An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 52: Lost Cities and Faithful Fire Spirits (Ahqaf(al-Ahqaf))

Ahqaf(al-Ahqaf) 1-35
Lost Cities and Faithful Fire Spirits.

Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0

For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com

Ahqaf(al-Ahqaf) 1-20

“Who is more astray than him who invokes besides Allah such as would not respond to him until the Day of Resurrection, and who are oblivious of their invocation?”

This chapter begins with the mystery characters again, which I’ve not bothered to point out for many prior chapters. Here, it’s “Ha, Mim”, which has been a common refrain. Again I looked this up, and the general answer, such as it is, seems to be that only God knows what they mean. More meaningful conjectures are scribal interjections and, as I mentioned before, some weird numerological mystical stuff. One of the more interesting, but fringe, theories, that I found is that these go with the theme where the Qur’an dares the doubter to produce something like it – by offering up Arabic characters that Qur’an is giving the reader the raw materials to write something in Arabic. Sounds … dubious to me, but I thought it was quite fun.

All of which is to say that there’s not a lot of novelty in the text, but here the Prophet is enjoined to tell doubters that he’s nothing special within a long history of apostles, but his only role is to be a warner. And also that the Book of Moses “was a guide and a mercy” and that the Qur’an is a book in Arabic to “confirm it”. I have to say, compared to the Pentateuch there’s a lot less material in the Qur’an. The Pentateuch contained all the ancient myth and history plus a load of written law, the Qur’an just tends to tell you that it’s the word of God and that you’ll be burned if you don’t believe that.

That said, there is actually some kind of commandment given - “We have enjoined man to be kind to his parents.” Because “His mother has carried him in travail, and bore him in travail, and his gestation and weaning take thirty months”. It also claims that “When he comes of age and reaches forty years”, which I at first thought that it meant that coming of age was 40 years old, but perhaps this is coming of age (at mid-teens I guess) and *also* at 40 years old.

But apart from that, the main thing that seems to separate the righteous and the non-righteous, and what kind of desserts they get in the afterlife, are based purely on faith and not deeds - “We accept the best of what they do, and overlook their misdeeds” it says of the faithful, whereas the faithless are told “you will be requited with a humiliating punishment for your acting arrogantly in the earth unduly”.

Ahqaf 21-35

"And mention [Hūd] the brother of ʿĀd, when he warned his people at Aḥqāf —and warners have passed away before and after him— saying, ‘Do not worship anyone but Allah. Indeed I fear for you the punishment of a tremendous day.’”

So here’s the titular verse, Ahqaf being the place that Hūd was sent to as an apostle, and whose people (rather predictably) refused to listen to him but (quite reasonably) asked him for a sign. After telling them that God doesn’t produce signs on order, nonetheless “When they saw it as a cloud advancing toward their valleys, they said, ‘This cloud brings us rain.’ ‘Rather it is what you sought to hasten: a hurricane carrying a painful punishment”, and Ahqaf is destroyed, the buildings left as a warning to others. “Ahqaf”, by the way, derives its name from “dune valleys” or similar, and a more poetic alternative title for this surah is “The Dune Valleys of al-Ahqaf”.

Apparently, as well, a team of jinn came to listen to the Prophet recite the Qur’an - “When We dispatched toward you a team of jinn listening to the Qurʾān, when they were in its presence, they said, ‘Be silent!’” Even the jinn are so impressed that they go away and tell the other jinn. I quite like that; it’s sort of an odd notion in that it maintains elements of the old polytheism, that of the spirit creatures the jinn, but has them convert to Islam rather than erase them completely. “See”, the Prophet is saying, “You worship the jinn, but the jinn worship my God, so you should cut out the middleman if you want to be sensible”.