TY - JOUR
T1 - Earth from Frozen Water? Traces of an Ancient Jewish Dilemma about the Creation of the Earth in Muslim Cosmogony, Reflected in a Rare Oath Formula Found in The 101 Nights
AU - Lerner, Amir
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH. Co.KG. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - In this paper we examine the origins of a quite rare oath formula in Arabic, as expressed by a protagonist in the medieval story collection The 101 Nights. As part of the oath formula, the Deity is depicted as having spread the earth over frozen water. A perusal of ancient Muslim traditions concerning the earth’s creation sheds some light on the matter, but the substantive and linguistic picture which these traditions draw is somewhat ambiguous. We shall present some ancient Jewish traditions, some of them pre-dating the emergence of Islam, in which a dilemma on this theme is seen to arise, and would seem to have served as a background against which a somewhat unstable ancillary Muslim cosmogonical approach to the earth’s creation emerged.
AB - In this paper we examine the origins of a quite rare oath formula in Arabic, as expressed by a protagonist in the medieval story collection The 101 Nights. As part of the oath formula, the Deity is depicted as having spread the earth over frozen water. A perusal of ancient Muslim traditions concerning the earth’s creation sheds some light on the matter, but the substantive and linguistic picture which these traditions draw is somewhat ambiguous. We shall present some ancient Jewish traditions, some of them pre-dating the emergence of Islam, in which a dilemma on this theme is seen to arise, and would seem to have served as a background against which a somewhat unstable ancillary Muslim cosmogonical approach to the earth’s creation emerged.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85208433500&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.13173/ZDMG.173.2.317
DO - https://doi.org/10.13173/ZDMG.173.2.317
M3 - مقالة
SN - 0341-0137
VL - 173
SP - 317
EP - 341
JO - Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft
JF - Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft
IS - 2
ER -