They include accounts about God’s selection of
both as his prophets, how both came into con-
frontation with their enemies as a result of their
belief in one God, how they received holy books
from God (the Torah and the Quran, respectively),
and how they experienced rejection by their own
people. There is also a parallel drawn between the
deliverance of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt
and the emigration (hiJra) of Muhammad and
his followers from Mecca to Medina. Just as the
pharaoh and his people were drowned in the sea,
the enemies of the Muslims were also threatened
with defeat and destruction. The Quran is clearly
seeking to underscore the validity of Muhammad’s
status as a prophet by making these parallels. It
is also showing how the Jews, through their dis-
obedience, have broken their covenant with God,
and that it has been transferred to Muhammad
and his followers (Q 7:168–170).
Biblical events involving Moses also men-
tioned in the Quran are his being cast away on
the waters as an infant by his mother to save his
life (Q 20:37–40); his killing of the Egyptian (Q
28:15); his escape to Midyan (Q 28:22–28); his
calling by a fire and a divine voice coming from
a tree (rather than a bush) by Mount Tur (Sinai,
Q 28:29–30); his performing signs and wonders
before pharaoh’s court (Q 7:104–109); his 40-day
sojourn in the wilderness, where he received the
tablets from God at the mountain (Q 7:144–145);
and the Israelites’ disobedience of his brother
Aaron (Harun) and worship of the golden calf (Q
7:148–149; 20:85–91). A story mentioned in the
Quran but not in the Bible is his journey to the
“meeting place of the two seas” and encounter
with a mysterious “servant of God,” identified by
later commentators as khadir (the green one), who
is more knowledgeable than Moses (Q 18:60–82).
Moses then travels with Khadir to acquire some of
his wisdom, but shows himself to be a less than
adept student. The stories of the prophets tradi-
tion elaborates on this and other narratives about
Moses, including the building of a temple for God
and the deaths of both Aaron and Moses in the
wilderness. In accounts concerning Muhammad’s
night JoUrney and ascent, Muhammad enters
the sixth heaven and encounters Moses there
with his people. The biblical prophet declares
that Muhammad is more honored in God’s eyes
than he, and weeps because more of Muhammad’s
community (umma) will enter paradise than of
his. Later in the story, Moses helps Muhammad
negotiate with God to reduce the number of daily
prayers Muslims are required to perform from 50
to five.
Over time Shiis and Sufis developed their own
distinctive understandings concerning the body of
narratives connected with Moses. The Shia see in
the relationship of Moses with his brother Aaron
a prefiguration of Muhammad’s relationship with
ali ibn abi talib (d. 661), his cousin, son-in-law,
and the first Shii Imam. They also include Moses
among the prophets through whom the authority
of the Imams was transmitted in the generations
preceding that of Muhammad and his cousin
Ali. In ismaili shiism, Moses is counted as one of
seven “speaking” prophets (the others are Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, and Muham-
mad ibn Ismail), who revealed God’s law for all
believers to obey; whereas Aaron is one of seven
of seven “silent” prophets who convey the hid-
den truths of God’s revelation to a select group
of believers. Sufis, for their part, have looked to
Moses’s encounter with God at Sinai as an exem-
plary mystical experience, and they saw in his
success in splitting the sea and overcoming the 40
years of trial in the desert a model for those seek-
ing inspiration to pursue the mystic’s path to unity
with God. Jalal al-Din rUmi (d. 1273) taught that
Moses and pharaoh were contending spiritual
impulses embodied in each person, suggesting
that those guided by the light of Moses will dis-
cover that Sinai, the place of the encounter with
God, can be found in their own hearts.
During the 20th century the story of Moses’s
confrontation with pharaoh has been invoked
by Islamists to justify their opposition to “dis-
believing” secular regimes and tyrannical rulers.Moses 483 J