Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: 

Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1977), 8–12; Bernard Weiss, 

“Covenant and Law in Islam.” In Religion and Law: 

Biblical, Judaic, and Islamic Perspectives, edited by E. 

B. Firmage, B. Weiss and J. W. Welch, 49–83 (Winona 

Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990).

creation

Historians of religion have noted that most reli-

gions and traditional societies have creation 

myths—stories about the origins of the world, 

plants and 

animals

, human beings, and important 

K  170  

covenant

---

aspects of social life. The events these nonsci-

entific accounts describe purportedly took place 

during the primordium, at the beginning time of 

the world and human history. People hold them 

to be true in literal and symbolic ways, and the 

stories contain reflections about human mortality, 

good and evil, and even the end of the world. Cre-

ation accounts are usually recited, remembered, 

or performed in rituals on important 

holidays

,

usually linked to the seasons.

Islamic stories and beliefs about creation are 

to be found in the q

Uran

 and a wide array of 

writings in Arabic, Persian, and other languages 

in the Muslim world. These writings include the 

hadith

, histories, philosophical essays, mystical 

texts, and poetry. Creation myths have also been 

incorporated into the oral traditions of Muslim 

peoples from Africa to Southeast Asia. They con-

tain themes and beliefs that were once part of the 

indigenous religious and cultural life even before 

Islam arrived on the scene. With Islamization, 

the native themes were reshaped to uphold the 

Quran’s chief teaching that everything in exis-

tence was created by one sovereign God (a

llah

) 

and that he had no partners in this. As a conse-

quence, all creation, especially human beings, was 

obliged to submit to him and serve him.

The Quran’s creation accounts drew from 

those that originated in the ancient civilizations 

of the Middle East, especially those found in the 

book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, which date 

to at least the seventh century 

b

.

c

.

e

. However, 

because it was organized according to different 

rules than those used for the Hebrew Bible, the 

Quran’s creation passages were not presented as a 

continuous story. It has verses that discuss God’s 

creation of the universe (the cosmogony), the cre-

ation of Adam and his wife (the anthropogony), 

and the story of their fall from grace and expul-

sion from Paradise, but they are dispersed and 

repeated in different chapters, starting with the 

second chapter, “Al-Baqara” (The cow). Indeed, 

details from the biblical accounts were omitted, 

suggesting that either they were not familiar to 

Muhammad and his audience or they were not 

deemed to be relevant to the message Muhammad 

wished to convey. One consequence of this is that 

the quranic creation stories were not celebrated 

in rituals or on particular holidays, in contrast to 

creation stories in other religions and cultures. 

By the eighth century 

c

.

e

., Muslim scholars were 

reassembling the quranic creation passages and 

combining them with biblical material and Jewish 

rabbinic lore to write continuous narratives about 

God’s creative activities. These creation myths 

were included in books about the 

prophets

 who 

preceded m

Uhammad

, such as those written by i

bn

i

shaq

 (d. 767), al-Thaalabi (d. 1036), and al-Kisai 

(ca. 13th century). They were also included in al-

Azraqi’s (d. 837) history of Mecca and the famous 

world history written by Abbasid historian and 

Quran commentator al-Tabari (d. 923).

In the Quran, as in the Bible, God creates by 

two methods: through craftsmanship and through 

speech. The doctrine of creation from nothing 

(Latin, creation ex nihilo) as a way of proving God’s 

absolute transcendence and power is not clearly 

stated in the Quran, but it was taken up by Jew-

ish, Christian, and Muslim theologians later in the 

Middle Ages. Most of the Arabic words used in the 

Quran to describe God’s creative actions suggest 

they resembled human activities such as leather 

working, making pottery, building, and growing, 

which implies that formless matter already existed. 

The most common word for creation is based on 

the root consonants kh-l-q, which the Quran uses 

more than 200 times in relation to God. Indeed, 

one of his 99 names is al-Khaliq (the creator), as 

stated in this verse: “He is God the Creator, the 

Maker, the Shaper of Forms. He has the most beau-

tiful names. All that are in heaven and earth glorify 

him. He is the Almighty, the Wise” (Q 59:24).

In refutation of polytheistic beliefs, the Quran 

proclaims that it was God alone who raised the 

heavens and spread out the earth below them, 

making it stable and placing rivers on it (Q 

13:2–3). Pagan gods, 

angel

s, and other beings 

had no inherent powers in creation. God created