20221205

People of the iPhone: Tri-Polar










*Chiraq




He is described in the Quran as "trustworthy" and "patient" and the Quran also says that he was "exalted to a high station". Because of this and other parallels, traditionally Idris has been identified with the biblical Enoch, and Islamic tradition usually places Idris in the early Generations of Adam, and considers him one of the oldest prophets mentioned in the Quran.  

Idris' unique status inspired many future traditions and stories surrounding him in Islamic folklore.


According to hadith, narrated by Malik ibn Anas and found in Sahih Muslim, it is said that on Muhammad's Night Journey, he encountered Idris in the fourth heaven. The traditions that have developed around the figure of Idris have given him the scope of a prophet as well as a philosopher and mystic, and many later Muslim mystics, or Sufis, including Ruzbihan Baqli and Ibn Arabi, also mentioned having encountered Idris in their spiritual visions.


Idris is identified as the great-grandfather of Nuh/Noah.


Antoine Faivre, in The Eternal Hermes (1995), has pointed out that Hermes Trismegistus (a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth) has a place in the Islamic tradition, although the name Hermes does not appear in the Quran. Hagiographers and chroniclers of the first centuries of the Islamic Hijrahquickly identified Hermes Trismegistus with Idris, the Prophet of surat 19.56-57 and 21.85, whom the Arabs also identified with Enoch (cf. Genesis 5.18–24). Idris/Hermes was termed "Thrice-Wise" Hermes Trismegistus because he had a threefold origin. The first Hermes, comparable to Thoth, was a "civilizing hero", an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world; he carved the principles of this sacred science in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The second Hermes, in Babylon, was the initiator of Pythagoras. The third Hermes was the first teacher of alchemy. "A faceless prophet," writes the Islamicist Pierre Lory, "Hermes possesses no concrete or salient characteristics, differing in this regard from most of the major figures of the Bible and the Quran." A common interpretation of the representation of "Trismegistus" as "thrice great" recalls the three characterizations of Idris: as a messenger of god, or a prophet; as a source of wisdom, or hikmet (wisdom from hokhmah); and as a king of the world order, or a "sultanate". These are referred to as müselles bin ni'me.


The star-worshipping sect known as the Sabians of Harran also believed that their doctrine descended from Hermes Trismegistus.