By name of The God The Merciful The Compassionate
Articles and Reflections
Harut and Marut in the Qur’an: Magic, Knowledge, and Human Responsibility
Reading Al-Baqarah 2:102 alongside traditions of Solomon, Babylon, and heavenly teachers
Introduction
In Al-Baqarah 2:102, The God says:
وَٱتَّبَعُوا۟ مَا تَتْلُوا۟ ٱلشَّيَـٰطِينُ عَلَىٰ مُلْكِ سُلَيْمَـٰنَ ۖ وَمَا كَفَرَ سُلَيْمَـٰنُ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱلشَّيَاطِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ يُعَلِّمُونَ ٱلنَّاسَ ٱلسِّحْرَ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ عَلَى ٱلْمَلَكَيْنِ بِبَابِلَ هَـٰرُوتَ وَمَـٰرُوتَ ۚ وَمَا يُعَلِّمَانِ مِنْ أَحَدٍ حَتَّىٰ يَقُولَآ إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ ۖ فَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مِنْهُمَا مَا يُفَرِّقُونَ بِهِۦ بَيْنَ ٱلْمَرْءِ وَزَوْجِهِۦ ۚ وَمَا هُم بِضَآرِّينَ بِهِۦ مِنْ أَحَدٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ ۚ وَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مَا يَضُرُّهُمْ وَلَا يَنفَعُهُمْ ۚ وَلَقَدْ عَلِمُوا۟ لَمَنِ ٱشْتَرَىٰهُ مَا لَهُۥ فِى ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ مِنْ خَلَـٰقٍ ۚ وَلَبِئْسَ مَا شَرَوْا۟ بِهِۦٓ أَنفُسَهُمْ ۚ لَوْ كَانُوا۟ يَعْلَمُونَ ١٠٢
Translation: And they followed what the devils recited concerning Solomon’s kingdom. Solomon did not commit kufr; rather, the devils committed kufr, teaching people magic and what had been sent down to the two angels in Babylon, Harut and Marut. Yet those two taught no one without first saying, “We are only a trial, so do not commit kufr.” People then learned from them things by which they could separate a person from their spouse, although they could harm no one through it except by The God’s permission. They learned what harmed them and brought them no benefit. They certainly knew that whoever purchased it would have no share in the Hereafter. How wretched was the price for which they sold themselves, if only they knew.
The verse brings together several interconnected subjects: Solomon, the devils, Harut and Marut, siḥr, fitnah, and divine permission. Siḥr is commonly rendered “magic”; fitnah here concerns a trial or test. The meaning of kufr, retained in the translation above, will also require closer attention.
Read together, the Qur’anic passages about Solomon describe a kingdom in which jinn and devils perform tasks beyond ordinary human experience. Some things that earlier generations understood as magic, sorcery, or hidden knowledge might invite comparison with advanced science and technology today. We may also be dealing with phenomena that lie altogether beyond the reach of our present empirical sciences. At this stage, none of these possibilities should be substituted for established truth. The God knows best what these phenomena truly are.
We cannot investigate Harut and Marut through laboratory testing, direct material evidence, or empirical observation as we might investigate an ordinary historical event. That does not close the door to inquiry. The Qur’an’s compressed language, and its references to Babylon, Solomon, Harut, and Marut without accounts of their lives or backgrounds, give us serious reason to consider whether at least some of these names and stories were already familiar to people in that cultural world.
This study takes the Qur’an itself—its language and the connections between its passages—as the basis for interpreting the verse. Since the surrounding passage concerns the Children of Israel and people who had been given the Book, Jewish sources and other traditions of the People of the Book also matter as historical context: the Old Testament, Second Temple literature, the Qumran scrolls, Enoch and Jubilees, rabbinic narratives, and accounts of Solomon, fallen angels, the Watchers, demons, forbidden knowledge, and Babylonian magic. These sources do not determine what the Qur’an means, nor do we accept every story they contain as historical fact. They help us investigate the beliefs and stories in circulation. Throughout, we must distinguish what the verse expressly says from our interpretation and from historical comparison.
The verse itself makes a striking distinction. Solomon is cleared of kufr; kufr is attributed to the devils; and Harut and Marut give a warning before they teach:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
This difference calls for an investigation: was the Qur’an addressing a familiar family of stories, distinguishing between their elements and correcting them?
This article also examines later Islamic accounts, legends from subsequent centuries, and even contemporary stories about unidentified extraterrestrial beings, lost technology, and the transfer of knowledge. These materials do not all carry the same evidentiary weight. Later stories are not our primary evidence for the verse’s meaning. Their significance lies in showing how memories of heavenly beings, hidden knowledge, and extraordinary teachers have persisted, taking new forms in the language and imagination of each age. Earlier generations spoke of angels, gods, Watchers, and heavenly sages; today, a similar narrative structure sometimes reappears in stories of extraterrestrials, advanced civilizations, and unknown technologies.
This brings us to the central question of the study: what stories did people know when they heard the names Harut and Marut, Babylon, Solomon, and magic? Within that world of stories, what does the Qur’an affirm, what does it reject, and where does it draw the boundaries anew?
The surrounding verses sharpen the question. In Al-Baqarah 2:101, a group among those given the Book casts The God’s Book behind their backs. Verse 102 then opens with “And they followed.” Verse 103 (Not yet published) sets faith, mindfulness of The God, and a better reward against that choice. The issue is therefore not just the power an acquired skill affords. It is also what people choose to follow and what they abandon in exchange. Verse 101 speaks of a group; its judgment should not be extended indiscriminately to all the People of the Book.
2. Three Groups the Qur’an Distinguishes
Gathering every element of this verse under the broad heading of “magic” obscures the Qur’an’s precise distinctions. The verse does not pass the same judgment on Solomon, the devils, and Harut and Marut. Each occupies a different position, and recognizing those differences is one key to understanding the account.
Solomon’s position is stated unequivocally:
«وَمَا كَفَرَ سُلَيْمَانُ»
Solomon did not commit kufr.
This is more than general praise: it clears Solomon of the charge of kufr in this particular matter. The distinction gains significance in a historical setting where his name had already become associated with spirits, spells, and the subjugation of demons. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, describes knowledge attributed to Solomon for expelling demons, along with techniques of exorcism. The Qur’an’s statement cannot therefore be read in a narrative vacuum, although we still cannot identify precisely which particular account it was addressing.
Responsibility for kufr falls on another group:
«وَلَكِنَّ الشَّيَاطِينَ كَفَرُوا يُعَلِّمُونَ النَّاسَ السِّحْرَ»
Rather, the devils committed kufr; they taught people magic.
The distinction in moral judgment is explicit: Solomon did not commit kufr; the devils did. This does not mean there was no relationship of any kind between them. Elsewhere, the Qur’an describes devils working under Solomon’s command. Here we must also read the rest of the teaching clause: «يُعَلِّمُونَ النَّاسَ السِّحْرَ وَمَا أُنزِلَ عَلَى الْمَلَكَيْنِ». On the reading adopted in this article, “what was sent down” is coordinated with “magic.” The devils are the subject of “they teach,” and both magic and what was sent down to the two angels are objects of their teaching. The opening translation follows this reading.
On this reading, the devils’ teaching and what was sent down to Harut and Marut cannot be treated as wholly unrelated fields. The subsequent dual verb, “those two teach,” turns to instruction by the two themselves. We encounter two settings: teaching by devils described as committing kufr, and teaching by the pair who first give a warning. The verse does not explain how the devils obtained the material, whether they mixed it with magic, or whether they removed a warning. Those remain hypotheses. What the text supplies is the contrast between the settings and its express account of the pair’s warning.
The introduction of Harut and Marut changes the verse’s tone once more:
«وَمَا يُعَلِّمَانِ مِنْ أَحَدٍ حَتَّى يَقُولَا إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
The two taught no one without first saying, “We are a trial, so do not commit kufr.”
A clear distinction emerges. The devils are described as committing kufr and teaching magic, whereas Harut and Marut warn their listeners against kufr before teaching them. The verse itself says nothing about those two committing kufr, rebelling against The God, or falling from heaven. The only words it directly quotes from them are a warning.
The importance of this distinction becomes clearer when we turn to one of the oldest Jewish accounts of heavenly beings. In First Enoch, particularly the section known as the Book of the Watchers, heavenly beings descend to earth and disclose knowledge extending beyond spells: metalworking, the manufacture of weapons, knowledge of plants, and heavenly secrets are among the subjects. Aramaic copies of this work have been found at Qumran, demonstrating that the account circulated within Second Temple Judaism centuries before Islam.
The Arabic root s-ḥ-r has several branches of meaning. Siḥr has been used for an act whose cause and means of operation are hidden, or which makes something appear to human perception as other than it is. Alongside it, saḥar denotes the last part of the night before dawn, although historical etymology does not establish with certainty that these two senses must share a single original meaning. The usual Hebrew words for magic do not derive from this Arabic root: כֶּשֶׁף (keshef, magic or sorcery) and כָּשַׁף (kashaf, to practice sorcery) are used. Aramaic likewise has word families such as qisma for divination and prediction, and ḥarash for magic and spells. These words do not share a single root, but they inhabit a similar cultural field: hidden practices, spells, divination, and effects produced through a force or cause not apparent to ordinary people.
In the Watchers’ story, too, the boundary between “magic” and “knowledge” is less sharply drawn than in our contemporary categories. Metalworking, weapons manufacture, knowledge of plants, spells, cosmetics, and the study of heavenly bodies all belong to a body of disclosed secrets. This will matter later: in some ancient accounts, “forbidden knowledge” could encompass both magic and techniques we would now place within science and technology.
The Book of Jubilees preserves the same tradition with an important difference. The Watchers are not initially evil beings: they come to earth to teach humanity and establish justice and uprightness, and their corruption occurs later. Even in the Jewish world before Islam, then, the idea of “heavenly teachers” was not necessarily associated with evil from the outset.
Traces of this family of stories also appear in early Christian texts. The Epistle of Jude speaks of angels who left their proper dwelling and were held for judgment; Second Peter likewise refers to angels who sinned and were punished. Yet there was no single, unchanging account. The history of this tradition is the history of a family of stories that changed over the centuries.
Within this same late-antique intellectual world, movements arose that are now described as Gnostic. Gnosis means knowledge, but the Gnostics did not constitute a single church or denomination. In many of these movements, salvation was associated with a hidden knowledge of human origins, the structure of the cosmos, and the soul’s path of return. Some regarded the material world as a lower, imperfect order of existence and distinguished a supreme deity from the powers governing the lower world.
The discovery of the Nag Hammadi collection in Egypt in 1945 transformed our understanding of these movements. Its Coptic papyrus codices preserved works such as the Secret Book of John and the Hypostasis of the Archons. In the latter, the lower world is governed by beings called “rulers,” or archons, whose chief is an ignorant, arrogant being who imagines himself to be God.
The Gnostic archons should not, however, be identified with Enoch’s Watchers. The Watchers are heavenly beings who descend from a higher station and subsequently sin; the archons in some Gnostic texts belong to the structure of the lower world from the beginning. There are real parallels, but these are not the same narrative.
Structures resembling Gnostic thought have also appeared among movements associated with an Islamic milieu. The classical Nusayri or Alawite tradition, for example, contains myths about the origin of souls and their descent from a luminous realm into the material world. This is not another version of the Enochic account of fallen angels. The resemblance lies in the overall narrative pattern: a higher realm, a fall from one’s station, and entrapment in the lower world.
In the same broad region of Iraq and Iran, the Mandaeans exemplify the survival of an explicitly Gnostic tradition into the present. An important distinction is that they are not Muslims: theirs is an independent religion. Their sacred language is a branch of Eastern Aramaic, and their tradition is rooted in southern Iraq and Iran’s Khuzestan region.
When discussing Watchers, fallen angels, Gnostic archons, and myths of the fall of souls, we should therefore resist treating them as parts of a single story. What we find is a network of narratives that circulated across the Near East for centuries: heavenly beings, descent from a higher realm, hidden knowledge, a fall, corruption, and confinement in the lower world.
Against this background, the language of Al-Baqarah 2:102 takes on a different weight. The Qur’an does not introduce Harut and Marut as two rebels who rose against The God. The charge of kufr is expressly attached to the devils, while the only words quoted from Harut and Marut are this warning:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
The existence of accounts of heavenly teachers and fallen angels before the Qur’an is a historical fact. It does not, however, establish that Al-Baqarah 2:102 directly addresses one particular version of that story. What we can say is that the Qur’an spoke within a world where such accounts had been circulating for centuries. The distinction it draws raises an important possibility: perhaps it separates heavenly teachers from rebellious beings guilty of kufr, where some surrounding narratives had conflated them.
3. Harut and Marut: Unknown Beings and Knowledge as a Trial
The phrase “وَمَا أُنزِلَ عَلَى الْمَلَكَيْنِ بِبَابِلَ هَارُوتَ وَمَارُوتَ” is among the verse’s difficult passages. In the Islamic exegetical tradition, the widely received reading, al-malakayn, means “the two angels,” while a reading al-malikayn, meaning “the two kings,” has also been reported.
The Qur’an itself does not explain Harut and Marut’s precise nature. If we follow the widely received reading, they are two angels; if we consider the alternative report, even this designation has not been uniform throughout the history of interpretation. We know nothing of their actual nature beyond what the verse states. The God knows the full truth of it.
Their role in the verse is clearer: they teach, but first they warn.
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
We are a trial, so do not commit kufr.
The warning brings responsibility into view before instruction begins. “Anyone” treats each person approaching the teachers individually, and the singular “do not commit kufr” addresses that person. Its singular form gives us no reason to identify Solomon as their particular pupil. The plural “they learn” then speaks of the learners; it does not, by itself, establish organized cooperation among them. Nor does a warning prove that every kind of learning is neutral or harmless. What is learned, why it is sought, and what it is intended to accomplish all matter.
In the scene the verse presents, Harut and Marut warn, and people learn from them something through which they separate a person from their spouse. The verse then describes learning what harms the learners themselves and brings them no benefit. It does not set out the pair’s whole curriculum or identify marital separation as the teachers’ stated purpose. But this silence does not establish that all the teaching was beneficial and that wrongdoing began only with its later application.
This gives fitnah, trial, a wider significance. Access to knowledge and power can itself test a person. The exact words are “We are a trial,” not simply “Our knowledge is a trial.” We may therefore understand the encounter with these teachers, the trust placed in them, and the decision to learn as parts of the test. Responsibility concerns not only what we do with what we know, but also what we choose to learn and how we pass it on.
No direct grammatical connection in the verse makes Solomon a pupil of Harut and Marut. The phrase concerning Solomon’s kingdom belongs to the account of what the devils recited. The names appearing in one passage do not establish that the pair necessarily lived before Solomon or in his lifetime. The verse supplies no precise chronology for these relationships.
4. Siḥr: Magic, Hidden Knowledge, or a Means of Influence?
The word siḥr in the Qur’an does not describe a single, simple phenomenon. In the account of Moses, some of it involves influencing human perception:
«سَحَرُوا أَعْيُنَ النَّاسِ وَاسْتَرْهَبُوهُمْ»
They bewitched people’s eyes and struck them with fear.
Elsewhere, the magicians’ ropes and staffs appear to Moses as though they are moving. At least some siḥr therefore involves effects on perception. Al-Baqarah 2:102 speaks of harm and separation between spouses, but real harm does not establish a supernatural mechanism: deception, fear, and manipulated perception can have real consequences too. The verse does not explain how this harm is produced. We should not present one possible explanation as its express statement.
Today we draw clear boundaries between science, medicine, astronomy, magic, and religious ritual. We cannot simply project those boundaries onto the ancient world. In Mesopotamia, knowledge of the stars, divination, medicine, spells, and protective rites could coexist within a single system of knowledge. Herbal treatment, ointments, diagnosis, amulets, and incantations were not always divided into entirely separate domains.
This matters for Harut and Marut. If the Qur’an says that something was given to them and that people learned from them, we should not assume at the outset that everything they possessed fitted our modern image of magic: a mysterious formula and an invisible force. We may be dealing with a range of knowledge and techniques that people of that time understood as secrets, magic, or heavenly knowledge. Equally, we have no grounds for reducing siḥr to advanced technology alone.
The limits of the grammatical argument matter here. On this article’s reading, “magic” and “what was sent down” are coordinated expressions; the verse does not expressly declare them synonymous. Yet coordination alone does not establish that their referents are wholly separate: two expressions can overlap or stand in a general-to-particular relationship. We should assume neither complete identity nor complete separation. Likewise, “sent down” does not, by itself, make every way of learning or using the material beneficial or permissible.
A simple example illustrates the distance between past and present perspectives. If a smartphone, advanced surgery, wireless communication, or an intelligent system had been presented thousands of years ago to people who knew nothing of how it worked, many of its functions might have seemed magical. This does not prove that siḥr in the Qur’an was technology. It only shows how ignorance of a cause can shift the perceived boundary between “knowledge” and “magic.”
We therefore neither reduce siḥr to sleight of hand from the outset nor equate it with technology. Hidden knowledge, techniques of influence, and incantation offer contexts for comparison, not a single definitive explanation of every Qur’anic use of siḥr. For this verse, the statements about teaching, warning, harm, and responsibility provide firmer ground than speculation about an unknown mechanism.
5. Why Babylon?
Babylon’s name in this verse does more than identify a location. For thousands of years, Mesopotamia was one of the world’s principal centers of written knowledge. Scribes and scholars produced texts on the movements of the stars, calendars, medicine, divination, spells, and rites for warding off evil.
Within Babylonian systems of knowledge, the boundaries between what we now call science, medicine, astronomy, and magic did not take their present form. Some kinds of knowledge were also regarded as secret or restricted, unavailable to everyone.
This background gives significance to the association of Harut and Marut with Babylon. If the account concerns hidden knowledge, an unknown power, and instruction that can be used for either benefit or harm, Babylon was a natural setting for such stories within the cultural memory of the Near East.
The association persisted into later periods. Large Jewish communities lived in late-antique Mesopotamia, where traditions concerning spells, the expulsion of demons, and invisible powers continued. Among the clearest surviving witnesses are Aramaic incantation bowls: vessels inscribed with prayers and spells intended to repel demons, illness, and harmful forces.
These objects do not establish the historical reality of Harut and Marut. They do show that, in the centuries approaching the emergence of Islam, Mesopotamia remained familiar with spells, angels, demons, and protective rites.
Here lies Babylon’s importance for our investigation. The Qur’an places Harut and Marut in a land associated for centuries with astronomy, divination, medicine, spells, and restricted knowledge, and which later became one of the most important centers of Jewish life and thought.
6. Solomon Before the Qur’an: Wisdom, Exorcism, and the Charge of Magic
In the Book of Kings, Solomon is known above all for wisdom and extensive learning. He speaks about plants and trees, animals, birds, and creatures of the sea, and his reputation for knowledge reaches other lands. This earlier layer says nothing yet of a magical ring or of commanding demons through a special seal. The image of a king with exceptional knowledge nevertheless provided fertile ground for more elaborate accounts of his hidden powers in subsequent centuries.
One of the earliest witnesses to this development appears among the Dead Sea Scrolls. A manuscript now designated 11Q11 preserves a collection of hymns and prayers associated with the expulsion of demons. The text is damaged, but Solomon’s name appears in one portion alongside spirits and demons, indicating that an association between Solomon and exorcism was known within Second Temple Judaism.
Josephus provides a clearer picture in the first century CE. He writes that The God gave Solomon knowledge through which demons could be expelled and certain illnesses healed, and that Solomon left behind spells and methods of exorcism. He then describes a man named Eleazar who uses a ring and incantations attributed to Solomon to drive a demon out of a person. In this account, the ring belongs to Eleazar, not to Solomon himself.
Another late-antique tradition takes the story further. In the Testament of Solomon, Solomon himself receives a ring with a special seal and uses it to summon and control demons. The work’s precise date of composition is uncertain, and the surviving text contains multiple layers. It should not be treated as a direct historical account of Solomon.
Another witness is particularly important for the Jewish world of Babylonia: the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin 68a and 68b. Its account concerns the building of the Temple. Because the Book of Kings states that no iron tools were heard during its construction, Solomon asks how the stones can be cut. This leads to mention of the shamir, a mysterious creature capable of cutting stone. To find it, Solomon orders a search for Ashmedai, king of the demons. Benaiah binds him with a chain and a ring inscribed with the divine name. Later, Ashmedai asks Solomon to remove the chain and give him the ring. He swallows the ring, reveals his power, and even displaces Solomon from his throne for a time. Sefaria
This account comes specifically from the Jewish Babylonian milieu, and its relevance is clear: late-antique rabbinic literature brings Solomon, the building of the Temple, the king of the demons, a ring bearing the divine name, and the subjugation of nonhuman beings together in a single story. Modern scholarship has also shown that the Babylonian Talmud’s account of Solomon and Ashmedai was in contact with diverse Jewish, Christian, and Iranian traditions of late antiquity. OUP Academic
This evidence must not be made to bear a conclusion greater than it can support. We cannot establish that Al-Baqarah 2:102 is responding directly to this particular Talmudic story; the Babylonian Talmud’s final form is itself the result of a long process of collecting and editing traditions. What we can say is that stories linking Solomon’s power over demons to a ring, the divine name, and mysterious instruments circulated within that Babylonian cultural world.
Against this background, the Qur’an’s statement no longer looks like an unprompted defense of Solomon:
«وَمَا كَفَرَ سُلَيْمَانُ وَلَكِنَّ الشَّيَاطِينَ كَفَرُوا يُعَلِّمُونَ النَّاسَ السِّحْرَ»
Solomon did not commit kufr; rather, the devils committed kufr and taught people magic.
The Qur’an does not deny Solomon’s extraordinary power. Elsewhere in its own account, jinn and devils work under his command. The boundary drawn here concerns something else: this power should not be taken as evidence of Solomon’s kufr, or as the product of the very magic the verse attributes to the devils.
One historical possibility is that narrative memory entangled Solomon’s wisdom and abilities, magic attributed to devils, and what was sent down to the two teachers. On that hypothesis, the verse can be read as distinguishing sources and responsibilities within those accounts. This is not an established reconstruction of historical events. The verse itself explicitly clears Solomon of kufr, attributes kufr to the devils, and records the pair’s warning.
The relationship between siḥr, kufr, and shirk also requires care. No Qur’anic verse says that “siḥr is identical to shirk” or that “every magician, simply by being a magician, is a mushrik.” In the account of Moses, siḥr is associated with deceiving the eyes and frightening people. Elsewhere, the magicians’ work is called “a magician’s stratagem,” and Surah Yunus places it within the sphere of corruption. Shirk has a different meaning: assigning a partner to The God, or attributing divine standing to another being.
Kufr, too, must be read in its own Qur’anic sense. The root k-f-r is associated with covering and refusing to acknowledge, and the Qur’an repeatedly contrasts it with shukr, gratitude:
«وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ»
Be grateful to Me, and do not commit kufr against Me.
Al-Baqarah 2:102 does not say that “magic is the definition of kufr.” It says that the devils committed kufr and taught people magic.
Harut and Marut must likewise be read within the whole sentence. On this article’s reading, “what was sent down to the two angels” appears within the account of the devils’ teaching; “those two taught no one” then turns to the pair’s own instruction. The absence of a repeated word “magic” in this second clause does not, by itself, prove that their teaching had no connection with it. The clearer distinction is that the verse records their warning before instruction:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
Knowledge can confer capability, but responsibility does not begin only after a capability has been acquired. What someone chooses to learn, their purpose, the way they transmit it, and its application all matter to the ethical inquiry. Nor does distinguishing the meanings of siḥr, kufr, and shirk prevent them from overlapping in a particular act. Distinct concepts do not amount to a blanket acquittal of every practice.
Al-Baqarah 2:102 thus establishes no simple, mechanical equivalence between knowledge, power, magic, and kufr. Solomon has extraordinary power yet is cleared of kufr. The devils are charged with kufr and, on our reading, teach both magic and what was sent down to the two angels. The pair themselves warn before teaching, while the learners acquire something harmful. These distinctions invite scrutiny of teaching, learning, and application without pretending that the whole curriculum or route of transmission has been disclosed.
7. Genesis 6: The “Sons of God,” the Nephilim, and the Seed of a Larger Story
One of the earliest clues to the story of heavenly teachers lies in a few brief, enigmatic verses in Genesis. Genesis 6:1–4 describes a group called the bene elohim, “sons of God” or divine beings, who see the daughters of humanity and take them for themselves. In the same passage, beings called Nephilim appear, along with mighty men of renown.
The text is highly compressed. It offers almost no explanation of these beings’ identity, the reason for their presence, or the nature of the Nephilim. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, bene elohim is also used for heavenly beings, giving the nonhuman interpretation of these figures a substantial history.
“Nephilim” is not easily translated either. Later traditions often understood them as giants, and the ancient Greek translation likewise interpreted the word in that direction. But Genesis itself does not supply all the details found in later accounts.
More important for our inquiry, Genesis does not yet describe the teaching of magic, metalworking, botany, or heavenly secrets. These few verses neither name the Watchers nor tell a story of forbidden knowledge. Such elements developed later around this brief narrative core in Second Temple Jewish literature, especially the Book of the Watchers within the Enoch collection.
Genesis 6 therefore provides a narrative seed that would grow into a much larger story, rather than a final answer to our inquiry.
8. The Book of the Watchers: Heavenly Beings and Forbidden Knowledge
Among Jewish texts predating Islam, few come as close to the subject of Harut and Marut as the opening portion of First Enoch. The section now known as the Book of the Watchers tells of heavenly beings who descend from their station, mingle with human beings, and reveal secrets previously unavailable to humanity.
The complete collection survives in Ethiopic, while Aramaic fragments have also been found at Qumran. Its presence within Second Temple Judaism can therefore be established through both material and textual evidence.
The story begins with approximately two hundred heavenly beings. They see human women and decide to unite with them. Their leader, whose name appears in forms such as Shemihazah or Semyaza in different versions, fears that the others will withdraw and leave him alone to bear the responsibility. To prevent this, they all swear an oath and bind themselves together on Mount Hermon.
Their unions with human women produce enormous, violent offspring. For the present inquiry, however, the more significant element is the transmission of knowledge.
One of them, named Asael in the Aramaic version and more commonly Azazel in the Ethiopic tradition, teaches human beings to make swords, knives, shields, and armor, and shows them how to work metals. The manufacture of jewelry and the use of precious stones, pigments, and cosmetics are also attributed to him. Other beings teach spells, knowledge of plant roots, the signs of the stars, constellations, and the movements of heavenly bodies.
This list matters greatly to the argument. Magic, botany, metalworking, weapons manufacture, cosmetics, and astronomy all form part of a single body of disclosed secrets. The boundary between science and magic does not resemble our present division.
Scholars have discerned traces of two narrative strands even within the Book of the Watchers itself. One focuses more on Shemihazah, human women, and the birth of giants; the other centers on Asael and the disclosure of forbidden knowledge. It is possible that the fall of the angels and the transmission of forbidden knowledge began as somewhat independent traditions and were later brought together in a single story.
The consequences of instruction in Enoch are not neutral. Weapons manufacture leads to violence, other secrets become associated with corruption, and punishment is eventually decreed for the Watchers. In this account, the teachers themselves share in the wrongdoing: they have disclosed what should not have been disclosed and have transgressed the limits of their own station.
The resemblance to Al-Baqarah 2:102 is striking: heavenly beings, the teaching of humanity, dangerous knowledge, and secrets beyond ordinary human understanding. The difference is equally fundamental. In Enoch, the Watchers themselves cross a divine boundary; in the Qur’an, Harut and Marut warn before teaching:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
The Qur’an tells no story of their lust or involvement with women, no birth of giants, and no rebellion against The God. Nor does it say that their teaching was itself their sin.
Resemblance alone cannot therefore establish that Harut and Marut were Enoch’s Watchers. Yet the proximity cannot simply be ignored. Several centuries before the Qur’an, accounts were circulating in the Jewish world about heavenly beings who introduced humanity to hidden knowledge, magic, metalworking, plants, and heavenly secrets.
9. Jubilees: Teachers Who Came to Teach Before Their Fall
Where the Book of the Watchers concentrates on the corruption of heavenly beings and the disclosure of forbidden knowledge, Jubilees preserves part of the same tradition with a crucial difference.
In this account, the Watchers do not initially come to earth on an evil mission. Describing the time of Jared, Jubilees says that the angels of The God, called Watchers, descended to teach the children of humanity and establish justice and uprightness on earth. Their corruption came afterward.
The difference is substantial. In a Jewish account predating Islam, the descent of heavenly beings to teach was originally a legitimate mission; their fall belonged to a later stage.
This structure comes closer to Al-Baqarah 2:102. Harut and Marut also appear in the Qur’an as teachers who disclose the danger before giving instruction:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
In Jubilees, the descent to teach is legitimate and the fall occurs later. The Qur’an reports no fall of Harut and Marut at all.
The presence of Hebrew copies of Jubilees at Qumran shows that this conception does not originate in Islamic legends of later centuries. Before the Qur’an, there was already an account in which heavenly beings came to earth to teach humanity.
Jubilees does not name Harut and Marut, so we cannot say that the Qur’an directly retells this book. Its importance lies in showing that a “heavenly teacher” did not necessarily mean an evil, fallen being from the outset.
This comparison should not become a simple opposition between intrinsically evil knowledge in earlier traditions and neutral knowledge in the Qur’an. Jubilees itself describes an initially positive mission, while Enoch connects heavenly origins with wrongful disclosure. The more precise question concerns the relationship between source, teacher, transmission, and consequence. In the Qur’an, “what was sent down” and the pair’s warning stand alongside “what harms them and does not benefit them.” None should be set aside to establish a universal claim about all knowledge.
10. From Shemihazah and Azael to the Story of Two Angels
Over subsequent centuries, the Watchers’ story took new forms. Some accounts shifted their focus from a large company of heavenly beings to a few particular figures. One of the best-known concerns Shemihazah and Azael.
In an account attributed to Midrash Abkir, these two object to human corruption. The God tells them that, if placed in human circumstances, they too would face the same temptations. They come to earth, and Shemihazah falls in love with a beautiful woman named Istahar. In some versions, she learns a secret name from him and uses it to ascend to heaven. Shemihazah repents of what he has done, while Azael becomes associated with corruption and the disclosure of knowledge.
The resemblance to the familiar Islamic story of Harut and Marut is striking: two heavenly beings, an objection to humanity, descent to earth, a beautiful woman, secret knowledge or a hidden name, a moral fall, and punishment.
But resemblance is not a license to leap to a historical conclusion. Midrash Abkir has not survived in full; what remains is quoted in later works. We cannot simply assume that this complete form of the story was available to Arab audiences before the Qur’an.
What is older and more securely attested is the underlying story of fallen angels. Jude and Second Peter speak of heavenly beings who sinned and were punished. The core account thus existed several centuries before the Qur’an.
What we do not know is the precise route by which the details were transmitted. Jewish and Islamic accounts may both have drawn on an older oral tradition; later versions may have influenced one another; or both processes may have occurred.
11. Islamic Accounts of Harut and Marut: Added Stories and the Limits of the Qur’anic Account
The Qur’an says almost nothing about Harut and Marut’s past. It names them in Babylon but does not explain where they had been before or what later became of them. Even asking what earlier offense they committed imports a premise the verse does not supply: it reports no such offense. Later narratives filled this silence with an elaborate story.
Later Islamic narratives preserve several versions of the story. In the familiar account, the angels are astonished by human sin and claim that, in humanity’s place, they would not commit such offenses. Two angels are sent to earth to be tested. A beautiful woman ensnares them. In some versions they drink wine, in others they commit murder, in others they bow to an idol, and in others they teach the woman a hidden name. Using that name, she ascends to heaven and becomes associated with Venus. Harut and Marut are punished, and in some accounts remain suspended upside down in Babylon.
The story became so deeply embedded in Persian and Islamic literature that, in later poetry and popular culture, Harut and Marut became almost synonymous with masters of magic.
Yet almost none of these details appears in the Qur’an. It does not say that they objected to human sin or fell in love with a woman. It says nothing of wine, murder, idol worship, Venus, a well in Babylon, or their being suspended there. Most importantly, the Qur’an never says that Harut and Marut committed kufr.
Instead, the only words directly quoted from them are:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
The difference matters: the later story supplies a past, offenses, and punishments that the verse does not report. Yet “absent from the Qur’an” is not the same as “logically contradictory to the Qur’an.” The pair’s warning does not, on its own, rule out every possibility concerning their past. Our objection is that these additions must not replace the Qur’anic account or predetermine its meaning. Likewise, on the grammatical reading adopted here, the presence of “what was sent down” alongside “magic” requires us to examine their relationship rather than assume it has already been settled.
This story did not go unchallenged within the Islamic world. Some writers distrusted its additions, regarding parts as the inventions of storytellers or material drawn from Isra’iliyyat, traditions associated with the People of the Book.
Harut and Marut receive only a brief, limited mention in the Qur’an. Collective memory later built a whole world of stories around those two names. To understand the verse, we must retrace that process: separate the added stories from the verse itself and return to the distinctions the Qur’an actually makes.
12. The Apkallu: Babylon’s Sages Before the Flood
Looking beyond Judaism to earlier Mesopotamia, we encounter one of the most important examples of teaching beings: the apkallu, ancient sages associated with the time before the Flood and the transmission of the knowledge of civilization.
In Babylonian accounts, these sages carried knowledge that brought civilized order to humanity. One of the best-known witnesses to this tradition is the writing of Berossus, a Babylonian priest of the third century BCE. He describes a being named Oannes who emerges from the waters and teaches people writing, calculation, the sciences, and the arts of civilization.
The familiar pattern appears again: humanity lacks knowledge; an extraordinary being arrives; knowledge is transmitted; civilization changes. The difference is that, in the Babylonian account, the transfer of knowledge is not necessarily an offense.
The scholar Amar Annus has argued that the story of the Enochic Watchers can be understood, in part, as a critical reworking of this Mesopotamian tradition. On this reading, beings honored by the Babylonians as great sages before the Flood became, in Jewish literature, beings who taught humanity dangerous and forbidden knowledge.
This hypothesis has particular relevance here because Al-Baqarah 2:102 itself names Babylon. Three layers can be set alongside one another: in Mesopotamia, the sages before the Flood bear knowledge; in Enoch, heavenly beings disclose forbidden knowledge; in the Qur’an, Harut and Marut teach people something in Babylon and warn them before doing so.
This sequence does not mean that Harut and Marut are the apkallu. There is no direct evidence for that identification. The apkallu do, however, show that the idea of superhuman teachers has a very ancient history within Mesopotamian culture itself.
The Anunnaki must also be placed in their proper context. In Sumerian and Akkadian texts, they are a group of deities whose roles vary across periods. Cuneiform sources do not describe them as extraterrestrial gold miners or genetic engineers of humanity. That image belongs to much later, contemporary narratives.
If we are looking for a closer Mesopotamian counterpart to Enoch’s Watchers, the apkallu are a more appropriate comparison than the Anunnaki.
13. The Names Harut and Marut: Is There an Iranian Layer?
The names Harut and Marut do not appear to be Arabic. One of the best-known linguistic proposals connects them with two sacred beings in the Avestan tradition: Haurvatat and Ameretat.
Haurvatat is associated with wholeness, perfection, and health, and developed into Khordad in Middle Persian. Ameretat represents immortality, with the Persian form Amordad. The two commonly appear together in Zoroastrian tradition.
Forms resembling Harut and Marut have also been recorded in Iranian, Sogdian, and Armenian traditions. This has led some scholars to seek the origins of the Qur’anic names within this family.
Names and narratives must nevertheless be distinguished. In Zoroastrian tradition, Haurvatat and Ameretat are not two fallen angels, teachers of magic, or beings imprisoned in Babylon. Even if the names are related, it does not follow that the Qur’an is retelling a Zoroastrian story.
A more intriguing possibility is a narrative with several layers: the names may carry an Iranian element; Babylon supplies a Mesopotamian setting; the pattern of heavenly teachers may be connected with the Watchers tradition; and the Solomon story may draw on Jewish heritage.
The late-antique Near East was not a collection of sealed, isolated cultures. Iran, Iraq, the Levant, and the Hijaz were continually connected through trade, migration, war, and religion. This helps explain why the search for a single source behind the account of Harut and Marut may be misguided from the outset.
14. “Separating a Person from Their Spouse”: Magic, Love, and Estrangement
One of the most concrete statements in Al-Baqarah 2:102 is:
«فَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مِنْهُمَا مَا يُفَرِّقُونَ بِهِ بَيْنَ الْمَرْءِ وَزَوْجِهِ»
They learned from the two what they could use to separate a person from their spouse.
This clause does not describe the pair’s entire curriculum or their stated purpose. It identifies what people learned and used to cause separation. At the same time, “what” does not itself mean “the harmful portion of an otherwise beneficial body of knowledge.” Both limits matter: we should neither reduce all the instruction to marital separation nor invent a beneficial remainder and treat it as established.
Ancient documents show that love magic, the binding of desire, the arousal of sexual longing, and the separation of couples were recognized forms of magical practice.
Numerous charms, curse tablets, and magical recipes concerning love and sexual relationships survive from the Greek and Roman worlds. Some sought to arouse love or desire; others to retain a spouse, prevent a relationship with someone else, or create estrangement between husband and wife.
Late-antique Christian texts also describe attempts to separate a man from his wife through spells and charms. The Qur’anic phrase did not appear in a cultural vacuum.
This evidence means that we need not begin by seeking an entirely symbolic meaning. The practice described was a recognized application of magic in the ancient world.
Of course, these documents do not prove that the charms actually worked through supernatural mechanisms. A spell could have exerted an effect through fear, suggestion, a medicinal substance, deception, psychological manipulation, or some other means. The Qur’an does not explain the mechanism. It says only that people learned something through which they caused such harm.
For this reason, much broader interpretations—such as taking the phrase as a symbol of cosmic collapse or insisting that it refers to altering the natural structure of pairs—have no place in this study without independent evidence. The closest historical context presently available is the practice of magic intended to produce love or separation between couples.
15. Trial, Permission, and Responsibility: Power That Is Not Independent
Amid all the stories about magic, devils, and heavenly beings, the Qur’an establishes two fundamental boundaries that must not be lost beneath accumulated folklore.
The first is:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
Fitnah itself carries a vivid image. In Arabic, the root f-t-n was used for putting gold or silver into a fire to separate impurities from pure metal and reveal its quality. From this semantic field, fitnah comes to signify a trial that reveals a person’s true condition. Lane's Lexicon
The image fits the verse’s subject closely: power and knowledge can reveal a person’s quality as fire tests metal. Someone without capability has not yet been tested in many choices. Once power becomes available, what lies within begins to show.
Metalworking is also among the arts the Watchers teach in Enoch. Setting this lexical image of fitnah beside stories involving metalwork makes an interesting literary comparison, but it does not establish a Qur’anic allusion to Enoch. We have no evidence for that direct connection. Nor can the lexical image alone determine the verse’s meaning. Here, “We are a trial,” the warning that follows, and the consequences of learning must be read together.
A warning before instruction foregrounds responsibility; it does not prove that every form of teaching or learning is unobjectionable. In “We are a trial,” the pair themselves are described as the test. The encounter with a teacher, the decision to learn, and the eventual use can therefore be understood as parts of that situation. The verse’s subsequent description of harmful, unbeneficial learning also prevents us from reducing the issue to application after the learning is complete.
Reading “magic and what was sent down” within the devils’ teaching brings the ethics of transmission into view alongside the ethics of use. The source of something learned does not guarantee the integrity of every transmitter, explanation, or application. Material can be mixed with other claims or directed toward harmful ends in transmission. Yet the verse does not expressly say that this is exactly what the devils did here, or that they removed a warning. Applied to our own circumstances, the reflection raises questions about how knowledge is taught, why it is circulated, and the responsibilities of both transmitter and learner.
The second boundary is:
«وَمَا هُم بِضَارِّينَ بِهِ مِنْ أَحَدٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ»
Whatever nature we suppose siḥr to have, the Qur’an grants it no independent power. No magician, devil, angel, or body of hidden knowledge possesses a domain independent of The God.
Permission, idhn, does not necessarily mean divine moral approval of an act. Many human actions are possible without being pleasing to The God. The point is that no other agent operates beyond His sovereignty.
Late-antique Iran and Mesopotamia also contained various dualist traditions, including forms of Zoroastrian thought that understood the relationship between good and evil differently. Iranian dualism was not a single, simple, unchanging system throughout its history, and we cannot claim without evidence that Al-Baqarah 2:102 directly refutes a particular Zoroastrian school. What the Qur’an itself establishes more securely is this principle: no evil force, magic, or unknown being possesses power independent of, or equal to, The God. Iranica Online
Responsibility then returns to the human being:
«وَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مَا يَضُرُّهُمْ وَلَا يَنفَعُهُمْ»
They learn what harms them and brings them no benefit. Earlier, the verse described separating spouses and harming another person; now it emphasizes harm to the learners themselves. The consequences of their choice do not fall on others alone. Harut and Marut have warned, and power is not independent of The God, yet the learner remains responsible. The verse does not disclose what the rest of the teaching contained. What it condemns here is harmful learning that brings no benefit.
The closing language of buying and selling asks what people pay for what they acquire: they purchase something and sell themselves in exchange. Having no share in the Hereafter places the consequences beyond immediate advantage or loss. Verse 103 (Not yet published) then calls the reward with The God “better.” The juxtaposition of “they certainly knew” and “if only they knew” can also be read as a gap between awareness and a choice that takes that awareness seriously. Knowing a consequence does not necessarily produce a sound decision. This is a reading of the relationship between the phrases, not a claim that no other explanation is possible.
On this understanding, knowledge and ethics cannot be separated. As knowledge expands, so does power, and responsibility grows with it. Medicine can heal or poison; fire can warm or burn; knowledge of the atom can produce energy or destroy a city.
16. From Heavenly Teachers to Extraterrestrials: Folklore Still in the Making
The story of beings who come from a higher world and teach humanity did not end with Enoch or Babylon. Its forms changed, but the pattern persisted across cultures: confronted with knowledge that seems beyond the ordinary capabilities of earlier generations, people ask where it came from.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus brings fire to humanity; Hephaestus is associated with metalworking and industry, and Athena with the skills and arts of civilization. In Egypt, Thoth is linked with writing, calculation, knowledge, and mysterious matters. In Mesopotamia, Oannes emerges from the water and teaches humanity the arts of civilization.
In the modern age, the language of the story changed. The heavens were no longer only the abode of angels and gods. With modern astronomy and space travel, heavenly beings became unidentified extraterrestrials in the popular imagination. The old question acquired a new vocabulary: had visitors from beyond earth taught ancient civilizations architecture, astronomy, mathematics, or technology?
Egypt’s pyramids became one of the most familiar subjects of these stories. Their scale, the weight of their stones, and their geometric precision struck some people as so extraordinary that they proposed the involvement of an advanced civilization or extraterrestrial beings. Archaeology, however, provides extensive evidence concerning ancient Egypt’s organization of labor, economy, and construction methods. Some technical details may remain debated, but “we do not know every detail” does not mean “therefore extraterrestrials built them.”
The Anunnaki have undergone a similar transformation. In Sumerian and Akkadian texts, they are a group of deities. Accounts in which they come to earth to mine gold, create human beings through genetic engineering, and provide humanity with advanced technology are products of modern reinterpretation.
In the twentieth century, writers such as Erich von Däniken popularized this way of reading the past. Egyptian monuments, the Nazca Lines, South American sites, and myths from different cultures were reinterpreted as signs of extraterrestrial visits.
The Roswell story likewise shows how folklore can grow even in an age of newspapers, cameras, and official archives. Within a few decades, an incident can acquire stories of alien bodies, secret technologies, reverse engineering, and hidden governments, with each generation adding new details.
These examples do not establish the reality of Harut and Marut. Their value lies elsewhere: they allow us to watch folklore being created, expanded, and reinterpreted before our eyes.
From this perspective, heavenly Watchers and extraterrestrial teachers are not the same beings, but their stories share a structure: a being beyond humanity, knowledge ordinary people do not possess, the transfer of that knowledge, and a transformation of human life.
None of these similarities proves that all such accounts preserve the memory of a single historical event. They do, however, explain why folklore should neither be accepted immediately as historical fact nor discarded as worthless fiction. Folklore may fail to preserve what happened while still preserving the memory of the questions people asked.
17. Conclusion: Power, Knowledge, and Servanthood
After this journey through Babylon, Enoch, Jubilees, the Watchers, the apkallu, Solomon’s stories, Isra’iliyyat about Harut and Marut, and contemporary accounts of unknown beings, one feature of the Qur’an stands out: it does not allow the unknown to take The God’s place.
Human beings naturally fear what they do not understand. When a being possesses powers beyond ours, when someone has knowledge whose workings we cannot grasp, or when we hear of an unknown force, the mind can readily magnify it beyond its true proportions. A being becomes “absolute power,” a body of knowledge becomes “the secret to controlling the world,” and an object becomes “the key to commanding invisible forces.”
Al-Baqarah 2:102 closes off this path from the outset.
Solomon is the first example. Centuries of storytelling have linked his name with exorcism, demons, a ring, a seal, and mysterious knowledge. Some of this folklore is very old and can be traced to before the Qur’an. Yet at the heart of this very question, the Qur’an says:
«وَمَا كَفَرَ سُلَيْمَانُ»
Solomon did not commit kufr.
This statement does more than defend a prophet’s moral character; it also clarifies the source of his power. Elsewhere, the Qur’an explicitly affirms Solomon’s power over nonhuman beings and attributes it directly to The God:
«وَلِسُلَيْمَانَ الرِّيحَ عَاصِفَةً تَجْرِي بِأَمْرِهِ إِلَى الْأَرْضِ الَّتِي بَارَكْنَا فِيهَا وَكُنَّا بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَالِمِينَ وَمِنَ الشَّيَاطِينِ مَن يَغُوصُونَ لَهُ وَيَعْمَلُونَ عَمَلًا دُونَ ذَٰلِكَ وَكُنَّا لَهُمْ حَافِظِينَ»
(Al-Anbiya 21:81–82) (Not yet published)
Al-Anbiya 21:82 (Not yet published)
And for Solomon, the forceful wind, flowing at his command toward the land We had blessed; and We had knowledge of all things. And among the devils were those who dived for him and performed other work besides that; and We kept watch over them.
The wind and the devils did not become obedient through a magical seal that Solomon possessed as an independent source of power. The Qur’an places their subjugation within The God’s command and protection.
Even before describing these powers, it introduces Solomon through a fundamental quality:
«نِعْمَ الْعَبْدُ إِنَّهُ أَوَّابٌ»
(Sad 38:30) (Not yet published)
What an excellent servant; he was ever turning back.
If someone today searches for “Solomon’s seal,” hoping to find a hidden object that will once again subjugate jinn, devils, or nonbiological beings, the idea finds more support in folklore than in the Qur’an. The Qur’an does not identify a ring as the source of Solomon’s power or locate the secret of his kingdom in a magical object. It emphasizes his servanthood and the subjugation The God made possible for him.
The Qur’an also strips away the appearance of absolute power from the jinn. When Solomon dies, they remain unaware of his death until a termite eats through his staff and his body falls:
«فَلَمَّا خَرَّ تَبَيَّنَتِ الْجِنُّ أَن لَّوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُونَ الْغَيْبَ مَا لَبِثُوا فِي الْعَذَابِ الْمُهِينِ»
(Saba 34:14) (Not yet published)
Had the jinn known the unseen, they would not have remained at that arduous labor.
However astonishing an unknown being may be, the Qur’an does not turn it into a lesser god.
Harut and Marut belong within the same logic. The Qur’an does not present them as possessing independent power. In the widely received reading, they are two angels; and of the angels, the Qur’an says:
«بَلْ عِبَادٌ مُّكْرَمُونَ»
(Al-Anbiya 21:26) (Not yet published)
Rather, they are honored servants.
Even if we make no claims about Harut and Marut’s precise nature beyond what the verse states, one thing is clear: they remain servants within The God’s sovereignty. They teach, warn, and describe themselves as fitnah—a trial through which the truth of a person becomes apparent.
The Qur’an then states one of the verse’s most important principles:
«وَمَا هُم بِضَارِّينَ بِهِ مِنْ أَحَدٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ»
They harm no one through it except by The God’s permission.
This statement should put our fear of many ancient and modern stories into perspective. Suppose beings exist whom we do not yet know. Suppose some of what earlier generations called siḥr was a real, supernatural phenomenon. Suppose civilizations exist beyond earth, or that one day we encounter knowledge we cannot currently even imagine. None of these possibilities creates a realm independent of The God.
Faith does not have to deny the unknown in order to defend The God. The God introduced by the Qur’an is not diminished by the discovery of a new being, a new law of nature, or an unknown civilization. If other intelligent beings are discovered in the universe tomorrow, they too belong to that same creation; they are not rivals to its Creator.
Contemporary stories of extraterrestrials, hidden technologies, unidentified devices, reverse engineering, or lost civilizations should therefore not throw us into panic. Some may be entirely fabricated, some may arise from misunderstandings, and in other cases we may still lack sufficient information. A thoughtful response requires neither blind denial nor belief in every exciting story.
Folklore reinforces the need for that caution. The accounts examined here sometimes feature a large company of heavenly beings and sometimes two figures; other versions include a woman, Venus, wine, murder, Babylon, and various punishments. Without further evidence, these similarities do not establish a definite route by which one story became another. As noted earlier, the precise transmission of the details remains uncertain. Modern extraterrestrial stories also accumulate new details. A narrative’s reach or repetition does not, by itself, establish the truth of everything it contains.
From amid all these stories, however, Al-Baqarah 2:102 draws out a thoroughly human, earthly question:
What do you choose to learn and follow, how do you pass it on, and what do you do with what you have acquired?
Harut and Marut say:
«إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ فِتْنَةٌ فَلَا تَكْفُرْ»
We are a trial; do not commit kufr.
The Qur’an does not then say that they compelled people to put knowledge to evil use. It says:
«فَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مِنْهُمَا مَا يُفَرِّقُونَ بِهِ بَيْنَ الْمَرْءِ وَزَوْجِهِ»
They then learned from the two what they used to separate a person from their spouse.
And then:
«وَيَتَعَلَّمُونَ مَا يَضُرُّهُمْ وَلَا يَنفَعُهُمْ»
They learned what harmed them and brought them no benefit.
The verse’s attention does not stop at the teachers’ identity. Warning, learning, harm to others, and harm to the learners themselves are central too. This does not mean that everything learned is neutral until a user makes it harmful. The choice of what to learn and the process of learning also require scrutiny.
Modern life offers many ways to reflect on this responsibility. Metal can become a plow or a sword. Chemistry can produce medicine or poison. Knowledge of the atom can generate electricity or destroy a city. Biology can treat disease or contribute to weapons. Artificial intelligence can extend education, healthcare, and knowledge, or serve deception, warfare, surveillance, and manipulation. These are contemporary applications of the reflection, not evidence that Harut and Marut taught these sciences.
From this perspective, we can ask what happens when scientific capability outpaces ethical maturity. That is our contemporary application, not a literal translation of the verse. It concerns the ethics of use as well as selection, teaching, and transmission: what do we learn, to whom and how do we teach it, and with what consequences?
Here the lexical image behind fitnah becomes meaningful. Just as fire reveals the quality of metal, power reveals the quality of a person. Without power, someone may imagine themselves righteous. When real power becomes available, what they were prepared for becomes clear.
This reflection should deepen responsibility toward science rather than drive us away from it. Curiosity and understanding are valuable, but questions about what we learn, why, and how cannot be deferred entirely to later use. As knowledge grows, we must also ask whether judgment, ethics, and responsibility are growing with it.
This reading brings source, teacher, transmission, choice, application, and responsibility into the same inquiry; it does not reconstruct a complete historical chain. Under the coordination adopted here, the devils teach what was sent down to the two angels alongside magic; the pair themselves warn before teaching; and the learners are described as acquiring what harms them. The verse leaves the connections between these settings and the full content of the instruction unexplained. What remains clear is that an extraordinary source or an impressive capability does not remove responsibility for following, teaching, learning, or acting.
In closing, Solomon’s story may offer a clearer way forward. The Qur’an does not promise the earth’s future to those who possess magical seals or hidden sciences, or to those who subjugate unknown beings. It says:
«وَلَقَدْ كَتَبْنَا فِي الزَّبُورِ مِن بَعْدِ الذِّكْرِ أَنَّ الْأَرْضَ يَرِثُهَا عِبَادِيَ الصَّالِحُونَ»
(Al-Anbiya 21:105) (Not yet published)
We indeed wrote in the Psalms, after the Reminder, that My righteous servants shall inherit the earth.
This principle matters more than all the stories about Solomon’s seal. Before being master of the wind and the jinn, Solomon is a righteous servant of The God. His power does not arise from escaping the divine order. It has meaning within that order and by The God’s permission.
If one day the truth about Harut and Marut, the nature of siḥr, unknown beings, or some of the universe’s mysteries becomes clear to us, our faith should not have to wait until then to find its footing. The principle is already clear:
The One we worship is The God; all others are servants.
Knowledge, however vast, is not God.
Power, however astonishing, is not independent.
And the more a human being knows, the more that person is tested.
After all this inquiry, perhaps the most important question raised by Harut and Marut is this:
If knowledge hidden from us today becomes available tomorrow, will we be ready to possess it—or merely ready to use it?