Israʼiliyyat
Sources from Judaism were introduced into Islam
ʾIsrāʾīliyāt (إسرائيليات “Israelitica”) is a sub-genre of tafsīr and Ḥadīth which supplements Quranic narratives. Isra'iliyyat may derive from Judaic sources. In the early years, Isra'iliyyat were widely accepted. Only by the time of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Kathīr, the term Isra'iliyyat began to denote content considered dubious or as un-Islamic. In modern times, Turkish Quran commentators still allow for usage of Isra'iliyyat, while they are rejected by half of the Arab Quran commentators.
The Qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ usually contain the same materials, but avoided criticism of foreign import. Whether Qaṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ is a subdivision of Israiliyyat or the other way around, remains a scholarly debate.
Israiliyyat frequently appear in Qur'anic commentaries, Sufi narratives and Islamic literature. They are used to offer more detailed information regarding earlier prophets mentioned in the Bible and the Qur'an.
History
The first known use of the term Isra'iliyyat is in a writing of the 10th-century historian and geographer al-Masudi (d.
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This entry incorporates text from “Israʼiliyyat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.