Metaphors of Death and Resurrection in the Qur’an

Front matter

METAPHORS OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION IN THE QUR'AN

An Intertextual Approach with

Biblical and Rabbinic Literature

Preface

With the Qur'ans main theme being the Day of Resurrection, it is only imperative to closely study the topic. The traditional Muslim understanding is that death and resurrection in the Qur'an is physical with resurrection portrayed as bones leaving their graves. One of the problems humanity faces is that once a stimulus is associated with something, they typically take it for granted without questioning the premises. Unquestioned premises kill curiosity, which I think might be the natural pure state of a person that Muslim tradition calls ‘fitrah’. In Muslim tradition, every person is born with this pure state, but their surrounding environment feeds them with premises. Humans are born with the thirst for curiosity and, unfortunately, children are usually taught not to question what their parents or teachers tell them. This book attempts to at least resurrect the readers' curiosity and not to push a conclusion on anyone. Once premises are shattered, humans will remove the shackles onto which they chain themselves, and then curiosity may be re-ignited. Curious minds will then attempt to go on a journey in search for truth. Such a journey might be intellectual, spiritual or both. The intention is not to assert what the Qur'an says or means, but it is to make people recognize that no matter how much we think we know, we really do not know anything. A person living in the darkness of a cave for a very long time their eyes become atrophied and, therefore, become blinded. With time living in such darkness, the person would start to hallucinate. After a very long time, that person will be unable to recognize what is reality and what is hallucination. Perhaps this is the state of humanity; our souls are living in the darkness of a cave for a very long time. While this book does not essentially suggest what reality is, it at least attempts to make us recognize that we might be hallucinating. The Qur'an suggests that it endeavours to take people from the darkness to the light. The first step is to make us recognize the darkness that we are in and that we are only hallucinating so that we realize there is more to reality than what we think.

Additionally, inter-religious dialogue is ever-more important. While there are some Muslim theological dialogues with Jews and Christians, meaningful theological dialogues with some Eastern traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism are especially lacking. One of the major differences in the worldview is resurrection vis-à-vis reincarnation. While this book does not claim the Qur'an adheres to a specific worldview that will be fully compatible with another, it does open doors for a humble dialogue.

Let us break ourselves from the shackles of premises, resurrect our curiosity and travel together on a journey of self-discovery and sincere search for truth. It is not easy to leave our comfort zones. The journey is not easy. It is an act of kendsis to reach theðsis. I do not even have the answers. I can only make you realize that a journey is important and that we can travel together. Please forgive me for my shortcomings.

ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful for the Living (al-Hayy) and the living, for the Living has given the living life. I am also very thankful for the dead, for many who were living are dead.

I am appreciative for my physical life (even if such a physicality is not a reality) and everyone who caused it and sustained it. I am grateful for the First Cause and the chain reaction of causes. I am indebted to my late grandparents (Zainab and Abdulla), my parents (Afaf and Ibrahim) and my siblings (Hassan, Sarah, and Hind). I am also very grateful to the divine for matching me with a partner, Fatma, who would accompany me in my spiritual journeys.

I am indebted to the many mentors, friends and colleagues who have steered and supported the mental exploration without which this work would not have been possible: Reuven Firestone, Gabriel Reynolds, John Kaltner, Walid Saleh, Ulrika Mårtensson, David Penchansky, Zohar Hadromi-Allouche, Ayman Shihadeh, Francis X. Clooney, Kurt Anders Richardson, David Burrell, Gordon Newby, Michael Pregill, Holger Zellentin, Mun’im Sirry, Nicolai Sinai, the late Andrew Rippin, Rick Sopher, Esther-Miriam Wagner, Ahmad al-Khuraibet, Mansour al-Khouri, Ben and Diane Blackwell, and many others who have shared their wisdom over the years. I wish to thank those who supported this project and those who did not. I wish to also thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback.

I am truly filled with praise for life and death, light and darkness, vision and blindness, hearing and deafness, noise and silence, friends and enemies, and the unity of all the opposites. I am sincerely grateful for the supreme existence, in which nothing else exists except it.

ix

NOTES ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

Arabic s 2 r E f ! a,a 3 Z à Q b o» s = k m t os sh J l e th us $ e? m [d J ua q Ù n zZ h L t 5,8 h € kh Lh Zz 3 wt à d a t yii E dh a gh

The short vowelization at the end of a word is typically omitted.

Other languages

The book uses other languages, mainly Semitic and Greek. For transliterations of the Hebrew Bible (HB) and the Greek New Testament (NT), the SBL Handbook of Style (2nd edition) is used. For other Semitic terms, the transliteration follows similar to the Arabic with vowelization sometimes omitted.

Quranic translations used in this book are from The Study Quran (TSQ),' with changes to modernize some English terms or other noted changes. Biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRS V) unless otherwise noted.

Quotes from the Mishnah mostly use Neusners translation, with some variations.

Quotes from the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud mostly use Neusner's translation with some variations.

A note on dates

Throughout the manuscript, two dates of death are given for Muslim individuals: the first date is AH and the second is CE.

X

INTRODUCTION

Considering all the themes that scholars have explored in combination with the Qur'an - Jesus in the Qur'an, women in the Qur'an, and so forth - the subject of death in the Qur'an has anchored relatively few modern studies.’ It is a curious ratio because eschatology and the concept of the Day of Resurrection together constitute a major theme in the Qur'an? and perhaps the theme to which the text is most devoted.’

If the major Qur’anic discourse is on death and resurrection, then by Socratic definition, it is a book of philosophy. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860 cE) said,

Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as 0avárov ueAéwn [thanatou melete]. Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing.*

Commenting on Schopenhauer's statement, R. Raj Singh understands from this that, ‘Death is described here as not just one among many concerns and issues of philosophy but as the business of philosophy? Some will debate around the edges, but theology and philosophy are closely intertwined. Ingolf U. Dalferth has sketched their relationships in this way:

Theology is not philosophy, and philosophy is not a substitute for religious convictions. But whereas religion can exist without philosophy, and philosophy without religion, theology cannot exist without recourse to each of the other two.*

Plato (d. 347 BCE) narrates that Socrates (d. 399 BcE) defined philosophy as‘meleté thanatow (rehearsal for death). The theological arguments of the Qur'an concentrate greatly on the topic of death and resurrection. Thus, one needs to understand what the Qur'anic philosophy about death and resurrection is.

One of the scholarly works on death in the Qur'an in the last century is Thomas O'Shaughnessys Muhammads Thoughts on Death: A Thematic Study of the Qur'anic Data O'Shaughnessy sifts through possible Syriac sources for the concept of death in the Qur'an? He asserts that the Qur'an adopts in many instances a biblical view of death, although the earliest references to death in the Qur'an, according to the chronological order he adopts, are metaphoric:

The subject of death occupies a place of growing frequency and importance in the Qur'àn as one passes from the Meccan to the Medinan period. Its earlier occurrences are more often in figures of speech, but these gradually yield to a greater preoccupation with the reality as Muhammad advances in years. Even a casual paging through the Qur'àn will show to what extent it reflects the manyfaceted Biblical view of death, more evidently as set forth in the Old Testament but as closer inspection will reveal, also as propounded in the figurative language of the New.”

One of the great scholarly books written on the topic of death in Islam is The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection," in which Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Y. Haddad study how the topic evolved throughout history and through various teachings and theological schools in Muslim traditions. This study, in contrast, does not solely focus on the Muslim tradition, and when it does refer to tradition, it generally uses it as a comparative tool through a critical lens. The aim of this book is to look at the principles of death, life and resurrection in the Qur'an. The intention is not to completely ignore the Muslim tradition but to investigate the definition of death in the Qur'an and any possible subtexts that the Qur'an adopts. The reason for such an approach is simple: investigating the Qur'anic concept; it is not necessarily because Muslim tradition has been viewed by many scholars with a sceptical eye in adequately interpreting the Qur'an, and sometimes with good reason; John Wansbrough,” Patricia Crone, Michael Cook,? Fred Donner" and Gabriel Reynolds? have been among the many who point out such inadequacy.'? However, itis in an attempt to read the Qur'an for what it is without completely ignoring some of the insights that may also be found from the Muslim tradition, which allows us to appreciate the plethora of interpretations that also already exist within it. In other words, it is an attempt to do some form of ijtihād (independent reasoning) in Qur'anic hermeneutics and not simply an imitation of it (taqlid al-ijtihád)."

Indeed, there are numerous legends in circulation, many of which have been drawn on to fill lacunae in Qur'anic interpretation by traditional exegetes. For example, traditional exegetes have misrepresented and to some extent misinterpreted the Qiblah passages in the Qur'an by asserting that they are arguing with Jews and Christians about the prophethood of Muhammad or the superiority of the Ka bah, when it seems highly likely that the passages are instead alluding to the Shema in Deuteronomy and its rabbinic commentary. This sometimes calls into question the reliability of Muslim tradition in the interpretation of the Qur’an.” Thus, this book treads carefully when comparing Muslim tradition with the Qur’anic text, but still appreciates the diverse and insightful understandings already found from within the tradition.

Patricia Crone is a scholar who has, more recently, discussed resurrection in the Qur’an.” She mainly focused on the nonbelievers’ attitudes towards the Qur'anic concept, yet, like most scholars, took the Qur’anic understanding of bodily

Introduction 3 resurrection for granted?! She divides the nonbelievers into a spectrum of attitudes, those unconcerned about the resurrection (perhaps because some believe they will be saved) and those who doubt or deny it." Crone identifies Qur'anic passages about those who doubt resurrection using such terms as rayb (e.g. Qur'an 22:5), shakk (e.g. Qur'an 34:21) or zann (e.g. Qur'an 28:39).?

While Crone upholds that the Qur'an does not much discuss other forms of an afterlife or their nature, she particularly endorses the notion that the Qur'an argues for bodily resurrection:

In short, the unbelievers in the Meccan suras are depicted now as believing in the resurrection without paying much attention to it, now as doubting it, and now as denying it outright, rejecting the very idea of life after death. Their emphasis on the impossibility of restoring decomposed bodies could be taken to mean that some of them believed in a spiritual afterlife, but there are no polemics against this idea, nor against other forms of afterlife such as reincarnation. In so far as one can tell, the disagreement is never over the form that life after death will take, only about its reality. The choice is between bodily resurrection and no afterlife at all.”

She implies two main things: that the Qur'an did not engage with people who believed in different forms of an afterlife, and that it advocates bodily resurrection. However, as is discussed in the first chapter of this book, pre-Islamic Arabia made space for various views of an afterlife, and it is conceivable that Muhammad might have known many of these views. If the Qur'an did not engage with them, either for or against, it may actually be very telling: the Qur'anic portrayal of what is seemingly a bodily resurrection may not be as literal as one would expect.

Yet one cannot discuss death and resurrection in the Qur'an without also discussing the nafs.” The meaning of this term, whether in the Qur'an or the Bible, has always daunted scholars of the Near East: is it the soul, an embodied self, or an ethereal spirit? It is said that the concept of a disembodied soul comes from ancient Greek philosophy and is foreign to Semitic people. However, Richard C. Steiner has argued that this is not the case and that the Semitic people from the times of the ancient Near East, including the ancient Israelites, had an understanding of a disembodied nepes even before Hellenistic interaction. Therefore, this book closely investigates the concept of the nafs in the Qur’an to understand further the concept of death and life in the Qur’an.

Other issues this study introduces to readers concern reincarnation and resurrection. These two concepts appear to be distinct philosophies that existed in the ancient world. Eastern philosophies, and even ancient Greek philosophy, embraced various concepts of reincarnation or the transmigration of souls. Contrariwise, ancient Egyptians, the Semitic people, and, with the rise of Zoroastrianism, the Persian culture embraced concepts of resurrection instead. These two great philosophies, reincarnation and resurrection, existed in the Near East by the time the Qur’an was formulated. Therefore, it is imperative to understand such notions.

The traditional view, accepted by most scholars, interprets most Qur’anic passages concerning resurrection as bodily resurrection. For example, Jane Smith states, "Ihat resurrection at the time of judgment means a resuscitation of the physical body is an accepted reality in Islam and well attested by the Qur'an? While some studies on death in the Qur'an focus on physical death and resurrection, this book analyses the definition of death and resurrection in the Qur'an focusing on the metaphorical and spiritual aspects of death, especially in light of some of the intertextual relationships of some Qur'anic passages with biblical, extrabiblical and rabbinic literature. It argues that the Qur'an portrays two different kinds of death and resurrection, that of the body and that of the nafs, which may be understood as the body’s soul or life force. Therefore, there needs to bea distinction between what the Qur’an describes as the resurrection of the body and what it describes as the resurrection of the nafs.

Several passages in the Qur’an appear to allude to bodily resurrection, but many of those passages, including some that are very lucid in their description of resurrection, do not necessarily refer to it in a literal way. Throughout Muslim history, several Muslim philosophers and mystics have interpreted resurrection as being completely spiritual, not bodily. Ibn Sina (d. 428/1037), for example, rejected the concept of physical resurrection because of its irrationality.? In some of his works, such as Kitab al-najah and Kitab al-shifa’, he does concede that it is to be accepted as a doctrine of faith disregarding reason, but in his more esoteric book on metaphysics, Risdlah fil-adwiyah al-qalbiyah, he completely allegorizes and rejects physical resurrection.

At times, the Qur'an appears to be explicitly talking about people who are spiritually dead, who may be described as walking tombs or, in other words, zombies. Certain Muslim schools of thought have very distinct interpretations of an afterlife that mainstream Muslims consider heretical. In some Isma ‘ili discourse, the resurrection has been understood spiritually, which is the resurrection of the nafs (soul) enabling one to understand the esoteric meanings of divine revelation.” The Haft bab by Hassan-i Mahmid-i Katib (d. c. 1242 cz; previously attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah) depicts the Isma‘ili doctrine of resurrection in a spiritual manner when the esoteric understandings of the shari‘ah (Islamic law) become manifest.*!

Setting prophetic traditions (ahddith) aside and looking mainly at the Qur'an, we can identify that physical resurrection is not what the Qur'an is always alluding to in the passages that discuss resurrection. Schools of thought with different interpretations for resurrection do not necessarily need to go out of their way to explain their standpoints.

For the purpose of this book, physical resurrection is defined as dead bodies leaving their graves. The reason this needs to be made explicit is that metaphorical resurrection can also be physical: the resurrection of a city may be metaphorical in the sense of a city being rebuilt and repopulated. Therefore, the main argument this book makes is that passages concerning resurrection in the Qur’an are not always physical, and when they are physical, they can still be understood metaphorically, without necessarily denoting bodies leaving their graves. However,

Introduction 5 this argument does not imply that Islam does not teach physical resurrection.” Some Muslim doctrines do not necessarily explicitly trace themselves to the Qur'an, such as the expectation of a Messianic figure. Therefore, even if the argument made is that the Qur'an does not always denote physical resurrection, I am not at all arguing that the doctrine of physical resurrection is not Islamic.

Another important finding this book tries to understand is the type of audience with whom the Qur'an is in conversation. Understanding the possible subtexts or oral traditions from biblical, extrabiblical and rabbinic traditions open a door in understanding the community with whom the Qur'an engages. It appears that the Jewish community with whom the Qur'an is in dialogue is well-aware of the Torah, rabbinic literature and even Jewish liturgy. This provides us some insights to this community. When analysing Islamic sources about this possible Jewish community, Haggai Mazuz concludes that the Jews, during the earliest years of Islam, were Talmudic-Rabbinic Jews who were observant and held beliefs in accordance with the midrash (rabbinic interpretations).? While his approach was mainly through Islamic traditional sources and not necessarily the Qur'an, the findings of this book might echo some of his own: the Jewish community with whom the Qur’an is in discussion are well aware of rabbinic tradition, interpretation and liturgy.

Chapter 1

Reincarnation and resurrection are both philosophical conceptions of the afterlife, but with apparent contradictions. In general, reincarnation is the broad notion of rebirth, whether the transmigration of conscious souls, as in Hinduism, or the transmigration of fruits of actions (karma) taken up by a different, yet related personality, as in Buddhism. Many traditions of ancient Europe, such as Pythagoreanism and Manichaeism, include concepts of reincarnation.! Resurrection is also not a concept exclusive to the Abrahamic religions, as it also exists in Zoroastrianism’ as well as in ancient Egyptian cosmologies.? This chapter introduces those different concepts of the afterlife, as they were not foreign to the audience of the Qur’an, though the specifics of their nature have varied across cultures. After introducing these concepts, a section introduces the methodology used in the book in its attempt to focus on the passages of death and resurrection in the Qur'an that are possibly intended to be metaphorical or spiritual or, possibly, effectively have dual meaning.

Reincarnation

The origins of reincarnation are difficult to discern. The notion had some prominence in Indic culture, ancient Greece! and even among Celtic Druids.° Its attestation among Amerindians and the Inuit led Mircea Eliade and Antonia Mills to argue that such beliefs might also have existed in the shamanic principles of hunter-gatherer tribes. When invoked, ancestors spirits may sometimes possess the body of the shaman." Such early beliefs might have been the kernel from which the belief in metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, evolved.

Reincarnation comprises a diversity of beliefs. In ancient Greece, Pythagoras believed in the immortality of the soul* and in metempsychosis.’ Both concepts are prevalent in India, leading some scholars to argue that Pythagorean beliefs might have roots there." Although the ancient Egyptians also believed in the immortality of the soul, the nature of the afterlife and resurrection in Egyptian culture appear to be distinct from the Pythagorean view.

Reincarnation in India underwent a great transformation with the rise of Buddhism. Buddhist teachings do not include the immortality of the soul.

Buddhism denies the existence of a soul or a self in a living being; accordingly, reincarnation does not take the form of metempsychosis, in which a soul is reborn, but in the form of metamorphosis." This was a break from the Hindu understanding of an átman (soul), a term that can be traced back to the Rigveda in the second millennium BcE by the Indo-European tribes that lived in Northern India."

Buddhism teaches non-self (anattà or anátman), as can be seen in the Nikaya Suttas.? In Buddhism, a soul does not migrate to be reborn in another body since there is no concept of an immortal soul.‘ An important tenet of Buddhism is the concept of impermanence (anicca or anitya), according to which nothing is immortal. Although the concept of impermanence also exists in Hinduism in that everything is constantly changing," the difference is mainly on the existence of a soul (atman)." In Buddhism, a soul does not exist.^ When it comes to paths to liberation (nirvana in Buddhism or moksha in Hinduism), does the distinction really matter??? Is a monk seeking liberation selfish? Buddhist tradition shows that Gautama Buddha tried to teach only what is necessary for liberation. Many Buddhist monks, in some traditions, do not even seek to achieve liberation; rather, the aim is to become a bodhisattva, one who wants to become enlightened for the sake of others and not oneself, and who therefore delays nirvana out of compassion for all beings.”

Whether or not the doctrine of non-self (anattà) is a way to teach selflessness,” itled to an evolution of the concept of reincarnation - there no longer being a soul to leave a body and be reborn.? It was for this reason that some Buddhists prefer the term ‘rebirth’ over reincarnation.?

Concepts of reincarnation can be seen in Kabbalah and in orthodox Hasidic Judaism;™ in some Muslim schools of thought, such as the Druze (branching from the Isma'ilis);? and among some Christian Gnostics of the past.” The various concepts of reincarnation within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam continuously evolved throughout history." Jane Smith writes:

Metempsychosis [tanásukh] and incarnation of spirits in other bodies [hulül] have been upheld by some individuals and some schools in the history of Islam. The doctrine of metempsychosis came originally to Islam from India and gained credence in a number of schools of thought considered outside the orthodox fold. Some persons associated with the Mu'tazila held that God's justice necessitates another opportunity for those whose good and bad deeds are equal and who thus merit neither the Fire nor the Garden. Many of the Shi‘a, such as the Ismà ilia, Batiniya [sic] and others, applied the doctrine of metempsychosis both to the Imam and to individual believers. Most Sufis, like most orthodox Muslims, have rejected transmigration, although a few accept it as a means of achieving spiritual perfection.”

Despite resurrection being a fundamental theme in the Qur'an, several early Muslim schools of thought accepted reincarnation.? Even later Muslim groups, such as Yoruba Muslims, do accept reincarnation; in the Yoruba tradition, reincarnation is believed to occur within the family,” as is true of many shamanistic belief systems.’ Reincarnation’s acceptance among Yoruba Muslims suggests that they might have simply been influenced by shamanistic indigenous beliefs that predate Islam in the region. The Druze concept of reincarnation, as another example, is strictly within the faith. That is, a person who is born into a Druze family would not reincarnate as a non-Druze after death.? The concept of reincarnation in Islamic thought may have come from the East - in India, as Smith and Haddad state,” but it may also have originated with Muslim interaction with the treatises of Greek philosophers, especially among the Druze, many of whom held Pythagoras in high esteem.** Delving into various Muslim schools of thought that believed in reincarnation, Patricia Crone found they were from not only esoteric but also exoteric schools? She suggests that influence from followers of the Persian Mazdak (d. 528 cE)** - who, though a Zoroastrian, believed in reincarnation” - made its way into Muslim thought.** While Zoroastrianism espouses a belief in resurrection, it has been suggested that Manichaean influence might have gradually imposed itself during Late Antiquity, including the notion of reincarnation,” even though their beliefs and tenets diverged in other aspects.

Although the Qur'an appears to have emerged within a milieu of resurrection surrounded by Judaism, Christianity and even Zoroastrianism, some pre-Islamic Arabs might have believed in some sort of reincarnation called ‘the return (al-raj ah), in which a person returns to this life after physical death." Some Muslim exegetes even interpret the following Qur'anic passages as the raj 'ah that some pre-Islamic Arabs believed in:*!

There is nothing but our life in this world: we die and we live, and we will not be resurrected.

Qur'an 23:37

They say, “There is nothing but our life in this world. We die and we live, and none destroys us except time [al-dahr]: But they have no knowledge thereof. They are but deluded.”

However, we have no details of the nature of this raj ‘ah or whether, indeed, some pre-Islamic Arabs believed in it. Perhaps it was influenced by Greek, Gnostic, or even Manichaean doctrines of metempsychosis. It could also have been only speculations by some Qur anic exegetes many centuries after the emergence of the Qur'an to make sense of some of its passages that might point to some people asking for a raj 'ah (return) to this life (e.g. Qur'an 23:99). Patricia Crone did suggest the possibility of various views on an afterlife existing within the Qur'anic milieu. She argued that the Qur'an particularly engages with those who denied or doubted the reality of it.? When commenting on the word order of ‘we die and we live, she does, however, assume that the nonbelievers are using a biblical formula, in which God is shown to have the power to bring forth death and life in that order

(e.g. Deut. 32:39, 1 Sam. 2:6, 2 Kgs. 5:7). It is likely that the Qur'an is aware of some biblical formulae, but Crone suggests that the nonbelievers, in this case, are also fully aware of the Bible or more so parabiblical literature, and, therefore, know the biblical formula.? She is convinced that the Qur'anic nonbelievers (mushrikün) have some Judaeo-Christian roots.^

Some later Muslim communities, such as some Shii schools of thought, do believe in the raj ah (return) of their imams, meaning they will return to this life to lead their followers." This kind of return to this life may not be strange within the early Islamic milieu, as resurrection in some Jewish thought is the return of the righteous to this life during the Messianic Age.? These conceptions of a select group who would return to life was part of Near Eastern beliefs, as will be discussed in the next section. Abū al-'Alà' al-Ma'arri (d. 449/1057) is known to have denied resurrection, and some think he might have subscribed to the raj ‘ah.”

Some traditional Muslim scholars interpret the dahr (time) in Qur'an 45:24 - ‘We die and we live, and none destroys us except time (al-dahr)' - as a form of reincarnation.? Some scholars hold that some pre-Islamic Arabs believed in this form of reincarnation, and think that it perhaps had Persian influence from Zurvanism, whose name in Middle Persian, zurvàán, actually means time.?' After all, Zurvàn, who is the god of time, is also the god of life and death.” Aida Gasimova argued of Zurvanite influence on pre-Islamic Arabian doctrines,? which makes the connection between Zurvàn with the concept of dahr a possibility, even though W. Montgomery Watt hesitated to assert such relationship.? In pre-Islamic Arabian poetry, dahr is presented fatalistically.**

Acknowledging Manichaeism, Mazdakism within Zoroastrianism, and other traditions, Patricia Crone states, Reincarnation of the soul and periodic incarnation of the deity were ideas with a wide diffusion in the pre-Islamic Near East, and the concept of the moon as a carrier of souls is likely to have been widely diffused too.*’ Within the Islamic milieu of the Near East, reincarnation was not a foreign concept. Moreover, if Hinduism, which has a highly developed concept of reincarnation,? emerged from a religion of some Indo-European tribes? that migrated to India from Iran or other places within the Eurasian steppes,” then the Indian branch may not necessarily be the prime influencer of transmigration of souls among the ancient Greeks or other places like Persia. These traditions might have shared a similar heritage for such belief! or this belief could have emerged in these cultures independently.

One should not assume, as Margaret Smith suggests, that the concept of reincarnation has only entered Muslim thought directly from India, or perhaps to a lesser extent from Greek philosophy on the transmigration of souls,” but that such concepts were known to pre-Islamic Arabs through the Persians, within the Qur'anic milieu. Nonetheless, this does not necessarily mean that all Muslim schools of thought that have espoused the doctrine of reincarnation of some sort throughout history have all taken it from either pre-Islamic Arab concepts or Persian; indeed, perhaps some were influenced by other cultures, such as Greek or Indian.?