Sacred legends: legends of the ancients in Muslim heritage

The earth is carried on the back of a bull, and the sun revolves around it with a wheel pulled by angels every day, and the frankincense and myrrh and jinn inhabited the earth long before the creation of humans.. the city of Iram of the Pillars still exists in Yemen, and Harut and Marut are still in Babylon teaching people magic, and the phoenix is a real creature and not one of the impossible things as we were told.. Al-Khidr is still alive, and Dhu al-Qarnayn is Alexander the Great, and Nimrod flew into space to kill the Lord of the heavens and then returned, and Prophet Solomon stole his kingdom from a demon for forty days and then reclaimed it.. Do not be surprised, dear reader, for some of the most famous books of Islamic heritage contain this kind of talk, and more, and some ancient narrators of religious stories used to tell it to people who believed it and circulated it.. Some described it as falsehoods, others called it “fabricated lies,” and some others called it “Isra’iliyyat.” In any case, the existence of such stories indicates that Muslims have their own legends just as the Greeks, ancient Egyptians, the people of Iraq and the Levant, and others did.. Walid Fikri talks about the legends of the ancients that infiltrated Muslim heritage.