Mary

(3,123 words)

Mary (Ar. Maryam), mother of Jesus and the only woman

named in the Qurʾān, is a model of piety, chastity, and Article Table of Contents
righteousness in the Islamic scripture and a revered gure
1. Mary in the Qurʾān
in Islamic tradition. The Arabic name Maryam matches
the Syriac (Maryam) and Greek (Μαριάμ) forms of the 2. Mary in later Islamic
name (Ambros and Procházka, 311), all of which are tradition
ultimately derived from the Hebrew Miryām. Mary is the 3. Mary in popular Muslim
most prominent female gure in the Qurʾān (in part piety
because of her relationship to Jesus) and consequently is Bibliography
an important gure in Islamic tradition and spirituality.

1. Mary in the Qurʾān

In the Qurʾān, Mary is distinguished not only by her relationship to her son, Jesus, but also, in
her own right, by her miraculous nativity and upbringing and her qualities of chastity and piety.
Drawing on traditions known from the Protoevangelium of James, the Qurʾān refers to the vow
of Mary’s mother—who is referred to as the “wife of ʿImrān”—to dedicate her child to the
service of God (Q 3:35), a vow that causes consternation among those Muslim scholars who
consider it illicit to involve another person in a vow (Arnaldez, 40). When Mary is born, her
mother asks that God protect the child “and her o fspring” (an allusion to Jesus) from Satan (Q
3:36). In the following verse, the Qurʾān declares that God accepted Mary (perhaps, a way of
a rming that God allowed her to serve Him even though she was female) and alludes to her
upbringing in the “sanctuary” (Ar. miḥrāb), presumably the Temple in Jerusalem (in light of the
Protoevangelium, 7:2–8:1), where she receives food miraculously. In the same sūra, the divine
voice of the Qurʾān addresses Mary directly, informing her that God has preferred her above all
women (Q 3:42) and commanding her to be obedient and pious (3:43).

The Qurʾān also refers to an ordeal over Mary (Q 3:44). Islamic tradition generally imagines this
ordeal to have been a contest over who would be Mary’s guardian—Ibn al-Jawzī speaks of
“kafālat Maryam” (Ibn al-Jawzī, 1:389). However, the passage’s relationship with the
Protoevangelium (9:1) suggests that the Qurʾān might be concerned with whom would be
Mary’s husband. Nevertheless, and with a few exceptions, Islamic tradition generally considers
Mary to have remained an unmarried, chaste virgin. Mary’s celibacy would connect her with
Jesus, who is also understood to have remained an unmarried virgin. Both gures thus stand as
exceptions to the generally understood principle that Islamic piety involves marriage.
The Qurʾān links the story of Mary to that of John the son of Zechariah (John the Baptist of
Christian tradition). In the midst of the account of Mary in sūra 3 is an account of the
annunciation to Zechariah in his old age and, despite the barrenness of his wife (Q 3:40), of the
birth of John. In sūra 19, the account of the annunciation to Zechariah (Q 19:2–15) immediately
precedes the account of the annunciation to Mary (Q 19:16 f.). Also, in sūra 21, a reference to
Mary’s conception of Jesus (Q 21:91) is immediately preceded by an allusion to the annunciation
of John (21:89–90).

A twin account of the annunciation to Mary and the birth of Jesus is found in sūra 19
(a sūranamed after Mary). Mary is said to travel alone to an “eastern” place (perhaps, an allusion
to the Temple) and to veil herself. Whereas in sūra 3 “angels” are said to have announced the
birth of Jesus to Mary (Q 3:45), here the Qurʾān also relates, “We sent to her Our Spirit” (19:17;
apparently, an allusion to Gabriel; cf. Luke 1:26). After conceiving Jesus, Mary withdraws to a
distant (qaṣī) place—unlike in Luke, where she travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth—where she
delivers Jesus near a palm tree. Mary laments her fate (“I wish I had died before”), and the infant
Jesus comforts her by relating that a stream will open up in the ground and dates will fall from
the palm tree. This miracle is associated with the ight to Egypt in the Gospel of Pseudo-
Matthew (20:1–2), although it may be connected with the birth of Jesus at the Church of the
Kathisma near Bethlehem (Shoemaker). Mary is then confronted by her suspicious people. To
defend her chastity, she points to the infant, who again speaks, thereby suggesting the
miraculous nature of his conception (Q 19:30–3).

The theme of Mary’s chastity is found also in Q 21:91, where the Qurʾān describes how the
conception of Jesus took place: “And she who guarded her private part ( farj)—We breathed
into her some of Our spirit, and made her and her son a sign to the worlds.” Q 66:12 is similar,
except that instead of “breathed into her ( fīhā),” it reads “breathed into it ( fīhi)” (apparently,
her “private part”). In this sūra, Mary is held up, along with the wife of Pharaoh, as an example
—to the “believers,” but perhaps in particular to the wives of the Prophet (see Q 66:5)—of a
pious woman. (The wives of Lot and Noah are held up as examples of impious women.) Mary is
said to have “a rmed the words of her Lord” (presumably, at the Annunciation) and to have
“become one of the obedient” (min al-qānitīn).

The elevated status of both Jesus and Mary is suggested by Q 3:36, which has Mary’s mother
pray for their protection from Satan (cf. Q 23:97), and by Q 21:91, which makes them “a sign to
the worlds” (presumably, because of the Virgin Birth). That status seems to be con rmed by Q
23:50, which again declares that Mary and her son are a “sign” and continues: “We gave them
both refuge on high ground.” The standard interpretation (e.g., al-Maḥallī and al-Suyūṭī, 383) is
that the “high ground” is a reference to Jerusalem (or, perhaps, Damascus). It may be a reference
speci cally to the site of the Church of the Kathisma (the “seat” where Mary rested), which
indeed lies on highland with a spring of water (as the latter part of the verse indicates;
Reynolds, 539–40). The Italian translator of the Qurʾān Ludovico Maracci (d. 1700) thought that
this might be a reference to the high station of Jesus and Mary in paradise.

The Qurʾān is concerned with the worship of Mary (alongside Jesus). Q 5:75, after insisting that
Mary was truthful (ṣiddīqa), adds that both she and Jesus “ate food” (and thus were mortal).
Later in that same sūra, the Qurʾān has Jesus deny that he ever told people to worship him “and
his mother” as two gods apart from God (Q 5:116). This latter verse has led scholars to wonder if
the Prophet understood the Trinity to involve “Father, Mother, and Son,” and even to speculate
that he was in uenced by heretical sects in Arabia that divinised Mary.

A second controversy surrounding Mary involves Q 19:28, which has Mary’s people call her
“sister of Aaron.” This appellation raises the possibility that Mary (Ar. Maryam) the mother of
Jesus has been confused with Miriam (Ar. Maryam) the sister of Moses and Aaron, which seems
to be con rmed by the Qurʾān’s naming her father ʿImrān (apparently, equivalent to
Heb. ʿAmrām, who in 1 Chr 5:29 is named the father of Miriam, Moses, and Aaron), although the
father of Mary is known as Joachim in the Protoevangelium and in Christian tradition generally.
However, it has also been argued that the Qurʾān means only symbolically to connect Mary to
Aaron in light of her association with the Temple (Dye, 40–8). Islamic tradition is well aware of
the ages that separate Miriam and Mary the mother of Jesus, and some modern Muslim
translations of the Qurʾān relate that the Qurʾānic description of Mary as “sister of Aaron” is only
symbolic (e.g., Asad, n.22 to Q 19).

2. Mary in later Islamic tradition

The allusions in the Qurʾān to Mary’s nativity and upbringing left Muslim commentators with
certain problems. Q 3:37 describes Mary’s presence in the miḥrāb (Droge: “place of prayer”), a
classical Arabic term used for the prayer niche in mosques. Some exegetes, inspired in part by Q
38:21, think of the miḥrāb as an elevated place in the sanctuary. The Muʿtazilī commentator al-
Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) relates that the Jews called their masājid “maḥārib” (1:358). That
same verse speaks of the miraculous food Mary received in the miḥrāb. Why, however, would
Mary receive a miracle when miracles are meant to be signs that prove a prophet’s veracity? The
only prophet of her time was Zechariah, who is ignorant about this food’s origin. Thus, most
Muslim scholars explain that the food can be seen not as a miracle (muʿjiza) but only as a
“wonder” (karāma) that attests to Mary’s saintliness (walāya; Arnaldez, 58).

A number of canonical ḥadīths, most of which seem to be inspired by Qurʾānic verses, praise

Mary. A ḥadīth reported by ʿAlī has the Prophet compare Mary to his rst wife (and mother of
Fāṭima): “Mary bt. ʿImrān is the best woman of her [generation] and Khadīja is the best woman
of her [generation]” (al-Bukhārī, K. Aḥādīth al-anbiyāʾ, bāb 45; K. Manāqib al-anṣār, bāb 20; Ibn
Ḥanbal, 3:167, no. 12400, including also Fāṭima and Āsiya, wife of Pharaoh). A
second ḥadīthcompares Mary instead to the wife of Pharaoh, with whom she is joined in Q 66,
and to the Prophet’s beloved wife ʿĀʾisha, daughter of Abū Bakr: “Many men were perfect but
the only women who were perfect are Mary bt. ʿImrān, Āsiya the wife of Pharaoh, and the virtue
of ʿĀʾisha above other women is like the virtue of tharīd (broth) over all other foods” (al-
Bukhārī, K. Aḥādīth al-anbiyāʾ, bāb 32, 46; K. Faḍāʾil Aṣḥāb al-Nabī, bāb 30; K. al-Aṭʿima, bāb 25;
Muslim, K. Faḍāʾil al-Ṣaḥāba, bāb 12). Another tradition lists Mary with Fāṭima as the highest
ranked of the women of paradise (Ibn Ḥanbal, 3:98, no. 11762). Despite these traditions, many
Muslim commentators hesitate to place Mary above all other women, deferring to the status of
the women related to Muḥammad by birth or marriage.

The language of Q 3:42, which has the angels say to Mary, “[God] has chosen (iṣṭafāki) you over
all other women,” led commentators to debate whether Mary is to be ranked above all other
women of all time, or only of her time. The theologian and philosopher Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.
606/1209) understands her superiority in an absolute sense: “This verse shows that Mary is
better than all [women]” (al-Rāzī, 8:39). His contemporary Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200), the noted
jurisconsult, traditionist, historian, and preacher from Baghdad, reports, on the other hand, that
most scholars consider Mary to have been chosen above the women of her time only (Ibn al-
Jawzī, 1:387; cf. also al-Qurṭubī, 4:83). A number of commentators, reading closely the words of
Mary’s mother on Q 3:36, note that Mary was exceptional in being allowed to dwell in the
Temple, an honour otherwise reserved for males (Arnaldez, 41–3).

An extremely widespread ḥadīth, with a number of variant wordings—transmitted variously by

the Companion Abū Hurayra (d. 58/678, or slightly later) and the Qurʾānic exegete Qatāda (d.
117/735)—has the Prophet declare that only Mary and Jesus (some versions of the ḥadīthhave
only Jesus) have avoided the “piercing” (ṭaʿana) or “pricking” (nakhasa) of Satan that a icts
every child at birth (al-Bukhārī, K. Badʾ al-khalq, bāb 11; K. Aḥādīth al-anbiyāʾ, bāb 44; K. al-Tafsīr,
bāb on Q 3:36; cf., Muslim, K. al-Faḍāʾil, bāb 40 (Faḍāʾil ʿĪsā); K. al-Qadar, bāb 6; Ibn Ḥanbal,
2:312, no. 7200). This tradition seems to be a Midrashic tale based on the wording of Q 3:36
(where the mother of Mary asks that she “and her o fspring” be protected from Satan), although
it implies that Mary and Jesus have a certain distinction not shared by any other humans,
including other prophets, and indeed Muḥammad himself—one reason why it is rejected by
the Muʿtazilī theologian ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1024; al-Rāzī, 8:25). A variant Muslim tradition
suggests that Mary and Jesus were distinguished only because they did not cry from Satan’s
touch at their birth (Ibn Ḥanbal, 3:368, no. 7726). This ḥadīth has also led some scholars to
argue that the Qurʾān not only explicitly accepts the Virgin Birth but also implicitly teaches the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (Arnaldez, 47).
Various traditions also speak of the presence of an image of Mary inside the Kaʿba. According to
a ḥadīth reported by al-Bukhārī and attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās (K. Aḥādīth al-Anbiyāʾ, bāb 8), the
Prophet enters the Kaʿba and nds portrayals of Abraham and Mary. Another tradition, not
found in the canonical ḥadīth but attributed to the biographer Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150/767) in the
historian al-Azraqī’s (d. 244/858) Akhbār Makka, relates that Muḥammad, upon entering the
Kaʿba after the conquest of Mecca, ordered that all of the images inside be erased except those
of Jesus and Mary (Ibn Isḥāq, 552). Ibn Hishām, the best known of Ibn Isḥāq’s redactors (d.
c.215/830), relates that the Prophet ordered all images be erased (Ibn Hishām, 2:413).

Some Muslim scholars were willing to countenance the idea that Mary, along with Moses’s
mother and Pharaoh’s wife, might be considered a prophetess (nabiyya), although not a
messenger (rasūl), thus challenging the standard doctrine that only men are prophets in Islam.
This speculation is connected to the declaration in Q 19:17 that God sent His “spirit”—usually
understood to be Gabriel, but sometimes taken as the “spirit” of Jesus—to Mary with a divine
message (although not with a scripture, a distinction given only to “messengers”). The exegete
al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273) holds that Mary (along with Āsiya the wife of Pharoah) must be a
prophetess inasmuch as she holds the quality of perfection, which is a mark of prophethood (al-
Qurṭubī, 4:84). Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī disagrees, noting that Q 12:109 refers to the “men” (rijāl)to
whom revelation (waḥy) has been sent (al-Rāzī 8:38). The Ẓāhirī polymath Ibn Ḥazm (d.
456/1064) similarly notes that Q 16:43 declares: “We have only sent (arsalnā) men (rijāl) before
you and given them revelation,” although he comments that there might be
prophethood (nubuwwa) without the sending of a message (risāla) and allows that Mary, along
with Sarah (Moses’s mother) and Āsiya, might be a prophetess because an angel spoke to her
directly, in Q 19:19 (Ibn Ḥazm, 3:187).

3. Mary in popular Muslim piety

Islamic texts from the European context attest to the important place Mary held in Muslim
piety there. The Gospel of Barnabas, likely written in Renaissance Europe, opens with a long
version of the Annunciation emphasising Mary’s submissiveness to God. The Lead Tablets of
Sacromonte, discovered at the end of the sixteenth century near Granada, Spain, were written
by Moriscos and consist in part of prophetic declarations of Mary—one “book” is entirely
dedicated to Mary’s discourses (García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, 23, n.11).

Through the centuries Marian shrines have been the sites of Muslim-Christian encounters. Just
outside Jerusalem, on the road to Bethlehem, the Church of the Kathisma, built around a rock
on which Mary was held to have rested, was used by Muslim worshippers in the early Islamic
period and presumably remained a site of Marian devotion. (Its palm tree mosaics suggest a
connection with the miracle associated with the nativity or childhood of Jesus.) The Persian
Ismāʿīlī pilgrim Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. after 462/1070) describes a shrine on al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf
known as miḥrāb Maryam (“the sanctuary of Mary”; Khosraw, 26; also al-Harawī, 74). Rita
George-Tvrtkovic describes the reports of the Christian Dominican pilgrims to Jerusalem
Riccoldo da Montecroce (d. 1320) and Felix Fabri ( . 1480s), both of whom speak of an ongoing
tradition of “Saracens” who venerated Mary at the Tomb of Mary, a shrine that, like the
Kathisma, includes a miḥrāb (George-Tvrtkovic, 103–4). Near Ephesus, a shrine held by
Christian tradition to be the site of the “House of Mary” (Tk., Meryem Ana Evi) in the latter
years of her life is still venerated by both Christians and Muslims. Other Christian Marian
shrines, from Harissa in Lebanon and Saydnaya in Syria, to Mariamabad in Pakistan and
Vallarpadam in India, are often visited by Muslim pilgrims. Mary’s intercession is sought
especially by women seeking to conceive. This Muslim Marian devotion persists despite
contemporary Salafīs’ opposing the crossing of religious boundaries and the very idea of
intercession.

Gabriel Said Reynolds

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