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Title: The Commerce of Eschatology
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Author: Andrew Rippin

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 IS____ IC PHILOSOPHY
THEOLOGY D SCIENCE
Texts and Studies

EDITED BY

H. DAIBER and D. PINGREE

VOLUME XXVII

,
 )

EDITED BY

STEFAN WILD

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EJ.BRILL
LEIDEN • NEW YORK • KOLN
1996
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Qur,an as text / edited by Stefan Wild.

p. cm. - (Islamic philosophy, theology, and science, ISSN
0169-8729 ; v. 27)
In English, French, and German with translations into English.
"A symposium on the 'Qur,an as text' which was held in Bonn from
the 17th to the 21st of November 1993"-Pref.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9004103449 (alk. paper)
l. Koran. I. Wild, Stefan, 1937- . II. Series.
BP130.Q87 1995
297'. l 226-dc20 95-30502
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Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

The Qur,an as text / ed. by Stefan Wild.

Leiden ; New York ; Koln : Brill, 1996
(Islamic philosophy, theology, and science; Vol. 27)
Einheitssacht.: Qur'an
ISBN 90-04-10344-9
NE: Wild, Stefan [Hrsg.]; EST; GT

ISSN 0 169-8 729

ISBN 90 04 10344 9

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 THE COMMERCE OF ESCHATOLOGY

ANDREW RIPPIN

Eschatology plays a major role in the Qur)an. The events leading up

to and taking place on the ''last day'' 1 feature prominently in many
of the suras of the text. Certainly these texts may be read as simply
giving details of what will transpire on the last day, that is, they are
texts which reflect the reality of God's plan for creation. But under­
lying these descriptions, it may be argued, are more significant
points. These relate, for one, to a philosophy of history, and, for
another, to an orientation for this-worldly life. Eschatology reveals
that history has a terminus, that existence is not merely a never­
ending drifting through time, but that it culminates in an event.
Compared to the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible and the Book
of Revelation in the New Testament, the Qur)an is less emphatic on
this definitive moment than is its forerunners. The apocalyptic
sense-while present in the Qur)an by implication in the stories of·
the prophets of the past and the destruction of communities who
have erred-is not strong in the Qur)an. It has been suggested that
among the reasons for this is the absence of the concept of original
sin and subsequent redemption. Consequently, the day of judge­
ment is not the goal of creation in the Qur)an as such: it remains an
unspecified time in the future. This highlights the autonomous
action of God such that the focus of his message becomes the enact­
ment of the human response and not his resolution of creation. 2
A central teaching of the Near Eastern monotheist tradition is that

1
Just what the word ''eschatology'' ( and its sometimes-related term '' apoca­
lypse'') means has created a great deal of debate in scholarly-theological literature.
Here I simply take it to mean ''end times''. Precisely what one might think those
''times''
•
are the ''end'' of, and what might lie ''beyond'' them, is subject to discus-
s1on.
2
Abdoljavad Falaturi, ''Experience of time and history in Islam'', in Anne­
marie Schimmel, A. Falaturi (eds), We believein one God. The experienceof God in Chris­
tianity and Islam (New York, 1979), 67. Also see Jacques Berque, ''The expression
of historicity in the Koran'', in George N. Atiyeh, Ibrahim M. Oweiss, Arab civili­
zation: challengesand responses.Studies in honour of ConstantineK. Zurayk (Albany, NY,
1988), 74-81.
 126 A. RIPPIN

we are, as individuals, responsible for our fate both in this world and
the next. The empowering and explanatory power of this myth­
existing in the face of human despair and alienation, yet allowing us
as individuals to attempt to strive for a better world-makes the
point an important one and the way in which this is conveyed within
the textual traditions of the religions is of profound significance.Just
as transactions in this world have implications, so too do they have
implications in the next world. But the point would seem to be more,
for the symbolism in which the mythic images are couched, conveys
an ethic for practice also. 3 For example, one stress might be said to
fall, symbolically, on fairness: God deals with us fairly, we should
deal with our fellow humans fairly. In this, too, is suggested an ele­
ment of personal responsibility in that the symbolism not only makes
the reader aware of a dimension of life beyond the mundane and her
responsibility towards it, but also of the significance of this life as a
reflection of the divine realm.
It is the second element, the effect that eschatology has on worldly
life, that is worthy of special attention. To anticipate the argument •

of this paper, the impact of the eschatological symbolism resounds

within a vocabulary of worldly life. In eschatological symbolism,
terms relating to mundane human activities predominate. Embed­
ded in that vocabulary are the perpetual terms of human relations
and human existence. The symbolism of eschatology is partially de­
rived from the image of the foundations of a moral, flourishing
• society; the symbolism resolves the seeming iniquities of life as it is
actually lived (in which evil seems to prosper) by reflecting a
divinely-ruled society in which evil gets its proper ''reward''.
At least three realms of symbolism interplay in the language of the
eschaton in the Qur)an. The divine judge sits in judgement over
three loci: the urban world, the natural world and the individual
human life. The judge presides over an urban setting, creating, in
moral terms, the City of God and destroying the city of humanity.
Streets and houses are full of commerce in both places, although the
moral gap between the two is gargantuan. The judge also sits in

For the background on what is presupposed in speaking of ''myth''

3 and
''symbolisn1'', see for example Paul Ricoeur, 1ne symbolism of evil (Boston, 1969),
and the development of Ricoeur's ideas in Andre Lacocque, '' Apocalyptic sym­
bolism: a Ricoeurian hermeneutical approach'', Biblical research26( 1981), 6- 15;
also Mohammed Arkoun, ''Introduction'', in his Lectures du Coran (Paris, 1982).
 THE COMMERCE OF ESCHATOLOGY 127

judgement over the natural world, based around agriculture where

flourishing fields become an attribute of the justice of God's control.
Finally, the basic experiences of human life, including fundamental
elements of basic human needs, of sex and, ultimately, of death,
provide the most immediate images in which the tensions are
resolved under God's hand. In this paper, I will explore the inter­
pretation of the urban context of eschatology as that specifically
manifests itself in ''commercial'' terms; only a few suggestions will
be made for directions of study in the other dimensions.
C. C. Torrey's The Commercial-theologicalterms in the Koran4 pro­
vides a thorough survey of the following words and their use in the
Qur)an, examined under the following headings: 5

mathematical terms: IJ,isab,reckoning, account ( also God as reckoner,

al-lJ,aszb);alJ,~a,to number, count;
weights and measures: wazana, to weigh; mzzan, balance, scales; 6 tha­
qula, to weigh heavy; mithqal, weight;
payments and wages: J·aza, to recompense, reward; thawwaba, to
reward; thawab, reward; waffe, to pay in full; aJ·r,wage, reward;
kasaba, to earn; 7
loss andfraud: khasira, to suffer a loss, to be lost; 8 bakhasa, to defraud,
to diminish; ,?alama, to wrong, to do evil; alata, to defraud; naqa~a,
to diminish;
buying and selling: shara, ishtara, to buy, to sell, to barter; 9 baca, to sell;
ti_jara,commerce; IO thaman, price, cost, value; rabilJ,a,to profit;

4 Leiden, 1892.
5
Torrey, 8, sets the words up in chart form suggesting some correlations be­
tween words although he does not use this interlinking structure as a part of his ar­
gument.
6
T. Sabbagh, Le metaphoredans le Coran (Paris, 1943) also isolated some of these
commercial terms in the Qur)an. He lists most of them within his framework' 'So­
cial life: sedentary life: terms relating to commerce''. Sabbagh's work is valuable
for its gathering together of metaphorical usages and it provides a good basis for
further analysis but it does not provide a meaningful framework for the analysis.
He classifies the words according to their ''literal'' meanings and does not consider
the contexts in which the words are used or the fields of their metaphorical applica­
tion. His work is essentially culled from the many Arabic sources which deal with
the topic and which, for our purposes here, do not provide a necessary framework
of analysis either. For mzzan, see Sabbagh, 212, # 368.
7 Sabbagh, 215, # 377.
8 Sabbagh, 216, # 378.

9 Sabbagh, 214, # 373.

10 Sabbagh, 213, # 371.
 128 A. RIPPIN

11
loans and security: qarcJ,,loan ( often with aqracJ,a,to loan); aslafa, to
12
have paid in advance; ralfin, a security, something pledged.
Torrey suggested that these words form a cluster of terms derived
from commercial applications which have taken on theological over­
tones in the Qur)an. His selection of the terms was somewhat arbi­
trary, in the sense that it is not apparent how he defined the semantic
range of ''commerce'' which dictated the scope of his attention to
the metaphorical application of the words. Nor did he justify why
commercial terms should be separated from judicial terms, for ex­
ample, for this investigation. His main justification for the study was
that ''Mohammed's idea of God, as shown us in the Koran, is in its
main features a somewhat magnified picture of a Mekkan merchant.
It could hardly have been otherwise.'' 13 Torrey, it may be said, as­
sumed a mercantile background of Mul)ammad and Mecca, and
14
then found evidence for that in the Qur)an.
Such is the predominate paradigm of Euro-American studies of
the Qur)an: the notion is promulgated, in good philological fashion,
that an analysis of the language used in the text can lead to a recon­
struction of history surrounding its creation. The model of the
''commercial environment'' of Mecca and Medina as explaining
the rise of Islam and as testified to in the vocabulary of the Qur)an
comprises one of the prime examples of this approach and is one of
its most persistent. Torrey's 1892 dissertation put the material
•
together in a consistent and rigorous fashion for the first time. The
full implications of the ideas underlying his work were developed
later in works by Henri Lammens, Maxime Rodinson and William

Sabbagh, 214, # 374.

11
12 Sabbagh, 215, # 376.
13 Commercial-theological terms, 15.
14 Another element of Torrey's argument that justifies his abstraction of these
particular terms is his assertion that ''the mathematical accounting on the judge­
ment day is alien to Judaism and Christianity.'' (Commercial-theologicalterms, 14)
This statement may well have reflected the state of research at the turn of the century
but no longer can that position be maintained. Torrey himself notes ( 17, n. 3) that
he had been informed that the picture of a balance being used at the final judgement
was to be found in Egyptian religion. That, it is now well known, represents only
the tip of the iceberg in terms of the extent to which it may now be clai1ned that
the Qur'an shares in a Near Eastern mythic universe of judgement day symbolism.
For a classic statement of this '' mythic universe'' 1n elements stretching well be­
yond the judgement day alone, see Morton Smith, ''The common theology of the
Ancient Near East'',Journal of Biblical literature 71(1952), 135-47.
 THE COMMERCE OF ESCHA'fOLOGY 129

Montgomery Watt, among many others. 15 Kenneth Cragg sum­

marizes the general sentiment: ''[Mecca's] genius for trade and high
finance dominates the imagery of the Scripture.'' 16
The work of Watt provides a good illustration of the techniques
employed in scholarship along with an occasion for consideration of
some of the critiques which they have aroused in scholarly circles.
Watt reads the ideology of the Qur)an in a way that allows him to
perceive a society in the throes of the impact of capitalism being
challenged by a prophet of social justice. He makes a case for this
picture despite the absence of evidence for certain central elements
which might normally be expected (for example, details such as the
means and mode of production, or the existence of a social system
with a significant elite resultant from the presence of concentrated
capital). The picture, Watt's critics suggest, results from an imposi­
tion of a 20th century ideology which dernands that certain elements
in the construction of a picture of society must be present (even if
they remain unmentioned in the source material) in order for the sit­
uation to cohere in a ''natural'' way. Watt's ''natural'' sense of the
world around him, the historian's sense that things ''must have
been'' a certain way, is argued by his critics to have affected his per­
ception and the analysis. 17
Patricia Crone's Meccan trade and the rise of Islam 18 points out-in

15
See, for example, W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad's Mecca History in the
Quran (Edinburgh, 1988), 40, where he specifically cites Torrey.
16
Kenneth Cragg, The event of the Qu-?an Islam in its scripture (London, 1971 ),
98. Cragg continues: ''though, strangely, the word taJir(merchant) does not figure
in the Qur)an, and tijarah (merchandise) only on nine occasions, commerce is the
central theme in the life it mirrors and in the vocabulary by which it speaks.'' (98)
The list of unexpected exceptions goes on impressively, but not sufficiently to make
Cragg question the presupposition. More recent work continues the same ten­
dency, for example Robert Simon, Meccan tradeand Islam problemsof origin and struc­
ture (Budapest, 1989); see the review of this book by J. Wansbrough in BSOAS
53(1990), 510-1.
17
Robert Irwin expresses this nicely in a review of Patricia Crone's Meccan trade
and the rise of Islam in (The London) Times literarysupplement, Sept. 11-17, 1987, 990:
''First she [Crone] demonstrates that the relators of hadiths in the eighth and later
centuries thought that the Meccans traded not in spices, but in leather. Second ...
[the nature of the hadith,;suggest] that the men who told the hadiths about Meccan
commerce had no better sources of information about it than we have today.
Leather seemed plausible to them, as spices seemed plausible to Lammens. '' Plau­
sibility, like coherence, is a principle of historical reconstruction but notions of what
is plausible vary over time, as Irwin suggests.
18 Princeton, 1987.
130 A. RIPPIN

a manner which certainly has not satisfied everyone-the vague de­

tails provided for this model by the Arab historical texts. Arguing
that the view provided in the classical Greek texts of a flourishing
trade through Arabia speaks of a situation some 600 years prior to
the rise of Islam, Crone suggests that the later Muslim writers have
been read rather imaginatively through the filters of this earlier peri­
od. When the texts are read for what they say, rather than what is
assumed, she says, '' . . . such information as we have leaves no
doubt that [the Meccans'] imports were the necessities and petty
luxuries that the inhabitants of Arabia have always had to procure
from the fringes of the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere, not the luxu­
ry goods with which Lammens would have them equip themselves
abroad.'' 19 The Meccans traded, certainly, but mainly within the
confines of their own area and in response to their basic needs and
20
not for ''the commercial appetites of the surrounding empires'' .
Crone does not pursue the issue of the Qur)anic commercial termi­
nology nor does she explain how this element, which forms a part
of the overall argument of scholars such as Watt, is to be under-
stood. 21
The cluster of words which Torrey terms '' commercial-theologi-
cal'' is employed in three contexts in the Qur)an: in speaking about
the prophets of the past, in legislating the Muslim community, and
in descriptions of eschatology. This may be illustrated with the
example of the image of the ''balance'' (mzzan), 22 as in the state-

19 Crone, Meccan trade, 150- 1. It 1s noteworthy that the body of early Arab
poetry-whether genuinely pre-Islamic or not-does not provide testimony to this
commercial environment. See the comments of F.E. Peters, ''The quest of the
historical Muhammad'', !]ME'S 23(1991), 292, where he suggests that the poetry
''testifies to a quite different culture''.
2o Crone, Meccan trade, 151. The same sentiment is echoed in F.E. Peters, ''The
Commerce of Mecca before Islam'' in F. Kazemi, R. D McChesney (eds), A way
prepared. Essays on Islamic Culture in honor of Richard Bayly Winder (New York, 1988),
3-26, (see esp. 4) and in his Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany, NY, 1994)
although Peters' reconstruction of the rise of Islam is st1bstantially different from
that of Crone.
2 1 Methodologically, Crone does make one interesting remark which relates to
the issues at stake here. '' ... the Koran speaks at length about the miraculous
navigability of the sea'' (Meccan trade, 5, an observation which Crone credits to
W.W. Barthold, '' Der Koran und das Meer'', ZDMG 83 [ 1929], 3 7 - 43) and this
is odd, since Mu}:lammad is never reported to have gone near the sea. The point
is that historical reconstruction cannot always depend on the imagery employed in
a religious text such as the Qur)an.
22 See E. Wiedermann, ''Mizan'', E/ 2 , for the balance's role in Muslim eco-
nomic and scientific history.
 THE COMMERCE OF ESCHATOLOGY 131

ment ''fill up the measure and the balance with justice'' (wa-awfa 'l­
kayl wa)l-mzzan bi)l-qist 23) and variations on that phraseology.

Q. 11/84-6: And to Midian, their brother Shucayb, who said, 'O my

people, serve God! You have no god other than He. And diminish not
the measure and the balance. I see you are prospering and I fear for
you the chastisement of an encompassing day. 0 my people, fill up
the measure and the balance justly, and do not diminish the goods of
the people in the land, working corruption. God's remainder is better
for you, if you are believers. And I am not guardian over you. ' 24

The stories of the prophets of the past frequently employ these

words. 25
The vocabulary also finds its place in passages of a legal nature
addressed to the contemporary believing audience.

Q. 6/151-2: Say: 'Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden
you .... And fill up the measure and the balance with justice.'

However, the use of this image predominates in eschatological pas­

sages which thereby echo both of these aspects of language: that of
the past ( the time of the ancicn t prophets) and that of the present ( the
present community).

Q. 21/4 7: And We shall set up the just balances for the Resurrection
day, so that not one soul shall be wronged anything. 26

A second example of the use of these ''commercial-theological''

terms in the three contexts may be seen in the concept ay·rI uy·ur,
'' wage( s)''. 27

3
2 Q. 6/ 152; on
qist see Arthur Jeffery, Theforeign vocabularyof the Quran (Baroda,
1938), 237-8; also note the use of qistas (see Foreign vocabulary, 238-9) in similar
phrases: Q. 17/35 within a contemporary situation; Q. 26/182 referring to Shucayb.
4
2 Also see Q. 7/83. Translations are based on A .J. Arberry, The Koran inter­
preted (London, 195.5), but have been modified where desirable. Verses numbers
follow the Cairo text ..
25 See John Wansbrough, Quranzcstudies: sou,rcesand methodsof scriptural interpreta­
tion (Oxford, 1977), 24-5, for examples of what he terms elements of the ''standard
diatribe'' of prophets which is Pentateuchal in origin. Among the Biblical prophetic
developments of the motif, see, for example, Jeremiah 7/5-6: ''Mend your ways
and your doings, deal fairly with one another, do not oppress the alien, the orphan,
and the widow, shed no innocent blood in this place, do not run after other gods
to your own ruin.• ''
26 Other passages which use the idea of a balance on the judgement day include
Q. 7/7-8, 23/102-3, 101/6-8 and perhaps 42/17, 55/7, 57/25; wazana is also used
verbally in all three contexts.
7 2
2 See J. Schacht, ''Adjr'', E/ , for the use of this word in juristic contexts
132 A. RIPPIN

Q. 11/51: 'O my people, I [Hud] do not ask of you a wage for this;
my wage falls only upon Him that did originate me; will you not
understand? ' 28
An episode in the story of Moses provides another usage:
Q. 28/25- 6: [When Moses arrived in Midian, he helped two women
by drawing water for them.] Then came one of the two women to him,
walking modestly, and said, 'My father invites thee, that he may
recompense thee with the wage of thy drawing water for us.' So when
he came to him and had related to him the story, he said, 'Be not
afraid; thou hast escaped from the people of the evildoers. ' Said one
of the two women, 'Father, hire him; surely the best man thou canst
hire is one strong and trusty.'

In terms of passages relating to regulations of the Muslim communi­

ty, Q. 4/24-5, 5/5, 33/50 and 60/10 all use uJ·urin reference to mar­
riage in the sense of dower, mahr; the use in Q. 65/6 in reference to
paying ''wages'' to a woman during her period of cidda for suckling
would appear to be a purely commercial exchange ( and from here
stem the juristic implications that uJ·ur come when ''under con-
tract'').
The eschatological use of ''wage'' abound: ''Their wage awaits
them with their Lord'' and variations on that phrase occur five times
in sura 2 alone (Q. 2/62, 112, 262, 274, 277).
Overall, it is important to note that, while the narratives of the
past and the legal provisions of the present are not framed as escha­
tology, 29 within the context of the Qur)an they cannot be read apart
from that setting. Put together, these passages emphasize that the
social dimensions of human existence transcend time: the imagery
of life flows from the historical ''past'' to the eschatological '' fu­
ture''. The past and the present become blended, symbolically, in
the eschatological ''future''. Put another way, one may suggest that
the eschaton is identified with the past and the present: the Edenic
vision of a life of justice and equality can exist, the Qur)an says,
through an implementation of the will of God as that is expressed
in terms of fundamental justice and symbolized in the eschatological
trials. Past, present and future are blended in a realistic vision of
nostalgia and optimism. The perfect society is trans-historical.

28 Also see the story of Noah in Q. 11/29 and in the sequence of prophet stories
in Q. 26/ 109- 180 where the same phras~ occurs 5 times.
29 Note Q. 55/7 which explicitly blends present and future.
 THE COMMERCE OF ESCHATOLOGY 133

In eschatological symbolism we see the employment of terms re­

lating to fundamental human activities which occur throughout his­
tory. The symbolism here is not just a reflection of the state of affairs
at the time of revelation. Rather, it provides the perpetual terms of
human relations expressed as future hopes which have been practised
in the past and should be implemented in the present. 30 That this
need not reflect-in fact, may well be quite distant from-historical
''reality'' would, in fact, seem to be the point. This is confirmed by
the observation that the Qur)an shares these terminological usages
with the general urban imagery employed in religious literature of
the monotheistic Near Eastern world. 31 '' The wages of sin is
death,'' says Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. The vision of the moral
society, symbolized in eschatology, is a constant religious motif.
The use of ''commercial-theological'' terminology does not en­
compass the entire dimension of the urban context within the sym­
bolism of eschatology. Roads, houses, and buildings may also be iso­
lated as illustrations of the point. While the Qur)anic imagery does
not focus on the creation of the ideal city as the Biblical tradition
does with the city of Zion, 32 the individual elements would seem to
collect in a similar manner.

30
These conclusions are based, in part, on scholarly considerations of the
meaning and significance, in theological terms, of eschatology and apocalypticism
in general. See for example, John]. Collins, The apocalypticimagination An introduc­
tion to theJewish matrix of Christianity (New York, 1984) who speaks of apocalypses
as' 'ways of affirming transcendent values'' (214) and who says' 'the value of these
imaginative ventures cannot be assessed by a correspondence theory of truth, but
only by evaluating the actions and attitudes which they supported'' (215) and
'' apocalyptic language is commissive in character: it commits us to a view of the
world for the sake of the actions and attitudes that are entailed." (215). Also see
his '' Patterns of eschatology at Qumran'', in B. Halpern, J. D. Levenson (eds),
Traditions in transformation. Turning points in Biblicalfaith (Winona Lake, IN, 1981),
351- 75: ''the eschatology of Qumran is, like wisdom, an attempt to find order and
structure in the world'' (375); ''it is also an affirmation of an alternative order
which is eclipsed in the present, but is already experienced by the elect community
and will be fully manifest in the future." (375)
31
Tor Andrae, Les originesde !'Islam et le Christianisme (Paris, 1955) ( = transla­
tion of Der Ursprung des Islams und des Christentum [U ppsala, 1926 ]) , 186; Tor
Andrae, Mohammed. the man and hisfaith (New York, 1960), 86; Wayne Meeks, The
first urban Christians: the social world of theApostle Paul (New Haven, 1983), 66- 7: such
ter111inology is used to describe aspects of the relationship between apostle and con­
gregation and used metaphorically to make theological statements. J. Duncan
M. Derrett, Jesus 's audience: the soical and psychologicalenvironment in which he worked
(London, 1973), 73-81, for a more literal-historical interpretation.
32
See the treatment of Zion in Donald E. Gowan, Eschatology in the Old Testa­
ment (Philadelphia, 1986).
134 A. RIPPIN

Furthermore, the realms of eschatological symbolism stretch well

beyond the urban into the agricultural. One of the most famous im­
ages in the Qur)an is that of the garden. 33 Adam and Eve com­
mence creation in a garden. The present day earthly garden be­
comes a symbol of the rewards of God, and the garden is the setting
of the rewards of the hereafter, gardens in which rivers flow full of
water ( and other fluids). The vision of the perfect and flourishing
agricultural setting reaches its fulfillment in the new creation at the
end of time directly under the controlling hand of God. 34
The images of the basic functions of human life also play their role
in eschatology, revealing their final meaning: eating, sex and death
are all intimately linking in the resolution of human existence on
both the mundane and the divine planes. To cite a fairly prominent
example, suffering and death are the features of hell; the negative
aspects of this-worldly life become the rnain attributes of hell, the
place which is to be avoided. Likewise, the ''sensual'' picture of
heaven does not necessarily convey, as a historical-critical perspec­
tive might suggest, a bedouin's vision of a perfect society of wine,
women and poetry, but a rather more fundamental appreciation of
ideal human nature as the monotheistic tradition conceives it.
Here too, then, we may observe the way in which the past, present
and future blend: once again, social dimensions of existence trans­
cend time, imagery flows from ''past'' to ''future'' such that the
idealized past and the ideal present become the eschatological future.
Not all eschatological symbolism focuses on the morality of human
life, notice, but all relates to the general conditions of human life.
As was suggested above, the symbolism of eschatology is partially
derived from the image of the foundations of a moral and flourishing
society; the symbolism resolves the seeming iniquities of life as it is
actually lived-the presence of suffering and injustice as basic
facts-by reflecting a divinely-ruled society in which evil gets its
proper ''reward''. The symbolism gives '' a higher meaning to his­
tory by relating it to transcendental mythic patterns''. 35 The Edenic

33 See Thomas J. 0' Shaughnessy, ''Notions associated with the Qur'anic para­
dise'', in his Eschatological themes in the Qu,-)an (Manila, 1986), 76 -88.
3 4 See Arne A. Ambros, ''Gestaltung und Funkt1onen der Biosphare im
Koran'', ~MG 140(1990), 290-325, for a discussion of the full range of vocabulary
which would need attention here for a complete treatment of this topic.
35 Bernard McGinn, ''Revelation'', in Robert Alter, Frank Kermode (eds),
The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 527.
 THE COMMERCE OF ESCHATOLOGY 135

myth of the ideal society plays its role by formulating a terminus of

history which fully implements the constraints of justice.
Our understanding of the Qur)an in this manner cannot rest here,
however, for our interests naturally stray to how Muslims under­
stood this imagery in the development of Islam. Only a few general
suggestions can be made here. The genius of Muslim interpretation
of the Qur)an was to situate the ideal society not only in the period
of the ''Garden of Eden'' and the time of the patriarchs, but also in
the time of Mul;ammad. This was accomplished through historici­
zation of eschatological imagery. In reflecting upon the text of the
Qur)an, the Muslim legal establishment conceptualized the Islamic
umma, and specifically the place of human relations within that com­
munity, through a process of the historicization of the symbolism of
eschatology which both produced and was supported by the inter­
pretational framework of the Qur)an within the historical context of
Mecca and the life of M ul;ammad. :{6 The reading of symbolism in
terms of a historical and legal vocabulary created the framework for
the community. The juridical accomplishment was precisely to see
that the principles which lay behind the eschatological drama were
the ones which should motivate Islamic society in the here and now.
The historicization of the symbolism of eschatology produced a
vision of the perfect world which was within the grasp of Muslims
individually. Specifically, in envisioning the time of Mul;ammad as
a period of God's rule, as a time of the true implementation of the
divine law, as a time of the achievement of a utopia, the eschatologi­
cal longing was transformed from the future to the past and, by
implication, brought potentially into the present. Understanding
the processes by which this was accomplished-the hermeneutical
perspective-remains the task of scholarship if the desire is to com­
prehend the way in which elements of Muslim culture became truly
Islamic. At the same time, however, an indication is provided of the
extent to which caution is needed in reading the Qur)an: the histori­
cal contextualization of the text, I am suggesting, is a product of later
Muslim readings tailored towards particular ideological ends. 37

.
36
John W ansbrough, 1ne sectarianmilieu: contentand compositionof Islamic salvation
history (Oxford, 1978), 144-8, contains some valuable and provocative suggestions
for investigations along this line.
37 For a fuller treatment of the symbolism of eschatology in the Qur)an and its

implications, see my forthcoming work, Readin,g the Quf)an (Princeton: Darwin

Press).