Harut and Marut


Harut and Marut are two angels mentioned in Quran 2:102, who are described as having been present during the reign of Solomon, and as being located in Babylon. According to some narratives, those two angels were in the time of Idris. The Quran indicates that they were a trial for the people and through them the people were tested with sorcery. The names are probably etymologically related to Haurvatat and Ameretat, two Zoroastrian archangels.

Quranic narrative

In the Quran, the two angels are briefly mentioned as follows:

Interpretations by scholars

Tabari

offers different narrations linking back to the sahaba. Although differing in detail, the story can be summarized as follows:
The angels were astonished at the acts of disobedience committed by the human beings on earth, claiming they would do better than them. Therefore, God challenged the angels to choose two representatives among them, who would descend to earth and be endowed with bodily desires. During their stay on earth, they fell in love with a woman named Zohra. She told them she would become intimate with them if they joined her in idolatry and tell her how to ascend to heaven. The angels refused and remained pious. Later they met her again and the woman this time stated she would become intimate with them if they drank alcohol. The angels thought that alcohol could not cause great harm and therefore, they accepted the condition. After they were drunk, they became intimate with her and after noticing a witness, they killed them. On the next day, Harut and Marut regretted their deeds but could not ascend to heaven anymore due to their sins, as their link to the angels was broken. Thereupon, God asked them, either their punishment shall be in this world or in the hereafter. They chose to be punished on earth and therefore were sent to Babel as a test, teaching humans magic but not without warning them that they were just a temptation.

Ibn Kathir

The 14th-century scholar Ibn Kathir gives an alternative version of Harut and Marut. Although regarding their story as sound in chain of narrations, but since it goes back to Ibn Abbas and not to Muhammad himself, he asserts Muslims should not follow this narrative. Instead he goes into depth about what exactly the angels had taught to the people in his book, Stories of the Qur'an:

Narrated Al-`Ufi in his interpretation on the authority of Ibn `Abbas pertaining to Allah's Statement When Sulaiman lost his kingdom, great numbers from among mankind and the jinn renegaded and followed their lusts. But, when Allah restored to Sulaiman his kingdom and the renegade came to follow the Straight Path once again, Sulaiman seized their holy scriptures which he buried underneath his throne. Shortly after, Sulaiman died. In no time, the men and the Jinn uncovered the buried scriptures and said: This was a book revealed by Allah to Sulaiman who hid it from us. They took it as their religion and Allah the Almighty revealed His Saying:. and they followed what the devils gave out, i.e. all that blocks the remembrance of Allah.

Criticism

Some Islamic exegetes prefer to view Harut and Marut as ordinary men rather than angels, who learned magic from devils since their legend cannot be attributed to Muhammed with certainty. This also shall defend the impeccability of angels, as already asserted by Hasan of Basra, but mostly emphasized during the Salafi-movement. Contrary, the story was accepted by many Medieval Muslims, and also cited by influential scholars such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
According to Muslim scholar Ansar Al-'Adl, many interpretations of the verse originated from alleged Judeo-Christian sources that came to be recorded in some works of Quranic exegesis, called Tafsir. Numerous stories have been transmitted about these verses, yet all center around the same basic story. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, translator of the Qur'an into English, asserts that the source of this story may be the Jewish Midrash:
Among the Jewish traditions in the Midrash was a story of two angels who asked Allah's permission to come down to earth but succumbed to temptation, and were hung up by their feet at Babylon for punishment. Such stories about sinning angels who were cast down to punishment were believed in by the early Christians, also.

However, most recent research in the field of Islamic Studies has established that the earliest possible date for the Midrash dealing with the Harut & Marut narrative, dates from the 11th century and thus postdates the advent of Islam by more than 400 years:

Careful comparison of the developed narratives of the "Tale of Harut and Marut" and the Midrash amid the larger literary corpora within which they are embedded suggests that the Muslim Harut wa-Marut complex both chronologically and literarily precedes the articulated versions of the Jewish Midrash. What is likely the oldest Hebrew form of the story dates from approximately the eleventh century, several hundred years after the bulk of the Muslim evidence.

Similarly, Patricia Crone argues, that the Midrash actually adapted the story from Muslims, but the names were changed to Azazel and Samyaza, terms for fallen angels in other earlier Jewish scriptures, however, regarded as unauthentic by Rabbinic Judaism.

Shia discussion

, the 11th Imam of the Twelver Shi'ah, after being asked about the truth of the story, refuted the belief that angels may emerge as transgressors, because, he reasoned, they lack freedom to act upon their will and just rely on the Will of God. Pertaining to the Quran's statement: "To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth, and those who are near Him do not disdain to worship Him, nor do they become weary. They glorify night and day, and they do not flag," he argued that if Harut and Marut had committed oppression and injustice, how could they have been God's representative or messenger on earth?
Shia Islamic scholars and philosophers such as Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi believe that angels are regarded as mujarradat who are "intrinsically intelligible" and free from the limitations of material existence. A mujarrad being, as described by Shirazi, is not necessarily something "that exists as an abstraction in the mind". It can be a concrete reality as in the case of God, the angels or the intellect.