Harut and Marut

Mentioned briefly in Qur'an 2:102 as two figures at Babylon to whom certain knowledge was sent, later tafsīr traditions develop a narrative in which Harut and Marut are heavenly beings sent to earth as part of a divine testing episode; they teach or are associated with the transmission of sorcery, warn learners 'We are only a trial,' and become the etiological source for illicit magical practices. Some commentators accept them as angels who taught dangerous arts (serving as a moral test), while other readings, resisting the notion of errant angels, reinterpret them as ordinary kings or men or argue they only transmitted lawful knowledge.

The Qur'anic verse and the supplied exegetical summaries do not provide a consistent physical description. Classical commentaries and later tale-like expansions offer narrative detail in some accounts, but the provided sources contain no reliable, specific physical depiction of Harut and Marut.

Classical and modern summaries attribute to Harut and Marut the role of teaching forms of sorcery (siḥr), including methods alleged to cause separation between spouses. In exegesis their activity is framed ambiguously: as agents in the transmission of harmful arts (and thus etiological founders of some magical practices) and as embodiments of a divine test who warn those they teach that they are only a trial. Alternative interpretations in the tradition maintain they could not have sinned and therefore recast their activity as non-culpable instruction or identify them as non-angelic figures.