An Overview of the Qur’an’s ḥikmah and ḥukm Verses

Abstract Chapter 2 gives an overview of every occurrence of ḥikmah in the Qur’an by organizing the verses thematically and then describing their relative chronology. What emerges from this are various intriguing patterns. For instance, the prophets most explicitly associated with ḥikmah are all scripture-bearing prophets: David, Jesus, and Muhammad, with Moses being conspicuously absent from this list. This suggests that ḥikmah is an aspect of revelation, yet is distinct in the Qur’an from the pre-qur’anic revelation to which the Qur’an gives the greatest prominence, namely, the Torah of Moses. In addition, the phrase kitāb wa-ḥikmah (‘scripture and wisdom’), which accounts for nearly half of all occurrences of ḥikmah in the Qur’an, is entirely Medinan. The author explores the implications of these observations in the chapters to come, particularly Chapter 9.