Extra-Canonical Narratives and Late Antique Traditions in the Qurʾān

This study audits a set of Qurʾānic narratives that have close analogues in Jewish, Christian, Syriac, rabbinic, pseudepigraphic, Iranian, and Alexander-legend traditions. It prioritizes securely datable pre-Qurʾānic witnesses and separates Qurʾānic wording from later Islamic exegesis. Strong cases include the Sleepers of the Cave and the late-antique Seven Sleepers tradition, and Jesus’ animation of a clay bird and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Marian infancy traditions and Abraham’s destruction of idols also have significant pre-Islamic comparanda. Other dossiers, especially Moses and the unnamed servant later called al-Khiḍr, Hārūt and Mārūt, Idrīs/Enoch, and the precise written source behind Dhū l-Qarnayn, require greater caution. The paper argues for a multilingual transmission environment in which Syriac, Greek, Jewish Aramaic/Hebrew, Ethiopic, Middle Persian/Sogdian, and Arabic oral performance could all mediate narrative motifs without requiring that the Qurʾān copied a single surviving book.