"What no eye has seen and no ear has heard": Towards a sensory history of early Islam

Abstract

This article studies the ḥadīth qudsī, “God said: I have prepared for my pious servants that which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart has conceived (aʿdadtu li-ʿibādī al-ṣāliḥīn mā lā ʿaynun raʾat wa-lā udhunun samiʿat wa-lā khaṭara ʿalā qalbi bashar)” (Hammām b. Munabbih > AbūHurayra > the Prophet). After briefly discussing Hammām’s Ṣaḥīfa and the eschatological narratives found in it, I address the late-antique contexts in which the saying is embedded. I then proceed to propose a chronology, based on an isnād-cum-matn analysis, of the various versions in which the saying circulated up to ca. 250 AH. The paper concludes by highlighting the promise of studying the sensory history of early Islam, a history that largely remains to be written.