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 qUran 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 (allah)
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 mUhammad, such as those written by ibn
ishaq (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, angels, and other beings
had no inherent powers in creation. God createdcreation 171 J