The imaginative power of symbolism in ritual and literature is well known. Among the religions of the ancient world, Robertson Smith argued, mythology took the place of dogma; “the sacred lore of priests and people, so far as it does not consist of mere rules for the performance of religious acts, assumes the form of stories about the gods; and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual”. There seems little doubt that pre-Islamic Arabia typified this general pattern, but Islam, as a statement of monotheistic belief overriding ritualistic symbols, radically challenged, then radically altered, this pattern.

Yet, viewed in perspective, the Quranic message is not as marked a break with the past as it first appears. The retention of the pilgrimage and the ceremonies at the Ka'bah, Minā and ‘Arafāt provided rituals around which pre-Islamic stories were told and post-Islamic legends woven. One might enquire which came first – a ritual running (sa‘y) between the hills of al-Safā’ and al-Marwah, or the story of the running of Hagar (Hājar) seeking water for her abandoned son Ishmael (Ismā‘īl), the accepted Islamic explanation for this ritual?

The text of the Qur'ān introduced complex and interchangeable characters who were no ordinary mortals and were of symbolic potential. Some were Arabian, others biblical, a few of indeterminate origin. The Prophet and those persons, human or supernatural, who preceded him in God's disclosure are never absent from the verses (āyāt) of Holy Writ.