ʾ

ibrāhīm | Abraham

See inter alia under → ab, → arḍ, → isrāʾīl, → ḥarrama, → ḥanīf, → aslama, → millah, → nabiyy, and → hājara. For a more detailed and systematic treatment of Abraham in the Qur’an with due references to earlier scholarship, refer to Sinai 2020a and Sinai, forthcoming b.

iblīs | Iblīs, the devil

→ shayṭān

ab | father, forefather

Further vocabulary discussed: alladhīna kafarū, al-kāfirūn, al-kuffār pl. | the repudiators alladhīna ashrakū, al-mushrikūn pl. | the associators mansak | rite ʿabada tr. | to serve s.o. or s.th., to worship s.o. or s.th. al-shayṭān | the devil, Satan ḍalla intr. | to go astray ṣanam | idol tamāthīl pl. | images ḍalāl | being astray, going astray ummah | exemplary custom mutraf | affluent, spoilt by affluence ashraka intr. | to be an associator, to venerate associate deities, to attribute associates to God dhurriyyah | offspring ahl al-kitāb | the scripture-owners, the (previous) recipients of scripture nazzala, anzala tr. | to send s.th. down, to bring s.th. down shāʾa tr./intr. | to wish or will (s.th.) ḥarrama tr. | to declare s.th. to be, or regard s.th. as, inviolable, sacred, or forbidden millah | religion, religious teaching

The Qur’anic pagans and their appeal to ancestral precedent. In contrast to the Bible, the Qur’an nowhere describes God as a father, and indeed one verse, Q 5:18, expressly criticises the Jews and Christians for doing so (see under → allāh). In the Qur’an, the theological importance of the notion of fatherhood and paternal authority lies elsewhere: many passages polemically depict Muhammad’s pagan opponents—who are usually termed the repudiators or associators (→ kafara, → ashraka)—as invoking and inveterately adhering to the authority of ancestral tradition and precedent, preferring it over the divine revelations transmitted to Muhammad.¹ The Qur’an does not name the forefathers in question, just as it almost never names the subsidiary deities worshipped by its associating adversaries (see again under → ashraka). It is a reasonable guess, though, that the Meccan progenitors would have included the legendary figure of Quṣayy: a verse by al-Aʿshā Maymūn portrays him as the builder (or rebuilder?) of the Kaʿbah, indicating that Quṣayy would have been remembered as a foundational figure in Meccan history already towards the end of the sixth century (Shahîd 1989, 394–397, citing Ḥusayn 1983, no. 15:44).

The Qur’anic pagans’ esteem of and deference to their forefathers bears affinity with the world-view of pre-Islamic tribal poetry, which prizes noble descent and underlines the duty of progeny to live up to the lofty role model of their ancestors: "Whatever valuable qualities (khayr) they have been given, the forefathers of their forefathers passed them on as an inheritance before (tawārathahu ābāʾu ābāʾihim qablu)," Zuhayr praises a tribe (DSAAP, Zuhayr, no. 14:40; cf. Jacobi 1971, 93–94). With similar devotion to their ancestors, the Qur’anic pagans insist on following the custom of our forefathers or, more literally, that to which we have found our forefathers beholden/accustomed (Q 2:170: mā alfaynā ʿalayhi ābāʾanā; 5:104, 31:21: mā wajadnā ʿalayhi ābāʾanā), rather than following what God has sent down (mā anzala llāhu).² The Qur’anic pagans’ conviction that the practice of their forebears had normative force resonates with a verse from the Muʿallaqah of Labīd (ʿAbbās 1962, no. 48:81 = EAP 2:199; see Bravmann 1972, 165), in which the poet boasts of belonging to a "tribe (maʿshar) whose forefathers have established a pattern of behaviour for them (sannat lahum ābāʾuhum); and every people has its pattern of behaviour (sunnah) and model (imām)." It is, of course, in no way certain that the verse just cited predates the Qur’an, given that Labīd died in the early Islamic period. But the line does not anachronistically go beyond the deference to ancestral authority that the Qur’an ascribes to its pagan opponents and may accordingly reflect a general facet of pre-Qur’anic Arabian tribalism.³

The Qur’an does not on the whole offer compelling evidence of ancestor worship. Q 16:21 alleges that the deities venerated by the Qur’an’s pagan opponents are in reality dead, not alive, and do not know when they will be resurrected. As Crone notes, this could be read as presenting the deities in question as mere human beings falsely deified (QP 73); but even if that is correct, it only shows that the Qur’an is polemically casting the deities of its opponents as mere mortals, not that the opponents whose rites are attacked were themselves conscious of venerating mythical progenitors. Perhaps somewhat more convincingly, Q 2:200 might be understood to disclose that the pre-Qur’anic ḥajj ritual included an invocation of ancestors or ancestral spirits, but again it is impossible to be very confident.⁴ Hence, the Qur’an mainly envisages the Meccans’ forefathers as having practised, and thereby guaranteeing the validity of, certain cultic practices rather than as being themselves the objects of ritual veneration. It is the continuation of such ancestral ritual precedent that Muhammad is perceived to endanger. He is accordingly rejected as only a man who wants to turn youp away from what your forefathers were wont to serve (Q 34:43: mā hādhā illā rajulun yurīdu an yaṣuddakum ʿammā kāna yaʿbudu ābāʾukum). The Qur’anic proclamations in turn dismiss their opponents’ forefathers as devoid of knowledge (Q 18:5) and as heeding the call of the devil or Satan (→ al-shayṭān; Q 31:21). Muhammad’s preaching thus squarely rejected the Meccan ancestors’ authority to set valid precedents in religious matters. As the early Meccan passage Q 37:69–70 puts it with sardonic humour, the unbelievers "have found their forefathers going astray (innahum alfaw ābāʾahum ḍāllīn) // and there they are being driven on in their footsteps (fa-hum ʿalā āthārihim yuhraʿūn)! God, the text asserts, is not only yourp Lord, but also the Lord of yourp ancient forefathers" (Q 44:8: rabbu ābāʾikumu l-awwalīn), insisting that vis-à-vis God all humans occupy the same station (see also Q 26:26 and 37:126, where the same phrase is used by Moses and Elijah).

Ancestral precedent in Qur’anic messenger narratives. The same tenacious attachment to ancestral tradition for which Muhammad’s opponents are taken to task is also ascribed to various communities in the past. Thus, in the early Meccan verse Q 26:74—which together with Q 37:69–70 chronologically precedes all of the other material discussed in this entry—the contemporaries of Abraham justify their veneration of idols (Q 26:71: aṣnām; see under → dhabaḥa) by saying that we found our forefathers doing the same (qālū bal wajadnā ābāʾanā ka-dhālika yafʿalūn). A parallel utterance is attributed to Abraham’s people in Q 21:53 (We found our forefathers serving them, qālū wajadnā ābāʾanā lahā ʿābidīn, namely, the images or tamāthīl mentioned in v. 52). Similar to Q 37:69, quoted above, Abraham here responds by dismissing his opponents and their ancestors as being clearly astray (Q 21:54: fī ḍalālin mubīn). According to Q 10:78, the people of Lot ask him whether he has come to turn us away from the custom of our forefathers (qālū a-jiʾtanā li-talfitanā ʿammā wajadnā ʿalayhi ābāʾanā). Q 43:22–24 generalises that just as contemporary unbelievers are determined to let themselves be guided by the exemplary custom (→ ummah) of their forebears (vv. 22: wajadnā ābāʾanā ʿalā ummatin wa-innā ʿalā āthārihim muhtadūn; cf. again Q 37:70), so the same stance was inevitably taken by the affluent elite (mutrafūhā, on which see the remarks under → khatama and → istaḍʿafa) of each settlement or town (qaryah) to whom God has previously dispatched a warner (v. 23, repeating v. 22 but substituting muhtadūn by muqtadūn). The same historical generalisation is made in Q 14:10, where the messengers (rusul) sent to various past peoples are said to have faced the accusation of intending to turn their addressees away from what our forefathers were wont to serve (an taṣuddūnā ʿammā kāna yaʿbudu ābāʾunā; note the similarity to Q 34:43, quoted above). The opponents of the historic messengers Ṣāliḥ (sent to Thamūd), Shuʿayb (sent to Madyan), and Hūd (sent to ʿĀd) are also faulted for appealing to what our forefathers served (mā ± <kāna> yaʿbudu ābāʾunā; see Q 11:62.87 and 7:70). Employing the verb → ashraka, to associate (namely, other beings with God), the allegedly universal human propensity to uphold ancestral traditions is moreover anticipated in Q 7:173: "Already our forefathers associated, and we are their offspring (wa-kunnā dhurriyyatan min baʿdihim)." To belong to someone’s offspring (dhurriyyah) goes hand in hand with commitment to certain ancestral values, a notion that we will ultimately see the Qur’an transfer to the figure of Abraham.

In short, the Qur’an portrays humans as universally prone to derive normative—in particular, cultic or religious—orientation from inherited custom and tradition. This is presented as a chief obstacle to acknowledgement of the conflicting truth claims conveyed by prophetic messenger figures. The Qur’an thus articulates what Jan Assmann, following Theo Sundermeier, has described as the tension between primary and secondary religions—namely, the fact that positive or founded religions are counter-religions that had to confront and to reject a tradition (Assmann 1997, 169).⁵ This tension is cast as a ubiquitous feature of religious history in the Qur’an.

Ancestral tradition and divine endorsement in Q 7:28, 6:148, 16:35, and 43:20. A noteworthy and interpretively problematic variant on the same theme is found in Q 7:28, where the Qur’an’s opponents are alleged to justify the perpetration of abominable deeds (wa-idhā faʿalū fāḥishatan) by declaring that this was the custom of our forefathers (qālū wajadnā ʿalayhā ābāʾanā), which then appears to be equated with divine commandments (wa-llāhu amaranā bihā). Should one take this pronouncement to entail that the Qur’an’s opponents deemed their ancestral traditions to preserve and give access to divine revelations, just as the Qur’an considers the scripture-owners (→ ˻ahl al-kitāb), i.e., Jews and Christians, to be recipients of past revelations that were subsequently handed down to the present (although perhaps not without distortion)?

In support of an affirmative answer, one may note that Muhammad’s pagan adversaries do seem to have subscribed to certain entrenched preconceptions about what genuine divine revelations would need to look like (→ ashraka). Nonetheless, it is overall unlikely to read Q 7:28 as manifesting a claim on the part of Muhammad’s antagonists that their ancestral tradition gave them access to divine revelations, in the same way in which Jews and Christians might claim to stand in a traditionally mediated link to revelation. After all, the Qur’an does not explicitly engage with any such claim on their part. Indeed, several of the verses cited above are predicated on a straightforward opposition between ancestral custom and what God has sent down (mā anzala llāhu; → nazzala), rather than on a distinction between direct and indirect access to divine revelation (i.e., between revelation conveyed through prophecy and through tradition). Rather, Q 7:28 is best read as implying a counterfactual argument that is reported in more detail in Q 6:148 and 16:35 (and similarly 43:20): Had God willed, neither we nor our forefathers would have associated [anything with him], and we would not have declared anything to be forbidden (Q 6:148: law shāʾa llāhu mā ashraknā wa-lā ābāʾunā wa-lā ḥarramnā min shayʾin); Had God willed, we would not have served anything besides him, neither we nor our forefathers, and we would not have declared anything besides him to be inviolable (Q 16:35: law shāʾa llāhu mā ʿabadnā min dūnihi min shayʾin naḥnu wa-lā ābāʾunā wa-lā ḥarramnā min dūnihi min shayʾin).⁶ Such passages present the pagans as responding to the Qur’anic Messenger’s claim to be the recipient of divine revelations by insisting that their ancestral traditions are at least backed up by an indirect kind of divine endorsement: were these traditions opposed to God’s will, God would have made sure that such customs had not persisted intact until the present (see also under → ḥarrama).

In other words, passages like Q 6:148 show the Qur’anic pagans—who self-avowedly had not hitherto received a divine scripture or a warner from God (e.g., Q 6:157, 35:42)—scrambling to put in place some sort of secondary defence against the force of the Qur’an’s persistent claim to be anchored in revelation. This defence notably concedes that divine revelation is ultimately superior to human tradition, but it seems likely that the Qur’anic pagans started out from the conviction that established custom is normative as such. They may tacitly have identified adherence to ancestral tradition with adherence to the will of God, but explicit recourse to the idea of divine endorsement of their inherited cultic practices would appear to have been a secondary phenomenon, triggered by Qur’anic attempts to establish a sharp opposition between human tradition and divine revelation.

Abraham’s development from anti-paternal rebel to paternal forbear. While the Qur’an depicts a number of past messengers as being confronted by their audience’s devotion to ancestral tradition, this topos is particularly tangible with regard to the figure of Abraham (Sinai, forthcoming b). Thus, several versions of the Qur’anic Abraham narrative recount the monotheistic exhortations that Abraham addressed not only to his people (li-qawmihi) but specifically to his father (li-abīhi; Q 6:74, 19:42, 21:52, 26:70, 37:85, 43:26). The conflict between Abraham and his father is particularly foregrounded in Abraham’s sermon in Q 19:42–45, containing four occurrences of the vocative yā-abati, O my father (Sinai 2020a, 280), to which Abraham’s father replies by underlining his commitment to his gods and by threatening his son with stoning (v. 46). The Qur’an thus portrays Abraham as the quintessential anti-paternal rebel, whose decisive break with ancestral tradition is deployed in direct connection with the appeals to ancestral tradition on the part of Muhammad’s adversaries (Q 43:19–29, with a total of five occurrences of the words father or fathers in vv. 22, 23, 24, 26, and 29).

The Medinan surahs build on the Meccan image of Abraham as a paradigm of anti-paternal rebellion by elevating him to an effective founding figure of Qur’anic monotheism. Most importantly in the present context, Q 22:78 calls upon the community of believers to adhere to the teaching of yourp father Abraham (millat abīkum ibrāhīma; → millah). In this appeal, the erstwhile anti-paternal rebel Abraham is himself recast as a figure of paternal authority. The formulation has strong Jewish and Christian precedent (e.g., m. Qidd. 4:14 and Rom 4:1.11–12), and Q 22:78 is no doubt concerned to assert that the Qur’anic believers’ claim to Abraham is superior to that routinely staked out by Jews and Christians (see also Q 3:67–68). It is nonetheless striking that Q 22:78 expresses Abraham’s paradigmatic importance for the Qur’anic community in paternal terms, given the Meccan surahs’ strident criticism of their opponents’ appeals to ancestral authority.⁷ The idea that Abraham and his immediate descendants function as a counter-paradigm to the ancestral custom on which the Qur’anic pagans base themselves also underlies Q 2:133, where Jacob’s sons promise their dying father that they will, after his death, continue to serve "yourS God and the God of your fathers Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac (ilāha ābāʾika ibrāhīma wa-ismāʿīla wa-isḥāqa). The same motif is already in evidence in Q 12:38, according to which Joseph professes his determination to follow the teaching of my fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (cf. also Q 12:6).

Thus, by the Medinan period the Qur’anic revelations do not so much reject the concept of authoritative paternal tradition as such, but rather seek to neutralise the weight of the ancestral legacy of paganism with the monotheistic heritage of Abraham and the Biblical patriarchs. It is important to note that this counter-paradigm of a monotheistic Abrahamic heritage presupposes the understanding that the inhabitants of Mecca are literally the offspring (dhurriyyah) of Abraham (Q 2:128, 14:37.40; see Goudarzi 2019), just as the associators are literally the offspring of their forefathers (Q 7:173).⁸ Paradoxically, therefore, by clinging to the veneration of deities other than God, the pagan Meccans, despite their seeming obsession with ancestral precedent, are actually violating their true ancestral heritage, Abrahamic monotheism.

atā tr./intr. bi- | to bring s.th. (to s.o.)

ātā tr./ditr. | to give s.th. (to s.o.)

See briefly under → āyah, → zakāh, → ṣadaqah, → ṣallā, → furqān, → malik, and → nazzala.

ajara tr. | to serve s.o. for wages

istaʾjara tr. | to hire s.o. for wages

→ ajr

ajr | wage; dower

Further vocabulary discussed: ajara tr. | to serve s.o. for wages istaʾjara tr. | to hire s.o. for wages thawāb | reward jazāʾ | recompense, requital waffā ditr. | to pay s.th. to s.o. in full; to repay s.o. for s.th. in full aḍāʿa tr. | to neglect (to pay) s.th. zāda tr. | to give s.o. more ghayr mamnūn | rightfully earned maghfirah | forgiveness kaffara tr. ʿan | to absolve s.o. of s.th. jazā tr. | to recompense s.o., to reward or punish s.o.

The Qur’an exhibits a pervasive tendency to couch the relationship between God and humans in monetary and commercial terms (Torrey 1892; Rippin 1996). This is exemplified not only by its metaphorical usage of notions like purchasing and selling, divine reckoning, the accrual of good and bad actions, and loaning unto God (→ sharā, → ḥisāb, → aqraḍa, → kasaba), but also by numerous assurances of divine recompense or wage (ajr) in the hereafter, which will take centre stage in what follows. A second context in which the term ajr is prominently used, to be discussed at the end of this entry, is the assertion in the Meccan surahs that God’s emissaries do not demand a wage from their audience and that they will be exclusively remunerated by their divine sender.

Ajr = wage. Although the noun ajr is often translated as reward, it denotes more precisely a reward given for service rendered (Torrey 1892, 23), i.e., a wage (thus Arberry’s consistent rendering): ajara is to serve for wages (Q 28:27) and istaʾjara to hire for wages (Q 28:26; see Torrey 1892, 24, and CDKA 21), and a number of Qur’anic passages employ ajr or its plural ujūr to mean wages or pay in this-worldly dealings between humans (Q 7:113, 18:77, 26:41, 28:25), including cases in which ajr refers to dower paid by a groom to the bride (Q 4:24–25, 5:5, 33:50, 60:10, 65:6). Indeed, Arabic ajr has an Aramaic cognate agrā, which similarly signifies hire, wages, fee, payment and the like (SL 8; DJBA 80–81).⁹ Hence, while the word ajr is clearly an approximate synonym of thawāb, reward (e.g., Q 3:145.148.195, 18:31.44.46), or jazāʾ, recompense, requital (e.g., Q 3:136, 4:93, 5:29.85, 9:95, 78:26.36), it is semantically distinctive in implicitly casting humans as labourers contracted by God, labourers who will receive their due pay in the world to come—How excellent is the wage of those who labour! (niʿma ajru l-ʿāmilīn), three verses exclaim (Q 3:136, 29:58, and 39:7).¹⁰ Moreover, whereas thawāb and jazāʾ are readily used both for this-worldly and other-worldly reward (see, e.g., Q 3:145.148, 4:13 on the former, and 2:85.191, 5:33.38.95 on the latter), ajr is mostly reserved for eschatological recompense, although there are exceptions, as shown by Q 12:56 (Joseph’s wage seems to be equated with his God granting him an abode in Egypt) and 29:27 (stating that Abraham is not only among the righteous in the hereafter but that he also received his wage in the proximate life, ātaynāhu ajrahu fī l-dunyā).¹¹

Qur’anic pledges of eschatological wage. Those who believe, do righteous deeds, give charity, and perform prayer, etc., are promised that their wage is with their Lord (Q 2:62.112.262.274.277, 3:199: ajruhum ʿinda rabbihim) or is incumbent upon their Lord (Q 4:100, 42:40: fa-±<qad waqaʿa> ajruhu ʿalā llāhi). The preposition ʿinda, with, in verses like Q 2:62 has an implication of eschatological communion with God (see in more detail under → jannah). Other passages announce that God will pay peoples’ eschatological wages in full (Q 3:57, 4:173: fa-yuwaffīhim ujūrahum; see also 3:185, 35:30, 39:10, and in general Torrey 1892, 22–23) and that he will not neglect to pay (aḍāʿa) the wages of those who believe (Q 3:171; see also, without the term ajr, 2:143) and who do righteous or good deeds (Q 7:170, 9:120, 11:115, 12:56.90, 18:30; see also, without the term ajr, 3:195). Indeed, God will give them more than their due wage (Q 4:173, 35:30: wa-yazīduhum/yazīdahum; see also 24:38 and 42:26 for a similar use of zāda), and at least some people will receive their wages twice over (marratayn; Q 28:54 and 33:31).¹² A large number of formulaic verse-endings highlight that the eschatological requital awaiting the pious will be mighty or great, using the adjectives ʿaẓīm, which is predominant in Medinan passages (e.g., Q 3:172.179, 4:40.67.74.95.114 etc., 33:29.35), and kabīr (Q 11:11, 17:9, 35:7, 57:7, 67:12; see also 16:41). Other adjectives describing people’s eschatological wage are ḥasan, good (Q 18:2, 48:16), karīm, generous (Q 33:44, 36:11, 57:11.18), and ghayr mamnūn, not considered as an unearned favour or rightfully earned (Q 41:8, 68:3, 84:25, 95:6; see CDKA 259).¹³

Eschatological wage and divine forgiveness. It is salient that promises of eschatological wages are repeatedly paired with promises of divine forgiveness (maghfirah; Q 5:9, 11:11, 33:35, 35:7, 36:11, 48:29, 49:3, 67:12; see also the occurrence of ajr in proximity to declarations that God is forgiving, ghafūr, in 4:100.152, 35:30, and 73:20). The underlying rationale is spelled out in three Meccan passages (Q 29:7, 39:35, 46:16) that proclaim God’s leniency towards those who believe and do righteous deeds (Q 29:7: alladhīna āmanū wa-ʿamilū l-ṣāliḥāt) or who are God-fearing and do what is right (Q 39:33.34: al-muttaqūn, al-muḥsinūn): Q 39:35 declares that God will absolve them of the worst of what they have done (li-yukaffira llāhu ʿanhum aswaʾa lladhī ʿamilū) and recompense them with wage according to the best of what they have done (wa-yajziyahum ajrahum bi-aḥsani lladhī kānū yaʿmalūn; for more detail, see → kaffara), and the same point is made in Q 29:7 and 46:16. Two consecutive verses in Surah 16 also assert that God will recompense those who are patient (Q 16:96: la-najziyanna lladhīna ṣabarū) or who do righteous deeds (Q 16:97: la-najziyannahum) with wage according to the best of what they have done (ajrahum bi-aḥsani mā kānū yaʿmalūn).

Hence, believers will receive the just compensation that is owed to them for their virtuous deeds, whereas any sins they may have committed will not be punished according to the dictates of strict justice but will instead be magnanimously effaced. Concomitant announcements of eschatological wage and of divine forgiveness (on which see also under → al-raḥmān) accordingly reflect that the believers’ salvation is not exclusively a consequence of their intrinsic desert, despite the repeated Qur’anic insistence that eschatological reward will be apportioned like contractually stipulated pay for services rendered. Rather, it is ultimately the fact that humans have previously entered into and maintained a believing relationship with God that guarantees divine effacement or disregard of their sins, which are thus prevented from tarnishing their other-worldly prospering.

God’s wage in the Qur’an and the New Testament. Precursors for the Qur’anic promise of eschatological reward are found in the New Testament (Torrey 1892, 27), such as Matt 5:12 and 6:1–6.16 and Luke 6:23.35. They employ the Greek word misthos, which like Arabic ajr means hire, wages, payment (e.g., Luke 10:7). Particularly significant are Matt 5:12 and Luke 6:23.35, according to which those who are persecuted like the prophets or who love their enemies, do good, and expect nothing in return will receive a "great (polys) wage," recalling the frequent Qur’anic nexus between the noun ajr and the adjectives ʿaẓīm and kabīr. It is notable that the Syriac Peshitta renders misthos as agrā, the cognate of Arabic ajr. Meanwhile, Qur’anic verses describing God’s wage in the hereafter as something that is rightfully earned (ghayr mamnūn) may involve a distant resonance of Paul’s affirmation in Rom 4:4 (in the context of his exegesis of Gen 15:6) that "to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift (kata charin ≈ mamnūn?) but as something due."

As these parallels demonstrate, the Qur’an shares its use of commercial-theological language with the general urban imagery employed in religious literature of the monotheistic Near Eastern world (Rippin 1996, 133; see also CQ 49–50), ultimately going back to important conceptual shifts in Second Temple Judaism like the understanding of sin as a debt to be repaid and of charitable deeds as storable commodities (see Anderson 2009 and 2013). This deep intertextual background undermines Torrey’s assessment that the Qur’anic use of commercial notions manifests the deep-rooted commercial spirit of the Arab nature (Torrey 1892, 50). A more relevant approach would be to focus on the theological ramifications of the Qur’anic recourse to monetary metaphors, such as conceiving of eschatological salvation as God’s payment of a rightful wage. God, in his dealings with human agents, will exercise unfailing and scrupulous justice—and indeed will go well beyond the expectations of fairness that are operative in human economic interactions: he pays his servants twice their due wage and does not make deductions for any outstanding debts.¹⁴ Moreover, in being prepared to remunerate a finite quantity of this-worldly righteousness with eternal reward, God offers uniquely favourable terms of trade. Finally, the Qur’an’s deployment of economic metaphors drives home that humans who construct their daily lives around belief in posthumous divine compensation are not taking an uncertain leap of faith but are instead making a profoundly rational choice.

God’s messengers do not demand human pay. A frequent trope linked to the word ajr is the recurrent insistence in Meccan surahs that Muhammad and God’s emissaries before him, such as Noah, did not or do not ask (saʾala) for a wage from their respective audience in return for conveying God’s warnings (Q 6:90, 10:72, 11:29.51, 12:104, 25:57, 26:109.127.145.164.180, 34:47, 38:86, 42:23; see also 36:21, 52:40, 68:46). Rather, God’s emissaries will be compensated by God himself (Q 10:72, 11:29, 34:47: in ajriya illā ʿalā llāhi; similarly 11:51 and 26:109.127 etc.). Thus, God’s warners—unlike, for instance, the Egyptian sorcerers whom Pharaoh marshals to confront Moses (Q 7:113, 26:41)—are not in the service of humans but of God. Ahrens connects this with Matt 10:8, where Jesus orders his disciples to give without payment, as well as a passage in the second-century Shepherd of Hermas (Commandments 11:12) criticising the one who receives wages for his prohecy (misthous lambanōn tēs propheteias autou; Ehrmann 2003, 2:288–289; see CQ 161, BEQ 456, and Reynolds 2018, 659–660). This prophetological motif goes back as far as the Biblical condemnation of prophets who give oracles for money in Mic 3:11. That false prophets or teachers may be recognised by their acceptance or demand of material remuneration is also reiterated in other Christian texts, such as the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles 11:9.12 (Ehrmann 2003, 1:434–437) and Ephrem’s sermon on Jonah and Nineveh (Beck 1970b, no. 1:701–702), where the Syriac word agrā is employed.¹⁵

It is interesting to note that the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum argues to the contrary that he who speaks to you the word of God and dispenses spiritual food and water and everlasting life is to be offered "perishable and temporal food, for ‘the labourer (pāʿlā) deserves his wage (agreh)’ " (Vööbus 1979, 37), quoting Luke 10:7. The argument evidently reflects the increasing institutionalisation undergone by the early Christian church and the consequent need to come to terms with some form of monetary remuneration for full-time ministers. By contrast, Muhammad’s authority was in principle grounded in his prophetic charisma and not, like that of a Christian cleric, in his belonging to an ecclesiastical hierarchy whose maintenance required regular financial support in return for the regular provision of religious teaching and other services.

In the Qur’an’s Medinan period, however, Muhammad acquired responsibility for the collection and redistribution of charitable donations (see Q 9:58–59.102–103 and 58:12–13; → ṣadaqah, → zakāh) and of military spoils (Q 8:1.41, 59:6–7). This could have made him vulnerable to the complaint that his Medinan role violated the Meccan doctrine that God’s messengers do not seek remuneration, which is perhaps the reason why statements denying that Muhammad or other emissaries asked for a wage do not recur in the Medinan Qur’an (even though it is reasonable to suppose that Meccan denials that divine emissaries might claim wages continued to be known to the Medinan community). The fact that a number of Medinan passages contain catalogues of the various categories of recipients who are entitled to receive charitable assistance or a share of military spoils (see under → zakāh) could also bespeak a desire to foreground that Muhammad’s acquisition of a quasi-fiscal role did not equate to demanding wages for himself, but instead served merely to support community members in need (Sinai 2018a, 15). In highlighting the social rationale for Muhammad’s new prerogatives in Medina, the Qur’an sets him in implicit opposition to Jewish and Christian dignitaries, many of whom are roundly condemned for unjustly consuming people’s possessions in Q 9:34. One might also consider whether the stress in Q 59:6–7 that the Messenger’s spoils are effectively a gift from God (mā afāʾa llāhu ʿalā rasūlihi, what God has granted his Messenger) is to be read as an implicit appeal to the Meccan teaching that a warner’s legitimate wage will be disbursed by God himself.

ajal | term

Further vocabulary discussed: musammā | named, specified, fixed iqtaraba intr. | to draw near ḥisāb | reckoning, account waʿd | promise; pledge al-sāʿah | the hour (of the resurrection) akhkhara tr. | to postpone s.th.; to reprieve s.o. khalada intr. | to remain forever al-dunyā | the proximate life al-ʿājilah | what is fleeting, what passes in haste matāʿ ilā ḥīn | enjoyment until a certain time mattaʿa tr. (ilā ḥīn) | to grant s.o. enjoyment (until a certain time) al-ākhirah | what is final or last, the final state of things, the hereafter dār al-qarār | the abode of stability umm al-kitāb | the mother of the scripture, the mother-scripture (meaning either the celestial archetype of earthly scriptures or the Qur’an’s unequivocal core) maḥā tr. | to erase or delete s.th. kashafa tr. | to lift or remove s.th.

Overview. The noun ajal means a fixed time or term, such as the due date of a loan (Q 2:282), an antecedently stipulated length of employment (Q 28:28–29), or the waiting period (ʿiddah) that must elapse before a woman’s remarriage after a divorce or the death of her previous husband (Q 2:231–232.234–235, 65:2.4). Apart from its occasional appearance in connection with mundane transactions or family matters, the word plays a crucial theological role, which will be described in more detail in what follows (see already succinctly Mir 1987, 17).¹⁶

Phraseologically, ajal often collocates with the attribute musammā (named, specified, fixed; CDKA 139), which accompanies it both in the mundane context of money-lending (Q 2:282) and in theological or anthropological affirmations (e.g., Q 6:2). In one case, ajal has the adjective maʿdūd (Q 11:104), limited (CDKA 184). God’s setting (verb: jaʿala) of a term (ajal) also occurs in a poetic retelling of the creation of Adam attributed to the Christian poet ʿAdī ibn Zayd (al-Muʿaybid 1965, no. 103:14; see Toral-Niehoff 2008, 247–248, and Dmitriev 2010, 373–374), although in a much less universal sense than in the Qur’an: according to the poem, God cursed the serpent that seduced his creation—namely, Adam and Eve—and did not place a time limit on this curse, meaning that the curse was perpetual.

All of pre-eschatological creation has its term. God’s creation of humans and of the currently existing cosmos as a whole is Qur’anically understood to have involved the setting of an ajal or term of existence. Thus, God primordially fashioned humans from clay and "then set a term (thumma qaḍā ajalan)—there is a specified term with him (wa-ajalun musamman ʿindahu)" (Q 6:2; for other occurrences of ajal in connection with the creation of humans, see 17:99 and 40:67). More generally, the divine voice avers that we only created the heavens and the earth and what is between them in truth and with a specified term (Q 46:3: mā khalaqnā l-samāwāti wa-l-arḍa wa-mā baynahumā illā bi-l-ḥaqqi wa-ajalin musamman; see also 30:8). With respect to the sun and the moon in particular, it is repeatedly said that each runs its course until a specified term (kullun yajrī li-ajalin musamman; Q 13:2, 31:29, 35:13, 39:5). The preordained term of the cosmos as a whole is clearly the day of judgement, when the heavenly bodies, including the sun and the moon, will perish (Q 75:8–9, 77:8, 81:1–2, 82:2) and when humans will, by their own words, have reached the term that you have set for us (Q 6:128: wa-balaghnā ajalanā lladhī ajjalta lanā, harking back to 6:2.60). At the individual level, humans’ specified term (ajal musammā) is the moment of their death (Q 6:60, 39:42, 40:67; see also 3:145, where an individual’s death is called a kitāb muʾajjal, which one might render as a fixed-term decree). After death, an individual’s ethico-religious balance sheet, on the basis of which he or she will ultimately face God’s final judgement, will remain unalterably fixed. Thus, as Mir notes, the Qur’anic idea of ajal stresses the finiteness of the period of time allotted to individuals and nations for moral action (Mir 1987, 17).

As the preceding quotation from Mir intimates, human communities, too, have their specified term (cf. Acts 17:26, noted in CQ 168 and BEQ 453), for which they will be neither early nor late (Q 7:34, 10:49: li-kulli ummatin ajalun ± <fa->idhā jāʾa ajaluhum ± <fa->lā yastaʾkhirūna sāʿatan wa-lā yastaqdimūn, which is partly paralleled by 16:61; see also 15:5 and 23:43: mā tasbiqu min ummatin ajalahā wa-mā yastaʾkhirūn). Just as the term of an individual is not simply the moment of her demise but also the preamble to her resurrection and her being called to account, so the term of a human collective is not merely the moment at which they will cease to exist on earth (SQ 419) but rather the moment when they must face divine justice. This occurs either when a historical messenger figure, like Noah, urges a specific community to serve and obey God, on pain of immediate inner-historical retribution, or when God’s universal judgement finally irrupts into the world. This collective dimension of the term ajal is exemplified by Q 7:185, threatening those who dismiss our signs as a lie (v. 182) that perhaps their term has drawn near (ʿasā an yakūna qadi qtaraba ajaluhum). Pertinently, the verb iqtaraba, to draw near, elsewhere collocates with God’s reckoning (→ ḥisāb; Q 21:1), with the true pledge (al-waʿd al-ḥaqq; Q 21:97; see under → waʿada), and with the hour of the resurrection (→ al-sāʿah; Q 54:1). "As for those who expect to meet God: God’s term is coming (fa-inna ajala llāhi la-ātin), and he is hearing and knowing," declares Q 29:5, similarly employing the word ajal as a byword for the eschatological reckoning. Later on in the same surah (Q 29:53), it is said that were it not for a specified term, the punishment would come upon them [immediately], and a number of passages combine the word ajal with the verb akhkhara to express the idea that God has granted humans a temporary reprieve from his judgement and chastisement, thus enabling them to improve their prospects of passing eschatological muster (e.g., Q 11:104, 14:10).¹⁷ Thus, Q 16:61 (see similarly 35:45) asserts: "If God were to chastise people for their wrongdoing, he would not leave behind any creature on earth (mā taraka ʿalayhā min dābbatin); yet he reprieves them until a specified term (wa-lākin yuʾakhkhiruhum ilā ajalin musamman). And when their term comes, they will not be early by an hour nor late."

The Qur’an sometimes depicts pivotal theological truths as reflected or prefigured by natural phenomena. For instance, the dualism of moral right and wrong and of belief and unbelief, leading to two antithetical soteriological outcomes (namely, heaven and hell), is mirrored by cosmic dualities like day and night or male and female (Q 91:1–10, 92:1–10; see PP 224 and 233–234, as well as SPMC 122–124), and hierarchical distinctions of rank exist not only in nature and in pre-eschatological human society but also in paradise (see under → darajah). In a similar vein, the notion of a preset end point of the created order, to be followed by the hereafter, is applied to an inner-cosmic natural process like the maturation of the human fetus: "we place in the wombs whatever we will until a specified term (wa-nuqirru fī l-arḥāmi mā nashāʾu ilā ajalin musamman) and then bring youp forth as children" (Q 22:5). Later in the same surah, the addressees are reminded that animals destined to be sacrificed during the ḥajj are beneficial to you until a specified term, upon which their place of slaughter is near [or directed towards] the ancient house (Q 22:33: lakum fīhā manāfiʿu ilā ajalin musamman thumma maḥilluhā ilā l-bayti l-ʿatīq). Pre-eschatological being, one might be tempted to generalise in a Heideggerian register, is inevitably being-towards-a-term. All of the entities and processes constituting the presently existing cosmos are characterised by non-perpetuity, by built-in obsolescence: created beings are temporally finite not only a parte ante, in so far as they have a beginning in time, but also a parte post, in so far as they are destined to perish at some future time.¹⁸ In this, God’s pre-eschatological creation contrasts with the cosmic renewal following the eschatological judgement, since people’s stay in paradise and hell will be eternal (→ khalada). This contrast is explicitly drawn: the present or proximate life (→ al-dunyā) is fleeting or transient (Q 17:18, 75:20, 76:27: al-ʿājilah), offering humans enjoyment until a certain time (Q 2:36, 7:24, 16:80, 21:111, 36:44: matāʿ ilā ḥīn),¹⁹ while the final state of things (→ al-ākhirah) ensuing after the day of judgement is the abode of stability (Q 40:39: dār al-qarār).

How unalterable is God’s term? In many cases, God’s term appears to be envisaged as immutably fixed: for every term there is a written decree (Q 13:38: li-kulli ajalin kitāb; see also 3:145). In Q 42:14, the respite that God is said to have granted those who have become divided after receiving divine knowledge is called a preceding word from yourS Lord [granting reprieve] until a specified term (kalimatun sabaqat min rabbika ilā ajalin musamman; see similarly 20:129, where this preceding word is equated with a specified term).²⁰ But a statement like Q 42:14 only refers to the end of the world and thus to the term of the cosmos as a whole, which is indeed plausibly viewed as primordially inscribed into God’s creation from the beginning, in line with statements like Q 6:2 and 46:3 (see above).²¹ Should we suppose that the term of individuals and collectives is likewise unalterably and primordially fixed? The Qur’an holds that those who face divine punishment or death will sometimes plead for an extension with God (Q 14:44, 63:10, where the request is for God to grant them reprieve for a short while, ilā ajalin qarībin; see also 4:77, where the same demand is uttered in response to the commandment to fight). Such pleas are not unfounded, in so far as some passages suggest that the arrival of God’s term can be averted by human repentance and remorse. Thus, according to Q 14:10, God’s messengers announce to their respective audiences that God "calls upon youp (yadʿūkum) so that he might forgive you some of your sins and reprieve you until a specified term (wa-yuʾakhkhirakum ilā ajalin musamman). The affirmation has a close parallel in Q 71:4, where Noah admonishes his people to serve God (v. 3) so that he might forgive youp some of your sins and reprieve you until a specified term; when God’s term comes, it will not be postponed. Thus, it is only when God’s term has arrived that the subsequent judgement can no longer be delayed; up until this moment, however, deferrals remain possible. This is also spelled out rather clearly when the assertion that for every term there is a written decree in Q 13:38, cited earlier, is read together with the following verse. Q 13:39 adds that God erases and sets down what he wills; with him is the mother-scripture" (yamḥū llāhu mā yashāʾu wa-yuthbitu wa-ʿindahu ummu l-kitāb). The mother-scripture is the celestial book containing, among other things, God’s decrees for the future (see under → kitāb), and Q 13:39 suggests that God is at liberty to alter this mother-scripture as he sees fit. Hence, even after a term has been set down in the heavenly mother-scripture, God remains sovereign and free to erase (maḥā) it.

One gathers, therefore, that when a community is threatened with divine retribution by a warner like Noah, a positive response to his preaching will entail postponement of their term. This prospect is confirmed by the story of the people of Jonah, who exceptionally believed the warner sent to them, as a result of which God lifted from them the humiliating punishment in the proximate life and granted them enjoyment until a certain time (Q 10:98: lammā āmanū kashafnā ʿanhum ʿadhāba l-khizyi fī l-ḥayāti l-dunyā wa-mattaʿnāhum ilā ḥīnin; see also 37:148 and under → ʿadhdhaba). Similarly, when the Egyptians seem to feel remorse after God has struck them with a number of preliminary plagues, such as flooding, locusts, and lice (Q 7:133–134), God lifts (kashafa) his punishment (→ rijz) from them until a certain term, although they subsequently break their promise to believe Moses and to release the Israelites (Q 7:135: fa-lammā kashafnā ʿanhumu l-rijza ilā ajalin hum bālighūhu idhā hum yankuthūn; see also 43:49–50). The same sequence of human repentance and divine reprieve figures in Q 11:3, calling the addressees to "implore yourp Lord for forgiveness and then to turn to him in repentance (thumma tūbū ilayhi), so that he might grant you good enjoyment until a specified term (yumattiʿkum matāʿan ḥasanan ilā ajalin musamman) and accord his favour to those meant to receive it (wa-yuʾti kulla dhī faḍlin faḍlahu). Hence, the precise time at which a human community will face its term" would seem to depend on whether it will prove responsive or impervious to the preaching of the messenger whom God may elect to send to them. Such latitude, however, falls away once God’s retribution (as opposed to such preliminary and pedagogical chastisements as the Egyptian locusts or lice) has begun to materialise (Sinai 2019a, 248–249): once the divinely specified term of an individual or a community has arrived, no further reprieve will be granted (Q 63:11, 71:4; see also 7:34, 10:49, 16:61). That is why the requests for an extension for a short while (ilā ajalin qarībin) in Q 14:44 and 63:10 are doomed to go unanswered: on the day on which the punishment comes upon them (Q 14:44) or at the moment when death comes upon one of youp (Q 63:10) it will be too late to plead for any deferment.

ittakhadha tr. sukhriyyan | to compel s.o. to work

→ darajah

akhkhara tr. | to postpone or delay s.th.; to reprieve s.o.; to neglect to do s.th.

→ ajal, → qaddama

ākhir | last, final

al-yawm al-~ | the final day

al-~ah | what is final or last, the final state of things, the hereafter

al-dār al-~ah | the final abode

Further vocabulary discussed: awwal | first; ancient yawm al-dīn | judgement day khalada intr. | to remain forever, to be immortal āmana intr. bi- | to believe in s.th. rajā tr. | to hope for s.th.; to expect s.th. al-ḥayāh al-dunyā | the proximate life al-ʿājilah | what is fleeting, what passes in haste dār al-qarār | the abode of stability al-ūlā | what is first

Overview. The Qur’an employs the adjective ākhir—the opposite of awwal, first, ancient—both as an attribute of judgement day, which Medinan verses call al-yawm al-ākhir, the final day, and as a general label for the afterlife itself, which is frequently termed al-ākhirah, the final state of things, or al-dār al-ākhirah, the final abode. This dual use of the descriptor ākhir implies a close conceptual grouping together of the end of the world and the afterlife, making it especially fitting to speak of the Qur’anic presentation of God’s universal judgement and of paradise and hell as the Qur’an’s eschatology, namely, its teaching about final things.²² The following will mainly focus on the terms al-yawm al-ākhir and al-ākhirah, while other uses of the adjective ākhir—such as the contrast between al-awwalūn and al-ākhirūn, ancient and later generations (e.g., Q 56:13–14, 77:16–17)²³—remain largely outside the scope of the discussion. On al-nashʾah al-ākhirah/al-ukhrā, the final bringing-forth (meaning the recreation or resurrection of humans in preparation for the final judgement) in Q 29:20 and 53:47,²⁴ see briefly under → khalaqa; on al-millah al-ākhirah, which one might render contemporary religious teaching or belief, see under → millah.

Al-yawm al-ākhir. Many Medinan verses refer to the "day of judgement (→ dīn¹)" that precedes people’s eternal (verb: → khalada) stay in heaven and hell (e.g., Q 2:25.39.81–82) as the final day, al-yawm al-ākhir. Most of the relevant passages identify the final day as a mandatory object of belief (→ āmana), normally following directly after belief in God. Thus, six verses evoke the one who believes in God and the final day (Q 2:62.126.177, 5:69, 9:18–19: man āmana ± <minhum> bi-llāhi wa-l-yawmi l-ākhiri), a phrase continued in various ways, such as by reference to righteous deeds (Q 2:62, 5:69: wa-ʿamila → ṣāliḥan) or by additional objects of belief (Q 2:177). The same phrase believing in God and in the last day is also found in a string of further verses (Q 2:8.228.232.264, 3:114, 4:38–39.59.136.162, 9:29.44–45.99, 24:2, 58:22, 65:2).²⁵ Believing in God and in the last day accordingly functions as a credal condensation of the Qur’anic community’s most basic doctrinal commitments. In addition, the expression al-yawm al-ākhir occurs as the object of the verb rajā, to hope or to expect (see also under → waʿada). Thus, in Q 29:36, the only Meccan occurrence of al-yawm al-ākhir, the messenger Shuʿayb calls upon the people of Madyan, My people, serve God, expect the final day, and do not cause mischief and corruption on earth (yā-qawmi ʿbudū llāha wa-rjū l-yawma l-ākhira wa-lā taʿthaw fī l-arḍi mufsidīn). Two more Medinan verses similarly speak of the one who, as one might translate, places his hope in God and the final day (Q 33:21, 60:6: man kāna yarjū llāha wa-l-yawma l-ākhira), again singling out God and the day of judgement as two credal pillars. The Medinan employment of al-yawm al-ākhir may have something to do with the fact that the early Meccan designation yawm al-dīn, day of judgement (e.g., Q 38:78, 51:12, 70:26, 82:15.17–18), ceases to be used in the later Meccan period (→ dīn¹), even if the alternative → yawm al-˻qiyāmah, the day of resurrection, remains part of Medinan vocabulary (e.g., Q 2:85.113, 3:55.77). Al-yawm al-ākhir has a clear counterpart in New Testamental language (John 6:39–40.44.54, 7:37, 11:24 etc.: en tē eschatē hēmera = b-yawmā ḥrāyā in the Peshitta; see CQ 48),²⁶ which in turn harks back to the notion of an end of days (aḥărît hayyāmîm/yômayyāʾ) in some passages of the Hebrew Bible (Ezek 38:16, Hos 3:5, Dan 2:28 and 10:14; see TDOT 1:210–212 and TDNT 2:697–698). Medinan references to the final day thus make explicit that the Qur’an subscribes to a Biblically based understanding of earthly history as finite and moving towards a culminating end point, an end of days, at which God will sit in judgement over all moral agents that have previously lived. (What the Qur’an lacks, however, is the conception of a millennial period of messianic peace and justice before the final judgement, as predicted in Rev 20:1–6.²⁷)

Al-ākhirah. In its feminine form, the adjective ākhir provides the standard Qur’anic term for the hereafter, encompassing heaven and hell (Lange 2016a, 37–38; see also the overview of various derivatives of ʾ-kh-r in pre-Islamic poetry in el Masri 2020, 117–131). Ambros maintains that al-ākhirah is short for either al-dār al-ākhirah, the final abode, or al-ḥayāh al-ākhirah, meaning the life to come (CDKA 22), but this is not entirely certain. A handful of later Meccan and Medinan verses do indeed have al-dār al-ākhirah (Q 2:94, 6:32, 7:169, 28:77.83, 29:64, 33:29), or its variant dār al-ākhirah (Q 12:109, 16:30; see Ṭab. 1:251). Yet given that the expression al-ākhirah is fully established already in the early Meccan period (Q 53:25, 68:33, 74:53, 75:21, 79:25, 87:17, 92:13, 93:4), well before the appearance of al-dār al-ākhirah, it is not obvious that one is entitled to interpret al-ākhirah as a truncation of al-dār al-ākhirah.²⁸ As for the possibility that al-ākhirah abbreviates al-ḥayāh al-ākhirah, this latter expression is not explicitly attested in the Qur’an. It is true that several passages, starting with the early Meccan couplet Q 87:16–17, employ al-ākhirah in close proximity to → al-ḥayāh al-˻dunyā, the proximate life, and this naturally suggests that al-ākhirah, too, presupposes the noun ḥayāh, life (see also, for instance, Q 2:86, 4:74, or 9:38). Still, the fact that there are no Qur’anic instances in which ākhirah is explicitly used as a modifying adjective of ḥayāh, even where one might have expected the text to exploit the opportunity for a parallelistic pairing of al-ḥayāh al-dunyā and al-ḥayāh al-ākhirah (see Q 10:64, 14:3.27, 16:107, 41:31), gives pause; the Islamic scripture consistently prefers coupling al-ḥayāh al-dunyā with simple al-ākhirah. In view of this, it is uncertain that al-ākhirah is abbreviatory. Translators wanting to capture the term’s antonomastic allusiveness may want to have recourse to makeshift renderings like what is final or the final state of things. Many existing English translations of the Qur’an, of course, opt for the hereafter. While this has the advantage of employing an established English expression that yields at least a reasonable semantic fit, it has the drawback of capturing neither al-ākhirah’s connotation of finality nor its link with the related phrases al-yawm al-ākhir, the final day, and al-dār al-ākhirah, the final abode.

By casting the afterlife as the final state of things, the Qur’an extends the Biblically based notion of a culminating final frame of history, an end of days or a final day, to include the afterlife itself, that is, the ultimate outcome of salvation or damnation into which humans will be eternally and unalterably locked as a consequence of their earthly lives. As the Qur’an reminds its addressees, the final state of things or the final abode is not only better than the proximate life (e.g., Q 4:77, 6:32, 12:109; see also 93:4), which is said to be fleeting or transient (Q 17:18, 75:20, 76:27: al-ʿājilah), but is the abode of stability (Q 40:39: dār al-qarār; see also Q 14:29 and 38:60 as well as Lange 2016a, 38).²⁹ The final state of things is also irreversible, a fact dramatically depicted in a number of passages in which the evildoers, confronted with their impending punishment, vainly implore God to be permitted to return to their earthly existence so that they might do better (Q 6:27, 7:53, 23:99–100.107, 32:12, 35:37). The final state of things, therefore, is one that is insulated from any further change and is distinguished by its eminently enduring and non-ephemeral (or perhaps static) quality. The temporal sequentiality that is inherent in the notion of a final state of things may appear disrupted by occasional affirmations presupposing the possibility of immediate entry into paradise (→ jannah) even before the day of judgement (Q 2:154, 3:169, 36:26–28), which suggest that the Qur’an considers paradise to be in some sense contemporaneous with, rather than merely subsequent to, the present world (Lange 2016a, 39–43). But there is no genuine paradox here if one understands the term al-ākhirah to be relative to individuals: at least in some circumstances, one person may already have entered his or her ākhirah while others are still living their proximate life.

Correlates of al-ākhirah. In several early Meccan verses (Q 53:25, 79:25, 92:13, and 93:4) and again in the later Meccan verse Q 28:70, al-ākhirah is paired with al-ūlā, what is first, namely, present, pre-eschatological existence. Q 75:20–21, also early Meccan, and again Q 17:18–19 oppose al-ākhirah to al-ʿājilah, what is fleeting or what passes in haste. Across the Qur’an as a whole, however, the standard antonym of al-ākhirah is → al-dunyā or al-ḥayāh al-dunyā, the proximate life. The latter expression appears as a correlate of al-ākhirah in an early Meccan passage (Q 87:16–17) and then comes to be frequent in later Meccan and Medinan passages (for al-dunyā and al-ākhirah, see, e.g., Q 2:114.130 etc., 3:22.45.56; for al-ḥayāh al-dunyā and al-ākhirah, see, e.g., 2:86, 4:74, 13:26.34, 14:3.27). While al-ūlā and al-ʿājilah are both terms that connote temporal succession or change, the same is not true for al-ḥayāh al-dunyā: the attribute → dunyā, the feminine of adnā (nearer, nearest), is spatial rather than temporal (Lange 2016a, 37), casting the present, pre-eschatological sphere of existence as proximate. Al-dunyā in the approximate sense of this world is attested in pre-Islamic poetry (for references, see under → dunyā), but does not seem to imply al-ākhirah as its counterpart there. The early Meccan fluidity in the various correlates of al-ākhirah (al-ūlā, al-ʿājilah, al-ḥayāh al-dunyā) is certainly striking and is best explained by assuming that the established dunyā-ākhirah dichotomy of the later Meccan and the Medinan proclamations is the outcome of a gradual process of phraseological consolidation over the course of the Meccan period rather than having crystallised already in pre-Qur’anic Arabic.

On the Jewish and Christian background of the Qur’anic dunyā-ākhirah dichotomy. Nonetheless, the expression al-ākhirah as such may have had some currency in pre-Qur’anic Arabic: as noted, the expression has a significant number of occurrences in the early Meccan surahs (Q 53:25, 68:33, 74:53, 75:21, 79:25, 87:17, 92:13, 93:4), and in contrast with its shifting correlates does not really compete with any other terms in designating the afterlife.³⁰ In other words, al-ākhirah may already have been a reasonably well-established Arabic expression in the milieu of the earliest Qur’anic proclamations, even if it was not yet habitually paired with al-dunyā. It is tempting to speculate that al-ākhirah might have served Arabic-speaking Christians as a plausible equivalent of Syriac ḥartā, the end or "the eschaton" (e.g., Bedjan 1905–1910, 1:510, l. 7). In its Qur’anic use, of course, al-ākhirah refers to the hereafter—i.e., to people’s eternal residence in heaven or hell—rather than to the convulsive disintegration of the present world on the day of judgement. This semantic shift could be original to the Qur’an. Yet it is also conceivable that already pre-Qur’anic speakers of Arabic were wont to oppose al-ākhirah with al-ūlā, since this contrast is after all found in four early Meccan verses (see above) and thus has a better claim to reflecting pre-Qur’anic usage than the ākhirah-dunyā dichotomy that ultimately emerged as the Qur’anic standard. If it is the case that not only the expression al-ākhirah but also its opposition to al-ūlā were in use before the Qur’an, then this would entail that al-ākhirah had already come to refer to the hereafter prior to Muhammad’s preaching. The range of possibilities is impossible to narrow down without pre-Qur’anic Arabic prooftexts.

Functionally, the Qur’anic polarity of al-dunyā and al-ākhirah is of course akin to the New Testamental contrast between this age and the coming age (Matt 12:32: oute en toutō tō aiōni oute en tō mellonti; Peshitta: ʿālmā hānā vs ʿālmā da-ʿtīd; see also Mark 10:30 and Luke 18:30: en tō aiōni tō erchomenō = b-ʿālmā d-ātē, and Heb 2:5 and 6:5) and to the cognate juxtaposition of this world and the coming world (ha-ʿolam ha-baʾ, ʿalma d-ate; DTTM 1052, 1084–1085; DJBA 867–868) in rabbinic language. It seems clear that this is the contrast that the opposition of al-ākhirah with al-dunyā or al-ūlā is intended to express in Arabic. The match is only partial, however: the New Testamental and rabbinic opposition comprises two terms that are explicitly temporal, and it qualifies one and the same noun (aiōn, ʿolam, ʿalma) by two contrasting adjectives.³¹ By contrast, the Qur’an, as we saw, opposes a spatial term (dunyā) to a temporal one (ākhirah), without a recurrent noun underpinning both elements of the antithesis. Designating the present and the eschatological age as worlds was not unknown in pre-Islamic Arabia, as indicated by a South Arabian inscription (b-ʿlmn bʿdn w-qrbn, in the far and the near world; Mordtmann and Müller 1896, 287 and 289–290; CIH, no. 539, l. 2). It is noteworthy, therefore, that the Qur’an never employs ʿālam in the sense of New Testamental aiōn: the Qur’anic plural → al-ʿālamūn (always used in the genitive) means the world-dwellers, not the worlds.³² Instead, the Islamic scripture came to articulate the contrast between a present world or age and a coming one by a terminological pair that is relatively distinctive, with one element (al-dunyā) apparently repurposed from pre-Islamic poetic diction.

God as the first and the last. Besides the frequent application of the adjective ākhir to the day of judgement and to the afterlife, a Medinan verse exceptionally describes God himself as the first and the last (Q 57:3). The predication is a resonance of two passages from the Biblical book of Isaiah (44:6 and 48:12; see BEQ 445). To call God the first could underscore that he temporally precedes the world created by him, though Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī cautions that the priority in question does not necessarily have to be understood in a temporal sense (İskenderoğlu 2002, 71; Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī 1981, 29:210–212). In fact, other Qur’anic verses give the impression that the creation of the cosmos proceeded from a pre-existing substrate (Q 21:30), and the Islamic scripture does not generally espouse the doctrine of creation ex nihilo in an unequivocal manner (see under → khalaqa). A possible, mildly Aristotelianising solution would be to propose that God’s firstness as asserted in Q 57:3 is compatible with the existence of unformed matter in so far as the latter, being devoid of all shape, does not yet qualify as a discrete and proper existent. As for God’s description as the last, contrary to the early theologian Jahm ibn Ṣafwān (Lange 2016a, 168–171), this probably does not signal that at some future time solely God will remain in existence, since the Qur’an frequently and explicitly envisages paradise and hell as being eternal (→ khalada). More likely, the underlying rationale of calling God the last is that he, unlike other things, will never perish (Q 28:88, 55:26–27), whereas the inhabitants of paradise and hell, even though they will persist into the indefinite future, will have been resurrected from the dead, i.e., will have been recreated (e.g., Q 10:4.34, 27:64, 30:11.27: yabdaʾu l-khalqa thumma yuʿīduhu; → khalaqa). Overall, then, when the Qur’an adopts the Isaianic phrase the first and the last, it highlights God’s uncreated and unique nature, as a result of which he alone continuously and unconditionally persists through all time.

adhina intr. li- | to give permission to s.o.

idhn | permission

→ shāʾa, → malak (and briefly under → arḍ, → amr, → jinn, and → samāʾ)

adhā | harm

→ ṭahara

arḍ | earth; land

Further vocabulary discussed: al-ʿālamūn pl. | the world-dwellers al-ḥayāh al-dunyā | the proximate life al-samāwāt wa-l-arḍ pl. | the heavens and the earth rabb | lord mulk | kingship, rulership al-ghayb | the hidden khalaqa tr. | to create idhn | permission sabbaḥa intr. li- | to glorify s.o. sajada intr. li- | to prostrate o.s. before s.o. ṭawʿan wa-karhan | willingly or (literally: and) by force aslama intr. (li-) | to surrender o.s. or dedicate o.s. (to s.o., namely, God) sakhkhara tr. (li-) | to make s.o. or s.th. subservient (to s.o.), to subject s.th. or s.o. (to s.o.) dhallala, jaʿala dhalūlan tr. li- | to subject s.th. to s.o., to make s.th. subservient to s.o. anām pl. | animate beings rizq | provision dābbah | land animal afsada intr. (fī l-arḍ) | to wreak corruption (on earth / in the land) nafaʿa tr./intr. | to benefit s.o.; to be of benefit mahd, mihād | s.th. spread out basaṭa tr., daḥā tr., saṭaḥa tr., ṭaḥā tr., farasha tr., madda tr. | to spread s.th. out jaʿala/salaka subulan | to make pathways nahar | river, stream al-baḥr | the sea al-barr | dry land sayyara tr. | to enable s.o. to travel māda bi- | to make s.o. sway qarār, mustaqarr | abode, stable abode, dwelling place aḥyā tr. | to