A. Kudriavtseva

“And Thy Robes Purify!” — Clothes (Libas) in the Qur’an

 Abstract: Last year as part of the new Russian Qur’anic translation preparation the project entitled “The Qur’anic lexicon as a source on material culture of Arabia at the turn of the 6th—7th centuries” was started in MAE RAS. It provides for studies of lexico-semantic groups of the Qur’anic language that allow distinguishing and describing of most important daily life structures. The current article is devoted to the clothing of inhabitants of Arabia which was simple and functional. In the article we have tried to show that the materials at hand make it possible to identify certain functions in clothing of inhabitants of Arabia at the turn of the 6th—8th centuries, such as utilitarian, aesthetical, social, sexual, climate‑ and weather‑related as well as religious and ideological functions.

 Key words: The Qur’an, pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia, daily life, material culture, comparative textual analysis of the Qur’anic terminology and pre-Islamic poetry, libas