A. Kudriavtceva

MAE (Kunstkamera), RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia

E-mail: kudriavtsevaa@mail.ru

BANANA, ACACIA AND “LEVELS OF PARADISE”. ACACIA RADDIANA (SAVI) BRENAN / ACACIA GERRARDII BENTH IN THE QUR’AN

Abstract. The article continues a series of publications devoted to the study of everyday life of Arabia at the time of the Prophet. In the eschatological fragment of the Qur’an (56:27—38), two shrub trees characteristic for Arabia are mentioned, one of which, talh, is identified by a number of authoritative classical and modern commentaries and dictionaries of the Qur’an, either as the Arabian acacia or as a tropical plant belonging to the genus banana Мusa L., whose appearance in the Mediterranean region approximately coincides with the period of the emergence of Islam. The study is based on the method of lexico‑semantic analysis proposed by Ksenia Kashtalyova and developed in the framework of the concept of “Qur’anic ethnography” by Efim Rezvan. Basing on the linguistic sources of pre‑Islamic and early Islamic times and modern ethnobotanical data we found out that the Qur’anic phytolexeme talh corresponds to the plant species Acacia raddiana (Savi) Brenan / Acacia gerrardii Benth. In this fragment, talh and sidr (Ziziphus spina‑christi (L.) Willd. (Rhamnaceae)) shrub trees are of major functional importance, pointing to one of the levels of Paradise, the bliss of which is comparable to the rest under the canopy of trees at the edge of wadi with a cool spring after a long and heavy caravan crossing of the desert.

Keywords: Everyday life of Arabia in the times of the Prophet, Qur’anic ethnography, the Qur’anic Paradise, the language of the Qur’an, the terminology of the Qur’an, ethnobotany, pre‑Islamic poetry, Muslim eschatology, the flora of Arabia

Acknowledgments. The article was prepared as part of the research under the RFBR grant No. 18‑09‑00100 “Qur’anic Ethnography 1. Material Culture of the Qur’an”.

DOI: 10.31250/1238-5018-2018-24-2-26-32

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Received by the Editorial Board: 12.07.2018