Āl-‘Imrān 3:35

The issue

This text tells us of ‘Imrān’s wife, who is Hannah, according to the scholars. When she felt that she was pregnant, she offered what was in her womb as a servant to Allah. However, after she delivered, she discovered that the baby was female and pleaded with Allah that her newborn was not fit to serve him because she was a female. So she named the baby Maryam (Mary) and prayed, asking Allah to protect her and her offspring from “Satan the pelted [outcast].” Allah answered her prayer and protected Maryam. Later the verse declares, “[A]nd Zachariah took care of her.” Whenever Zachariah visited her in her prayer chamber, “he found beside her a provision.” When he asked her about the source of the food, Maryam told him that it was “from God.”

The scholars agree that the man named ‘Imrān mentioned in this text is the father of the Virgin Mary (the mother of Jesus) and not the father of Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. They base their argument on two points:

• The context of these verses inform us that Zachariah took care of Maryam.

• Sūra  l-i ‘Imrān (Q 3) is concerned with Christ’s biography and does not recount the story of Moses or Aaron.

This story, as mentioned in the Qur’ān, contains several inconsistencies from the biblical account:

Maryam, daughter of ‘Imrān

• First the name of ‘Imrān appears with an n at the end instead of m ending found in the Torah. According to the Bible, Maryam’s mother was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi (not Hannah): “To Amram she bore Aaron, Moses and their sister Miriam” (Num. 26.59).

• Maryam had no children because she was not married. (See the comment on sūra Maryam, Q 19.27-28, in the second volume of this book.)

Hannah

The Islāmic commentaries state that Hannah is Maryam’s mother and that she vowed to give the fruit of her womb to serve in the temple. However, the biblical account does not mention the names of Mary’s parents, while the Islāmic sources state that her mother’s name was Hannah. After comparing biblical references to Hannah and the story of making a vow in the temple, the Qur’ānic version of the story clearly seems to be a fabrication based upon the Old Testament story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who is mentioned in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel 1.11, 24, 28 and 2.11, 18-19.

The analysis of the Qur’ānic version of the story leads us to the apocryphal books from which Muhammad most likely derived this account. Since the analysis of all elements of this story would require a detailed and lengthy study, we will only highlight one detail. The issue of the food that was given to Maryam on a daily basis seems to originate in a Coptic book called The Biography of the Virgin. This book states that when Hannah put her daughter Maryam in the temple, “She was provided for like a dove, and the angels used to bring her food from heaven…and frequently brought her fruit to eat from the tree of life.”