Shoaib

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Shoaib in Islamic tradition

Shu'aib belongs to the Arab rather than Jewish tradition, to which he is unknown. His identification with Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, has no warrant, and I reject it. There is no similarity either in names or incidents, and there are chronological difficulties. If, as the commentators tell us, Shu'aib was in the fourth generation from Abraham, being a great-grandson of Madyan

Madyan

Madyan is a popular hill station, located in Swat , NWFP, Pakistan.In November 2007 it was reported that the town had been taken over by Islamist miltants led by Maulana Fazlullah....
 (son of Abraham

Abraham

Abraham is a man featured in the Book of Genesis and an important figure in several monotheistic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions regard him as the founding Patriarchs of the Israelites, Ishmaelites and Edomite peoples....
), he would be only a century from the time of Abraham, whereas the Hebrew Bible would give us a period of four to six centuries between Abraham and Moses. The mere fact that Jethro was a Midianite and that another name, Reuel

Reuel

Reuel or Raguel is a Hebrew name associated with several Biblical and/or religious figures.Biblical persons with this name are:* Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, who also went by the name "Reuel" ....
, is mentioned for a father-in-law of Moses in Num.x.29, is slender ground for identification. As the Midianites were mainly a nomad tribe, we need not be surprised that their destruction in one or two settlements did not affect their life in wandering sections of the tribe in other geographical regions.

As they were a mixed wandering tribe, both their resilience and their eventual absorption can be easily understood. But the destruction of the settlement or settlements (if the Wood or Aika was a separate settlement, (see ) to which Shu'aib was sent to preach was complete, and no traces of it now remain. — ibid.

The Midianites were in the path of a commercial highway of Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
, viz., that between two such opulent and highly organized nations as Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
 and the Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
n group comprising Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
 and Babylonia

Babylonia

Babylonia was a state in Lower Mesopotamia , Babylon as its franklin. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad....
. Their besetting sins are thus characterised here:

1. giving short measure or weight, whereas the strictest commercial probity is necessary for success;
2. a more general form of such fraud, depriving people of rightful dues;
3. producing mischief and disorder, where peace and order had been established (again in a literal as well as metaphorical sense);
4. not content with upsetting settled life, taking to highway robbery, literally as well as
5. metaphorically, in two ways, viz., cutting off people from access to the worship of God, and abusing religion and piety for crooked purposes, i.e., exploiting religion itself for their crooked ends, as when a man builds houses of prayer out of unlawful gains, or ostentatiously gives charity out of money which he obtained by force or fraud, etc.

After setting out this catalogue of besetting sins, Shu'aib makes two appeals to the past:

1. You began as an insignificant tribe, and by God's favour you increased and multiplied in numbers and resources; do you not then owe a duty to God to fulfil His Law?
2. What was the result in the case of those who fell into sins? Will you not take warning by their example?

So Shu'aib began his argument with faith in God as the source of all virtue, and ended it with destruction as the result of all sin. — op. cit., n. 1055, p. 366

Can we get any idea of the chronological place of the destruction of the Midianite? In Chapter (7:85) we have discussed the geographical aspects. The following considerations will help us in getting some idea of their period:

1. The story of Noah
   Noah
   
   Noah was, according to the Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs ; and a prophet according to the Qur'an. The biblical story of Noah is contained in the book of Book of Genesis, chapters 5-9, while the Qur'an has a whole sura named after and devoted to his story with other references elsewhere....
   , Hud
   Hud (prophet)
   
   Hud, ), is a Prophets of Islam. The eleventh sura of the Qur'an, Hud , is named after him, though the narrative of Hud comprises only a small portion of the sura, ....
   , Salih, Lot
   Lut
   
   Lut or Lot , is a Prophets of Islam mentioned in the Qur'an. He also appears in the Bible, but the Lot are not entirely accepted within Islam....
    and Shu'aib seem to be in chronological order. Therefore Shu'aib came after Abraham
   Abraham
   
   Abraham is a man featured in the Book of Genesis and an important figure in several monotheistic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions regard him as the founding Patriarchs of the Israelites, Ishmaelites and Edomite peoples....
   ,see ) whose nephew Lot was.
2. If Shu'aib was in the fourth generation from Abraham, It would be impossible for him to have been a contemporary of Moses, who came many centuries later — this difficulty is recognized by Ibn Kathir
   Ibn Kathir
   
   Ismail ibn Kathir was an Islamic scholar and renowned commentator on the Qur'an....
    and other classical commentators.
3. The identification of Shu'aib with Jethro the father-in-law of Moses is without warrant; see .
4. Shu'aib must have been before Moses; see .
5. The Midianites who were destroyed by Moses
   Moses
   
   Moses is a Hebrew Bible Hebrews religious leader, lawgiver, prophet, to whom the Mosaic authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed. Also called Moshe Rabbeinu in Hebrew , he is the most important prophet in Judaism, and also an important prophet of Christianity, Islam, the Bah?'? Faith, Rastafari movement, Chrislam and many ot...
    and by Gideon after him were local remnants, as we may speak of the Jews at the present day; but their existence as a nation in their original homeland seems to have ended before Moses ().
6. Josephus
   Josephus
   
   Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
   , Eusebius, and Ptolemy
   Ptolemy
   
   Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
    mention a town of Madyan, but it was not of any importance.
7. After the first centuries of the Christian Era, Madyan as a town appears as an unimportant place resting on its past.

— op. cit., n. 1064, p. 369

Shoaib's Tomb

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