Poetics Of Ibl#299;s: Narrative Theology In The Qur'An

Poetics Of Ibl#299;s: Narrative Theology In The Qur'An

Synopsis

Ibl+s, the character in the Qur’an who refuses God’s command to bow to Adam and is punished by eviction from heaven, is commonly depicted as a fiendish character no different from Satan. However, some Sufi stories describe Ibl+s as the ultimate monotheist, a lover of God, but tragically rejected. This volume seeks the origins of this alternative Ibl+s within the Qur’an itself, by looking at each of the seven Qur’anic versions of the Ibl+s story as a unique rendering of the basic narrative. Whitney Bodman finds that the likely earliest version of the Ibl+s story presents him as a tragic figure, an elder sibling of Adam unjustly displaced from God’s favor. Subsequent renderings present an Ibl+s more hostile to humanity, and in the last two abbreviated versions Ibl+s becomes an incidental figure in the extended story of Adam. In modern Arab literature the character of Ibl+s is deployed to reveal tragic dimensions of modern life. Alhough it is often said that there is no place for tragedy in Islam, Bodman’s careful examination of the Ibl+s story shows that the tragic exists even in the Qur’an and forms part of the vision of medieval Sufi mystics and modern social critics alike.

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