Food Ecology in the Qur’an: Reality and Afterlife

Abstract

On the eve of the emergence of Islam, a most unstable sociopolitical and economic situation in Arabia and around it, intensified by a range of historic, cultural, climatic and natural factors, once again brought the issue of national starvation and survival to the foreground. That is why it is hardly surprising that the theme of food impregnates the text of the Qur’an, which responds to sensitive issues in a lucid style. The present paper aims to reveal the perception of ideal food as seen by the population of Arabia and to analyze the projection of the known food images onto a highly abstract range of punishment and reward in the afterworld in order to arouse an emotional response to the new religious paradigm.