Elias/Elijah (Ilyās), a prophet of the Children of Israel, who is mentioned twice or possibly three times in the Qurʾān. The early philologists recognised that the name Elias (Ilyās) was not an Arabic word (e.g. see al-Jawālīqī, 102), and that it must have been derived, via a Greek or Syriac Christian source which introduced the final ‘s’, from the Hebrew Elijāhū which means ‘Yaweh is God’ and was perhaps symbolic of his prophetic mission (Jeffery, 68; Gutmannn [Sperling], 6/331).

According to Q 6:84–85, Elias was descended from Noah and is considered one of ‘the righteous’ (al-ṣāliḥīn). …