Ahiqar was fabled for his wisdom in Late Antique monotheistic circles more
than any other person - with one possible exception: Solomon. Interestingly,
Solomon (or Sulayman) is the only other person in the Qur' an to build a
sarh and
. he does so in a context that closely parallels the Ahiqar and Fir' awn episodes. In
the Qur'anic description of their meeting (Q 27:23-44), Sulayman hosts the
Queen of Sheba and invites her to embrace Allah's religion. They challenge each
other with various tests, and when she arrives at his court, he tricks her into lifting
her dress by building a
sarh that creates the illusion that she was about to step on
water. Upon realising that Solomon outsmarted her, she immediately submits to
Allah, the
sahr playing a direct and pivotal role in her decision to convert.
This Qur'iinic episode loudly echoes both the Biblical account of Solomon's
meeting with the Queen of Sheba, 40 as well as midrashic elaborations on the story
related in the Targum Sheni to the .Book of Esther.41 What concerns us here,
however, is the relationship between the Qur'anic version of this story and
Fir' awn's
sarh Even a superficial comparison between the two episodes reveals
that they are inverted parallels of each other: Both Fir'awn and Sulayman attempt
to build a Sulayman succeeds whereas Fir'awn fails; Solomon's sarh is the
means by Which the Queen of Sheba embraces Allah; Fir' awn's is .the. means
by which Pharaoh expresses his rejection of Allah.
For how Nadan became Haman see p474 of the previously linked text.
A mixed bag it certainly is, although this is unlikely to reflect a 'mistake'. More a rhetorical rearticulation of stories common to the milieu in which the Quran was 'revealed'.
I'm talking more in the context of the
sitz-im-leben of the 7th C, rather than what later became Islamic Orthodoxy and the claims inherent within its tradition.
In short, while there are Christian formulas in the Qur’ān, there are no clear Jewish formulas in it, and the same can be said about its apparently pro-Jewish formulas. Conversely, there are a considerable number of anti-Jewish polemical formulas (which cannot be read as intra-Jewish ones in contrast to many of the anti-Christian polemical formulas that can be interpreted as intra-Christian controversial formulas, on which see below), as well as a few anti-Jewish (and anti-Christian) supersessionist formulas in the Qur’ān.
Thus we have in the latter:
(a1) Christian formulas ✓;
(a2) Pro-Christian formulas ✓;
(a3) Anti-Christian (and/or intra-Christian) polemical formulas ✓; and
(a4) Anti-Christian supersessionist formulas ✓;
vs.
(b1) Jewish formulas ? ;
(b2) Pro-Jewish formulas ? ;
(b3) Anti-Jewish polemical formulas ✓; and
(b4) Anti-Jewish supersessionist formulas ✓.
Also, when one looks into the biblical material in the Qur’ān – by biblical I mean here relative to the Hebrew Bible alone – one gets the overall impression that this material is generally read through a Christian lens; in fact, its knowledge is often mediated through other, basically Syriac-Christian, texts (e.g. the Joseph story in Q 12, as convincingly shown by Witztum 2011).
(A Messianic Controversy Behind the Making of Muḥammad as the Last Prophet?)
That is an argument that is often made, for example in
The Qur’ān and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions by Emran el-Bardawi, (which in its 'sources and method' chapter contains probably the best summary of the full range of 'Western' academic Quranic scholarship I've ever read).
If you are interested, a while ago I posted a load of links for academic scholarship on early Islam
here
