Академия Корана:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān/Aaron

Aaron, "Andrew Rippin" in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: J. D. McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

The brother and companion of Moses (q.v.). Aaron (Hārūn b. ʿImrān) is mentioned by name twenty times in the Qurʾān. He is given prophetic status alongside Moses, having received the criterion (q.v.) of revelation (furqān, q 21:48-9; cf. 19:53; 7:122; 23:45; 37:114-20; and 20:70 and 26:48, containing the phrase, «We believe in the Lord of Moses and Aaron»; see revelation and inspiration), and is listed with a number of other prophets (q 4:163; 6:84). Moses asked God to make Aaron his partner (wazīr) in his affairs when he was commanded to go before Pharaoh (q.v.; q 25:35; cf. 10:75; 20:29-36; 26:13; 28:35). Moses also asked God to let Aaron be his spokesman because he was so eloquent (q 28:34-5). The form of the name «Hārūn» is also known from early Arabic poetry and entered Arabic from Hebrew, likely via Syriac (see foreign vocabulary).

A focus of attention regarding Aaron in the Qurʾān is the worship of the calf of gold (q.v.). The incident is mentioned twice. In the first account (q 7:148-57), the story is told as in Exodus 32, with the anger of Moses toward Aaron quite apparent even though his role was just that ¶ of an onlooker. In the second version, (q 20:83-98) a Samaritan (see samaritans) is presented as the tempter of Israel (q.v.). He urged the people to throw their ornaments in the fire and he made the calf that was worshipped by the people, despite Aaron’s advising them not to do so. Again, Moses' anger toward Aaron is apparent. Thus, it may be said that the Qurʾān agrees with the Jewish biblical commentary (midrash) in reducing the blame upon Aaron, although that innocence is not connected, as it is in Jewish commentary, to Aaron’s status as high priest, an idea not mentioned in the Qurʾān (see idolatry and idolaters).

Later Islamic tradition has paid a good deal of attention to the death of Aaron. When Aaron died, the people accused Moses of having murdered him, but angels (q.v.) appeared — or other divine interventions took place — in order to alleviate their suspicions. According to Muslim legend, a similar accusation was lodged against Joshua in the death of Moses.

An issue related to Aaron which has proven to be subject to dispute since the early days of Islam is q 19:28, in which Mary (q.v.), the mother of Jesus (q.v.), is called «the sister of Aaron» (see also q 3:35, «a woman of ʿImrān (q.v.)» and 66:12, «Mary, ¶ the daughter of ʿImrān, who guarded her chastity»). In Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ, K. al-Adab, for example, there is a ḥadīth from al-Mughīra b. Shuʿba (d. 50/670) which indicates that the polemical nature of the charge of «errors» in the Qurʾān existed from the earliest period of Muslim-Christian relations.

Al-Mughīra said, "When I came to Najrān (q.v.), the Christians asked me, ‘You read, "O sister of Aaron, « in the Qurʾān, whereas Moses was born much before Jesus.’ When I came back to the messenger of God, I asked him about that, whereupon he said, ‘People used to give [to their children] the names of the messengers and [other] pious persons who had gone before them.’»

According to the biblical story, Aaron did have a sister called Miriam (who watched over the baby Moses in the bulrushes according to Exodus 2:4-7; see Exodus 15:20-1 for her name), but she was not, of course, the same as Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the Muslim tradition has never taken that to be the case. Al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), for example, in speaking of Mary, says that people reacted to her presentation of the baby Jesus by saying, «Sister of Aaron, your father was not a wicked man and your mother was not unchaste. So what is your case, sister of Aaron?» This al-Ṭabarī explains as follows: «[Mary] was descended from Aaron, the brother of Moses, so that this expression is the equivalent of saying, ‘O brother of such-and-such tribe’; i.e. it indicates a familial relationship [but not necessarily the exact one indicated]» (Taʾrīkh, i, 734; M. Perlmann (trans.), History, iv, 120). Other exegetes suggest that the Aaron referred to here is an otherwise unknown brother of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (q.v.), who were related ¶ through their father ʿImrān b. Matthān (see Bayḍāwī, Anwār, ad q 3:30-1). See also prophets and prophethood .

Bibliography

Primary:

• Kisāʾī, Qiṣaṣ, 222-3, 238
• Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, i, 471-81 (Aaron in Egypt), 489-98 (Aaron and the calf), 502-5 (Aaron’s death), trans. W.M. Brinner, History of al-Ṭabarī, iii. The children of Israel, Albany 1991, 55-65, 72-80, 85-8 and M. Perlmann, History of al-Ṭabarī, iv. The ancient kingdoms, Albany 1987
• Thaʿlabī, Qiṣaṣ, Cairo n.d., 163-5, 184-8, 218

Secondary:

• A. Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? Baden 1833, trans. Judaism and Islam, Madras 1898, 130-2
• B. Heller, Sāmirī, in ei2, viii, 1046
• Horovitz, ku, 128 (Imran), 138-40 (Mary), 148-9 (Aaron)
• Jeffery, For. vocab., 283-4
• H. Schwarzbaum, Biblical and extra-biblical legends in Islamic folk-literature, Walldorf-Hessen 1982, 13-5
• id., Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Falasha legends of the death of Aaron, the high priest, in Fabula 5 (1962), 185—227
• H. Speyer, Erzählungen, 242-3, 260-2, 323-33
• A.J. Wensinck, Maryam, in ei2, vi, 628-32