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== Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān / Satanic Verses ==
Name given by western scholarship to an incident known in the Muslim tradition as “the story of the cranes” ( qiṣṣat al-gharānīq) or “the story of the maidens.” According to various versions, this is the assertion that the prophet Muḥammad once mistook words suggested to him by Satan as divine revelation (see revelation and inspiration; devil); that is to say, as verses of the Qurʾān — the words reportedly interpolated by Satan are called the “satanic verses.” The historicity of the satanic verses incident is strenuously rejected by modern Islamic orthodoxy, often on pain of takfīr (being declared an unbeliever; see belief and unbelief ).

The satanic verses incident is reported in the tafsīr (qurʾānic exegesis; see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval ) and the sīra-maghāzī literature (epic prophetic biography; see sīra and the qurʾān ) dating from the first two centuries of Islam. While the numerous reports on the incident differ in the construction and detail of the narrative, they may be broadly collated as follows. ¶ The incident is generally dated to the fifth year of Muḥammad's mission, when the small Muslim community in Mecca (q.v.) was under persecution by the leaders of Quraysh (q.v.; the dominant tribe in Mecca), the most vulnerable of Muḥammad's followers having fled for safety to Abyssinia. The reports indicate that in these circumstances, Muḥammad hoped to achieve reconciliation with Quraysh. At this time, Sūrat al-Najm ( q 53, “The Star”), was revealed to Muḥammad, who recited the chapter to a gathering of Quraysh (see occasions of revelation; recitation of the qurʾān). When Muḥammad reached q 53:19-20, with their reference to the female deities worshipped by Quraysh — “Have you considered al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, the third, the other?” — Satan was able to cast two verses into Muḥammad's recitation which Muḥammad took to be divine revelation and duly recited; in some reports, Muḥammad is portrayed as being drowsy and inattentive when he committed the error. These are the “satanic verses”: “Indeed they are the high cranes/the high maidens (al- gharānīq/al-gharāniqa l-ʿulā), and indeed their intercession is to be desired.” (The precise wording of the satanic verses varies with the different reports; a version of the satanic verses is also reported as a pre-Islamic talbiya or ritual invocation of Quraysh; see prayer formulas; ritual and the qurʾān.) The Quraysh were greatly pleased at Muḥammad's praise of their deities and at his having accorded them a place in the theology of his revelation, to the point that when Muḥammad recited the closing verse of the sūra, q 53:62: “So: prostrate yourselves to God and worship [him]” — the unbelievers present prostrated themselves alongside the Muslims (see bowing and prostration ). Later, however, Gabriel (q.v.) came to Muḥammad and apprised him of his error; in some reports, Muḥammad is depicted as realizing the error on his own. ¶ The Prophet was greatly distressed, so God sent down to him q 22:52-4, comforting him and explaining to him what had happened:

We have not sent before you a messenger (q.v.) or a prophet (see prophets and prophethood ), but that when he desired/recited ( tamannā; the verb means both “to desire” and “to recite”), Satan cast into his desire/recitation ( umniyyatihi), so God eliminates (yansakh) that which Satan casts, then God establishes his own signs [q.v.; āyāt] clearly — and God is all-knowing, all-wise (see god and his attributes ) — to make that which Satan casts a trial (q.v.) for those in whose hearts is sickness and for those whose hearts are hardened (see heart ) — truly the wrongdoers are in deep dissension — and so that those who have been given knowledge (see knowledge and learning ) may know that it is the truth (q.v.) from your lord (q.v.), so that they might believe in it, and that their hearts may submit to it — truly, God guides those who have faith (q.v.) to the straight path (see path or way ).

Muḥammad then acknowledged his error and recanted the satanic verses, thereby provoking the renewed hostility and persecution of Quraysh (see opposition to muḥammad ). Some of the reports cite q 53:21-2, “Would you have sons, and for him daughters? That, indeed, would be a crooked division,” as having been revealed in place of the satanic verses, while others link the incident with the revelation of q 17:73, “And they strove to tempt you away from that [with] which we inspired you, that you might fabricate against us something other than it;… and had we not made you firm, you would have inclined to them a little.” Generally, though, the incident is cited as the “occasion of revelation” ( sabab al-nuzūl) for q 22:52, although in some commentaries it appears in the exegesis on q 53:19. ¶ It is also widely reported that the news of the Quraysh prostrating themselves alongside the Muslims made its way to Abyssinia (q.v.), prompting some of the Muslim refugees — understanding Quraysh to have converted to Islam — to return to Mecca, only to have to leave again (see emigration ).

The satanic verses incident is reported in the respective tafsīr corpuses transmitted from almost every Qurʾān commentator of note in the first two centuries of the hijra (see calendar ): Saʿīd b. Jubayr (d. 95/714), Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 104/722), al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim (d. 105/723), ʿIkrima the client (mawlā) of Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 105/723), Abū l-ʿĀliya al-Riyāḥī (d. 111/729), ʿAṭiyya b. Saʿd al-ʿAwfī (d. 111/729), ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 114/732), Muḥammad b. Kaʿb al-Quraẓī (d. 118/736), Qatāda b. Diʿāma (d. 118/736), Abū Ṣāliḥ Bādhām al-Kūfī (d. 120/738), Ismāʿīl al-Suddī (d. 128/745), Muḥammad b. al-Sāʾib al-Kalbī (d. 146/763), ʿAbd al-Malik b. Jurayj (d. 150/ 767), Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767), Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 154/770), Yaḥyā b. Sallām al-Baṣrī (d. 200/815). Several of these relate the incident on the authority of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās (d. 68/687; see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval ). The incident also appears in the respective sīra-maghāzī works transmitted in the first two centuries from ʿUrwa b. al-Zubayr (d. 94/713), Muḥammad b. Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 124/742), Mūsā b. ʿUqba (d. 141/748), Muḥammad b. Isḥāq (d. 150/767), Abū Maʿshar al-Sindī (d. 170/786) and Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Wāqidī (d. 207/823). Thus, the satanic verses incident seems to have constituted a standard element in the memory of the early Muslim community about the life of Muḥammad (q.v.). ¶ The incident continued to be cited and its historicity accepted by several Qurʾān commentators and authors of sīra-maghāzī works throughout the classical period, including authors of important commentaries, such as Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Abū Isḥāq al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035), Abū l-Ḥasan al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058), al-Wāḥidī al-Nīsābūrī (d. 468/1076), al-Ḥusayn b. al-Farrāʾ al-Baghawī (d. 516/1122), Jār Allāh al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (d. 864/1459) and others.

Strong objections to the historicity of the satanic verses incident were, however, raised as early as the fourth/tenth century — as evidenced in al-Nāsikh wa-l-mānsūkh of Abū Jaʿfar al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950) — and continued to be raised in subsequent centuries, to the point where the rejection of the historicity of the incident eventually became the only acceptable orthodox position (see abrogation; theology and the qurʾān). From among the many important Qurʾān commentators who rejected the historicity of the satanic verses incident, the respective opinions of Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148), Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī (d. 744/1345) and ʿImād al-Dīn b. Kathīr (d. 773/ 1373) have been regularly invoked by their successors down to the present day. Probably the most authoritatively cited refutation of the incident, however, appears in the al-Shifāʾ of al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī (d. 544/ 1149), a work written in demonstration of the superhuman qualities of Muḥammad (see names of the prophet; but see also miracles; marvels).

The historicity of the incident is rejected on two bases. First, the satanic verses story portrays Muḥammad as being (on at least one occasion) unable to distinguish between divine revelation and satanic suggestion. ¶ This was seen as calling into question the reliability of the revelatory process and thus the integrity of the text of the Qurʾān itself (see inimitability; createdness of the qurʾān). The incident was thus viewed as repugnant to the doctrine of ʿiṣmat al-anbiyāʾ, divine protection of the prophets from sin and/or error, as it developed from the third/ninth century onwards, all theological schools coming eventually to agree that God protected prophets from error in the transmission of divine revelation (see impeccability ). The satanic verses incident was conceived to be an especially egregious instance of error since the praise of the deities of Quraysh uttered by Muḥammad in his recitation of the satanic verses would have been tantamount to the cardinal sin of shirk (associating divinity with an entity other than God; see polytheism and atheism ). The claim that the Prophet could have committed shirk was denounced as kufr (unbelief). The doctrine of ʿiṣma has been most forcefully and consistently upheld by the Shīʿa (q.v.; see also shīʿism and the qurʾān ), for whom it is a central tenet. It therefore appears that no Shīʿī of any school has ever accepted the satanic verses incident. Those Sunnī scholars who did accept the incident had a slightly, but very significantly, different understanding of ʿiṣma: like Taqī l-Dīn b. Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), some of them held that prophets were not protected from error in the transmission of divine revelation, but rather from persisting in error after commission (Ahmed, Ibn Taymiyyah).

The historicity of the satanic verses incident is also rejected on the basis of the isnāds, the chains of transmission that carry the numerous reports of the incident. In the standard Islamic methodology developed by the scholars of ḥadīth (see ḥadīth and the qurʾān ) for assessing the veracity of reports, a report is judged by the reputation for truthfulness of the individual transmitters who constitute a complete isnād that goes back to an eyewitness. ¶ The satanic verses incident is not carried by isnāds that are complete and sound (ṣaḥīḥ); at best, some of the isnāds are ṣaḥīḥ mursal, meaning that while the transmitters are bona fide, the chains are incomplete and do not go back to an eyewitness. Thus, the reports are viewed as insufficiently reliable to establish the factuality of the incident. The incident is not cited in any canonical ḥadīth collection, although it does appear in some non-canonical collections. Those scholars who acknowledged the historicity of the incident apparently had a different method for the assessment of reports than that which has become standard Islamic methodology. For example, Ibn Taymiyya took the position that since tafsīr and sīra-maghāzī reports were commonly transmitted by incomplete isnāds, these reports should not be assessed according to the completeness of the chains but rather on the basis of recurrent transmission of common meaning between reports (al- tawātur bi-l-maʿnā; Ahmed, Ibn Taymiyyah).

Other scholars accepted the idea that the fact of widespread transmission meant that the reports about the satanic verses incident could not be rejected outright but also took the position that the equal fact of the ʿiṣma of Muḥammad meant that the incident could not have taken place in the specific manner narrated. To reconcile the apparently contradictory epistemological claims of widespread transmission on the one hand and ʿiṣma on the other, scholars such as Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1505) applied the principle of taʾwīl — what could be called rehabilitative interpretation — to the satanic verses reports so as to bring the narrative of the incident within the parameters of the permissibly conceivable. ¶ These scholars took the position that since Muḥammad simply could not have been deceived by Satan and have uttered the satanic verses himself, it must have happened that when the Prophet recited q 53:19, he paused for breath and at this juncture Satan, or one of the unbelievers present, seized on the opportunity to utter the blasphemous verses (see blasphemy ) while imitating the Prophet's voice, with the result that those around assumed that the Prophet had uttered them. (None of the early reports actually presents the incident in this way.)

Islamic modernity has been especially forceful and consistent in its rejection of the historicity of the satanic verses incident. The modern locus classicus is probably the article “Masʾalat al-gharānīq wa-tafsīr al-āyāt” published by Muḥammad ʿAbduh in al-Manār in 1905; but widely-circulated refutations of the incident have also been authored by other influential moderns, including Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal (d. 1376/1956) in Ḥayāt Muḥammad, Sayyid Quṭb (d. 1387/1967) in Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān, Abū l-Aʿlā Mawdūdī (d. 1399/1979) in Tafhīm al-Qurʾān, and Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1420/1999) in Naṣb al-majānīq li-nasf al-gharānīq (see exegesis of the qurʾān: early modern and contemporary ). Orientalists (see post-enlightenment academic study of the qurʾān ), including the most widely-read biographers of Muḥammad — such as William Muir, D.S. Margoliouth, W. Montgomery Watt, Maxime Rodinson and F. E. Peters — have tended (with few exceptions) just as forcefully to accept the historicity of the incident, the orientalist logic having been epitomized by Peters: “This is the indubitably authentic story — it is impossible to imagine a Muslim inventing such an inauspicious tale.” The widespread acceptance of the incident by early Muslims suggests, however, that they did not view the incident as inauspicious and that they would presumably not have, on this basis at least, been adverse to inventing it.¶

The rejection — or simple omission from tafsīr and sīra works — of the satanic verses incident having become routine in modern Islamic thought, the incident was somewhat rudely re-introduced to the larger Muslim consciousness through the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The satanic verses in 1988. While the hostile Muslim reaction had less to do with Rushdie's adoption of the satanic verses incident for his titular phrase and central scene than with other offensive motifs in the novel, it is nonetheless noteworthy that Rushdie's publication did not re-open the debate among Muslims over the historicity of the satanic verses incident. Its only result was reiteration of the orthodox view.
{{refbegin3}}
;Bibliography

'''Primary:'''

Abū Ḥayyān, Baḥr, ed. Cairo 1911, vi, 380-4

Baghawī, Maʿālim, ed. M. ʿAbdallāh al-Nimr et al., 8 vols., Riyadh 1993, v, 393-6

Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām, iii, 1286-91

Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, al-Kāfī fī takhrīj aḥādīth al-kashshāf, Beirut 1966, 114

Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 4 vols, Beirut 1966, iv, 655-8

ʿIyāḍ b. Mūsā, Shifāʾ, Amman 1986, ii, 275-310

Jalālayn, Cairo 1966, 312-3

Māwardī, Nukat, iv, 34-7; vi, 397-9

Qurṭubī, Jāmiʿ, xii, 79-88

Quṭb, Ẓilāl, vi, 3418-22

Rāzī, Tafsīr, Cairo 1933, xxiii, 48-55

Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. ʿAlī et al., xvii, 186-95

Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān, MS Topkapı Sarayı, Ahmet III, Tefsir 76/3, f. 41b-42a (ed. M. b. ʿĀshūr, 10 vols., Beirut 2002, vii, 29-30)

Wāḥidī, Asbāb, 319-21

Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, Beirut 1947, iv, 19

'''Secondary:'''

M. ʿAbduh, Masʾalat al-gharānīq wa-tafsīr al-āyāt, in al-Manār 4/3 (1905), 81-99

Sh. Ahmed, Ibn Taymiyyah and the satanic verses, in si 87 (1998), 67-124

id., The problem of the satanic verses and the formation of Islamic orthodoxy (forthcoming)

id., The satanic verses incident in the memory of the early Muslim community. A study of the early riwāyahs and their isnāds, Ph.D. diss., Princeton 1999

M. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, Naṣb al-majānīq li-nasf al-gharānīq, Damascus 1952

J. Burton, Those are the high-flying cranes, in jss 15 (1970), 246-65

M.Ḥ. Haykal, Ḥayāt Muḥammad, Cairo 1935, 140-5

D.S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the rise of Islam, London 1906, 170-5

Mawdūdī, Abū l-Aʿlā, Tafhīm al-Qurʾān,¶ 6 vols., Lahore 1958-62, iii, 237-45

Muir, Mahomet, ii, 149-59

al-Naḥḥās, Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, al-Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh fī kitāb Allāh ʿazza wa-jalla wa-khtilāf al-ʿulamāʾ fī dhālik, ed. S. al-Lāḥim, 3 vols., Beirut 1991, i, 429-31, 448-51; ii, 527-9

F.E. Peters, Muhammad and the origins of Islam, Albany, NY 1994, 160-1

M. Rodinson, Mohammed, Harmondsworth 1971, 106-8

S. Rushdie, The satanic verses, London 1988

W.M. Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford 1953, 100-9

;Cite this page
Ahmed, Shahab, “Satanic Verses”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 07 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQSIM_00372>{{refbegin2}}

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