Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

120 t CHAPTER FIVE
own—in which the verse was sent down. These latter stories,
taken discretely, constituted an entire genre of Arabic literature.
The “Occasions of Revelation”—its most famous example is a
work of that same name by al-Wahidi (d. 1075)—find themselves
midway between biography and exegesis. Standing separately, as
they did in the “Occasions” collections, they are clearly intended
to explain scattered, though by no means all or even most, verses
in the Quran. Arranged chronologically with a linking narration,
they become the stuff of a “Life” of the Prophet.
As exegetical devices, the anecdotes dubbed “Occasions of Revelation”
served both halakic and haggadic ends, that is, to illumine
behavioral prescriptions and prohibitions or to enlarge, for any of
various reasons, a quranic pointer into what remains in the sacred
text a dark corner. In the first instance, the Quran’s various injunctions
against drinking wine are explained in the “Occasions”
through a series of anecdotes in which one or a number of Muhammad’s
followers come drunk to prayers or commit other improprieties,
which then provokes the sending down of the verse.
Thus, it becomes clear that wine is forbidden not because it is impure
or unclean, like the prohibited flesh of swine or carrion, but
because it causes intoxication, which in turn leads to impropriety.
The haggadic occasions are more diverse since their end is not so
much practical as informational or devotional. Many of the verses
of sura 2, for example, are explained in terms of Muhammad’s
confrontation with the Jews of Medina in 622–624. In another
approach, Quran 2:116 notes (with disapproval) that “They say,
‘God has taken a son. Glory be to Him!’” without, as often, bothering
to identify “they.” Al-Wahidi, in his Occasions, explains, not
entirely helpfully, that the “they” of this verse refers to “the Jews
when they said Uzayr [Ezra?] is the son of God and the Christians
of Najran when they said the Messiah [that is, Jesus] is the son of
God, and the polytheists among the Arabs who said the angels are
the daughters of God.” The verse, then, is expanded either from an
independent source or, far more likely, from what seems plausible
to either Al-Wahidi or other practitioners of the genre.