Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān

Get access Subject: Middle East and Islamic Studies
General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC


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(5 words)

 see oath; curse Bibliography


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 see lawful and unlawful; food and drink Bibliography


(1,276 words)

Author(s): Daneshgar, Majid
Unlike in the Bible, there are no direct references to the sword (commonly known in Arabic as al-sayf) in the Qurʾān. However, various Islamic exegetical works, traditions, Ṣūfī texts, and folk stories (ḥikāyāt) suggest a connection between the sword and particular verses of the Qurʾān (see Daneshgar). As such, Muslims have, for instance, often embellished their swords and other weapons with Qurʾānic verses, such as Q 61:13 (Daneshgar).The most direct reference to a sharp blade, of any kind, is found in Q 12:31, in which Zulaykhā shows off Yūsuf’s (Joseph’s) beauty to five (or a di…
Date: 2018-08-14

Symbolic Imagery

(2,639 words)

Author(s): Colby, Frederick S.
The use of allusion and figurative language to produce vivid descriptions and complex levels of meaning. The symbolic imagery in the Qurʾān arises out of the symbolic imagery of previous revelations as well as out of the poetic conventions of pre-Islamic Arabia (see scripture and the qurʾān; poetry and poets; pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān). While a key verse in the Qurʾān ( q 3:7) has sometimes been read to suggest that Muslims should not attempt to interpret its more ambiguous (q.v.) or symbolic passages, most Muslim exegetes (see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval) have …


(11 words)

 see jews and judaism; religious pluralism and the qurʾān Bibliography


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 see arabic language Bibliography


(1,495 words)

Author(s): Shahīd, Irfan
In the larger sense, Syria (in Arabic al-Shām) extended from the Euphrates River/ Amanus Mountains to the Gulf of Clysma/ Suez. The region was known to the pre-Islamic Arabs (q.v.), especially the Meccans, whose caravans (see caravan) traversed the spice-route, the two termini of which, Gaza and Buṣrā, were visited by them, as was the Sinai (q.v.) peninsula (see also pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān). The term Syria or al-Shām does not appear in the Qurʾān but, as al-Shām included the holy land, references to it in the Qurʾān as the land of the biblical prop…

Syriac and the Qurʾān

(17 words)

 see foreign vocabulary; language and style of the qurʾān; christians and christianity Bibliography

Syriac and the Qurʾān

(8,961 words)

Author(s): El-Badawi, Emran
Syriac was an Aramaic dialect spoken by Christians in and around Arabia during the time of the Qurʾān’s appearance. It originated in northern Mesopotamia and Syria but became the lingua franca of the late antique Near East (ca. second-seventh centuries C.E.), and the “golden age” of Syriac literature flourished from the fourth to the seventh centuries (Brock, A brief outline, 9-21). Syriac was the official language of the West Syrian (Jacobite) and East Syrian (Nestorian) churches, while the closely related dialect of Christian Palestinian Aramaic was used by the Chalcedonian…
Date: 2018-08-14