It was in the privileged region of Arabia, nearly four thousand years ago as per
Biblical records and Islamic traditions, that a man named Ibrahim (Abram or
Abraham) was born in a family of stone carvers who from his very early life,
protested against man's worship of other men and stone objects.
The story is
narrated in the Holy Qur’an as in following Verses translated by M. H. Shakir:
[6.74] And when Ibrahim said to his sire, Azar1: Do you take idols for gods?
Surely I see you and your people in manifest error.
[6.75] And thus did We show
Ibrahim the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and that he might be of those
who are sure.
[6.76] So when the night over-shadowed him, he saw a star; said
he: Is this my Lord? So when it set, he said: I do not love the setting ones.
[6.77] Then when he saw the moon rising, he said: Is this my Lord? So when it
set, he said: If my Lord had not guided me I should certainly be of the erring
people.
[6.78] Then when he saw the sun rising, he said: Is this my Lord? Is
this the greatest? So when it set, he said: O my people! surely I am clear of
what you set up (with Allah).
[6.79] Surely I have turned myself, being upright,
wholly to Him Who originated the heavens and the earth, and I am not of the
polytheists.
[2.258] Have you not considered him (Namrud) who disputed with
Ibrahim about his Lord, because Allah had given him the kingdom? When Ibrahim
said: My Lord is He who gives life and causes to die, he said: I give life and
cause death. Ibrahim said: So surely Allah causes the sun to rise from the east,
then make it rise from the west; thus he who disbelieved was confounded; and
Allah does not guide aright the unjust people.
[21.51] And certainly We gave to
Ibrahim his rectitude before, and We knew him fully well.
[21.52] When he said
to his father and his people: What are these images to whose worship you cleave?
[21.53] They said: We found our fathers worshipping them.
[21.54] He said:
Certainly you have been, (both) you and your fathers, in manifest error.
[21.55]
They said: Have you brought to us the truth, or are you one of the triflers?
[21.56] He said: Nay! your Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, Who
brought them into existence, and I am of those who bear witness to this:
[21.57] And, by Allah! I will certainly do something against your idols after you go
away, turning back.
[21.58] So he broke them into pieces, except the chief of
them, that haply they may return to it.
[21.59] They said: Who has done this to
our gods? Most surely he is one of the unjust.
[21.60] They said: We heard a
youth called Ibrahim speak of them.
[21.61] Said they: Then bring him before the
eyes of the people, perhaps they may bear witness.
[21.62] They said: Have you
done this to our gods, O Ibrahim?
[21.63] He said: Surely (some doer) has done
it; the chief of them is this, therefore ask them, if they can speak.
[21.64]
Then they turned to themselves and said: Surely you yourselves are the unjust;
[21.65] Then they were made to hang down their heads: Certainly you know that
they do not speak.
[21.66] He said: What! do you then serve besides Allah what
brings you not any benefit at all, nor does it harm you?
[21.67] Fie on you and
on what you serve besides Allah; what! do you not then understand?
[21.68] They said: Burn him and help your gods, if you are going to do (anything).
[21.69] We said: O fire! be a comfort and peace to Ibrahim;
[21.70] And they desired a war on him, but We made them the greatest losers.
[21.71] And We delivered him as well as Lut (removing them) to the land which We had blessed for all people.
[21.72] And We gave him Ishaq and Yaqoub, a son's son, and We made (them) all
good.
1: According to Qur’an Abraham’s father was Azar, not Terah as in KJB
Genesis 11:26 “And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and
Haran.”
After considerable reflection and divine guidance on the commonly
worshipped phenomena and the royal claims of divinity, he put forward the
concept of a Supreme Being, omnipotent and omnipresent, who created the world
and who alone deserved to be worshiped; that by comparison to that Being all
humans are almost equal and ought to treat each other equally and that all human
beings will have to account for all their actions on the day of judgment. The
believers of Jewism, Christianity and Islam believe that the ideas were not his
own but were the result of God’s guidance.
As he became vocal in the expression
of his ideas of human dignity, monotheistic religion and democratic attitudes,
the imperial establishment unable to counter him by argument began to feel
threatened and he was made the object of crude persecution. The refusal to
worship political and religious rulers and their deities was really a negation
of their domination, which deserved the most exemplary punishment. So much so,
that he had to leave his homeland and migrate to a distant land.
According to
merged and rationalized Biblical and Muslim traditions he left Mesopotamia (now
Iraq) and migrated to Egypt with his beautiful wife Sarah (or Serai). As per
Islamic popular texts his reputation as a man of great new ideas earned him
access to the court of the King or Pharaoh, but unfortunately the King was more
impressed by Sarah's beauty than by Prophet Ibrahim's (PBUH) philosophy. (The
Old Testament/Torah however says that Abram was forced to migrate from Canaan
due to famine Genesis 13.10).
According to generally accepted legends the
Pharaoh promptly gave him one of his prettiest maids or daughter according to
some traditions -- Hagar, hoping to make a fair exchange. But he was quite
disappointed when he discovered Sarah's complete loyalty to Ibrahim. In the
meantime, Hagar also started showing signs of having been influenced by
Ibrahim's philosophy of dignity and fidelity. The King was shattered. Here was a
man who possessed the ability to command absolute loyalty and unity of thought
with individuals close to him; something he had always wanted but never
achieved. He could not have Ibrahim (PBUH) killed. So, he simply asked him to
leave Egypt and take both women with him. If the legends are true, then the
original descendants of Ibrahim (pbuh) in Hijaz would also be of a mixed race.
The holy Qur’an does mention the aborted sacrifice of Ibrahim’s son Ismail but
does not corroborate the name or number of his wives.
Prophet Ibrahim (PBUH) on his part had learned the crucial lesson that it is futile to try to reform a
corrupt establishment by joining it and working from within. He decided to
create an institution of his own. By coincidence or design or divine guidance he
ended up in the valley of Makkah situated in the middle of mountains and only a
few meters above a great aquifer i.e., a natural underground water reservoir.
Possibly as he stood on one of the mountains around Makkah and looked around and
saw vegetation and wild animals in the mountain surrounded valley, he knew that
occasionally it rained in the area. But there was no lake at the bottom of the
valley, so where did the rainwater go? There had to be a great aquifer and
cracks in the earth through which water seeped; the same cracks could serve as
wells, or water could be stored by digging waterways and embankments. Ibrahim
was not just a stone carver and philosopher; he was a good engineer too. There
he settled with his wife who gave birth to a pious and obedient son Ismail with
whom he built a cubic structure on whose walls he wrote his inspired thesis on
human dignity proclaiming the unacceptability of man's worship of man or
objects, the equality of all men in worldly matters and the inevitability of a
day of final reckoning leading to heaven or hell. The message would have been in
hieroglyphics running in seven lines spirally along the four walls -- perhaps
the writing referred to in the Qur'an as "Sohhof Ibrahim....." (Verse 87:19). This
was Ka'bah, the first monument to what we call Democracy.
The holy Qur’an describes the event as follows:
[2.127] And when Ibrahim and Ismail raised the
foundations of the House: Our Lord! accept from us; surely Thou art the Hearing,
the Knowing:
[2.128] Our Lord! and make us both submissive to Thee and (raise)
from our offspring a nation submitting to Thee, and show us our ways of devotion
and turn to us (mercifully), surely Thou art the Oft-returning (to mercy), the
Merciful.
[2.129] Our Lord! and raise up in them an Apostle from among them who
shall recite to them Thy communications and teach them the Book and the wisdom,
and purify them; surely Thou art the Mighty, the Wise.
For hundreds of years to follow, men and women would come to walk around this Ka'bah, read the
inscriptions and meditate and get inspiration to live with dignity, freedom and
democracy. From the traditionally established direction of circumambulation
(Tawaf) it is apparent that the inscriptions on the walls of the Ka'bah were in
a language that was written and read from left to right. The kissing of the
black stone fixed at the edge from where circumambulations start and end is
exactly in line with the Arab custom of kissing a book after reading it. The
black stone of Ka'bah may have been the world's first bookmark.
Traditions indicate that with the passage of time, the Ka'bah gradually came to be known as
a place where one could acquire great knowledge and wisdom -- even magic. The
sanctity of the place would impart the visitor absolution from his sins; and the
infirm could regain health by exercising between the hills of Safa and Marwa and
drinking the mineral rich water of the nearby natural fountain of Zamzam. In
those days it was believed that sickness was the punishment for one’s sins or
was caused by evil spirits, and any place or person or object that helped people
to be cured had to have divine significance and power of atonement. So much so
that even trading caravans traveling between Northern Arabia and Yemen began to
make a detour to stop by it. Makkah thus became, maybe, the world's first city
to have simultaneously a university, a hospital, a church, an international
trading center and no king.
The following extract from Wikipedia raises serious doubts about the credibility of the Biblical accounts. “In the early to mid-20th
century leading scholars such as William F. Albright and Albrecht Alt believed
the patriarchs and matriarchs to be either real individuals or believable
composite people living in the "patriarchal age", the 2nd millennium BCE. In the
1970s, however, new conclusions about Israel's past and the biblical texts
challenged this portrait. The two works largely responsible were Thomas L.
Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (1974), and John Van
Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition (1975). Thompson's argument, based on
archaeology and ancient texts, was that no compelling evidence pointed to the
patriarchs living in the 2nd millennium and that the biblical texts reflected
first millennium conditions and concerns; Van Seters, basing himself on an
examination of the patriarchal stories, agreed with Thompson that their names,
social milieu and messages strongly suggested that they were Iron Age
creations.[7] By the beginning of the 21st century, and despite sporadic
attempts by more conservative scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen to save the
patriarchal narratives as history, archaeologists had "given up hope of
recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible
'historical figures'".
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham#Historicity
However it seems that the western archeologists were looking for Abraham in the
wrong place. The Bible suggests that Abraham travelled from Canaan to Egypt and
back along the shores of the Mediterranean. If they had looked further south in
those areas of Saudi Arabia close to Makkah and Madinah, they might have had
better luck. Excavations at Tayma reported in 2010 CE have already revealed some
hieroglyphic inscriptions dating back to 12th century BCE.
It is strange that
although Abraham is regarded as the founder of Jewish and Christian morality,
the Old Testament depicts him as a liar who on occasion introduced his wife as
his sister to save his own life and earn riches (Genesis 13:10-16)
Genesis 13
10 And there was a famine in the land : and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn
there ; for the famine was grievous in the land.
11 And it came to pass, when he
was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now,
I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon :
12 therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife :
and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.
13 Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister : that it may be well with me for thy sake ; and my soul shall
live because of thee.
14 And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into
Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
15 The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh : and the woman was
taken into Pharaoh’s house.
16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake : and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she
asses, and camels.
The end of the episode is equally instructive as to the virtues of courage and faith in God:
17. And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his
house with great plagues, because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
18. And Pharaoh called
Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me ? why didst thou not
tell me that she was thy wife ?
19. Why saidst thou, She is my sister ? so I
might have taken her to me to wife : now therefore behold thy wife, take her,
and go thy way.
20. And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him : and they sent
him away, and his wife, and all that he had.
It is obvious that Pharaoh was a decent and kindhearted person who was conned by the fugitive from Canaan.
Abram is also depicted in Bible/Torah as a heartless opportunist who banished his Egyptian wife and elder son to the desert after his old fair wife bore a son. The
tradition seems to have survived to date as in Saudi Arabia I learnt that
occasionally a Lebanese businessman visiting other countries would be
accompanied by a lady whom he would introduce as his sister who would quickly
and smartly establish intimate relation with the local official or businessman
and obtain concessions for her ‘brother’.
It is also possible that Abram and Abraham were two separate individuals, the former from northern and the latter
from southern Arabia and their legends were somehow merged somewhere in the
middle. The following Verses of the Bible, Book of Genesis Chapter 17 might have
a clue to the dramatic change:
17.1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God ;
walk before me, and be thou perfect.
17.5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham ; for a father of many nations have
I made thee.
17.15 And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt
not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.
Having pondered the above two accounts, one is persuaded to wonder if the reported encounters of Mr. Abram
were really with God or with Satan whose mission according to Qur’an is:
[15:39] He said: My Lord! because Thou hast made life evil to me, I will certainly make
(evil) fairseeming to them on earth, and I will certainly cause them all to
deviate.
