Editing Satanic Verses (section)

==Basic narrative==
[[File:Relief of the Arabian goddess Al-Lat, Manat and al-Uzza from Hatra. Iraq Museum.jpg|thumb|The Arabian goddess Al-Lat, flanked by goddesses Manat and al-Uzza.]]
{{Hatnote|See the complete text of [[#Tabarī's account|Tabarī's account]] below}}
There are some accounts of the incident, which differ in the construction and detail of the narrative, but they may be broadly collated to produce a basic account.<ref name="EoQ">{{Citation
 | last =Ahmed
 | first =Shahab
 | year =2008
 | publication-date =14 August 2008
 | contribution =Satanic Verses
 | contribution-url =http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=q3_SIM-00372
 | editor-last =Dammen McAuliffe
 | editor-first =Jane
 | title =Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān
 | location =Georgetown University, Washington DC
 | publisher =Brill
 }}{{Dead link|date=September 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The different versions of the story are recorded in early [[tafsir]]s (Quranic commentaries) and biographies of the Prophet, such as [[Ibn Ishaq|Ibn Ishaq's]].<ref name="IbnIshaq">{{Cite book |last=Ibn Ishaq |first=Muhammad |url=https://archive.org/stream/TheLifeOfMohammedGuillaume/The_Life_Of_Mohammed_Guillaume#page/n105/mode/1up |title=Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah - The Life of Muhammad Translated by A. Guillaume. |year=2002 |orig-date=1955 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780196360331 |location=Oxford |page=165 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161226152033/https://archive.org/stream/TheLifeOfMohammedGuillaume/The_Life_Of_Mohammed_Guillaume#page/n105/mode/1up |archive-date=26 December 2016 |url-status=live |df=dmy-all}}</ref> In its essential form, the story reports that Muhammad longed to convert his kinsmen and neighbors of [[Mecca]] to [[Islam]]. It then reports that as he was reciting these verses of [[an-Najm|Sūrat an-Najm]],<ref>([[wikisource:The Holy Qur'an/An-Najm|Q.53]])</ref> considered a revelation from the angel [[Gabriel]]:{{blockquote|"Have you thought of [[al-Lāt]] and [[al-'Uzzá]]? And about the third one, [[Manāt]]?"
:–[[Quran 53:19–20]]}}

[[Shaitan|Satan]] tempted him to utter the following line which does not appear in the Quran:{{blockquote|"These are the exalted {{transliteration|ar|gharāniq}}, whose intercession is hoped for."}}

Al-Lāt, al-'Uzzā, and Manāt were three [[Religion in pre-Islamic Arabia|pre-Islamic Arabian goddesses]] worshipped by the Meccans. Discerning the precise meaning of the word {{transliteration|ar|gharāniq}} has proven difficult, as it is a ''[[hapax legomenon]]'' (i.e. used only once in the text). Commentators wrote that it meant "the [[Crane (bird)|cranes]]". The Arabic word does generally mean a "crane" – appearing in the singular as {{transliteration|ar|ghirnīq, ghurnūq, ghirnawq}} and {{transliteration|ar|ghurnayq}}, and the word has cousin forms in other words for birds, including "raven, crow" and "eagle".<ref>{{Citation
 | last1 =Militarev
 | first1 =Alexander
 | last2 =Kogan
 | first2 =Leonid
 | year =2005
 | title =Semitic Etymological Dictionary 2: Animal Names
 | volume =278/2
 | series =Alter Orient und Altes Testament
 | location =Münster
 | publisher =Ugarit-Verlag
 | pages =131–132
 | isbn =3-934628-57-5
 }}</ref> Taken as a segment, "exalted {{transliteration|ar|gharāniq}}" has been translated by Orientalist [[William Muir]] to mean "exalted women", while contemporary academic Muhammad Manazir Ahsan has translated the same segment as "high-soaring ones (deities)". Thus, whether the phrase had intended to attribute a divine nature to the three "idols" is a matter of dispute.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://brians.wsu.edu/2017/02/08/the-satanic-verses/|title=The "Satanic Verses" &#124; Common Errors in English Usage and More &#124; Washington State University|date=8 February 2017 }}</ref> In either case, scholars generally agree on the meaning of the second half of the verse, "whose [[Intercession#Islam|intercession]] is hoped for".