Confusion of Tongues and Origin of Nations and Religions in Islamic Tradition

The story of the confusion of tongues and the origin of nations and religions in Islamic tradition has several non-Quranic versions. All of them have parallels in Judeo-Christian exegesis and constitute separate or 'included' motifs in life-stories of three Islamic prophets and 'forefathers' - Adam, Nuh, and Ibrahim. The first version is very popular in oral tradition, and it assigns the confusion of tongues and the origin of nations and religions to the sacred time or Creation and the earthly life of the first human generation. The plot is based on the family conflict between Adam and his sons, who take a stand against their father and even make a conspiracy to murder him. In order to prevent the fulfillment of the sinful scheme, God confuses their languages and disperses them and their progeny all over the world. The other two versions are well-known in classical Islamic sources. The first is based on the idea of peaceful movement of nations and distribution of languages between post-Deluge generations during the time of the prophet Nuh, and the second is an Islamic version of the biblical story of the confusion of languages of those who tried to build the Tower of Babel and defy God. In Muslim oral tradition they are not popular or have different functions. The second story, for example, is adopted as a proof of the dominant theme in prophetic stories - the theme of the salvation of the righteous prophet and the punishment of the sinful ruler and his supporters. The untypical discrepancy between Islamic literary and oral texts most probably is due to the fact that the popular story is a result of a late - maybe Ottoman - compilation of well- known motifs from the biblical sacred history. It stresses the primordial inequality of religions and nations. Presumably, it was distributed through Islamic education with the intention of creation of both negative and positive ethnic and religious stereotypes among common believers.