ABSTRACT
Next to exegesis and the sayings of Muḥammad, one of the literary genres destined to gather stories and legends on the Biblical prophets was that of historiography. A historical concept in nuce is already contained in the Qurʾān when reference is made to certain experiences of Muḥammad and above all to the stories of the prophets, or when it states that mankind was created with Adam and accepted or rejected in the past the preaching of other prophets, up to the point of the Arab Prophet. The Qurʾān does not however contain descriptions of events, but instead emblematic stories — in a certain sense parables — and the persons of the past are examples of a moral life, not figures whose experiences are fully described in terms of these past events. The realisation of a historical conception is therefore due to the extra-canonical traditions.
