Abraham: His Life and Times

Abraham is a definite historic personality and unique in history as with him began the continuity of God’s revelatory process. All the last three extant revealed religions i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam—claim him as the progenitor and are proud of the fact.The West has ignored the Qur’an as a source of history and for the early pre-Christ priod has relied solely on the Bible. The inexactitude and discontinuity of narrated accounts in the Bible texts is now openly acknowledged and admitted all around.I have used both the Biblical and the Qur’anic sources to give a complete picture in the biographical sketch of the Semitic patriarch and I believe this is the first attempt of its kind.Abraham’s life in his native city of Ur in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) has been reconstructed from the exacavations of the site by Sir Leonard Woolley. The deciphering of the clay tablets of Babylonian and Sumerian times has enabled me to piece together the civilization of Ur and agriculture and commerce in the time of Abraham.The Bible is silent on reasons of Abraham’s departure from Ur. The Qur’an gives them in full and that material has been utilised. The Book is a plea to accept the one point programme proposed in the Qur’an centuries ago that the followers of the three revealed religions worshop the one God that their progenitor—Abraham—worshiped.Let another Daniel in their midst once again read the writing on the wall.ME, NE, ME, NE,TE, KELGod hath numbered thy Kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed inthe balance and found wanting.—Bible, “The Book of Daniels”, chapter VI.For the first time I have ventured to suggest, the first Sufi even in the pre-Islamic past was Abraham and another tradition of his—dressed in pure white while circumambulating around the Ka‘bah—was incorporated in the Muslim ritual of Hajj and lasts to this day.Read more