The Representation of Animals in the Qur'an and the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt

Abstract

The position that the Qur'an allocates to animals has been studied either according to the principles of internal criticism, or within the framework of theologians’ reception of the Qur'an. Departing from these two options, this paper will draw a comparison with the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, an anthology gathering poems relatively near to the Qur'an in space and time. It will be shown that neither poetry nor the Qur'an possess a word that refers to animals as a class, but the latter sketches a cursory categorisation system of the living world. In contrast to widespread opinion, the poets are not more meaningfully interested in animals, with the noticeable exception of mounts, than the sacred book. Furthermore, network modelling enables us to discover that both documents depict sharply contrasting bestiaries. We should therefore revise the generally accepted idea that the Qur'an appeared in a Bedouin society similar to that of the poets. However, close textual comparison between the representation of animals in the Qur'an and the poems in the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt gives us a better understanding of Q. 22:27, which would not be possible without recourse to poetry.