The Unique Storytelling Style of the Qur’an
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
We find that stories constitute approximately one third of the Noble Qur’an, the greatest Book of guidance ever revealed to the world. And in its greatest chapter (al-Fātiḥah), we are taught to pray for guidance by alluding to the stories of those “favored by God”
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with guidance to the Straight Path before us. These scriptural phenomena validate the immense power of stories to move hearts and minds, dispelling the faulty assumption that stories are just for children or that incorporating them into our discourse detracts from its intellectual vigor. However, the Qur’an did not just validate storytelling. It proceeded to identify its own stories as unique and most potent for reforming its readers into the best versions of themselves. This paper explores why the Qur’anic style of storytelling is one that, while rather unconventional for some people, is replete with wisdom indicative of its Divine origins.
Storytelling at its finest
“We relate to you, [O Muhammad], the best of stories in what We have revealed to you of this Qur’an.”
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Should we infer from this noble verse that the account of Prophet Joseph (as) which unfolds in the very next verses, is the single greatest Qur’anic story? Some scholars have argued this, but it is rather unlikely for many reasons–-not the least of which is the multitude of Qur’anic references to the life and mission of Moses (as). Should we then infer that all the stories God chose to include in the Qur’an equally count as the “best of stories”? This seems to be the stronger position, but not the full explanation. Exegetes of the Qur’an point out that Allah did not say in this verse that He relates to us the best qiṣaṣ (stories), but rather the best qaṣaṣ (storytelling).
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In other words, Allah not only makes the ideal choices on which stories to tell, but also tells them in the most ideal way. And just as the “prologue” of Sūrah Yūsuf identifies the Qur’anic style of storytelling as best, its “epilogue” elaborates further with Allah’s words,
There was certainly in their stories (1) a lesson (2) for those of understanding. (3) Never was it [i.e., the Qur’an] a narration invented, but a confirmation of what was before it and (4) a detailed explanation of all things and guidance and mercy for a people who believe.
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This verse deepens our understanding about some important features of Qur’anic storytelling, and why its methodology best serves the Qur’an’s ultimate objective of offering “guidance and mercy for those who believe.” It built on the preexisting affinity for storytelling gatherings in Arabia and in every known human civilization (even today, albeit in the form of film and television above all), and then elevated its function to serve the loftiest of all purposes: heeding the Divine call.
1. Lesson-oriented
While the Qur’an is remarkably captivating, Allah (the Glorified and Majestic) makes it crystal clear that His wondrous words did not penetrate the barriers of this universe to simply fascinate us. Rather, it is al-Qawl al-Faṣl (the Decisive Word),
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here to set the record straight on sacred truths, establish measures of justice, and pass final verdicts for humanity on the ethical framework approved by Almighty God. This does not, however, preclude it from being a tapestry of Divine art that creatively guides people towards lessons that aid them in embracing these truths and teachings for their betterment in this world and the next. In that vein, the stories of the Qur’an are articulated and situated in ways that best elucidate for us the prescribed laws of the Divine, and motivate us to align ourselves with them.
As Muḥammad ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1973), an esteemed contemporary specialist of the Qur’an, explains in al-Taḥrīr wal-Tanwīr, Qur’anic storytelling does not qualify as the “best storytelling” solely because it is lesson-based, or because it restricts itself only to true stories. After all, there are many non-Qur’anic stories that are true, and from which valuable lessons can be derived. What makes Qur’anic storytelling exceptional is its efficacy in carving—not just introducing—its timeless lessons into the worldview of its readers and listeners, and steadily strengthening their interest in imbibing them.
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People tend to tell stories in ways that offer little benefit—stories that either entertain without purpose, or that bury their purpose under superfluous details that weaken their potency for moral refinement. These were among the reasons why traditional scholars often wrote works cautioning against “professional” storytellers.
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The Qur’an, however, is not just lesson-based; it is lesson-oriented and lesson-orienting. In order to inculcate rather than merely preach its moral vision—to not just explain ethics to its readers, but to make them ethical—it departs from the storytelling approach to which so many of us are accustomed.
Quite often, for instance, the Qur’an omits the names of people and their lineages, as well as the names of towns and their locations, in distinct contrast to the historical and biographical works with which we are familiar. These omissions are “by design,” for they better enable the reader to focus on the lesson itself, and not restrict its relevance to some transient moment in the annals of history.
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So why does the Qur’an not clearly tell us, for instance, whether or not earlier humans ever coexisted with dinosaurs, or what the birthname was for the “believer from Pharaoh’s family,” or where the cave of the “Seven Sleepers” is located? Perhaps His perfect knowledge of how easily excess information distracts us is part of the wisdom for such facts being redacted. Did not theologians historically debate, at great lengths, what kind of fruit the Forbidden Tree produced in the story of Adam (as), despite that being of no beneficial consequence? Did not the assumed location of certain pious figures’ graves lead to the erection of shrines at which the deceased are invoked instead of God, the only All-Hearing? Did not the historical emphasis on ancestry in religious scriptures lead to doctrines that perpetuated “elite bloodlines” in ways antithetical to God’s justice? Qur’anic stories therefore come with an infinitely wise framing, one that assists us both by what they include and what they exclude, sealing shut inlets to misguidance, and thus keeping history’s darker chapters from repeating themselves.
Consider how Allah reclaims the distorted narrative of the “Seven Sleepers” in the cave. At the onset, He declares, “It is We who relate to you their story in truth. Indeed, they were youths who believed in their Lord…”
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In other words, Allah tells us, discard the framing of those Jews who nationalized their religion and considered ethnic roots the ultimate determinant of human value; it was rather them being youth who had their whole lives ahead of them, and them choosing faith despite facing religious persecution, that was of paramount importance and worthy of celebration, not their “coincidental” belonging to one ancestry or another. As the story progresses, we find that not only will the names and ages of these young heroes remain undisclosed, but that Allah is delivering a clear caution against any polemical debates pertaining to their number; “Say [O Muhammad], my Lord is best aware of their number. None know them save a few. So contend not concerning them except an outward contending.”
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In other words, only dispute over this in ways that do not get under your skin, since such facts are neither strongly evidenced nor very consequential. And finally, at the climax of their story, we are guided to focus on the great sign of God’s power in reviving these sleepers three centuries later: “That is how We caused them to be discovered so that their people might know that Allah’s promise [of resurrection] is true and that there is no doubt about the Hour.”
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Therefore, it is Divine grace that we are not teased away from the primordial truth of God’s power here by the year of this historic event, nor by the name of the city they stumbled into with their archaic silver coins, nor by the geographical coordinates of the cave to which these righteous youth were tracked and ultimately discovered.
This distinctive feature (lesson-orientation) brings us to some of the wisdoms behind the narrative repetition we find in the Qur’an. Badr al-Dīn ibn Jamāʿah (d. 1333), for instance, authored a work entitled al-Muqtanaṣ which presents seven benefits of the repetition of certain stories.
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One wisdom lies in the fact that Qur’anic storytelling, much like preaching, is often didactic in nature. It would be odd to ask a preacher, “I recall you mentioning this personality in a sermon last year; why are you repeating yourself?” when the respective context each time justified it. Similarly, the Qur’an may reference the same story whenever the context benefits from its presence, and whenever that repetition helps lodge the intended lesson in the reader’s soul.
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In response to the question of why the Qur’an “repeats itself,” it is difficult to resist the urge to say, “Because you need to be told a thousand times to clean your room.” We have a little child inside us all, and a messy room inside all our minds and hearts. Just like the child, we too need a wise and methodical approach to work past our inexperience and impatience, one that can effectively wean us off our myopic tendencies to try everything firsthand, and to impulsively grab whatever we want when we want it. Otherwise, our potential optimism bias (false sense of security) about everything, or our dependence on instant gratification, will negatively impact every dimension of our wellbeing—be it physical, mental, emotional, financial, or spiritual. With their wise and consistent messaging, the stories of the Qur’an do just that: they rescue us from our crippling naivety, compel us to acknowledge reality, and inculcate within us the incentives to engage it prudently. The elderly often admit that their lifespans were in fact too short to allow for the timely discovery of such treasures.
The Creator of the human psyche knows our need for reinforcement through repetition. Without a vivid recollection and regular reiteration of these stories, we would never internalize them nor recognize the subtle threads between them—and thus our busy lives may very well erode even their most priceless lessons. We can all recall profound moments of pause in our lives—moments when time seemed to stop, or we wished it would. Whether these moments were like an invigorating rainfall of intense gratitude, or a devastating sledgehammer that left us feeling shattered beyond repair, life went on and those showers abated and those pains were sedated. Thus is the destiny of man, as the Prophet ﷺ said: “Adam forgot, and so too will his progeny forget.”
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Hence, we find Qur’anic stories accounting for the inherent deficiency of human memory, puncturing the nearly impervious stone of our ego with a steady stream of droplets spanning days, months, and years, rather than a short-lived downpour that rinses the dust off of the stone’s surface but causes no meaningful change therein. As Allah says, “The disbelievers say, ‘If only the Qur’an had been sent down to him all at once!’ [We have sent it] as such [in stages] so We may strengthen your heart with it. And thus, We have revealed it at a deliberate pace.”
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A second wisdom behind the repetition found in the Qur’an is to evidence its linguistic brilliance. Authors often shy away from theme repetition, in fear of sounding redundant, while the Qur’an exhibits a unique boldness in doing the very opposite. Experts of Arabic often express their intrigue with how the Qur’an “repeats itself” with such artistic variation that its rhetorical richness remains unblemished and its appeal undiminished. The Qur’an somehow avoids misstating the facts of each story despite employing variant wordings in each “retelling.” It also intersperses nuggets of additional nuance in some iterations of a story, and subtracts them from others, without compromising the overall integrity and coherence of the accounts. Hence, a closer examination of this “repetition” often reveals impeccable subtleties and nuanced distinctions that boast of the linguistic mastery of the Qur’an while offering further enlightenment and refinement to inclining souls.
Alongside noting these three complexities (versatility, consistency, and coherence), we should appreciate how this linguistic sophistication is compounded further by the Qur’an’s original status as a spoken corpus, not a written work, with a compositional structure without precedent in pre-Qur’anic Arabia. Ibn ‘Āshūr asserts that elaborate, story-driven dialoguing, as found in the Qur’an, was nonexistent in the poetry of pre-Islamic Arabia. Hence, one of the benefits of including stories in the Qur’an was that, without them, the master poets of Arabia could have attempted to hide their inability to meet the Qur’anic challenge to “produce its like” by avoiding interactive dialogue.
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Perhaps it was the linguistic guardrails that tightly governed their poetry’s structure and synonym counts that forced them to invoke brief imagery and passing analogies but not conversation-centric storylines. Whatever the reason, it’s as if the Qur’an is declaring to the Shakespeares of every civilization:
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I’ve diversified the styles of storytelling for you, and yet, the eternal challenge to wield your languages in any one of these ways is still unmet.
A third benefit of Qur’anic stories resurfacing in various places is that, while the memorization of the Qur’an is common, most Muslims have historically not committed the entire Book to memory. Even during the Prophet’s time, people would visit him ﷺ or his Companions, memorize parts of the Qur’an from them, and then return to their respective hometowns. Therefore, to ensure every believer’s familiarity with the Qur’an’s paradigmatic stories, regardless of what they have and haven’t memorized, these stories are, through repetition, made available throughout the Book.
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While only some were introduced above, below are the seven insights offered by Ibn Jamā‘ah for the repetition we encounter in the stories of the Qur’an:
1. Elucidating the stories gradually with additional nuance each time;
2. Ensuring that believers everywhere, laymen and scholars, are familiar with the major stories of the Qur’an;
3. Displaying the unique eloquence of the Qur’an through compatible portrayals of a single scene through myriad terms;
4. Ensuring maximum reach of its teachings, as people are more motivated to circulate stories than instructions;
5. Humbling the masters of Arabic rhetoric who could not match a single variant of the Qur’anic narratives;
6. Preempting polemicists from claiming that the Qur’an could not reframe its stories in different ways, so why challenge its rejectors to do so?
7. Retaining the readers’ interest, who need to immerse themselves in these scenes time and again, by offering a remarkably “fresh” depiction each time.
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Conclusion
The various stories in the Qur’an, as uniquely told by the Qur’an, offer us invaluable reminders and timeless lessons on universal themes that pertain to every dimension of the human experience. Through them, faith in Allah’s beautiful names and lofty attributes is found and not just defined, illness is endured when it cannot yet be cured, the oppressed remain optimistic until relief comes, and so much more. While those who settle for a cursory glance at the Qur’an may not realize the distinct wisdom in how its stories are mapped out, those who believe in this Mighty Book and dedicate themselves to rehearsing its stories will find layers upon layers of enlightenment, healing, and guidance therein. As partially captured in this brief paper, the truths of these stories, their respective locations and lengths in the Qur’an, and how Allah chooses to articulate them each time, all contribute to the unique lessons to be derived from them, and drive us to our betterment in this world and salvation in the next.
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