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One of several Jewish clans of Medina (q.v.) in pre- and early Islamic times (see jews and judaism; tribes and clans; pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān). In the Islamic tradition, they are usually considered part of the triad of important Medinan Jewish clans that also includes the Banū Qaynuqāʿ (see qaynuqāʿ ) and the Banū Qurayẓa, though often only the Naḍīr and the Qurayẓa (q.v.) are mentioned. The latter two were sometimes called al-kāhinān, “the two priest clans” and Arabic sources provide an Arabicized “Israelite” genealogy of the Naḍīr reaching back to Aaron (q.v.; Hārūn). The actu…

Kemāl, N.  Sovereignty Kennedy, Ph.  Samuel Kerbala see Karbalā Kermani, N.  Intellect  Post-Enlightenment Academic Study of the Qurʾān  Revelation and Inspiration  Rhetoric and the Qurʾān Kern, L.  Companions of the Prophet Keshab Chandra Sen  Translations of the Qurʾān Keturah  Midian Khadduri, M.  Justice and Injustice al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr (d. 311/922)  Creeds Khaddām Ḥusayn  Printing of the Qurʾān Khadīja  Nāmūs  Slaves and Slavery  Syria  Uncertainty Khadīja bt. Khuwaylid (the Prophetʿs first wife)  Emigration  Fāṭima  Informants  Khadīja  Mary  Prayer  Religious Pl…

The perception of reality through the eyes, or — for immaterial realities or future events — also the “mind's eye.” Two main semantic fields converge in the notion of ¶ “visions”: one is oneiric, referring to dreams ( ruʾyā; see dreams and sleep ) and the other is sensory, meaning the actual faculty of sight ( baṣar, pl. abṣār). In both cases divine action plays a central role (see revelation and inspiration ). When associated with dreams, visions appear as processes forced upon humans by divine stimulation. Most prominent of these are: the dream of Abraham (q.v.) that involves the sacrif…

Journeys undertaken for military purposes, including raids for the purpose of plunder and assassination, and single engagements of armed and/or mounted forces, each of which is intent upon decisive victory. The term “battle” may also be used in a figurative sense, and refers to a struggle with ¶ one's spiritual and psychological self, i.e. a battle against ego, greed, addiction, etc. Both senses are relevant to the use of this vocabulary in the Qurʾān. There are several terms used in the Qurʾān to refer to acts of aggression, some of which make reference directly, and…

Resistance to the political and religious authority (q.v.) of Muḥammad. The Qurʾān is very much a document that shows the struggle of a new faith (q.v.) coming into existence, and the career of Muḥammad is very much the story of a man who eventually defeated all odds when shaping the first community of believers (see community and society in the qurʾān ). Additionally, the qurʾānic concept of prophecy (see prophets and prophethood ) is profoundly marked by the experience of opposition (see q 25:31; 40:5). The fact of being opposed both theologically and politically (see politics and the q…

Gain or acquisition by force of arms. In the Islamic context it is associated with the ‘opening’ of a land to the message and rule of Islam. The Qurʾān, revealed as it ¶ was before the Islamic conquests had begun, does not possess a clear concept of conquest, but the Arabic root f-t-ḥ produced during the first Islamic century the technical term for the Muslims' conquests over the Byzantine and Sasanian empires (fatḥ/futūḥ) and is frequently translated as such in the Qurʾān. The Qurʾān has much to say about warfare (see war ). It is enjoined upon those able to do so (q 48:17 exempts the blind, cr…

The Prophet is usually said to have had thirteen wives or concubines, of whom nine survived him. But there is some dispute as to the identity of the thirteen. Some modern Muslim biographers have linked the large size of the Prophet's harem to the fact that all of the Prophet's marriages had been concluded by the time that the early Medinan revelation of q 4:3 limited the number of wives to four (Haykal, Life of Muḥammad, 293; see marriage and divorce ). Conversely, an Orientalist historian of the qurʾānic text has suggested that the Prophet had only four wives at the time of the revelation of q 4:3 …

The sons of Adam and Eve (q.v.). The qurʾānic account of Cain and Abel (q 5:27-32) closely follows the narrative in the Bible ( Gen 4:1-16; see scripture and the qurʾān ). Each of the two sons of Adam and Eve — whose names are not mentioned in the Qurʾān — offers a sacrifice (q.v.): Only Abel's was accepted while Cain's was rejected because he was not God-fearing. Upon Cain's threat to murder Abel, the latter remained passive, wishing only that Cain be held responsible for the sins of both ( innī urīdu an tabūʾa bi-ithmī wa-ithmika,q 5:29) and punished accordingly (see chastisement and punishment )…

At present the field of archaeology has little to contribute to an understanding of the Qurʾān and the milieu in which Islam arose. Archaeological excavations are taboo in Mecca (q.v.) and Mecca (q.v.) and only a few other excavations or surveys have yet taken place in the Arabian peninsula that shed much light on the topic. The pioneering work on historical geography and on the initial survey and collections of inscriptions in the Arabian peninsula began at the end of the nineteenth century with such explorers as Alois Musil in northern Arabia and Eduard Glaser in the Yemen, but only a lim…

A literary unit of undetermined length within the Qurʾān, often translated as “chapter.” In the printed editions of the Qurʾān, but not in the earliest manuscripts (see manuscripts of the qurʾān), it is marked as such by a title section that provides the name of the sūra, followed by a number that defines its place in the sequence of the 114 sūras of the entire corpus. Sūra names are not abbreviations of the content but “catchwords,” taking up a particular lexeme from the text that is either a rare word in the Qurʾān (e.g. q 80, Sūrat ʿAbasa, “He Frowned”) and thus easy to remember, or a…

The ninth month of the Islamic calendar, during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset and commemorate the revelation of the Qurʾān to Muḥammad. To understand Ramaḍān as a crucial scriptural and ritual issue in a major world religion, it is useful to look at its emergence and liturgical enactments from a comparative perspective (see scripture and the qurʾān; ritual and the qurʾān). It is obvious that, in phenomenological terms, three historically interrelated festivals — Pesach (Passover), Easter and Ramaḍān — display a close relation to acts of violence (q.v.) in tha…

Terminology The Arabic term denoting “Jews” is yahūd, which occurs seven times in the Qurʾān. The form hūd also denotes the same and appears in this sense three times. The singular, yahūdī, occurs once. From yahūd/hūd was derived the secondary verb hāda, which means “to be a Jew/Jewish.” “Those who were Jews” (hādū) is mentioned ten times. This verb appears once with the complementary ilā (q 7:156), in which case it denotes “to return to.” It is put into the mouth of Moses (q.v.), who says to God: “We have returned (hudnā) to you.” Obviously, this is a play on yahūd, on behalf of whom Moses is…

Preliminary reflections about the redaction and canonization of the Qurʾān Methodological dilemmas Any assessment of qurʾānic form and structure depends on the position chosen by the researcher as to the redaction and the canonization of the qurʾānic corpus (see collection of the qurʾān; codices of the qurʾān; for a recent analysis of western views on the collection of the Qurʾān, see Motzki, Collection). Two apparently irreconcilable positions are currently infelicitously blocking each other in qurʾānic scholarship: on the one hand, there …

The Muslim Prophet to whom God's revelation was “sent down” ( nuzzila,q 47:2; see prophets and prophethood; revelation and inspiration). On three occasions the name is followed by the title “messenger” (q.v.; rasūl), i.e. God's messenger (q 3:144; 33:40; 48:29). ¶ Names and appellations When, however, the Qurʾān addresses the Prophet directly in the second person, he is not referred to as “Muḥammad,” but is called by various appellations that indicate his relation to God. Here, apart from rasūl, the title most frequently used is al-nabī, “prophet” (q 8:64; 66:8, etc.). The appellati…

The Qurʾān is the most recent of the major sacred scriptures to have appeared in the chronology of human history. It originated at a crucial moment in time when Muḥammad proclaimed it in the northwestern half of the Arabian peninsula during the first quarter of the seventh century c.e. The Qurʾān exhibits a significant relationship to the biblical tradition, the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, while it shows no literary affinity to the sacred literatures of Hinduism and Buddhism and little to Zoroastrian sacred writings (see scripture and the qurʾān ). The elements of the bib…