1 Burton, R., Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah (London: Tylston and Edwards, 1893), 1:325Google Scholar.

2 Ibn Isḥāq, Sīrat rasūl Allāh, ed. Wüstenfeld, F., Das Leben Muhammeds nach Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1858–60), 409Google Scholar; English trans: Isḥāq, Muḥammad Ibn, The Life of Muḥammad, trans. Guillaume, A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 276Google Scholar.

3 See Smith, W. C., “Aḥmadiyya”, EI², 1:301bGoogle Scholar.

4 See Ayoub, M., “Towards an Islamic Christology II: the death of Jesus, reality or delusion?”, The Muslim World 70, 1980, 91–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ayoub argues that the idea that someone or something other than Jesus appeared on the Cross is inconsistent with the Quran's theological principles. He asks (p. 104), “Would it be in consonance with God's covenant, his mercy and justice to deceive humanity for so many centuries?”

5 Lawson, B. T., “The Crucifixion of Jesus in the Qur'ân and qur'ânic commentary: a historical survey”, The Bulletin of the Henry Martin Institute of Islamic Studies 10, 1991, (2, 34–62; 3, 6–40), 2, 40Google Scholar.

6 Fakhry: “But so it was made to appear unto them” (precisely that of Yūsuf ʿAlī). Haleem, Abdel: “Though it was made to appear like that to them”. The Qur'ān, trans. Fakhry, M. (Reading: Garnet, 1996)Google Scholar; The Qur'ān, trans. M. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

7 Ali, Yusuf's footnote here only adds to the ambiguity: “The Qur'ānic teaching is that Christ was not crucified nor killed by the Jews, notwithstanding certain apparent circumstances which produced that illusion in the minds of some of his enemies”, The Meaning of the Holy Qur'ān, trans. Yūsuf ʿAlī, ʿAbdallāh (Beltsville, MD: Amana, 1996), 236Google Scholar, n. 663.

8 Muslim commentators, however, often insist that Jesus is here referring to his death in the eschaton, when God will send him back to the world from his heavenly refuge. Parrinder retorts, “There is no futurity in the grammar of the Qur'ān to suggest a post-millennial death”. Parrinder, Geoffrey, Jesus in the Qur'ān (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 105Google Scholar. Elsewhere (p. 106) Parrinder comments that in interpreting 9.33 Muslim commentators “have let themselves be dominated by 4.157”. On this verse N. Robinson comments, “There is not the slightest hint, however, that his death also lies in the future. On the contrary, given only this sūrā, the assumption would be that it already lay in the past like John's”, Robinson, N., “Jesus”, EQ, 3:17bGoogle Scholar.

9 Thus Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1312) defines tawffāhu Allāh as “qabaḍ Allahu nafsahu”, literally, “God seized his soul”. The body is left behind as the soul is taken by God. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-'arab, ed. Muḥammad al-Sādiq al-ʿUbaydī (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā’ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1418/1997), 15:359.

10 The meaning of the verb rafa'a in Q 3.55 and 4.158 is clarified in light of Q 19.57, which reports that God raised Idrīs to a high place (rafaʿnāhu). Presumably Idrīs here represents Enoch (cf. Gen. 5.24), who according to Jewish and Christian tradition was preserved from death. The name Idrīs, meanwhile, may be derived from Andrew, the cook of Alexander the Great who according to the Alexander Romance wins immortality in the Fountain of Youth. Regarding the ascension of Christ in the Quran, Rudolph suggests that the mention of a high place reserved for Jesus and Mary (Q 23.50) reflects the Christian doctrines of the Ascension and the Assumption. Rudolph, W., Die Abhängigkeit des Qorans von Judentum und Christentum (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1922), 82–3Google Scholar.

11 Louis Massignon argues that this substitution theory, which is in no way obvious in the Quran itself, was inherited from the doctrine of radical Shii groups who maintained that their divine imāms only appeared to die, “la parcelle divine qui résidait en eux ayant été nécessairement soustraite à leurs assassins”. Massignon, L., “Le Christ dans les évangiles selon Ghazali”, Revue des études islamiques 6, 1932, 491–536, p. 525Google Scholar. Lawson (“The Crucifixion of Jesus in the Qur'ân and Qur'ânic commentary”, 3, 29) refutes Massignon's theory, countering that the Shia accepted the suffering and death of their Imāms, and therefore would not be reluctant to accept the suffering and death of Jesus. He seems to miss, however, that Massignon is referring precisely to those extreme (ghulāt) Shii groups (such as the Khaṭṭābiyya) who rejected (apparently) the suffering and death of their Imāms.

12 For a more extensive description of both classical and modern Islamic exegesis on the crucifixion see Lawson, B.T., The Crucifixion and the Qur'ān: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009)Google Scholar. Therein Lawson expands on his earlier two-part article: “The crucifixion of Jesus in the Qur'ân and Qur'ânic commentary: a historical survey”. Cf. also Fonner, M., “Jesus' death by crucifixion in the Qur'an”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 29, 1992, 432–50Google Scholar.

13 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr (henceforth: Tafsīr Muqātil), ed. ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Shaḥāta (Cairo: Mu'assasat al-Ḥalabī, n.d.), 1:420, on Q 4.157.

14 Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān fī ta'wīl al-Qur'ān, ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī Bayḍūn (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1408/1988; the pagination of this edition follows the 30 equal-part division of the Qur'ān, although it is bound in 15 volumes. References in the present work are to part:page), 6:12–3, on Q 4.157. This tradition is on the authority of Wahb b. Munabbih.

15 A name which is used idiomatically in both Muslim and Christian Arabic accounts for otherwise unnamed Christian figures. It appears, for example, in the Christian anti-Muslim polemical letter of Kindī for the renegade monk (otherwise known as Baḥīra or Buḥayra) who instructs Muḥammad. See Risālat ʿAbdallāh b. Ismā'īl al-Hāshimī ilā ʿAbd al-Masīḥ b. Isḥāq al-Kindī wa-risalat ʿAbd al-Masīḥ ilā ‘l-Hāshimī (Damascus: al-Takwīn li-l-Ṭibāʿa wa-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzīʿ), 2005 (reprint of ed. A. Tien, London: n.p., 1880), 75; trans. The Apology of al-Kindy, trans. W. Muir (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1887), 70.

16 Ṭabarī, 6:12–3, on Q 4.157. Ṭabarī's contemporary, the Shii exegete Qummī (d. after 307/919), relates a similar narrative on the authority of the fifth imām Muḥammad Bāqir:

17 According to Zamakhsharī, “When God informed [Jesus] that He would raise him to heaven and purify him [cf. Q 3.55] from the followers of the Jews, he said to his companions: ‘Who would like to have my likeness cast on him, to be killed and crucified, and to enter paradise?’ One of them said, ‘I would’. [Jesus'] likeness was cast on him and he was killed and crucified.” Zamakhsharī, Al-Kashf ʿan ḥaqā’iq ghawāmiḍ al-tanzīl, ed. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Aḥmad (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Istiqāma, 1365/1946), 1:586–7, on Q 4.153–9.

18 Ibid., 1:587, on Q 4.153–9.

19 Zamakhsharī also turns to grammatical considerations in his analysis of this verse. Thus he asks what the subject understood in the passive shubbiha is. If it is Jesus (who is named at the beginning of Q 4.157), he explains, then the phrase shubbiha lahum would mean that Jesus was made to look like someone and not that someone was made to look like him, which would make a nonsense of the substitution narratives. Therefore, Zamakhsharī concludes, it can only be the pronoun hum (“them”) in the prepositional phrase lahum, or the pronoun hu (“him”) in the earlier phrase inna qatalnāhu, i.e. the substitute who was in fact killed. If the former, then the phrase shubbiha lahum would mean, “But they became uncertain” (he offers as a parallel the statement khuyyila ilayhi “it seemed to him”). If the latter, this phrase would mean “But they became uncertain of whom they killed”. Zamakhsharī, 1:587, on Q 4.153–9.

20 Zamakhsharī, 1:587, on Q 4.153–9.

21 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, ed. Muḥammad Bayḍūn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1424/2004), 1:550, on Q 4.156–9.

22 Ibid., 1:550–1, on Q 4.156–9.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., 1:552, on Q 4.156–9. The Quran does not include exorcisms in the catalogue of miracles it attributes to Jesus; see Q 3.49; 5.110.

25 Ibid.

26 Cf. the version of the same ḥadīth in Ṭabarī, 6:12–3, on Q 4.157.

27 Ibn Kathīr, 1:553, on Q 4.156–9.

28 Ibid.

29 Tafsīr Muqātil, 1:279, on Q 3.55.

30 Ṭabarī 3:289, on Q 3.55.

31 Ṭabarī 3:290, on Q 3.55.

32 Thus in support of the first opinion Ṭabarī cites a ḥadīth (on the authority of al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib) in which the Prophet tells the Jews, “Jesus did not die. He is going to return to you before the Day of Resurrection”. Ṭabarī 3:289, on Q 3.55.

In support of the second opinion, Ṭabarī cites a tradition on the authority of the Jewish convert Ka'b b. al-Aḥbār, that when Jesus was distraught by the opposition against him God comforted him with the message that he would be raised, and added: “The one whom I raise to Myself is not dead. I will send you forth against al-ʿawar al-dajjāl and you will kill him. After that you will live 24 more years and then I will make you die”. Ibid., 3:290. Again Ṭabarī notes in support of this opinion a prophetic ḥadīth, according to which the Prophet declared, “How can a community of which I am its origin and Jesus its end perish?” Ibid. Later Ṭabarī reports a related ḥadīth (on the authority of Abū Hurayra) in which the Prophet explains: “I am the one who is closest to Jesus the son of Mary because there was no prophet between us and because he is the khalīfa (“successor”) of my community. He will descend”. Ibid., 3:291.

33 Ṭabarī cites three traditions which explain that while tawaffā refers to the death of Jesus, the Quran intends his death in the end times. One such tradition relates that Jesus will return as “a just arbiter and a righteous Imām, who will strike the Cross, kill the swine, pour forth money and combat all people for Islam, until in his era God will have annihilated all of the other communities. In his era God will also annihilate the misleading, lying Christ, al-Dajjāl”. Ṭabarī, 3:289.

34 Similar reports can be found in Ṭabarī's reports in his history. See Ṭabarī, , Annales (Ta'rikh), ed. de Goeje, M.J. (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), 1:737–9Google Scholar.

35 Zamakhsharī, 1:366, on Q 3.55–7.

36 Ibn Kathīr, 1:350, on Q 3.55–8.

37 Ibid.

38 Thus Ibn Kathīr reports with approval a ḥadīth in which the Prophet declares: “Jesus did not die. He will return to you on the Day of Resurrection”. Ibn Kathīr, 1:350, on Q 3.55–8.

39 This reading leads to various exegetical traditions according to which Jews and Christians, at the moment of their death, accept that Jesus is a Muslim prophet. Their belief, however, is too late to save them from damnation. Thus Zamakhsharī, for example, has the successor Shahr b. Ḥawshab report a conversation with al-Ḥajjāj (d. 95/714). Shahr describes al-Ḥajjāj's complaint that when he kills Jews and Christians he does not see them profess faith in Jesus as a Muslim Prophet. Shahr continues:

Zamakhsharī, 1:588, on Q 4.153–9. In the following tradition Zamakhsharī has ʿIkrima confess to [his master] Ibn ʿAbbās that when he cut off the head of one of the People of the Book he observed the man's lips moving before he died. Ibid. See the similar traditions in Ibn Kathīr, 1:553–4, on Q 4.159.

As though to support this view, a quranic variant (attributed to Ubayy) has mawtihim (“their death”) instead of mawtihi (“his death”). See Zamakhsharī, 1:588, on Q 4.153–9; Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt al-Qurʾāniyya, ed. Aḥmad ʿUmar and ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Mukarram (Tehran: Dār al-Uswa li-l-Ṭibāʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1426), 2:179.

40 Thus the explanatory parenthetical note in Paret's translation: “Und es gibt keinen von den Leuten der Schrift, der nicht (noch) vor seinem Tode (der erst am Ende aller Tage eintreten wird) an ihn glauben würde”.

41 Qummī, 1:165, on Q 4.159.

42 Again variants are used to favour certain interpretations. One variant (attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās, Abū Hurayra and Mujāhid among others) reads ʿalam (“sign”) for ʿilm (“knowledge”) and thus follows the exegetical traditions that the return of Jesus to earth will be a sign of the coming of the apocalyptic Hour. A second variant (attributed to Ubayy), however, reads instead dhikr (“reminder”), and thus suggests simply that Jesus reminded (or the Quran reminds) people of the Hour. See Zamakhsharī, 4:261, on Q 43.61; Muʿjam al-qirā'āt al-Qur'āniyya, 6:122–3.

43 Tafsīr Muqātil, 3:800, on Q 43.61.

44 See Ṭabarī, 25:90–1, on Q 43.61.

45 Zamakhsharī, 4:261, on Q 43.61.

46 Ibn Kathīr, 1:553, on Q 4.159.

47 Ibid., 1:554.

48 Ibid., 4:120, on Q 43.57–65.

49 “There is nothing to indicate that his future descent requires him to have been spared death on the cross.” N. Robinson, “Jesus”, 17b–18a.

50 Regarding which see Abel, A., “Al-Dadjdjāl”, EI², 2:75–7Google Scholar.

51 Qummī, 1:165, on Q 4.159.

52 See, for example, the traditions recorded by al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022), K. al-Irshād (Beirut: Muʿassasat al-ʿAllāmī li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1399/1979), 364 ff.

53 In a widespread ḥadīth on the authority of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728). See Ibn Māja, Sunan, Kitāb al-fitan, 24, Bāb shiddat al-zamān, ed. Muḥammad Fu'ād ʿAbd al-Bāqī (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1372–73/1952–53); cf. Wensinck, A. J., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 7:80a–bGoogle Scholar. A discussion of this ḥadīth appears in ʿAsākir, Ibn, Sīrat al-sayyid al-Masīḥ, ed. Mūrād, Sulaymān (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1996), 273–8Google Scholar. Note also, under the same entry in Wensinck (7:80a–b), the various counter ḥadīths which insist that the Mahdī will be an offspring of Fāṭima.

54 Regarding which see, for example, Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī, Uṣūl al-kāfī, “Bāb mawlad al-ṣāḥib” 1, n.e. (Tehran: Dār al-Uswa, 1418), 1:587.

55 This is so even in the work of scholars of contrasting ideologies, e.g. the Protestant missionary Tisdall, W. St. Clair, The Original Sources of the Qur'an (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1905), 142Google Scholar; the Dominican Anawati, G., “ʿĪsā”, EI², 4:84aGoogle Scholar; and the contemporary scholar Robinson, N., Christ in Islam and Christianity (London: Macmillan, 1991), 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 On this see Basetti-Sani, G., The Koran in the Light of Christ (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977), 169–73Google Scholar. See also R. C. Zaehner, who accordingly compares this passage to Philippians 2.7–9, in which Paul insists that God glorified Christ after the Crucifixion: “But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. And for this God raised him high, and gave him the name which is above all other names”, Zaehner, R. C., At Sundry Times: An Essay in Comparative Religions (London: Faber & Faber, 1958), 213Google Scholar.

57 Lawson, “The Crucifixion of Jesus in the Qurʾân and qurʾânic commentary”, 2, 35.

58 Ibid., 35.

59 Noted by Anawati, 4:84a; See Grégoire, H., “Mahomet et le monophysisme”, Mélanges Charles Diehl (Paris: Leroux, 1930), 1:107–19Google Scholar.

60 Henninger, J., Spuren christlicher Glaubenswahrheiten im Koran (Schöneck: Administration der Neuen Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft, 1951), 27–8Google Scholar.

61 Ahrens, K., “Christliches im Qoran”, ZDMG 84, 1930 (15–68, 148–90), 153Google Scholar. As noted by Bell, (The Origin of Islam in Its Christian Environment (London: Macmillan, 1926), 154Google Scholar), this theory was already suggested in the nineteenth century by Rosch, G., “Jesusmythen des Islam”, Theologische Studien and Kritiken 1, 1876, 409–54, 451Google Scholar.

62 Thus Masson notes the Acts of John 99, wherein the divine Christ appears with a great Cross of light while the human Jesus is being crucified, and declares, “It is not that wooden Cross which you will see when you go down from here; nor am I the [man] who is on the Cross”, English trans. Schäferdiek, K. in New Testament Apocrypha, trans. Wilson, R. (Cambridge: J. Clarke & Co., 1991), 2:185Google Scholar. He also refers to Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Smyraens (ch. 2): “Now, He suffered all these things for us; and He suffered them really, and not in appearance only, even as also He truly rose again. But not, as some of the unbelievers, who are ashamed of the formation of man, and the cross, and death itself, affirm, that in appearance only, and not in truth”, and to Irenaeus' refutation (Adv. Haer. 1:24) of Basilides' claim that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in the place of Christ. See Masson, D., Le Coran et la révélation judéo-chrétienne (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1958), 330–1Google Scholar.

63 Rudolph, 82. Later (p. 18) Rudolph expresses dismay at Muḥammad's view of the crucifixion, “Wer den Kreuzestod für eine Fälschung hält, hat von der Bedeutung Jesu nichts begriffen”.

64 See Bell, , The Origin of Islam, 154–5Google Scholar.

65 Henninger, , Spuren christlicher Glaubenswahrheiten, 32Google Scholar.

66 Anawati, 4:84.

67 Zayd, N. Abu, Rethinking the Qur'ân: Towards a Humanistic Hermeneutics (Amsterdam: Humanistics University Press, 2004), 34Google Scholar.

68 Jesus in the Qur'ān (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), 108. See also the similar opinion of Räisänen, H., Die koranische Jesusbild (Helsinki: Missiologian ja Ekumeniikan, 1971), 68Google Scholar. Lawson comments that within the larger passage the Quran's reference to the Crucifixion is “parenthetic and gratuitous”, “The Crucifixion of Jesus in the Qur'ân and qur'ânic commentary”, 2, 37.

69 Watt, W. M., Muslim–Christian Encounters (Routledge: London, 1991), 22Google Scholar. Similarly O. Carré argues for “la lecture non docétiste de la crucifixion du Coran et de l'élévation corps et âme de Jésus, et également, des martyrs”, O. Carré, “À propos du coran sur quelques ondes françaises actuelles”, Arabica 53, 2006, 353–81, 363. The approach of Masson is different. He proposes that the Quran is insisting that the divine nature of Christ was untouched by death: “Les hommes, en le faisant mourir, ont fait mourir, en effet, le corps dans lequel s'était incarné le Verbe eternel et immuable”, Masson, 330.

70 Cragg, K., Jesus and the Muslim (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 168Google Scholar. Cragg argues that the deeper meaning of this passage is missed by Muslim commentators who bring religious dogmas to their reading of the Quran: “Islamic convictions about Jesus and the Cross have never simply been those of mere investigators dealing with evidence. They have been those of believers persuaded already by theology … Historicity is involved inextricably with the larger theme of what ought to be”, p. 178. Elsewhere Cragg approvingly quotes Muḥammad Kāmil Ḥusayn, author of City of Wrong, who remarks, “The idea of a substitute for Christ is a very crude way of explaining the Qur’ānic text”, Cragg, 175. Ḥusayn, M. K., City of Wrong, trans. Cragg, K. (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1958), 222Google Scholar.

71 Robinson, N., Christ in Islam and Christianity, 115Google Scholar.

72 Robinson, N., “Jesus”, EQ, 3:19aGoogle Scholar. A similar development in Robinson's thought is evident with regard to the term tawaffā. In Christ in Islam and Christianity (p. 125) Robinson insists, “Although death is normally a concomitant [to tawaffā] there is no reason why there should not be exceptions”. In his Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ān article (3:18b), however, he comments, “There is a prima facie case for construing God's words to Jesus to mean that he was going to cause him to die and raise him into his presence”.

73 The importance of this theological point is similarly evident in the Gospel of John. The power of Jesus to take and restore his own life is a sign of his divine nature: “The Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will” (John 10.17–8a).

74 In this regard see also Luke 23.35: “The people stayed there watching. As for the leaders, they jeered at him with the words, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One’”.

75 On Jacob of Serugh see Griffith, S., “Christian lore and the Arabic Qur'ān: The ‘Companions of the Cave’ in Sūrat al-Kahf and in Syriac Christian tradition”, in Reynolds, G. S. (ed.), The Qur'ān in Its Historical Context (London: Routledge, 2008), 109–37Google Scholar; Kollamparampil, T., Salvation in Christ according to Jacob of Serugh: An Exegetico-Theological Study on the Homilies of Jacob of Serugh (451–521 ad) on the Feasts of Our Lord (Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 2001)Google Scholar; Mansour, T. Bou, La théologie de Jacques de Saroug (Kaslik, Lebanon: L'Université Saint-Esprit, 1993 and 2000)Google Scholar.

76 See Homélies contre les juifs, PO 174, ed. and trans. M. Albert (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1976).

77 Homélies contre les juifs, 44, l. 17.

78 Ibid., 146, ll. 171–2.

79 Basetti-Sani, , The Koran in the Light of Christ, 171Google Scholar.

80 Seder Neziḳin, trans. I. Epstein (London: Soncino, 1961), 3:281.

81 Ibid., 3:725.