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TheQiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (Arabic:قِصَص الْأَنـۢبِيَاء,lit. 'Stories of the Prophets') is any of various collections of stories about figures recognised asprophets and messengers in Islam, closely related totafsīr (exegesis of the Qur'an).
Since theQuran refers only parabolically to the stories of the prophets, assuming the audience is able to complete the rest from their own knowledge, it became necessary to store the version the original audience had in mind to keep the purpose of the message, when Islam met other cultures during its expansion.[1]
Authors of these texts drew on many traditions available to medieval Islamic civilization such as those of Asia, Africa, China, and Europe. Many of these scholars were also authors of commentaries on the Qurʾān; unlike Qurʾān commentaries, however, which follow the order and structure of the Qurʾān itself, theqaṣaṣ told its stories of the prophets in chronological order, which makes them similar to the Jewish and Christian versions of theBible. The narrations within theQasas al-anbiyāʾ frequently emphasise wisdom and moral teachings rather than limiting themselves to historical-style narratives.[2]
Islamic scholars and theologians have consistently regarded the writings inQaṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ as undependable for studying the lives ofProphets or for historical research; viewing the work with disapproval.[3]Abdul Wahhab Najjar's (1862–1941) modernQaṣaṣ explains the stories of the prophets solely based on Quranic sources, being diametrically opposed to the Medieval tractate of the same title. However, they share the chronological structure of earlierQaṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ and a summary of the prophetic moral lessons.[4]
TheQaṣaṣ thus usually begins with the creation of the world and its various creatures including angels, and culminating inAdam. Following the stories of Adam and his family come the tales ofIdris;Nuh andShem;Hud andSalih;Ibrahim,Ismail and his motherHajar;Lut;Ishaq,Jacob and Esau, andYusuf;Shuaib;Musa and his brotherAaron;Khidr;Joshua,Eleazar, andElijah; the kingsSamuel,Saul,Dawud, andSulaiman;Yunus;Dhu al-Kifl andDhu al-Qarnayn; all the way up to and includingYahya andJesus, son ofMaryam. Sometimes the author incorporated related local folklore or oral traditions, and many of theQaṣaṣ al-'Anbiyāʾ's tales echo medieval Christian and Jewish stories.
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The Qurʾān frequently mentions and makes use of stories of biblical figures, but only in the case ofJoseph son of Jacob (Yūsuf ibn Yaqūb) does it narrate a prophet's story linearly and in full. Implicitly the original audiences of the Qurʾān had enough knowledge of these biblical figures to understand the allusions, but subsequent early Muslims felt the need for more information about these figures, who came in Islam to be known asprophets (أنبياء,anbiyāʾ).[5]: xii–xiii Particularly influential sources of biblical knowledge, whose information was transmitted by later Muslim scholars, wereʿAbdullāh ibn Salām (d. 663),Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (d. c. 652), andWahb ibn Munabbih (d. c. 730); their information underpinned the first written expositions of the Qurʾān's allusions to biblical figures,exegetical commentaries (tafsir).[5]: xii–xiii These commentaries inspired a tradition of historical writing that began to present biblical figures in a more linear, narrative form; the principal work of this kind was theTarikh al-rusul wa-l-muluk byal-Tabari (839–923).[6][5]: xv–xvi
Alongside written commentaries in the early Islamic period, under theUmayyad Caliphate, people paid storytellers (quṣṣāṣ) to preach about religion to the people; they communicated legends about biblical figures that were circulating both orally and in writing among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities. Along with preachers during theFriday prayers, they were the first paid functionaries of Islamic religion. From the eighth century they were increasingly disparaged as folkloric preachers, and were disregarded by institutional scholars (ʿulamāʾ).[7][5]: xiv–xv
By the early ninth century CE the tradition of both written commentaries and oral storytelling inspired collections of fully narrated biographies of the prophets, and theseQaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ became a distinct genre of Islamic literature:[8][9][5]: xii–xvi the earliest to survive areMubtadaʾ al-dunyā wa-qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ byAbū Ḥudhayfa Isḥāq ibn Bishr Qurashī (d. 821) and theKitāb badʾ al-khalq wa-qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ ofʿUmāra ibn Wathīma (died 902).[10][11]: 132–33 Perhaps the most important work, characterised by Roberto Tottoli as "probably the most comprehensive collection of stories of the prophets, and [...] the most widely known in the Arab world", wasAbū Isḥāq al-ThaʿlabīʿArāʾis al-majālis fī qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, from around the early eleventh century.[11]: 133
Like the Qurʾānic commentaries or Jewishhaggadic texts, however, theQaṣaṣ are often didactic rather than simply narrative.[9] Unlike the Qurʾān, theQaṣaṣ were never considered as binding or authoritative by theologians. Instead, the purpose of theQaṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ was to offer Muslims complementary material on the basis of the Qurʾān, to explain the signs of God, and the reason for the advent of the prophets.[12] Themselves derived from Jewish and Christian texts,Qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ went on to influence Jewish writing within the majority-Muslim world: for example, the fourteenth-century Jewish scholarShāhin-i Shirāzi drew on such sources.[citation needed]
During the mid-sixteenth century, severalilluminated versions of theQaṣaṣ — such asZubdat al-Tawarikh andSiyer-i Nebi — were created byOttoman authors andminiature painters. According to Milstein et al., "iconographical study [of the texts] reveals ideological programs and cliché typical of the Ottoman polemical discourse with itsShi'ite rival inIran, and its Christian neighbors in the West."[13]
| author | title | date (CE) | language | modern translations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abū Ḥudhayfa Isḥāq ibn Bishr Qurashī | Mubtadaʾ al-dunyā wa-qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ | c. 800 | Arabic | |
| ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma | Kitāb badʾ al-khalq wa-qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ | ninth century | Arabic | French[14] |
| al-Ṭabarī | Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk | early tenth century | Arabic | English[15] |
| Baḷʿamī | Tarikhnama | tenth century | Persian | |
| Abū Isḥāq al-Thaʿlabī | ʿArāʾis al-majālis fī qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ | early eleventh century | Arabic | English,[16] German[17] |
| Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī | Qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ | earlier eleventh century | Arabic | Italian[18] |
| Abū Naṣr Aḥmad al-Bukhārī | Tāj al-qaṣaṣ | c. 1081 | Persian | |
| Muḥammad al-Kisāʾī | Qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ | c. 1100 | Arabic | English,[5] Hebrew |
| Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm ibn Mansūr ibn Khalaf | twelfth century | |||
| Nāṣir al-Dīn ibn Burhān al-Dīn Rabghūzī | Qaṣaṣ-i Rabghūzī | 1310/1311 | Khwārazm Turkish | English[19] |
| Mustafa ofErzurum | Siyer-i Nebi | fourtheenth century | Ottoman Turkish | |
| Ibn Kathir | Qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ | fourteenth century | Arabic | |
| Muḥammad Rabadán | Discurso de la luz de Muhamad | 1603 | Spanish |
Islamic theological circles have never consideredqasas al-anbiya works of either type as a reliable source.. All Islamic theologians until the present day have maintained a negative attitude towardqasas al-anbiya works
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Media related toQisas Al-Anbiya at Wikimedia Commons
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