but like Adam, they quickly fall into religious error, making the

calf, and neglecting the religious duties enjoined on them by the Torah. These repeated human

failures sometimes meet with punishment and destruction, sometimes with mercy and

forgiveness, but the cyclical pattern established here suggests that this is a process likely to go on

into the indefinite future, even for communities who, like the Israelites, accepted their prophet.

A Circular view of Sacred History: the Adamic and Abrahamic “Circles”

If Surat al-A`raf offers us one of the clearest examples of a cyclical conception of history at

work in the Qur’an that undermines a purely linear, progressive and triumphant view of sacred

history, it also suggests the third conception of history we see operating in the Qur’an—the

circular. As mentioned above, the repeated stories of prophetic warning, communal rejection,

communal destruction, and succession by a new religious community in this surah are opened by

a recounting of the Adam narrative. Adam, as the first human being and the first prophet, begins

the entire human saga of religious struggle and renewal. But how does this series of prophet

22

accounts conclude? It concludes in vv. 172-173 with a circular return to the very Adamic

beginning of humanity, with reference to the primordial covenant taken by the “seed of Adam,

from his loins” before the beginning of all earthly time, in which all human beings who will ever

live bear witness both collectively and individually to the Lordship of God, and are warned that

they will be held accountable for this covenant on the Day of Judgment. Thus the entire

prophetic history recounted in Surat al-A`raf ends where it began, with Adam before the fall—

with all human beings who will ever live, as it is commonly understood, standing together

outside of time, just as on the Day of Judgment. The surah’s account of sacred history is

contained and bound up in a kind of “Adamic” circle—beginning with the account of Adam and

his fall and concluding with a reminder of the covenant all human beings, drawn from the loins

of Adam, took even before their life on earth, to recognize the oneness of God.

The Abrahamic Circle

If this Adamic circle of history found in Surat al-A`raf is universal and comprehensive—binding

all human beings together, despite their various religious communities, or historical and

geographical situation, in a common spiritual journey—there is also a smaller circular pattern in

Qur’anic sacred history whose beginning and ending point is Abraham. It is a circle that

encompasses Muslims, Jews, and Christians, of course, but it is often forgotten that it o

alsencompasses the pagan Arabs of Mecca, given Abraham’s connection to Mecca and the Ka`ba,

as discussed at the beginning of this paper. As far as they may be from the monotheistic ideal of

Abraham (much farther, of course, than the Jews and the Christians), the Arabs of Mecca are

said to recognize Abraham as their forefather, and his shrine as their center of worship (even if

they have defiled it with idols). In the Qur’anic polemic with Jews and Christians, Muhammad

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claims, not that he has received a new religion that surpasses and progresses beyond the religions

of Judaism or Christianity, but rather that his religion represents a return to the original

monotheistic creed of Abraham, whose purity and simplicity is contrasted with the unnecessary

and in some cases, corrupting complications to this creed that are introduced in Judaism and

Christianity.25 The Qur’an instructs Muhammad to present the religion he brings, not as a herald

of progress or advance along a linear path of human religious or spiritual development, but rather

as a movement of spiritual return—one that brings religion full circle, and back to its Abrahamic

starting point. As the Qur’an instructs Muhammad to say to his interlocutors among the People

of the Book:

[When] they say, “Be Jews or Christians and you shall be rightly guided.” Say, “Rather, [ours is] the creed

of Abraham, the ḥanīf, and he was not of the idolaters.” Say, “We believe in God, and in that which was

sent down unto us, and in that which was sent down unto Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes,

and in what Moses and Jesus were given, and in what the prophets were given from their Lord. We make

no distinction among any of them, and unto Him we submit.” (2:135-136)

The rhetorical assertion in this verse is that Muhammad’s religion represents a return to “creed of

Abraham,” and in its invocation all the prophets between Abraham and Muhammad—Ishmael,

Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus—it suggests the wholeness and completeness of a common

community, embraced or encompassed by the Abrahamic legacy, rather than a progressive set of

spiritual guides whose messages have now been surpassed by that of Muhammad—again,

suggesting a circular and inclusive rather than linear and supersessionist conception of sacred

(Abrahamic) history. Moreover, what is suggested by the completion of the Abrahamic circle,

and bringing the Abrahamic cycle back to its pure origin, is not only the encompassing of the

25 See, e.g., Qur’an 3:65-68: “O People of the Book! Why do you dispute concerning Abraham, as neither the Torah

nor the Gospel were sent down until after him? Do you not understand? Behold! You are the very same who dispute

concerning that of which you have knowledge; so why do you dispute concerning that of which you have no

knowledge? God knows, and you know not. Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian, but rather was a ḥanīf, a

submitter, and he was not one of the idolaters. Truly the people worthiest of Abraham are those who followed him,

and this prophet and those who believe. And God is the Protector of the believers.”

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Jewish and Christian Abrahamic legacies, but also that of the pre-Islamic Arabs, particularly

those in Mecca, who are implicitly asked to recall their original monotheism, and the original

monotheistic dedication of the sacred shrine that stands at the center of their city.

This notion of Islam as a religion of “return” or of coming “full circle”, at least in the

Abrahamic world (which again includes not on Jews and Christians, but also pagan Arabs), also

aligns with the geographical return or “turn back” toward Mecca as a monotheistic, Abrahamic

center, particularly after the Muslim community temporarily directed their prayer toward

Jerusalem (following the Prophet’s experience of the Night Journey at the site of the ancient

Jewish temple there). In Surat al-Baqarah (Surah 2), Neal Robinson ably demonstrates that there

is a discernible moment of return when, after detailing the ways in which the Israelites/Jews have

gone astray, the Qur’an demands, at the exact center point of the verse (v. 143), that Muhammad

and his followers cease praying toward Jerusalem and turn their faces toward the “Sacred

Mosque” in Mecca—a move that would represent an almost 180 degree turn in the direction of

prayer. Robinson then shows that in the second half of the surah, the Qur’an is preparing

Muhammad and his followers precisely for an actual, physical return to and reclamation of

Mecca, which will necessitate both military action and the building of morally solid communal

foundation from which to effect this return.26

Sacred history in the Qur’an is told, in a somewhat cyclical fashion, as a succession of

communities (umam, sing. ummah). While it is certainly possible and reasonable to see various

religious communities as succeeding (if not superseding) one another in the Qur’anic narrative in

linear fashion, even the Qur’anic conception of “ummah” references different, and perhaps

concentric circles of belonging. Although the different religious communities are separate umam,

26 See Neal Robinson, Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text, Georgetown

University Press, 2004, ch. 10, “The Madinan Surahs.”

25

at the same time, the Qur’an reminds us that mankind was originally “one ummah”—here,

perhaps invoking the Adamic ummah to which all human beings belong. We are also told

(somewhat cryptically) that Abraham was an ummah, suggesting that all followers of Abraham

(not only Muslims, but Jews, Christians, and the Meccan Arabs—either in their pre-idolatrous

past, or after their reform and acceptance of Islam) form a single community as well. Thus the

Adamic and Abrahamic circles described above represent not only ways of envisioning

humanity’s movement through time, but also concentric circles of belonging and inclusion that

transcend, and can be contemplated, outside of the linear movement of time.

Conclusion

As I have tried to show, various conceptions of the movement of religious history operate

simultaneously in the Qur’an. There are verses that suggest a linear and progressive motion of

religious development until the coming of the Prophet Muhammad, who is the seal of prophecy,

and who brings the message the “completes” God’s true religion, Islam. The coming of Islam, in

this conception, can be understood as the end of prophetic history, and its ultimate fulfillment.

However, through our analysis of Surat al-A`raf in particular, we have tried to show that this

notion (with all of its inclination toward supersessionism) is nuanced in the Qur’an by a more

cyclical notion of history suggested most clearly by the repeated, and intentionally formulaic

accounts of communities who rejected their prophets and were destroyed as a result. In these

accounts, later communities show no hope of learning from the mistakes of their predecessors,

for even after Moses established the Israelites with their revealed law, the potential for

backsliding remains. At the same time, a circular pattern emerges from this same surah, insofar

as all these accounts begin and end with an invocation of the Adamic origin and common return

26

of all human beings. A similar but smaller circular pattern is discernible for the religious

communities who take Abraham as their founder, establishing a more exclusive Abrahamic

circle within the Adamic circle, that encompasses Jews, Christians, and the pre-Islamic Arabs,

whom the Qur’an tries rhetorically to bring back to a purer Abrahamic monotheism represented

by Islam. These cyclical and circular ways of conceiving of human religious history that can be

discerned in the Qur’an offer a counterpoint to any purely supersessionist readings of sacred

history in Islam, but also transcend altogether the chronological motion and order of time as an

organizing principle, offering us a view from the center or a view from above, where sacred

history can be surveyed as a metaphorical ummah outside of time—an Abrahamic, and

ultimately Adamic ummah.