Reconfiguring Pre-Islamic Arab Cosmology: A Pre-Text, Text, and Con-Text Analysis of the Qur’anic al-Layl Verses

Abstract

This study examines Qur’anic verses containing the term al-layl (night) through a historical-hermeneutical approach that moves beyond the tendency to read natural phenomena primarily through scientific exegesis (tafsīr ʿilmī). While contemporary discussions of the Qur’an and nature have extensively addressed the relationship between revelation and scientific knowledge, less attention has been paid to how Qur’anic discourse engaged with and reconfigured the cosmological imagination of pre-Islamic Arabian society. This article therefore investigates how the al-layl verses transformed existing perceptions of nature and articulated a new theological understanding of the cosmic order. Using the conceptual framework of pre-text, text, and con-text, the study analyzes thirty-four Qur’anic verses containing the term al-layl as its primary textual corpus. The verses are examined through thematic classification, semantic relations, and contextual interpretation, with particular attention to their predominantly Makkiyah setting and to their theological, cosmological, and eschatological functions. The findings show that the al-layl verses do more than describe the observable phenomenon of night. They reconfigure its symbolic significance within a tawḥīdic cosmology by relocating night, the alternation of night and day, and the wider celestial order from a sacralized cosmological framework into a Qur’anic discourse of divine signs (āyāt). Natural phenomena thus become signs of divine sovereignty, objects of contemplation, and reminders of eschatological accountability. The study contributes to contemporary Qur’anic scholarship by reading āyāt kauniyyah as historically situated and transformative discourse that reshaped the cosmological consciousness of the Qur’an’s earliest audience.