“You Pass By Them in the Morning and in the Night”

A sizeable amount of the Qur’an’s content does not seem compatible with its origins solely within the confines of Mecca and Medina during Muhammad’s lifetime, as the Islamic tradition and much modern scholarship would have us believe. Despite the unwarranted confidence often invested in this traditional narrative, which has rarely been questioned, many of the Qur’an’s traditions are simply not compatible with their presumed provenance in the central Hijaz during the early seventh century. To the contrary, significant portions of the Qur’an, including especially most of its “Christian” content, only make historical sense when understood as emerging within a context somewhere far to the north, in the Levant. To this mounting dossier of traditions, we add in this article the Qur’an’s traditions about Lot and its so-called Straflegenden, a recurring cycle of Punishment Stories set in the Nabataean lands, particularly in the region of Midian. For instance, in its remembrance of Lot, the Qur’an more than once reminds its audience that they live near the remains of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, whose location on the southeastern shores of the Dead Sea near the pilgrimage shrine of Lot’s cave was well-known in Late Antiquity. Likewise, the Qur’an’s Punishment Stories, with which its memories of Lot are intertwined, focus narrowly on other important locations within the ancient Nabataean realm, which also are said to be near the Qur’an’s audience. In these elements of the Qur’an, we meet further evidence that significant portions of the Qur’an appear to take their origins separately from Muhammad, Mecca, and Medina.