Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE MUSLIM SCRIPTURE t 119
out of it, the “Tales of the Prophets” that enlightened and entertained
early generations of Muslims.
There is another kind of history in the Quran, though it is
spread thinly and obliquely through the text. These are the rare
allusions to contemporary events, the famous battle at Badr Wells,
for example, in Quran 3:123. They had some claim to explanation,
but there was another historical motive at work, or rather, a
legal motive with historical implication. The revelations were received
by Muhammad and proclaimed, it was understood, on this
occasion or that over the course of twenty-two years. At times the
“occasional” quality of the revelation is underlined in the text.
Some are precise replies to very specific criticisms of or allegations
against the Prophet (e.g., 33:37) or, on one famous occasion, his
wife (24:11–20). But where, when, and under what circumstances
were the allegations made or the responses sent down?
The historical net may be spread even wider. Many of the quranic
revelations are prescriptive, whereby Muhammad or the community
of believers as a whole is bidden to perform one act (like
ritual prayer) or avoid another (like swearing oaths). Fulfillment of
these commands and prohibitions, at least in their particulars, required
knowledge of the circumstances that prompted such a revelation.
This had raised biographical and historical questions that
were answered in precisely a historical manner by Muslim exegetes
and that, like the biblical material, produced its own freestanding
literary genre, the “Occasions of Revelation.”
The “Occasions of Revelation”
The extant early biographies of Muhammad, which are arranged
in traditional chronological order, often gloss events in his life by
reference to specific verses in the Quran, most notably 93:6–8 on
his preprophetic days and 53:1–18 on his visions. The connection
is of course equally effective in the opposite direction: the biographical
event inevitably illuminates the quranic verse by providing
the sorely needed context—the Quran provides none of its