A Portable Covenant? The Biblical Subtext of the Mutual Cursing (mubāhala) in Āl ‘Imrān

The “mutual cursing” (mubāhala) episode in Āl ‘Imrān (3:59-64) has provided Muslim commentators a topos for probing the early Muslim community’s relation to Near Eastern Christians, as well as for understanding the Sunnī–Shī‘ī split. The language of “curse” and “witness” that pervades sūra 3 recalls formulae used in Deuteronomy 28 and Joshua 24 to renew the Mosaic covenant. In this essay, I argue that the biblical renewal ritual, which involves placing a collective curse on covenant breakers, forms the biblical subtext of the mubāhala. By reading sūra 3 against Deuteronomy and Joshua, we see how the Qur’ān as a text (oral and written) takes on the role of the Torah in the renewal ritual: a witness to the constitution of the Islamic covenant community that, unlike the a prophet or a cultic site, is both portable and duplicable.