Blood refers to the fluid which circulates in the arteries and veins (see artery and vein) of animals and a blood clot is a coagulated mass of this fluid. In the Qurʾān, the terms blood and blood clot do not refer primarily to concrete, physical, internal aspects of the body as they do in contemporary western cultures; indeed, the two terms function quite differently than one might expect.Except for one verse (Q 16:66), blood  (dam, pl.  dimāʾ) is always laden with a significance beyond its identity as the essential ingredient of living creatures. Thus, blood is a …

Sīra is a branch of Arabic literature that is devoted to the earliest salvation history of Islam and focuses on God’s actions towards and through his prophet Muḥammad, i.e. the revelation of the Qurʾān and the foundation of an Islamic community. The term sīra can also denote a work belonging to that literature. Sīra is the noun of kind (fiʿla) of the Arabic verb sāra, “to go,” “to travel,” etc., indicating the manner in which the action expressed by the verb is carried out (see Arabic language; grammar and the Qurʾān). Hence, it originally meant “way of going,” but its most frequent …

Tents are portable shelters for nomadic peoples and tent pegs are the objects used to fix them to the ground. Arabic dictionaries and lexicographical works provide us with a considerable variety of terms for a tent (see tools for the study of the Qurʾān), and most of this vocabulary goes back to the Arab philologists of the second-third/eighth-ninth centuries. These include al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 213/828), Abū ʿUbayda (d. 209/ 824-5), and Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī (d. 215/830), to whom later lexicographers owe much of their knowledge about the pre-Islamic Ar…

Peter of Cluny (1092 or 1094–25 December 1156) commissioned the first translation of the Qurʾān into a European language.1 During a voyage to the Iberian Peninsula in 1142, Peter hired Robert of Ketton and a team of translators to translate the Qurʾān and other texts about Islam from Arabic into Latin. Peter subsequently composed two polemical texts against Islam, which he characterized as a heresy, employing the works of his translators. Ketton’s translation was the most widely-read version of the Qurʾān among European Christians until well into the 17th century.1. LifeKnown as Pete…

Sūrat al-Fīl  Sūrat al-Fīl   Abraha   Animal Life   Chronology and the Qurʾān   Exegesis of the Qurʾān: Early Modern and Contemporary   Form and Structure of the Qurʾān   Ilāf   Journey   Narratives   Nature as Signs   People of the Elephant   Popular and Talismanic Uses of the Qurʾān   Sūra(s)   Trips and Voyages  1   Geography   Narratives   Pre-Islamic Arabia and the Qurʾān  1-2   Language and Style of the Qurʾān  1-5   Expeditions and Battles   Fire  2   Failure   Pit   Rhymed Prose  3   Animal Life   Grammar and the Qurʾān  3-4   Animal Life   Clay  4   Heaven and Sky   Meta…

Periodic celebrations held either to honor the memory of particular individuals or to remember or mark events important in sacred history. The Qurʾān does not use the word holiday (ʿīd), but this word has come to be employed for two feast days: the breaking of the fast of Ramaḍān (ʿīd al-fiṭr), and the “great ʿīd,” the feast of sacrifice (ʿīd al-aḍḥā) at the end of the rites of the pilgrimage to Mecca ( ḥajj, see ¶ pilgrimage ). To these two feast days Muslims later added other celebrations and commemorative days, including the celebration of the Prophet's birthday, thos…

The references to fauna in the Qurʾān. There are more than two hundred passages in the Qurʾān dealing with animals and six sūras bear the names of animals as titles (q 2 The Cow [Sūrat al-Baqara]; q 6 The Herding Animals [Sūrat al-Anʿām]; q 16 The Bee [Sūrat al-Naḥl]; q 27 The Ant [Sūrat al-Naml]; q 29 The Spider [Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt]; q 105 The Elephant ¶ [Sūrat al-Fīl]). Nevertheless, animal life is not a predominant theme in the Qurʾān. Animal species The common Arabic word for “animal” ḥayawān (lit. life) occurs only once in the Qurʾān (q 29:64) and actually does not refer to an animal, …

 see animal life Bibliography

A perennial woody plant with a main trunk. The Lisān al-ʿArab defines the term shajar as the “kind of plant that has a trunk or stem.” In the Qurʾān, the denominative shajara (nomen unitatis) is the form used most frequently (nineteen times) to designate this concept. The nominal shajar is found generally in a collective sense of trees, bushes or plants; in two instances (q 56:52; 36:80), however, it refers to specific trees, of which more below. For mention of other trees (date palm [q.v.], olive, etc.) see agriculture and vegetation . The contexts in which the collective sense of shajar appe…

Words representing amounts and the designation of the number of objects. The Qurʾān makes full use of a range of Arabic words denoting numbers and counting. In doing so, it employs the number words both in terms of literal counting and of representative images and symbols (see symbolic imagery ), many with an ancient heritage. Words are employed for each of the cardinal unit numbers and occasional higher numbers, including 10, 11, 12, 19, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 99, 100, 200, 300, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 5,000, 50,000, and 100,000. The number wor…

Sūrat al-Muʾminūn  Sūrat al-Muʾminūn   Biology as the Creation and Stages of Life   Jesus   Material Culture and the Qurʾān   Rhymed Prose   Ritual and the Qurʾān  1   Belief and Unbelief   Grammar and the Qurʾān  1-5   Anatomy  1-6   Belief and Unbelief   Epigraphy  1-9   Reward and Punishment  1-11   Breaking Trusts and Contracts   Literature and the Qurʾān  2   Breaking Trusts and Contracts   Literature and the Qurʾān  3   Breaking Trusts and Contracts   Language and Style of the Qurʾān  4   Breaking Trusts and Contracts  5   Chastity   Sex and Sexuality  5-6   Concubines   …

Persons or animals or plants connected by common descent. This concept emerges in the Qurʾān mainly in relationship with the glory (q.v.) of God who in his might was able to create a multitude of species upon earth (see creation; power and impotence). Thus in q 36:36: “Glory be to him who created pairs of all things, of what the earth grows, and of their own kind and of what they do not know” (see glorification of god ). The phrase “of what they do not know” is taken to refer to species unknown to humans. Similarly, in q 20:53 God is praised (see praise ) for producing from the earth many species o…

  kh-w-b    khāba    Failure   kh-w-f    khawf    Courage    Fear    Grammar and the Qurʾān    khāfa    Consolation    Fear    takhwīf    Remembrance   kh-w-ḍ    khāḍa    Grammar and the Qurʾān    Provocation   kh-y-b    khāʾib, pl. khāʾibūn    Failure   kh-y-l    khayl    Animal Life    Nature as Signs    Trips and Voyages    khayāl    Magic    mukhtālan    Boast   kh-y-m    khayma, pl. khiyām    Art and Architecture and the Qurʾān    Birth Control    Tents and Tent Pegs   kh-y-r    akhyār    Elisha    ikhtiyār    Election    Menstruation    Orthography    Politics and the Qur…

Sūrat al-Ḥajj  Sūrat al-Ḥajj   Biology as the Creation and Stages of Life   Form and Structure of the Qurʾān   Pre-1800 Preoccupations of Qurʾānic Studies   Ritual and the Qurʾān   Sūra(s)  1   Day, Times of   Expeditions and Battles   Form and Structure of the Qurʾān   Last Judgment   Sūra(s)   Time  2   Intoxicants   Lactation   Load or Burden   Wet-Nursing  3   Debate and Disputation   Devil   Opposition to Muḥammad  4   Book  5   Abortion   Anatomy   Beauty   Biology as the Creation and Stages of Life   Blood and Blood Clot   Colors   Creation   Earth   Epigraphy   Geogra…

 see animal life Bibliography

Something carried or borne, often with difficulty. The concept of load or burden appears in the Qurʾān approximately fifty times, in several forms, conveying a range of implications that can be classified as descriptive, metaphorical (see metaphor ), and morally didactic. As a term of physical description, variants of the radical ḥ-m-l frequently depict the load borne by animals such as cattle, donkeys and camels (q 12:72; 16:7; 62:5; see camel; animal life); as the cargo aboard ships (q.v.; q 23:22; 40:80) or related to natural elements such as clouds laden with rain (q 51:2; see air and …

  j-h-r    jahara    Prayer    Whisper    jahr    Prayer    Whisper   j-h-ḍ    ijhāḍ    Abortion   j-l-b-b    jilbāb, pl. jalābīb    Clothing    Community and Society in the Qurʾān    Veil    Wives of the Prophet    Women and the Qurʾān   j-l-d    jalada    Fire    jald    Flogging    Sex and Sexuality    jild, pl. julūd    Bedouin    Hides and Fleece    Sheets    Tents and Tent Pegs   j-l-l    jalal    Glory    jalla    Material Culture and the Qurʾān    jalāl    God and his Attributes    Theology and the Qurʾān    jalīl    Arabic Script    Glory    majalla    Sheets    tajallī    Ṣūfi…

A promise made to God to undertake an act of piety (q.v.). It differs from an oath (q.v.) which is not a promise to do something but a solemn declaration of truth (hence, its essential role as a form of juridical evidence; see witnessing and testifying ) performed by an act of swearing (often but not necessarily by God; but for overlap in juristic discourse on oaths and vows, see Calder, Ḥinth, esp. 220-6). A vow, which in Islam can only be made to God (for vows in pre-Islamic Arabia and non-religious vows after Islam, see Pedersen, Nadhr; see pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān ), may or may not in…

Macdonald, D.  Idolatry and Idolaters Macoraba  Geography Madelung, W.  Createdness of the Qurʾān  Emigration  Inimitability Madhabite  Yemen Madhḥij  Divination  South Arabia, Religions in Pre-Islamic Madigan, D.A.  Book  Criterion  Preserved Tablet  Revelation and Inspiration Madyan see Midian Madyanites see Midianites Madāʾ  Archaeology and the Qurʾān Madāʾin  Jerusalem Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ  Antichrist  Thamūd  Ḥijr al-Madāʾinī  Conquest Maghrib  Calligraphy  Khārijīs  Manuscripts of the Qurʾān  Mosque  Numismatics  Ornamentation and Illumination  Prayer Formulas  …

Travel episodes of long or short duration. Instances and descriptions of travel may be real, e.g. trips undertaken by qurʾānic characters, or figurative, e.g. following the straight path (see path or way ) to earn God's pleasure. Both feature prominently in the Qurʾān. Common also are references to modes of and motives for travel and allusions to the journeys (see journey ) undertaken by Muḥammad (e.g. the night journey; see ascension ) and by the early Muslim community (e.g. the hijra from Mecca [q.v.] to Medina [q.v.]; see emigration ). The Qurʾān acknowledges the fact that the cou…