Islamic

The present chapter explores the likelihood that Second Temple–era Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts have an important role to play in the history of classical Islamic literature. It makes a preliminary start toward identifying and outlining some of the ways in which Jewish noncanonical lore might shed light on certain terms or expressions, some narrative features, and particular ideological trajectories resident within distinctively Muslim literary formulations such as Qur’ān, tafsīr, “tales of the prophets” (qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’) collections, and the early universal histories of Ya‘qūbī (d. 897) and Ṭabarī (d. 923). It is hoped that the present chapter will stimulate further comparative work and contributions to this important field of study.