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Refutations

Did Islam Borrow the Concept of the Sirāṭ from Zoroastrianism? A Refutation

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The concept of the Sirāṭ in Islam is not borrowed from Zoroastrianism — it is divine revelation, established in Meccan Surahs before any possible channel of transmission could have existed. Missionaries have claimed that the Islamic concept of the bridge over Hell was taken from the Zoroastrian Činwad Puhl, specifically from the poetic hymns called the Gāthās found in the Yasna chapter of the Avesta. This claim is refuted across five points: the manuscript evidence, the textual corruption of the Avesta, the documented distortion of the Zoroastrian tradition, the established illiteracy of the Prophet ﷺ, and the fundamental doctrinal differences between the two descriptions.

The Hadith of the Sirāṭ

Sahih al-Bukhari 6204 — Kitāb al-Riqāq, Chapter: The Sirāṭ, the Bridge over Hell Abu al-Yamān narrated to us, Shu’ayb narrated to us, on the authority of al-Zuhrī — Sa’īd and ‘Aṭā’ ibn Yazīd narrated to me — that Abu Hurayrah narrated to them, on the authority of the Prophet ﷺ. And Maḥmūd narrated to us, ‘Abd al-Razzāq narrated to us, Mu’ammar narrated to us, on the authority of al-Zuhrī, on the authority of ‘Aṭā’ ibn Yazīd al-Laythī, on the authority of Abu Hurayrah, who said:

Some people said: O Messenger of Allah, will we see our Lord on the Day of Resurrection? He said: “Do you find difficulty in seeing the sun when there are no clouds in front of it?” They said: No, O Messenger of Allah. He said: “Do you find difficulty in seeing the full moon when there are no clouds in front of it?” They said: No, O Messenger of Allah. He said: “You will see Him on the Day of Resurrection.”

“Thus Allah will gather the people and say: Whoever worshipped something, let him follow it. So he who worshipped the sun will follow it, and he who worshipped the moon will follow it, and he who worshipped the tyrants will follow them. And this nation will remain among its hypocrites, so Allah will come to them in a form other than that in which they recognise Him and will say: I am your Lord. They will say: We seek refuge in Allah from you — this is our place until our Lord comes to us. So when our Lord comes to us, we will recognise Him. So Allah will come to them in the image that they know. He says: I am your Lord. They say: You are our Lord. They follow Him, and He strikes the bridge of Hell.”

“I will be the first to cross. The supplication of the messengers on that day is: O Allah, save, save. And in it are hooks like the thorns of the Sa’dān. Have you not seen the thorns of the Sa’dān?” They said: Yes, O Messenger of Allah. He said: “They are like the thorns of the Sa’dān, except that no one knows the extent of their greatness except Allah — so they snatch people by their deeds. Some of them are destroyed by their deeds and some are cut and then saved, until Allah has finished judging between His servants.”

Grade: Sahih · Bukhari

The concept of the Sirāṭ also appears in the Quran itself in a Meccan Surah:

Maryam 19:71–72 وَإِن مِّنكُمْ إِلَّا وَارِدُهَا ۚ كَانَ عَلَىٰ رَبِّكَ حَتْمًا مَّقْضِيًّا ۝ ثُمَّ نُنَجِّي الَّذِينَ اتَّقَوا وَّنَذَرُ الظَّالِمِينَ فِيهَا جِثِيًّا

“And there is not one of you but will pass over it. This is upon your Lord an inevitability decreed. (71) Then We will save those who feared Allah and leave the wrongdoers therein on their knees. (72)”

Sunan al-Tirmidhī 3159 — Kitāb Tafsīr al-Qur’ān ‘Abd ibn Ḥumayd narrated to us, ‘Ubaydullāh ibn Mūsā narrated to us, on the authority of Isrā’īl, on the authority of al-Suddī, who said: I asked al-Hamdānī about the statement of Allah the Most High: “And there is not one of you but will pass over it.” He told me that Abdullah ibn Mas’ūd told them that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

“People will pass over the Fire, then they will emerge from it because of their deeds. The first of them will be like the flash of lightning, then like the wind, then like the speed of a horse, then like a rider in his saddle, then like a man’s gait, then like his walking.”

Grade: Sahih · authenticated by Imam al-Albānī in Ṣaḥīḥ wa Ḍa’īf Sunan al-Tirmidhī, no. 3159; also in Al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah, no. 311

Point One: The Oldest Manuscript of the Avesta Postdates Islam by Six Centuries

The oldest surviving manuscript of the Avesta dates to 1323 AD — approximately 600 years after the time of the Prophet ﷺ.

Mary Boyce — Textual Sources for the Study of Religion, p. 12 “All their religious works were handed down orally; it was not until probably the fifth century AC that they were last committed to writing in the Avestian alphabet, especially invented for the purpose. The oldest extant MS is dated to 1323 AC.”

Source: https://archive.org/details/TextualSigion/page/n11

Furthermore, the Yasna chapter of the Avesta — which contains the Gāthās cited by missionaries — in the manuscript above is based in its writing on a lost manuscript dating to the ninth or tenth century AD, meaning two or three centuries after the rise of Islam:

Encyclopaedia Iranica — Article: Avesta (Holy Book) “Of the history of the Avestan texts from the collapse of the Sasanian empire and the oldest manuscripts in our possession little is known. We know that the Muslim conquest and the dispersal of the Mazdean communities caused a weakening of the religious tradition and a decline of the liturgical elocution, which caused damage to the written transmission of the Avesta. Also, examination of the manuscripts reveals mistakes which prove that all of them derive from a single common ancestor, which K. Hoffmann calls the ‘base manuscript’ and places in the ninth to tenth century AD.”

Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avesta-holy-book

Point Two: The Yasna Was Subject to Distortions, Additions, and Revisions Including in the Post-Islamic Era

The Yasna remained for a long time an open text subject to modification and additions. The Encyclopaedia Iranica explicitly states that post-Islamic additions to the Yasna cannot be ruled out:

Encyclopaedia Iranica — Article: Yasna “Obviously, the text could not have been composed until some time after the death of Zaraθuštra, as the majority of its composition is in the Standard (or Younger) Avestan dialect, in contradistinction to the Gāθic (or Old) Avestan dialect of the prophet’s Gāθās… One can imagine a uniform editorial composition, but then subject to later accretions… Since the Nērangistān appears to date from the close of the Sasanian period, its recognition of the essential components of the Yasna as it is known today would place the basic configuration of the Yasna within the same time frame, .”

Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yasna

This makes it entirely plausible that the account of the bridge in the Gāthās was itself influenced by Islam — a post-Islamic addition rather than an original Zoroastrian teaching.

Point Three: The Avesta as a Whole Was Radically Distorted and Influenced by Surrounding Religions

The oral transmission of the Avesta was the primary mode of its preservation from the third century BC — after Alexander the Great burned the Zoroastrian books at Estakhr — until the beginning of its re-writing in the Sassanid period in the third century AD. During that long interval and what followed, the Avesta and Zoroastrianism as a religion underwent continuous change, absorbing teachings and concepts from Christianity, the Mandaeans, and other surrounding traditions.

Encyclopaedia Iranica — Article: Avesta (Holy Book) “At the time of Alexander’s conquest, the Avesta was destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks, who translated into their own language the scientific passages of which they could make use. The first attempt at restoring the Avesta was made under the Arsacids, when a king Valaxš had the fragments collected, both those which had been written down as well as those which had been transmitted only orally. This undertaking was carried on in four phases under the Sasanians: Ardašēr (226–41) ordered the high priest Tansar to complete the work of collecting the fragments… Šāpūr II (309–79) Ādurbād ī Mahraspandān made the general revision of the canon and ensured its orthodox character against sectarian divergences… Finally, a revision of the Pahlavi translation took place under Ḵosrow I (531–79)… The earliest transmission of the Avesta must have been oral only, since no Iranian people seem to have used writing in early times. Until the advent of the Sasanians, and even under their regime, Iran was a country in which written documents were conspicuously rare.”

Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avesta-holy-book

The author of Zarādusht wa Zarādushiyyah states on pages 91–93:

Zarādusht wa Zarādushiyyah, pp. 91–93 “The catastrophe that befell them is the burning of the city of Estakhr, the spiritual capital of the country, by Alexander and the loss of most of the Zoroastrian heritage… most of the libraries and houses of knowledge were lost due to Alexander’s arrogance and his extreme disregard for human heritage, including the books of the Avesta with their explanations, commentaries, and interpretations.”

Commenting on the Sassanian collection: “In fact, the religion that was brought back to life… has no connection to the true religion of Zoroaster, but rather it is the distorted Zoroastrian religion that has lost many of its characteristics and its truth has been distorted and the manifestations of faith in it have been distorted. We would not be exaggerating if we said that the Zoroastrian religion in its new form is a strange and discordant mixture that combines the Zoroastrianism of ancient Mada and Persia, the paganism of Greece, and distorted Zoroastrianism.”

The Encyclopaedia Britannica further states that the completion of the collection of the Avesta took place in the third to seventh century AD — coinciding with and extending into the emergence of Islam — making post-Islamic influence entirely possible:

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Article: Avesta “The present Avesta was assembled from remnants and standardized under the Sāsānian kings (3rd–7th century AD).”

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Avesta-Zoroastrian-scripture

Point Four: The Illiteracy of the Prophet ﷺ Refutes the Claim of Borrowing

It is established from both the Quran and the authentic Sunnah that the Prophet ﷺ was illiterate — he could neither read nor write in Arabic. The claim that he borrowed from Zoroastrian texts requires that an illiterate Arab from Mecca in the seventh century not only accessed but read Zoroastrian books written in Persian — books that were accessible only to Magian priests at that time.

Al-‘Ankabūt 29:48 وَمَا كُنتَ تَتْلُو مِن قَبْلِهِ مِن كِتَابٍ وَلَا تَخُطُّهُ بِيَمِينِكَ ۖ إِذًا لَّارْتَابَ الْمُبْطِلُونَ

“And you did not recite before it any scripture, nor did you inscribe it with your right hand. Then the falsifiers would have had doubts.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 1814 — Kitāb al-Ṣawm Adam narrated to us, Shu’bah narrated to us, al-Aswad ibn Qays narrated to us, Sa’īd ibn ‘Amr narrated to us that he heard Ibn ‘Umar (may Allah be pleased with them both) from the Prophet ﷺ, that he said:

“We are an illiterate nation. We do not write nor do we calculate. The month is like this and like this” — meaning sometimes twenty-nine and sometimes thirty.

Grade: Sahih · Bukhari

Sahih Ibn Ḥibbān 4982 — Kitāb al-Sīrah, Chapter: Truce and Compromise On the authority of al-Barā’, who said: When they wrote the document of Hudaybiyyah, they wrote: “This is what Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, has decided.” The polytheists said: “We do not acknowledge this. If we knew that you were the Messenger of Allah, we would not have prevented you from anything.” He said: “I am the Messenger of Allah, and I am Muhammad ibn Abdullah.” He said to Ali: “Erase ‘the Messenger of Allah.’” Ali said: “By Allah, I will never erase you.” So the Messenger of Allah ﷺ took the document — — so he ordered and wrote in place of “the Messenger of Allah”: “Muhammad.”
Sahih Muslim 1783 — Kitāb al-Jihād wa al-Siyar, Chapter: The Treaty of Ḥudaybiyyah On the authority of al-Barā’, who said: He said to Ali: “Write the condition between us: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful — this is what Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, has agreed upon.” The polytheists said to him: “If we knew that you were the Messenger of Allah, we would follow you — write: Muhammad ibn Abdullah.” So he ordered Ali to erase it. Ali said: “No, by Allah, I will not erase it.” So the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Show me its place.” So he showed him its place, .

Grade: Sahih · Muslim

Al-Bayhaqī — Al-Sunan al-Kubrā, Kitāb al-Nikāḥ, no. 12916 “He was not permitted to learn poetry or to write. Allah the Most High said: {And We have not taught him poetry, nor is it befitting for him} and He said: {So believe in Allah and His Messenger, the unlettered Prophet.} Some of the commentators said: the unlettered is the one who does not read a book nor write with his right hand — this is the statement of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān and other scholars of interpretation.”

On the authority of Ibn ‘Abbās (may Allah be pleased with them both) regarding the words of Allah the Most High: {And you did not recite before it any scripture, nor did you inscribe it with your right hand} — he said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ did not read nor did he write.”

The Claim That Salmān al-Fārisī Was the Source

Someone might object that the Prophet ﷺ borrowed the concept from Salmān al-Fārisī (may Allah be pleased with him). The response is that Salmān did not convert to Islam except during the Medinan period and did not witness the Meccan period. Moreover, he was enslaved by a Jew and was absent from Badr and Uḥud, as established in the following authentic narration:

Majma’ al-Zawā’id — Kitāb al-Manāqib, no. 15833 (Chapter on Salmān al-Fārisī) On the authority of Salmān al-Fārisī, who said: “I was a Persian man from Iṣfahān, from a village called Jī. My father was the notable of his village, and I was the most beloved of Allah’s creation to him… I strove hard in Zoroastrianism until I was the fire-lighter who would not let it go out for an hour… So I fell upon it, kissing it and crying… and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to me: ‘Turn around.’ So I turned around and narrated to him my story… .”

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Write a contract, O Salmān.” So I wrote a contract with my companion for three hundred palm trees that I would revive for him in the soil, and for forty ounces. So I witnessed the Battle of the Trench with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and did not miss any battle with him after that.

Grade: Hasan · Imam al-Albānī classified it as good in Al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah, Part Two, p. 556

The concept of the Sirāṭ was already revealed in Surat Maryam — a Meccan Surah — before Salmān al-Fārisī even came to Madīnah and before he was freed from slavery. It is therefore impossible for him to have been the source.

Point Five: The Fundamental Doctrinal Differences Between the Sirāṭ in Islam and the Činwad Puhl in Zoroastrianism

The Encyclopaedia Iranica describes the Zoroastrian Činwad Puhl as follows:

Encyclopaedia Iranica — Article: Činwad Puhl “Činwad Puhl (Av. činuuatō pərətu-), traditionally thought to mean ‘the bridge of the separator’ but recently shown to be ‘the bridge of the accumulator/collector,’ the name of a bridge that, according to a Mazdayasnian/Zoroastrian eschatological myth, leads from this world to the next and must be crossed by the souls of the departed… It is already mentioned in the Gāthās (Y. 46.10, 46.11, 51.13)… one lies in the south, leading to paradise; the other lies in the north, and below it, beneath the earth, lies hell… Two dogs guard the bridge, according to the Vidēvdād (13.9, 19.30), but only one, according to the Bundahišn.”

Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cinwad-puhl-av

The differences between the two accounts are fundamental:

First: In Islam, the Sirāṭ extends only over Hell — it is a bridge above the Fire. In Zoroastrianism, the Činwad Puhl begins at the top of Mount Harbuz, passes over Hell, and reaches Paradise — an entirely different structural description.

Second: In Zoroastrianism, the bridge is guarded by two dogs (or one, according to later texts). There is no equivalent of this in Islam whatsoever.

Third: There is no mention in Zoroastrianism of Allah’s reckoning of those who pass over the bridge — a central element of the Islamic account.

The Bundahišn — A Post-Islamic Zoroastrian Work

Regarding the hooks, lances, and the bridge resembling a sword — details found in the Zoroastrian Bundahišn — the Encyclopaedia Iranica states:

Encyclopaedia Iranica — Article: Činwad Puhl “The bridge is said to be nine lances long and wide, although resembling a sharp sword (Bundahišn, TD2, p. 199.7–8), a razor blade, or a razor blade ‘of many sides.’”

Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cinwad-puhl-av

The Bundahišn is itself a very late Zoroastrian work that postdates the Islamic conquest. The Encyclopaedia Iranica confirms this:

Encyclopaedia Iranica — Article: Bundahišn “The text of the Bundahišn probably grew through different redactions, but it is impossible to say even approximately at what date the first compilation was made. , but it is not certain whether they are original or have been added to the work at a later stage. Most scholars subscribe to the view that it is ‘an original work on cosmology in which the scattered teachings of the Avesta were coordinated and brought into a system by an author who, living apparently towards the end of the Sassanian epoch, possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Avestic literature,’ and that the final chapters are a later addition.”

Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bundahisn-primal-creation

If the detailed description of the sword-like bridge in the Bundahišn postdates Islam — and the Bundahišn explicitly references the Islamic conquest — then the direction of influence is from Islam to Zoroastrianism, not from Zoroastrianism to Islam.

The missionary claim that the Islamic concept of the Sirāṭ was borrowed from Zoroastrianism fails on every front. The oldest Avesta manuscript postdates the Prophet ﷺ by six centuries. The Yasna was an open text subject to post-Islamic additions which the Encyclopaedia Iranica itself cannot rule out. The Zoroastrian tradition was radically disrupted by Alexander’s destruction, transmitted orally for centuries, and reassembled in a form heavily influenced by surrounding religions. The Prophet ﷺ was illiterate in Arabic — let alone Persian — and the concept of the Sirāṭ appears in a Meccan Surah revealed years before Salmān al-Fārisī even entered Islam, let alone before he was freed from slavery. The doctrinal differences between the two accounts are fundamental and irreconcilable. And the Bundahišn — the Zoroastrian work that contains the closest parallels — is itself a post-Islamic text that references the Arab conquest, making it far more likely that its author was influenced by Islam than the reverse.
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