The image of man in the Koran

Abstract

This article provides an insight into Koranic anthropology and looks at the essence of man in his relationship with God. Here the author starts from the term insān as one of several terms for »man« occurring in the Koran, which, according to the representation of the Arabic lexicographer al-Ḫalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī (d. ca. 791) in the Kitāb al-ʿain, refers back to the three-radical root n-s-y with the basic meaning »forget«. With the term insān al-ʿain, literally »the man of the eye«, which in Arabic denotes the pupil, he shows that seeing, perceiving and cognizing are essential characteristics of human beings which, on closer examination, include forgetting, since human beings can only see and recognize what they are actually looking at, while everything else is inevitably forgotten. The author considers this meaning in the context of some fundamental verses of the Koran, which clarify the complex dimensions of the human being in his relationship to God and the world, in order to finally show that man is capable of assuming the highest and lowest levels of being, depending on his degree of perception and knowledge.