THE CREATION STORY IN SURAT AL-BAQARA, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO AL-TABARI'S MATERIAL: AN ANALYSIS*

The story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the disobedience of Iblis and man is not recounted in the Qur'an as one continuous narrative encompassing all the story's elements from beginning to end. Rather, it is divided over the following suras: 1. Al-Baqara, verses 30 to 38 2. verses 11 to 25 3. Al-Ryr, verses 26 to 48 4. Al-Isra', verses 61 to 65 5. Al-Kahf, verse 50 6. Taha, verses 115 to 123 and 7. Sad, verses 7'1 to 85 Each one of these passages constitutes a narrative sequence and may be designated as a secondary narrative sequence or a 'sub-text'. The elements of the Qur' anic creation story arc distributed over the sub-text level and their totality makes up an implied 'primary text' from which the sub-texts are generated. The primary text does not figure in the Qur'anic text (henceforth, QT) but it can be reconstructed by listing all the elements of the sub-texts and ordering them according to their chrono/logical sequence. On the primary text level, events follow a linear generative scheme that may be represented as such: a- b-c- d ... etc. (where event 'a' leads to event 'b', event 'b' leads to event 'c', and so on). The overall temporal scheme on this level gives us what is described here as 'external time'. This time is 'external' in relation to the time of the sub-text. On the sub-text level, events unfold according to a different temporal scheme that may be represented as such: a-c- g-h ... etc. (where event 'a' is followed by event 'c', event 'c' is followed by event 'g' ... etc.). This temporal scheme represents the sub-text's 'internal time' according to which primary text elements are subordinated to a cer- tain organisational scheme of inclusion and exclusion. Historically, QT has given rise to the vast supplementary material of . This material did also incorporate QT's narratives, augmenting them and enriching them with prolific details and particulars. This led

* This article is part of a longer paper on the creation story in the Qur¸�n. For the translations of the verses I have used Arthur J. Arberry's The Koran Interpreted. 202

to the rise of what may be described as a parallel text (henceforth, PT) that comments on the Qur' anic stories, supplements them and heightens their impact.' The material of PT will be seen here as an extension of QT's material and will be treated as a 'subplot'.

SUB-TEXT 1: AL-BAQARA

huwa 'lladhi khalaqa la-kum 'l-ardi _7ami an thumma 'staze?a ila 'l-samä'i i fa-sawwa-hunna sabca samäwätin wa huwa bi-kulli shay'in callmun. [29]

"It is He who created for you all that is in the earth, then He lifted Himself to heaven and levelled then seven heavens; and He has knowledge of everything." Though the story proper starts in the next verse, this verse serves as a prelude that sets the scene for what unfolds subsequently. The central event in this verse, i.e. the creation of earth and the seven firmaments, is narrated by an independent, implicit voice that takes an active part in the composition of QT, in this case assuming the nature of a 'narrative' voice. The verse's construction presupposes a recipient, an addressee (indicated by the second person plural masculine pronominal suffix of la- kum) and refers to two spatial realms: al-ard and al-samä'. The verse con- strasts 'earth' as one space with 'heaven' as a multi-space that is made up of 'seven heavens'. Earth does, however, turn into a multi-space of I seven earths' in the subplot of PT. In his tafsir, al-Tabari cites a tradition attributed to some of the Prophet's Companions which recounts that the first thing God created was water and then He sat on His Throne which was on that water.2 When God wanted to create the creatures, He pro- duced smoke out of the water which rose (sama) up from the water making up the heaven (al-sama'). He then dried up the water and turned it into an earth, which He then split up into 'seven earths' that were created on the Sunday and the Monday. According to this tradition,

1 The origin of this material does not fall within the scope of this article. For a com- parative exposition of the Biblical and Qur¸�nic creation stories see Johann-Dietrich Thysen. Bibel und Koran: Eine Synopsegemeinsamer-Uberlieferungen, Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1989, pp. 2-25. For treatments of the origins of the Qur¸dnic and popular creation stories see D. Sidersky, Les originesdes légendesmusulmanes dans le Coran et dans les vies des prophètes, Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1933, pp. 9-20, and Heinrich Speyer, Die Biblischen Erzalungen im Qoran, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlangsbuchhandlung, 1961, pp. 41-83. 2 b. jar�r al-Tabar�,j �mi�al-Bay �fn� Ta¸w �'l-Qur¸l �n,Beirut: Dar al- Kutub al-�llmiyya,1992. 1: 231-32. There were differences among Muslim authorities concerning the very first thing that God created. A tradition attributed to Ibn �abb�s maintains that the first thing God created was the Pen which is mentioned in Q68:11. God then asked the Pen to write, the Pen asked what to write and God answered, "Al- Qadar" (Fate, Destiny). And then the Pen wrote down what was foreordained from that Day till the Hour of Resurrection. See ibid., 12: 175.