Nicolai Sinai (The eschatological Kerygma of the early Qur’an, p. 236), for example, interprets the eschatology of the Qur’an as a means to motivate its audience to do good and be obedient to God:

As underlined by Andrae, the early Qur’an’s evocations and portrayals of the end of the world and the hereafter primarily serve to stoke and keep awake the fearful anticipation of the Judgement that the early Qur’anic proclamations place at the centre of their moral vision. Qur’anic eschatology is therefore moralistic rather than apocalyptic: the Qur’an exhibits no interest in speculating about the future course of his tory leading up until the end of the world or in reassuring a group of people who seem to be on the losing side of history that they are, in fact, on the winning side. This lack of apocalyptic interest is most immediately apparent from the fundamentally ahistorical character of the way in which the Qur’an represents the Day of Judgement: passages such as Q 81:1–14 or 82:1–5, which enumerate different aspects of the world’s eschatological disintegration and the preparations immediately preceding the final reckoning, nowhere attempt to date the end in relation to the present or to spell out the signs by which one would be able to discern that it is imminent.

I take it that it is primarily to inculcate such an eschatologically tinged outlook on the world that several Qur’anic verses make the dra matic announcement that the Day of Judgement is, or has drawn, ‘nigh’ (see Q 70:6–7 as well as 54:1, and, even later, 21:1). At the same time, already the early Qur’an insists that only God, not Muhammad, knows when the end will arrive (Q 79:42–46). As indicated by the opening verse of this latter passage (Q 79:42: ‘They ask you about the Hour: When is the time of its anchoring?’; cf. also 75:6 and 51:12), the Qur’an’s insistence that it is not part of Muhammad’s mandate to predict the time of the end responds to pressing queries by some of his hearers to be told when exactly the Hour would occur. That such agnosticism about the exact time of the end was not necessarily seen as incompatible with announcements of eschatological imminence is confirmed by a sermon of Jacob of Serugh, which advances a very similar combination of claims.

1. Response to Shoemaker It is probably in response to the same queries that later Qur’anic verses substitute the announcement that the end is nigh by the more cautious formula that it may be (laʿalla, ʿasā an) nigh (see Q 17:51, 33:63, 42:17, all of which fall well outside this chapter’s primary text base). A different scenario is envisaged in Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad’s Life and the Beginning of Islam (Philadelphia 2012), p. 168: after Muhammad had died without the end of the world having arrived, the qualifiers laʿalla or ʿasā an could have been edited into what were originally unqualified announcements of eschatological imminence like 54:1. In response to this hypothesis, I would point to the numerous verses documenting that the problem of eschatological delay was acute even before Muhammad’s death (apart from Q 51:12, 75:6, and 79:42, see also 7:187, 10:48, 21:38, 27:71 etc.). Hence, a toning-down of the imminent eschatological expectation expressed in Q 70:6–7, 54:1, and 21:1 makes perfect sense already during Muhammad’s lifetime.
2. Sinai identifies two ways of interpreting the Qur’anic data: the Prophet may have preached the imminent end of the world initially, only to “tone it down” later on. Or the Prophet may have only preached about the reality of the Day of Judgement, which would still be “near” in the sense that the resurrection would appear to take place shortly after our deaths: since the deceased will spend the period between their individual demise and the Day of Judgement in a sleep-like state of unconsciousness, it will at least appear to them that the Resurrection occurs only a short time after their death. As pointed out by earlier scholars, this notion of a slumber of souls is set forth by various Syriac writers ranging from Aphraates to the dyophysite church leader Babay the Great (d. 628).78 Thus, regardless of when the Day of Judgement will take place in absolute historical terms, it is at least as near as anyone’s individual death. To all intents and purposes, then, it is incumbent on people to live their lives as if the end were nigh, regardless of how much history still remains to be traversed until the Resurrection is actually going to occur. Exactly the same moralistic, rather than apocalyptic, approach to eschatology is expressed by Jacob of Serugh: ‘Henceforth, my brethren, hasten the course with good works, / for the road is swift, and time has been cut short for the one who is on it. / Even if the time of the world in its entirety may not be short, our life flickers, as it is short (p.238)

1. According to Q 79:46, it will appear to the resurrected as if they had spent only a single night in their graves. Later passages speak of a period of ten days (Q 20:103), ‘only an hour’ (Q 10:45, 30:55), and ‘a short while’ (Q 17:52, 23:114). This is NOT the same as an imminent apocalypse.
2. The only Qur’anic statement remotely reminiscent of the usual apocalyptic previews of history is Q 30:2–4, which predicts a future victory (or defeat, depending on how one vocalizes the main verb) of the Byzantines. Yet even this passage does not explicitly attach any apocalyptic significance to the event in question: the passage is not framed as a prophecy of the end time.

The Qur’an exhibits almost no concern with predicting the final chapters of history that would usher in the end of the world.