Ilyas

Against the cult of Baal

'Do you call upon Baal and abandon the best of creators?'

EraBani Israil after Sulayman
PlaceThe lands of the Baal cult
Named in the Qur'an3 times

Generations after Sulayman, Bani Israil bent toward a new idol with an old logic: Baal, god of rain and fertility, worshipped because the economy seemed to depend on him. Ilyas was sent with a question that dismantles every such bargain: 'Do you call upon Baal and abandon the best of creators: Allah, your Lord and the Lord of your first forefathers?' (37:125-126).

Most denied him, and the Qur'an notes their appointment with justice, then does for Ilyas what it does for its patient ones: it preserves his greeting forever. 'Peace upon Ilyas. Indeed, this is how We reward the doers of good' (37:129-131). A minority remembered; heaven remembered louder.

The Qur'an on it

'Do you call upon Baal and abandon the best of creators?' The question that ends the rain-god bargain.

Qur'an 37:125

'And We left for him among later generations: peace upon Ilyas.'

Qur'an 37:129

'And Zakariyya and Yahya and Isa and Ilyas: all were of the righteous.'

Qur'an 6:85

In numbers