The Koran . . .is
full of bits of biblical-aggadic lore, which Mohammed had picked up from Jewish
and Christian acquaintances. Sometimes he gave the old stories a new twist,
either because he had not understood, or because his own taste prompted him to
change, what he had heard . . .IBLIS. The angels—so the rabbis declared—opposed
the creation of man and resented the favor God showed him. Adam, however,
displayed his superior qualities by naming the animals, a feat the angels could
not equal. Mohammed borrowed this legend and combined it with the apocryphal
story that Satan fell because in his pride he refused to worship Adam. This
combination occurs repeatedly in the Koran; in the fullest version; Iblis
explains why he will not worship the man: “I am better than he; Thou hast
created me of fire, while him Thou hast created of dust.” Thereupon God banishes
Iblis for his arrogance but the Devil is reprieved long enough to lead Adam and
Eve astray, and he still tempts mankind to sin (Koran 7.11-24; more briefly
2.30-6, 15.28-44, 17.61-5, 18.50, 20.116-23, 38.71-8).
Probably, Mohammed
drew here on Christian as well as on Jewish lore: the Adam-books, the chief
written sources for these tales, were preserved by the Church. So likewise the
man Iblis, derived from Diabolos, suggests Christian influence; for
Arabic has an exact cognate, Shaitan, to the Hebrew Satan. In the
Jewish-Christian sources of the legend, Satan was a great angel before his
fall. The Koran, however, states that “he was of the jinn, so he
transgressed” (18.50). This accords with another statement that God created
from the jinni of fire (15.27; 55.15). The jinni are demons, like
the shedim of whom we learned from the rabbis.
One might ask: If
Iblis was only a jinn, of a subordinate and spiritually inferior caste, why was
it so important that he worship Adam, and why was his disobedience to severely
punished? But we should not expect logical consistency from the unlearned
prophet of Arabia. He took the existence of the Devil and of demons for
granted; yet his uncompromising doctrinaire monotheism left no room for
dualistic conceptions He did not worry over the question why Allah, the
all-powerful and all-merciful should have created evil and malicious beings and
tolerated their plots against mankind; here, as in other matters, he left
serious theological difficulties to his more reflective successors. A dim recognition
of the problem appears in the statement that the Devil “has no authority over
those who believe and rely on their Lord. His authority is only over those who
befriend him, and those who set up gods with him” (16.99, 100). This is fair enough,
if you don’t scrutinize it too carefully. Mohammed combined the superstitions
of his own people, the bits of Jewish and Christian lore he had acquired and his
own unbudging monotheism; and he remained comfortably unaware of the
contradictions involved. (Bernard J. Bamberger, Fallen Angels: Soldiers of
Satan’s Realm [Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1952], 112-13)
