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Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān
- Generations
Stages in the succession of natural descent. Generations ( qarn, pl. qurūn) is used some twenty times in the Qurʾān to refer to the ¶2/293/1¶ groups of people (i.e. nations; cf. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, xi, 26, ad q 6:6) who had been destroyed by God for their disobedience (q.v.) and failure to heed his message (e.g. q 6:6; 10:13; 11:116; 17:17; 19:74, 78; 23:31; 38:3; 50:36); the same word, qarn, also refers to the people who replace those generations. These destroyed peoples are cited as examples of wrongdoing and as warnings not to follow their doomed ways. The destroyed peoples are usually identified with a prophet named in the Qurʾān, such as Noah (q.v.), Lot (q.v.), Hūd (q.v.) for the people of ʿĀd (q.v.), Shūʿayb (q.v.; sometimes identified with the biblical Jethro) for the people of Midian (q.v.) and Ṣāliḥ (q.v.) for the Thamūd (q.v.). The traces of their existence, either in memory or artifacts, serve as a caution to humankind about the consequences of disobedience to God (see geography ).
The use of the category of generations in the Qurʾān is part of the larger qurʾānic argument that all of history can serve as a lesson for humankind, part of the total number of signs (q.v.) and portents God has sent down. q 6:6, for example, states, “Do they not see how many generations before them we destroyed, which we had established on the earth, strengthening them as we have not strengthened you, for whom we sent down rain in abundance and made rivers flow beneath them. But we destroyed them because of their sins and brought forth another generation after them.” The destroyed generations are described as having had great power and wealth (q.v.) that availed them nothing in the face of God's judgment (q.v.). Not all sinners are necessarily condemned without the possibility of redemption. The Qurʾān tells the story of the people of Jonah (q.v.; Yūnus or Dhū l-Nūn), who repented and were saved from destruction ( q 10:98; 37:139-48).¶2/293/2¶
Post-qurʾānic commentators elaborate on details of the destroyed generations, making liberal use of materials derived from biblical commentaries and Arabian legends (see mythic and legendary narratives; scripture and the qurʾān). In the story of Noah, for example, the number of people saved from destruction rises to seventy, including the giant Og (ʿŪj b. ʿAnaq; cf. Kisāʾī, Tales, 99, 251-3). Such elaboration became the locus for the narration of much fabulous lore. Scholarly critics of this genre point to quotations of verbatim speeches and poetry from the destroyed peoples as examples of the excesses of this material. See also punishment stories .
- Primary
Kisāʾī, The tales of the prophets of al-Kisāʾī, trans. W. Thackston, Boston 1978
Ṭabarī, Annales, ed. de Goeje, Leiden 1881
id., Tafsīr, Cairo 1954
Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf
- Secondary
M. Lidzbarski, De propheticis, quae dicuntur, legendis Arabicis, Leipzig 1893
E. Littman, Thamūd and Safā, Leipzig 1940
G.D. Newby, The making of the last prophet. A reconstruction of the earliest biography of Muhammad, Columbia, SC 1989
R. Mottahedeh, Some Islamic views of the pre-Islamic past, in Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic review 1 (1994), 17-26
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