This entry deals with Qurʾānic narratives about men and women in relation to the afterlife, specifically the Garden(s) of Paradise and the Fire(s) of Hell, and how those narratives often were changed, recast, and reinterpreted in the early centuries of Islam as traditions developed and were informed by the contexts in which Islam found itself the ruling faith.

Much popular Islamic lore portrays the afterlife as the habitation of glorious abodes of paradise where all is comfort, bliss (including sexual), and tranquility. In these stories there often see…