Vir­gins of Par­adise” in Christianity

Asif Iqbal

It has already point­ed out pre­vi­ous­ly that the Ara­bic word hur al-ayn” (houris), mean­ing a beau­ti­ful, volup­tuous woman, was already well known in the pre-Islam­ic Ara­bia and many instances of its usage have been pre­served in the pre-Islam­ic poetry.

Some exam­ples may be seen as follows :

And the maidens like ivory statues white of eyes, did we captureThe Diwan of Abid ibn Al-Abras of Ban­id, vol vii, 24 ; ed., Sir Charles Lyall

Run­ning trans­la­tion : And the maid­ens like ivory stat­ues white of eyes, did we capture.”

They have touched your heart, these tender white maidens, beside the river bankAdi bin Zaid ; See F. Sez­gin, G.A.S., bd. ii, S. 321 – 22, Lei­den 1975

Run­ning trans­la­tion : They have touched your heart, these ten­der white maid­ens, beside the riv­er bank.”

"Virgins of Paradise" in Christianity 1Qa’nab, Mukhtarat, viii, 7

Run­ning trans­la­tion : And in the wom­en’s cham­ber when the house is full, are the white maid­ens with charm­ing voices.”

In all these vers­es, we are deal­ing with human women, flaw­less in beau­ty — a very dark pupil and a very white iris of their eyes being an essen­tial and par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing fea­ture of their beau­ty. As the verse of Abid indi­cates, such women were con­sid­ered a very pre­cious booty by the pre-Islam­ic Arabs in the raids of those times.

It must be not­ed here that the con­cept of houris of Par­adise” was gen­er­al­ly unknown to the pre-Islam­ic Arab since they did not believe in the idea of Here­after. How­ev­er, the con­cept of Maid­ens of Par­adise” was known to the Chris­tians (espe­cial­ly the Syr­i­ac Chris­tians) of the pre-Islam­ic times.

In the last cen­tu­ry, first Hubert GrimmeHubert Grimme, Mohammed, M?, i. W., Aschen­dorff, 1892 – 5, bd., ii, S. 160 – 61, n. 9 , and lat­er the famous Swedish Islam­ic schol­ar and a com­pe­tent mas­ter of Syr­i­ac, Tor AndraeTor Andrae, Les orig­ines de l’Is­lam et le Chris­tian­isme, Paris : A. M., 1955, pp. 151 – 161 dis­cov­ered the idea of the Maid­ens of Par­adise” — which were sup­posed to com­pen­sate for the earth­ly chasti­ty and absti­nence of the Chris­t­ian monks — in the hymns of the fourth cen­tu­ry Syr­i­ac Church Father St. Ephraim (spellings vary), enti­tled : Hymns on Par­adise”.

St. Ephraim, in explic­it sex­u­al con­no­ta­tion, evoked the wel­com­ing fem­i­nin­i­ty of the heav­en­ly vines” (“gup­na”, gram­mat­i­cal­ly fem­i­nine in Syr­i­ac), which were to take to their immac­u­late bosoms the aged monks, whose life of absti­nence had nev­er known the earth­ly loves and tenderness.

Thus we read in the stro­phy 18 :

    Who­ev­er has abstained from wine on earth,
    for him do the vines of Par­adise yearn.
    Each one of them holds out to them a bunch of grapes.
    And if a man had lived in chasti­ty, they [fem­i­nine] receive him
    in a pure bosom,
    because he as a monk did not fall into the bosom
    and bed of earth­ly love.

Here we clear­ly see St. Ephraim’s fee­ble attempts to spir­i­tu­al­ize his sen­su­al imagery.

Just a lit­tle ear­li­er in the text (in stro­phy 15) we find a soli­tary vir­gin, absti­nent in her earth­ly lives, being sur­round­ed by male beings (prophets, angels, apos­tles) in the heavens :

    The vir­gin who rejected
    the mar­riage crown that fades
    now has the radi­ant mar­riage chamber
    that cher­ish­es the chil­dren of light,
    shin­ing out because she rejected
    the works of darkness-
    To her who was alone
    in a lone­ly house
    the wed­ding feast now grants tranquility :
    here angels rejoice,
    prophets delight,
    and apos­tles add splendor.

The intend­ed sex­u­al­i­ty and the reward, of a sex­u­al nature, in the heav­ens for the right­eous of the world, are clear in these pas­sages. Hence it is proved that the con­cept of Maid­ens of Par­adise” was also known in the pre-Islam­ic Ara­bia, espe­cial­ly among the Chris­tians. The Qur’an, as is its style under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, used the same words for the deliv­er­ance of its mes­sage, which were gen­er­al­ly in vogue in the envi­ron­ment that it addressed. Since the idea of the Here­after formed the cor­ner­stone of the ear­ly Mec­can preach­ing of the Qur’an there­fore, to effec­tive­ly make it preach­ing get across its addressees, it employed the same known word hur” to describe the excel­lence of the reward for the right­eous in the known Chris­t­ian manner.

This is fur­ther con­firmed by the fact that it is only in the Mec­can (and espe­cial­ly the chrono­log­i­cal­ly ear­ly Mec­can) Qur’an­ic pas­sages in which the term hur al-ayn” is used in sen­su­al con­no­ta­tion. In the rel­e­vant Med­i­nan Qur’an­ic pas­sagesi.e., 2:25 ; 3:15 ; 4:57, we only find per­fect­ed counterparts/​spouses (i.e., for both the right­eous men and women).

This should be a slap in the face of the polemic mis­sion­ary pro­pa­gan­da. And only Allah knows best.

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