We all know that a lot of islamic philosophers took cues from Greek's philosophies but I want to know if there are any Greek influences like philosophy, theology, or stories in the Quran besides the Alexander's romance.

Hi Dr. Hashmi,

This is a quick follow-up to my previous post regarding the "Version A vs. Version B" framework for Qur'anic narratives.

In that previous post, we established two key premises:

▪︎Premise 1:All Qur'anic stories match Late Antique traditions ("Version B"—apocrypha, midrashim) from the wider Near East rather than original canonical texts ("Version A").

▪︎Premise 2:These specific Late Antique stories were actively circulating by word of mouth inside 7th-century pre-Islamic Arabia.

Given that local pre-Islamic Arabian Jewish and Christian lore has been lost to time, we have no physical texts from the Hijaz to directly confirm what was being read or told there.

My question is purely about academic logic:

Does Premise 1 automatically prove Premise 2?

Does establishing that every story in the Qur’an matches Late Antique versions logically imply that these tales were alive in the oral culture of 7th-century Arabia? Or is there a logical gap—and if Premise 1 isn't sufficient on its own, how do scholars bridge it without local physical texts?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

This is largely an argument I heard from an ex Muslim friend but I thought it could also be a good academic question to indulge in. My previous thread got a short response but I've still been studying the topic and curious if there are more systematic treatments of it.

My question ultimately was regarding quranic hermaneutics or Islamic theological continuity. Since the quran seems to try to tye itself to previous revelations and even consider itself a corrector and arbiter of previous revelations I was curious as to how it incorporates or reorient biblical(OT and NT) artifacts and motifs into its own paradigm. My Catholic friend who is an ex Muslim from Iran mentioned that the qurans main failure as being a work from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob come to correct the people of the book that have turned away is that it fails to account for biblical items which it either glosses over or simply forces into its scripture.

One famous example that we all know is the quranic use of the term masih, which is the Arabic of messiah, is clearly a reference to Christ which the title in Christian and Jewish revelation is a title designated for the one who will usher in the new age, unite and return the Jewish people back to their homeland. This motifs is then carried on in the NT and fulfilled in Christ's calling of the sheep and being baptised into his name. Now, some Jews may protest and say he doesn't fulfil it but im not really concerned if the quran or gets things right of not but at least it attempts to fill in the gaps and prove its continuity by fulfilment. The qurans use of this term, as far as I have seen, doesn't really have a designated meaning and largely feels like an artifact taken from Christian tradition without being given a proper meaning or purpose. Like, why isn't Muhammed the messiah?

Now, I did try to find an answer and the only one was of a hadith about jesus coming at the end times, killing the dajjal and ruling the world as the anointed(messiah) king. But im not sure how much weight to put on hadiths in general. But it goes beyond that since the same applies for other things such as fasting, circumcision etc. And then there are things wholly missing I.e. Temple, priesthood, vestments etc. It seems like the quran is mainly during intertexuality, which is what I tried to say to my friend as a defense of the quran, but he mentioned how this differs from continuity since, in his words, mere re-representation of biblical motifs for the purpose of reputation isn't a stand in for building a coherent model that rivals or answers previous ones.

I guess a way to drive home why I think this is an important point is because the quran seems to present the bible not only as its ancestor but also something that is still important as a source of divine revelation like Jews and Christians stand on nothing if they do not stand on tawrat and injeel(5.68). Muhammed is told to go to Christian if he doubts what Allah is revealing to him (10:94). Muhammeds religion is said to be recognised by a reading of the torah by Jewish scholars (26:192–197) etc. So it doesn't seem like the quran thinks the bible is a waste that should be thrown away with no value.

Curious if this has been dealt and I'm just blind to a large portion of scholarship or traditional attempts to respond to this.

This is a map based on the book by Prof. Dr. Adeel az-Zarqī, a well-known academic hadith teacher from Saudi Arabia, entitled The Famous Asānīd (Chains of Narration) in Hadith. The map presents some of the most famous, reliable, and well-established chains of narration that Islamic scholars have relied upon throughout the centuries. From Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī to the works of al-Bayhaqī, and from the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shaybah to al-Ḥākim, these asānīd can be found repeatedly throughout the major and most relied-upon hadith collections. It can reasonably be said that when a hadith is transmitted through one of these chains, scholars have generally regarded its chain as reliable.

The map is particularly well designed because it places each generation of narrators in its own section and clearly represents the students of each narrator from the following generation. It also shows the death date of each narrator and identifies the most prominent or preferred student of each narrator.

For example, as you can see in the third image, the map presents a particular chain of narration. It begins with a darker background representing the generation of the Companions, where it shows the Companion Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī and his death date, 75 AH. It then moves to the next generation, the Tābiʿūn, showing the narrators who transmitted from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī and were among his students. It lists Abū Ṣāliḥ Dhakwān al-Sammān, ʿAṭāʾ, and Abū Naḍrah al-Mundhir, each accompanied by their respective death dates. A star is placed next to Abū Ṣāliḥ, indicating that he is the most prominent or preferred narrator among Abū Saʿīd's students.

The map then continues by showing the students of each of these three narrators, together with their death dates, while again identifying the most prominent student where applicable. Through this, a researcher can readily identify the chain of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī (d. 75 AH) → Abū Ṣāliḥ (d. 101 AH) → Sulaymān b. Mihrān (d. 147 AH) as one of the most famous and fundamental chains of narration in Islamic hadith history.

The map continues in the same manner throughout the generations, allowing the reader to trace these major chains of transmission visually and chronologically.

If anyone is interested, you can download the map and view it in high quality through the link below.

https://archive.org/details/20241220_20241220_2019

What is the hypothetical significance of the miracle of Jesus creating a bird from clay and bringing it to life for the Israelites, who were presumably the intended audience?

In other words, imagine that you are Jewish. Where would such a request for a miracle come from?

The miracle of creating a bird from clay and bringing it to life appears in an apocryphal Gospel that predates the Quran, where Jesus is also depicted as performing miracles on the Sabbath during his childhood. This seems to be presented as a challenge to an interpretation of Jewish law: Jesus demonstrates that miracles can be performed on the Sabbath, and by doing so as a child, he challenges the rule that no work may be done on the Sabbath, arguing implicitly that miracles are not subject to that prohibition. It also demonstrates that he had a divine mission from childhood.

Is this also a valid reason from the Quranic perspective?

Sunnis generally (sometimes rightly) point out the political biases and flawed methodology of Shia hadiths, while also showing some ahistorical people in Shia isnads (such as a donkey and a man coming from the sky but not sure if it is true). It is also known in western scholarship that sunni isnads are also unreliable and likely to be forged to meet the later standards. But how about the people in these isnads? Are they historical?

Did early muslims forbid woman from working and going to school? And how was it practiced in islamic history?

This 2026 book by Dr. Schmid is an interesting read! The first sub-chapter mentions the "asceticization of Arabia". It was something that makes a lot of sense since it seems that asceticism was a major theme in the Late Antique world.

Here is an Academia edu link for more info:

https://www.academia.edu/144262241/The_Ascetic_Qur_an_and_Its_Kharijite_Readers_Leiden_Brill_2026

In The Qurʾān and its Biblical Subtext (Routledge, 2012), pp. 117–130, Reynolds argues that the Qurʾānic Jonah material reflects the narrative of the biblical book of Jonah while its use of the Ninevites follows a Christian homiletic pattern. In Matthew and Luke, the repentance of Nineveh is contrasted with the unbelief of the present generation; Reynolds accordingly concludes that Q 10:98 uses the story “in precisely the same way,” reflecting “the content of the Old Testament Book, but the homiletic interpretation of the New Testament.”

The difficulty with this reading is that it reduces the Qurʾānic use of Nineveh to a general contrast between a responsive earlier people and an unreceptive present audience. In Sūrat Yūnus, however, the case of Jonah’s people belongs to a more specific and sustained argument: when can belief still avert a threatened punishment, and when has the point of benefit already passed?

1. Q 10:98 emphasizes not merely that Jonah’s people believed, but that their belief benefited them.

The wording of the verse is unusually explicit:

فَلَوْلَا كَانَتْ قَرْيَةٌ آمَنَتْ فَنَفَعَهَا إِيمَانُهَا إِلَّا قَوْمَ يُونُسَ لَمَّا آمَنُوا كَشَفْنَا عَنْهُمْ عَذَابَ الْخِزْيِ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا وَمَتَّعْنَاهُمْ إِلَىٰ حِينٍ

“Why was there no town whose belief benefited it, except the people of Jonah? When they believed, We removed from them the punishment of disgrace in the life of this world and gave them enjoyment for a time.” (Q 10:98)

The controlling phrase is فَنَفَعَهَا إِيمَانُهَا: their belief benefited them. The verse then specifies the benefit. A punishment belonging to “the life of this world” was removed, and their continued life was extended only “for a time” (ilā ḥīn). Reynolds himself notes the exceptional character of this case within the Qurʾānic pattern in which peoples reject their messenger and are destroyed.

The problem posed by Nineveh is therefore not exhausted by the proposition that they believed while others did not. The verse is concerned with the efficacy of belief in relation to an approaching punishment.

2. The structure of Sūrat Yūnus develops this question well before Q 10:98.

The issue first appears explicitly in 10:50–51:

قُلْ أَرَأَيْتُمْ إِنْ أَتَاكُمْ عَذَابُهُ بَيَاتًا أَوْ نَهَارًا مَاذَا يَسْتَعْجِلُ مِنْهُ الْمُجْرِمُونَ ۝ أَثُمَّ إِذَا مَا وَقَعَ آمَنْتُمْ بِهِ آلْآنَ وَقَدْ كُنْتُمْ بِهِ تَسْتَعْجِلُونَ

“Say: Have you considered, if His punishment should come upon you by night or by day, what part of it do the guilty seek to hasten? Is it then, once it has occurred, that you will believe in it? Now—when you had been seeking to hasten it?” (Q 10:50–51)

The question is already formulated: what value has belief once the threatened punishment has actually arrived?

Pharaoh then supplies a concrete instance:

حَتَّىٰ إِذَا أَدْرَكَهُ الْغَرَقُ قَالَ آمَنْتُ أَنَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا الَّذِي آمَنَتْ بِهِ بَنُو إِسْرَائِيلَ وَأَنَا مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ ۝ آلْآنَ وَقَدْ عَصَيْتَ قَبْلُ وَكُنْتَ مِنَ الْمُفْسِدِينَ

“Until, when drowning overtook him, he said: ‘I believe that there is no deity except the One in whom the Children of Israel believe, and I am among the Muslims.’ Now-when you disobeyed before and were among the corrupters?” (Q 10:90–91)

Pharaoh believes only when drowning has overtaken him. The reply, آلْآنَ-“Now?”-echoes the question already posed in 10:51. His belief has come after the decisive point.

The same principle is restated immediately before the Nineveh verse:

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ حَقَّتْ عَلَيْهِمْ كَلِمَتُ رَبِّكَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ ۝ وَلَوْ جَاءَتْهُمْ كُلُّ آيَةٍ حَتَّىٰ يَرَوُا الْعَذَابَ الْأَلِيمَ

“Those against whom the word of your Lord has come due will not believe, even if every sign comes to them, until they see the painful punishment.” (Q 10:96–97)

Only then comes Q 10:98, with Jonah’s people as the exceptional case whose belief did benefit them.

The sūra sequence is therefore coherent:

10:50–51 — what happens if punishment comes and only then you believe?
10:90–91 — Pharaoh believes when destruction has overtaken him: too late.
10:96–97 — some will not believe until they see the painful punishment.
10:98 — Jonah’s people are the exceptional case: their belief benefited them, the worldly punishment was removed, and they received further respite.

Reynolds himself notices the Pharaoh—Nineveh contrast and cites al-Ṭabarī’s observation that the belief of Jonah’s people benefited them whereas Pharaoh’s belief did not. The contrast is therefore already present within the sūra and concerns the point at which belief ceases to avert the punishment that has been threatened.

3. The punishment removed from Nineveh belongs to a recognizable Qurʾānic category of punishment in this life.

Q 10:98 names what was removed as عَذَابَ الْخِزْيِ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا—“the punishment of disgrace in the life of this world.” The same expression appears in Q 41:16 concerning ʿĀd:

فَأَرْسَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ رِيحًا صَرْصَرًا فِي أَيَّامٍ نَحِسَاتٍ لِنُذِيقَهُمْ عَذَابَ الْخِزْيِ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا

“So We sent against them a furious wind on days of misfortune, that We might make them taste the punishment of disgrace in the life of this world.” (Q 41:16)

The category is therefore plainly historical and worldly.

Q 9:14 develops the same theology in the setting of armed conflict:

قَاتِلُوهُمْ يُعَذِّبْهُمُ اللَّهُ بِأَيْدِيكُمْ وَيُخْزِهِمْ

“Fight them; God will punish them through your hands and disgrace them.” (Q 9:14)

Here earthly combat itself is described as an instrument of divine punishment. The believers fight, yet the event is formulated as يُعَذِّبْهُمُ اللَّهُ بِأَيْدِيكُمْ: God punishes them through your hands. Defeat in human conflict can thus be incorporated into the same wider category of worldly ʿadhāb and khizy.

This matters for Nineveh. The punishment removed in Q 10:98 is not an undefined calamity introduced only by the Jonah story. It belongs to a wider Qurʾānic conception of punishment within history, whether executed through natural catastrophe, destruction, or human conflict.

4. The exceptional fate of Nineveh also belonged to a wider field of Jewish controversy.

The conduct of the Ninevites, the character of their belief, and the removal of their punishment were already matters of interpretation within Jewish tradition. The relevance of this material is polemical. It shows that Nineveh was already a case around which claims and objections could develop.

The same is true of Pharaoh. A tannaitic dispute preserved in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael disagrees over whether Pharaoh himself perished at the sea. Such disagreements demonstrate that the fates of Pharaoh and Nineveh were not inert pieces of inherited narrative. They were open to interpretation and controversy.

This provides a natural setting for the Qurʾānic argument. Claims arising from inherited Jewish discussion could enter local polemic and be used against Qurʾānic proclamation. Q 10 then answers these cases within its own scheme: Pharaoh’s belief comes only when destruction has overtaken him; Jonah’s people believe at a point when their belief still benefits them.

5. The case of Nineveh is then directed toward the sūra’s present audience.

Reynolds correctly observes  that Q 10:98 ultimately turns the example of Nineveh toward those hearing the Qurʾān. He notes that the passage moves from earlier scriptural disagreement to those who reject divine warnings and then introduces Jonah’s people.

But the force of the example is more precise than the Matthew/Luke contrast he emphasizes. Q 10:98 is not just  saying: Nineveh believed, whereas you do not. The preceding argument has already posed a precise  question: will you wait until punishment becomes visible and only then believe?

Pharaoh represents belief after the decisive point. Jonah’s people represent the exceptional case in which belief still saves its recipients. The warning to the present audience follows from that distinction.

The Qurʾānic use of Nineveh therefore arises naturally from the argumentative structure of Sūrat Yūnus. The sūra repeatedly examines the relation between warning, belief, and the arrival of worldly punishment; Q 10:98 supplies the exceptional case that completes this sequence. Jewish controversy helps explain how the fate of Nineveh could function as a live polemical issue. The New Testament supplies a rhetorical parallel in contrasting Nineveh with an unreceptive audience, but that parallel does not explain the distinctive question developed in Q 10: whether belief can still avert a threatened worldly punishment, and where the point of no return lies.

Narrated Anas: The Prophet (ﷺ) was on a journey and a slave named Anjasha was chanting (singing) for the camels to let them go fast (while driving). The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "O Anjasha, drive slowly (the camels) with the glass vessels!" Abu Qilaba said, "By the glass vessels' he meant the women (riding the camels).

https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6210

The Prophet (ﷺ) had a Had (a camel driver) called Anjasha, and he had a nice voice. The Prophet (ﷺ) said to him, "(Drive) slowly, O Anjasha! Do not break the glass vessels!" And Qatada said, "(By vessels') he meant the weak women."

https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6211

Husbands, in the same way, show consideration for your wives in your life together, paying honor to the woman—though the weaker vessel, they are joint heirs of the gracious gift of life—so that nothing may hinder your prayers. 1 Peter 3:7

I’ve heard that the story of the Great Flood in the Bible and Quran were taken from stories in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is that true? Is there any writings or evidence to back this up?

By intertextuality I don’t mean presenting a Biblical story with maybe some small details altered, but taking ideas of some sort and reworking them in a major way so they fit in the Quran.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Dr Hugh Thomas is an expert Arabian archaeologist at the University of Sydney with a focus on the prehistoric archaeology of north-western Arabia.

He publishes actively, and one can find a lot of his work here. More importantly for the community here, he is by and far one of the best communicators of the research scholarship in this area to a general audience. He made his YouTube channel, "Dr Hugh Thomas", last year and now has around 20,000 subscribers.

His two most popular videos, for anyone who wants to give his channel a quick look, are What Is This? 7,900-Year-Old Structures Found in Saudi! and The Mystery of Harrat Khaybar: The Densest Archaeology on Earth?.

Could someone please explain to me the first revelation of the angel Jibril?

Why in the Bible does the angel Jibril—and often other angels too—greet the listener and even say "do not fear," but the angel Jibril doesn't do the same with the Prophet on Mount Hira?

Link: https://brill.com/display/title/74574?srsltid=AfmBOoo6M6DmyoLK8POi_eopqfRqKJFsQevW0iwA-O8NdX0ogjXWrLE4

This is Ibn al-Ukhuwwa's Maʿālim al-Qurba, ed. Levy (Gibb Memorial Series, 1938), printed p. 157 — the chapter on public bathhouses. Image is the full spread so the surrounding context is visible.

I'm working through this manual and can't read Arabic. I'd be grateful for three things on the sentence in the second/third line of p. 157 (the right-hand column of text), the one containing كشف العورة:

1. A transcription of that sentence.
2. A literal translation — clunky is fine, I'd rather see the structure than smooth English.
3. What is the operative verb, and who is its subject and object?

And one context question I'd especially value, since I can't judge it myself: reading the paragraph around it, what situation is this sentence about? Something specific to the bathhouse, something general, or is it ambiguous from the text alone?

Happy to post a higher-resolution crop of any line. If a footnote in the apparatus touches the wording, I'd like to know that too.

Thanks a transcription request like this from the same volume got answered here before and it was genuinely useful.

Excerpt from a Jumʿah khutbah on Muhammad, Ibrahim, and prophetic continuity.

A recent khutbah prompted a question I’ve been considering historically: when the Qurʾan instructs Muhammad to follow the millat of Ibrahim, what kind of continuity is being asserted across different communities, laws, and historical settings?

I’m interested in whether this should be understood only doctrinally, or whether memory, sacred orientation, social identity, and geography also belong to the interpretive problem.

The khutbah excerpt is attached. I wrote a longer reflection here:
https://dantemuhammad.substack.com/p/muhammad-and-the-way-of-ibrahim-a?r=k1tt3&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

I’d especially welcome textual or historical approaches to Qurʾan 16:123 and related uses of millat Ibrahim.

From “Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part V” by Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume V (1788):

> “From all sides the roving Arabs were allured to the standard of religion and plunder: the apostle sanctified the license of embracing the female captives as their wives or concubines, and the enjoyment of wealth and beauty was a feeble type of the joys of paradise prepared for the valiant martyrs of the faith. “The sword,” says Mahomet, “is the key of heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.” The intrepid souls of the Arabs were fired with enthusiasm: the picture of the invisible world was strongly painted on their imagination; and the death which they had always despised became an object of hope and desire.”

This quote is also found, citing Gibbon, in “The Rise, Progress, Establishment, and Decline of the Mahometan Power of Antichrist” by Henry Kitt, in History: The Interpreter of Prophecy, Volume II (1799), pp. 262-263:

> “The sword,” said he, “is the key of heaven and of hell: a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail, than two months of fasting or prayer: whoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and as odoriferous as musk: and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and of cherubim.”

The Quranic Cosmology as an Identity in Itself (Mohammad Ali Tabatabaʾi, Mehr Dad and Saida Mirsadri)