Angelika Neuwirth presents a compelling argument that sura 112 (commonly titled al-Ikhlāṣ) makes intentional reference to Deuteronomy 6:4, often termed the Jewish creed, and to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed of 381 Ce, making the short sura a form of commentary on key elements of Jewish and Christian belief that gives succinct expression to the Muslim concept of God. Neuwirth’s theory would match the sura’s first verse, qul huwa Allāhu aḥadun, 1 with Deuteronomy’s shmaʿ Yisraʾel, adonai elohenu adonai eḥad, 2 both of which direct listeners toward monotheistic belief in a single divinity. Neuwirth then connects the remaining verses with the opening section of the Nicene creed, first composed in Greek. 3 Specifically, Neuwirth’s proposal links Q 112:2 with the first line of the Nicene creed’s reference to God as almighty, the third verse with “God’s only begotten son, begotten from the Father / begotten, not created,” and the fourth with the son being of “one essence” with the father, a concept sometimes rendered in English as consubstantiality. In other words, ṣamad is equated with pantokrator (almighty), the verbal forms of walida (to give birth) with gennēthenta (begotten), and kufuwan (equal) 4 with homoousion (of one essence or substance) (A. Neuwirth, The Qurʾan and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage).

For al-samad, scholars such as Sinai note that in some of the Old Testament examples, such as Isaiah 44.7–8, the statement that God is a rock is accompanied by the statement that nobody is equal to God, giving further parallels to the concepts expressed in sura 112. However, supporting a link to the Nicene creed, they add that ṣamad is “at least functionally (although probably not semantically) equivalent to παντοκράτορα (pantocrat) (D. Kiltz, V. Roth, and N. Sinai, “Jesaja 44:6–8 – TUK_0379”).

1. Given the strength of the argument that sura 112 is overtly referencing the Jewish and Christian creeds, it would be reasonable to think of ṣamad as intended to reflect something in those texts.
2. In Neuwirth’s favor, the quranic text on one occasion places God’s “power over the heavens and earth” at the head of a formulation that reads as a variant response to the Nicene creed, as if the ṣamad of Q 112:2 was an alternative for expressing “He who has power over the heavens and earth, who had no offspring, who had no partner in power, and who created everything according to his decree” (Q25:2).

The proposal of this article is that while, as a word, ṣamad may well have been plucked from the linguistic and ideational context of Arabic-speaking communities in the late antique Hijaz, the Quran infused it with a new meaning entirely, which was intended as a rejection of the matrix of Christian theologies centered on the theme of God as man and as an assertion of God’s indivisible, transcendent nature as a category apart from creation. In this context, the Nicene creed’s ousia is a more plausible reference point for the notion of God as ṣamad, an Aristotelian concept at the heart of intense theological and philosophical debate in the centuries preceding the Islamic revolution.

1. Pre-Islamic Theological and Philosophical Debate on the nature of God
2. The Nicene creed first came into being in 325 Ce as an effort by the Roman emperor and Christian convert Constantine to unite church factions around a common statement of faith and put an end to the rationalist theology of the priest Arius (d. 336) of Alexandria. Arius argued that Jesus, as the son, was created, fallible, and lacking true knowledge of the father, the sole ungenerated, uncreated entity. 24 The word ousia was deliberately chosen as a vague but current philosophical term from outside the scriptural lexicon of the time to limit the Arians’ scope for objection, while allowing for a breadth of interpretation that would assuage all parties to the dispute over the incarnation. Church fathers such as Basil of Caesarea in Cappadocia (d. 379) adapted the Aristotelian concepts of primary and secondary ousia to the Trinity, arguing that the divine ousia is a single nature with three particulars, the hypostases of father, son, and spirit, in which Christ is begotten, not created. 25 On that basis, the word ousia (though not hypostasis) entered the Nicene creed in the form of the phrase homoousion tōi patri (ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί, ‘consubstantial with the Father’). 26 In both Categories and Metaphysics, Aristotle had developed a conceptual system of primary ousiai (usually translated as substance, reality, entity, being), which are the ontologically basic entities in existence, as well as a generic ousia, which is the universal category to which individual people belong. The term subsequently developed along parallel lines in Hellenic philosophy and Christian theology. Among the Stoic movement, which was popular in the Roman empire until the rise of Christianity, ousia came to be thought of as matter in a general sense. But the Neoplatonic trend of Plotinus of Alexandria (d. 270) developed this language further within the context of Plato’s thinking around “the one” (το ἕν) and the many. A tension emerged between the transcendence and immanence of the One as an entity that must share some qualities of created beings, since their existence is dependent upon the causal effects of the One. Like Plotinus, Proclus of Athens (d. 485) posited a clear distinction between the two in asserting that the One was prior to the ousia of beings. 27 Damascius (d. 533), the last major Neoplatonist philosopher, who found refuge in Alexandria after Justinian is thought to have closed the Athens school in 529, developed the system further by stressing the Plotinian description of the One as arreton (ἄρρητον, ineffable), i.e., not belonging to the category of all things and beyond ousia.

1. Michael Marx, Nicolai Sinai, Veronika Roth: In terms of structure and content, Sura 112 is reminiscent of the creed proclaimed at the Council of Constantinople, the so-called Nicene-Constantinopolitan (381 AD). While the Christian confession, following God, speaks of Jesus as God’s Son who is “of one essence with the Father”, Q 112:3.4 denies that God could father a son or that any being could be like him. The second half of Sura 112 reads like a dogmatic inversion of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan. The first half of the sura, dedicated to God himself, can also be related to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan: The expression aṣ-ṣamad from verse 2, the meaning of which is unclear, is at least functionally (although probably not semantically) equivalent to παντοκράτορα.
2. Nicolai Sinai, Veronika Roth, Berenike Aschoff (Q112 & Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21; Numbers 15:37-41):
3. The Schema Israel, composed of various sections of the Fourth and Fifth Books of Moses, forms the central Jewish morning and evening prayer and is presupposed in the Mishnah (Treatise Berakhot), which was canonized in the 3rd century AD, but probably dates back to the Second Period Temple back (as it is quoted in Mark 12:29). As Mehmet Paçacı notes, the ʾaḥad (“one”) at the end of Q 112:1 is phonetically almost identical to the Hebrew ʾeḥād (“one”) that closes the first verse of Shema Yisrael. Paçacı himself is primarily interested in proving the continuity of the Koran with earlier manifestations of the monotheistic tradition. In fact, Q 112:1 is probably not just a resumption of earlier traditions, but rather a conscious allusion to the central confessional text of a monotheistic sister religion, which is associated with a clear claim to superiority; because Sura 112 also presents itself as an authoritative credo intended for community use. The Koranic use of the noun ʾ aḥad instead of the actually expected adjective wāḥid (“one”) cannot be explained solely by the need to rhyme, but rather serves to create a phonetic echo of the Yisrael schema generally recited in Hebrew. This hypothesis of an intended phonetic mimesis also gains plausibility from the fact that in the Medina period – to which Q 112 is probably included (see comment) – similar phonetic references to Hebrew phrases also occur elsewhere, such as those of the Israelites in Q 2: 93 and 4:46 attributed to the statement samiʿnā wa-ʿaṣainā (“we have heard and have resisted”), which is phonetically almost identical to šāmaʿnû wə-ʿāśînû (“we have heard and have done”) from Deuteronomy 5:27 (cf .TUK_0253 ) .
4. What is important is that this phonetic reference to Deuteronomy 6:4 only forms the background for an even clearer distance from the Yisrael schema in terms of content: the Koran no longer speaks of “our” God, but only of “God” in absolute terms; the Koranic salutation “Speak!”, which is the biblical “Hear!” inverted, is not aimed at a single collective, but claims validity for any believer. The Quranic sura, the second part of which refers to the central Christian creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan (cf. TUK_0047 ), presents itself as a new creed that is theologically corrected compared to the confessional texts of the two monotheistic predecessor religions.ʾilāhukum ʾilāhun wāḥidun (Q 22:34, 21:108 etc. “your God is a God”), the structure of which – as subject designation of God + suffix, as predicate designation of God + adjective “one” – largely corresponds to Deuteronomy 6:4. Unlike in Q 112:1, the adjective wāḥid appears here and not the noun ʾaḥad . Since Q 112 is probably a Medina text, the Koranic listeners at the time of proclamation of this sura would have been familiar with the formula ʾ ilāhukum ʾilāhun wāḥidun , which was already documented in Mecca, so that the use of ʾaḥad in the rhyme of 112:1 must have been all the more prominent (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, ed. by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph, 4th improved edition, Stuttgart 1990).