Gabriel and the Prophet

Description

Was there a real person named Dihya al-Kalbi in the life of the Prophet Muhammad before his mission, in whom the Prophet saw Gabriel, who had taken the form of a man of extraordinary beauty? Arab-Islamic narratives abound with fantastical stories about Dihya al-Kalbi. Some manipulate the historical narrative, portraying him as a messenger carrying a message from the Prophet to Heraclius, while others distort the logical sequence of events, making Dihya one of Yazid ibn Mu’awiya’s men. This book discusses a highly sensitive religious issue related to the problem of the existence of figures invented by narrators, who managed to create a fictional narrative that quickly became part of official history. This book deconstructs these false Islamic narratives and affirms that the figure of Dihya al-Kalbi is a literary creation, a product of the narrators’ imagination, and falls within the context of constructing a tragic figure of a heavenly angel who becomes human and then loses the ability to return to heaven. This is the compelling religious tragedy about the fate of a celestial being when he descends to Earth and becomes a prisoner of his human condition, that is, a prisoner of earthly misery.