Negotiating Justice: A Pre–Canonical Reading of the Qur'anic Creation Accounts1 (Part II)

Abstract

With the evaluation of the polythematic sūra, i.e. with the transition of the Qur'an from an oral to a written and thus Scripture-orientated text, a complex structure for the primordial drama emerges. The divine election of man as God's closest creature and the forecast of an elected community is framed in the story of a bargain contracted between God and Iblīs in pre-existence which entails for Iblīs the freedom to test man – with the exception of God's elect. This story is retold with ever-changing focus in six sūras; only the later ones are complemented by the account of the transgression itself, i.e. the first enactment of the test staged by Satan and involving the first couple, Adam and his companion. The paper will show how, in the wake of the abolition of the old mythical structures, gradually new – Islamic – images laden with symbolic meanings emerge, leading finally to the concept of a divine agency on earth, the khilāfa.