Uzair () is a figure who is mentioned in the Quran, Surah at-Tawbah, verse , which states that he was "revered by the Jews as the son of God". Uzair is most often identified with the biblical Ezra. Historians have described the reference as enigmatic since such views have not been found in Jewish sources. Islamic scholars have interpreted the Quranic reference in different ways, with some claiming that it alluded to a "specific group of Jews". A priest at the Aqsa compound also named Uzair is also said to have been in some commentaries to be the person who is identified as the protagonist in the Parable of the Hamlet in Ruins in surah Baqara (2:259). Implying he found Jerusalem in ruins from the Babylonian captivity and died for a 100 years like a sleep then God made him wake up. When awaken he was asked by God how much he slept and he said "maybe a day or a part of a day" while God then said that he was like it for a hundred years.
Ezra the priest is sometimes mentioned as being "raised to divine" or closely divine in some Syriac texts like Visions of Ezra as a metaphor. Which may have been the Quran's rebuttal of it.
Hythem Sidky and Holger Zellentin identified Uzayr as Eliezer ben Hurcanus, one of the most prominent Rabbinic sages of the Mishnah. Additionally, Ibn Ishaq's biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad describes that some Jews of Medina believed that Uzayr was the son of God, and that the Quranic revelation relates to that belief. Sallam and Numan b. Aufa and Mahmud b. Dihya and Sha’s and Malik came and said to him: ‘How can we follow you when you have abandoned our Qibla and you do not allege that ’Uzayr is the son of God ?’ So God sent down concerning these words: ‘The Jews say that 'Uzayr is the son of God and the Christians say the Messiah is the son of God. That is what they say with their mouths copying the speech of those who disbelieved aforetime. God fight them! How perverse they are’ to the end of the passage. p269 Ibn Ishaq, ‘Sirat Rasul Allah’, trans. A. Guillame (The Life of Muhammad) Oxford University Press, 1955
According to Ibn Kathir, Uzair lived between the times of Sulaiman and the time of Zakariya, father of John the Baptist Some Quranic commentators viewed Uzayr as a learned scholar who sought to teach the people the forgotten laws of God. Some Islamic scholars held Uzayr to be one of the prophets. Although there is a hadith that reports that God expunged Uzayr from the list of prophets because he refused to believe in predestination, this hadith is considered da'if (weak) and is rejected by most Islamic scholars.
Ibn Hazm, al-Samawal al-Maghribi and other scholars put forth the view that Uzair or one of his disciples falsified the Torah and this claim became a common theme in Islamic polemics against the Bible. Many aspects of later Islamic narratives show similarity to Vision of Ezra, an apocryphal text which seems to have been partially known to Muslim readers.
Classical Muslim scholars who were aware of Jewish and Christian denials of belief in Ezra explained that it was only one Jew or a small group of Jews who worshipped Uzayr, or that the verse refers to the extreme admiration of Jews for their rabbis.
Many classical Muslim scholars suggest that the description of Ezra as the son of God does not mean the same as it does for Christians in Jesus Christ, but rather it means the same as the son of God in Judaism, and that the Qur’anic verse rejects the use of the term “son of God.” In Islam, the use of the term “son of God” is completely forbidden, considering it a lie against God, as mentioned in the verse
Authors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia viewed the Quranic reference as a "malevolent metaphor" for the reverence accorded to Ezra in Judaism. Some modern historians have favored the theory that a Jewish sect in Arabia venerated Ezra to the extent of deifying him. Gordon Darnell Newby has suggested that the Quranic expression may have reflected Ezra's possible designation as one of the Sons of God by Jews of the Hijaz.G. D. Newby, A History Of The Jews Of Arabia, 1988, University Of South Carolina Press, p. 59 (quoted in Was `Uzayr (Ezra) Called The Son Of God? by M S M Saifullah & Mustafa Ahmed
Other scholars proposed emendations of the received spelling of the name, leading to readings ‘Uzayl (Azazel), ‘Azīz, or ‘Azariah (Abednego).
Quranic and hadith context The Quran states that Jews exalted Ezra as a son of God: The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of God,” while the Christians say, “Christ is the son of God.” Such are their baseless assertions, only parroting the words of earlier disbelievers. May God condemn them! How can they be deluded ˹from the truth˺?
In February 624, when the qibla (direction of prayer) changed from Jerusalem to Mecca. Sallam ibn Mishkam, a Jew who lived in Medina and his friends asked Muhammad: “How can we follow you when you have abandoned our qibla and you do not allege that Uzair (Ezra) is the son of God?” This verse is situated in a context of theological disputes with the Jewish community of Medina. The Quran emphasizes the absolute divinity of God and warns against associating any being with him (shirk). It further condemns Jewish and Christian leaders of the time for deceiving the masses into taking "their priests and their anchorites to be their lords in derogation of God". In casting doubt on claims about the divine status of Uzayr and Christ, the Quran also instructs Muslims to reject such beliefs. These arguments reflect the tensions between the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities of Arabia.
Islamic tradition and literature
In some Islamic texts, Ezra is identified as the person mentioned in Qur'an 2:259: Or ˹are you not aware of˺ the one who passed by a city which was in ruins. He wondered, “How could God bring this back to life after its destruction?” So God caused him to die for a hundred years then brought him back to life. God asked, “How long have you remained ˹in this state˺?” He replied, “Perhaps a day or part of a day.” God said, “No! You have remained here for a hundred years! Just look at your food and drink—they have not spoiled. ˹But now˺ look at ˹the remains of˺ your donkey! And ˹so˺ We have made you into a sign for humanity. And look at the bones ˹of the donkey˺, how We bring them together then clothe them with flesh!” When this was made clear to him, he declared, “˹Now˺ I know that God is Most Capable of everything.”
The history text Zubdat-al Tawarikh, dedicated to Ottoman sultan Murad III in 1583, narrates a story of Uzair's grief for the destruction of Jerusalem. His grief is said to have been so great that God took his soul and brought him back to life after Jerusalem was reconstructed. In the miniature accompanying the manuscript, the building on the lower right depicts the rebuilt city of Jerusalem in the form a typical sixteenth-century Ottoman building with a dome and an arched portico. The former ruins of Jerusalem are alluded to by the broken arches and columns on the left.
According to the classical Quranic exegete Ibn Kathir, after Ezra questioned how the resurrection will take place on the Day of Judgment, God had him brought back to life many years after he died. He rode on his revived donkey and entered his native place. But the people did not recognize him, nor did his household, except the maid, who was now an old blind woman. He prayed to God to cure her blindness and she could see again. He meets his son who recognized him by a mole between his shoulders and was older than he was. Ezra then led the people to locate the only surviving copy of Torah as the remaining were burnt by Nebuchadnezzar. It was rotting and crumpled, so Ezra had a new copy of the Torah made which he had previously memorized. He thus renovated the Torah to the Israelites. Ibn Kathir mentions that the sign in the phrase "And that We may make of thee a sign unto the people" was that he was younger than his children. After this miracle, Ibn Kathir writes that Jews began to claim that Ezra was the 'son of God'.Ibn Kathir, Stories of the Prophets, translated by Shaikh muhammed Mustafa Gemeiah, Office of the Grand Imam, Sheikh al-Azhar, El-Nour Publishing, Egypt, 1997, Ch.21, pp.322-324
The modern Quranic exegesis of Abul A'la Maududi states:
According to the Ahmadiyya Muhammad Ali's Quranic commentary, there indeed existed a group of Jews who venerated Ezra as the son of God. According to Ali, al-Qastallani held that in the Kitan al-Nikah there was a party of Jews who held this belief.
Alleged falsification of scripture
Ibn Hazm, an Andalusian Muslim scholar, explicitly accused Ezra of being a liar and a heretic who falsified and added interpolations into the Biblical text. Ibn Hazm provided a polemical list of what he considered "chronological and geographical inaccuracies and contradictions; theological impossibilities (anthropomorphic expressions, stories of fornication and whoredom, and the attributing of sins to prophets), as well as lack of reliable transmission (tawatur) of the text", Hava Lazarus-Yafeh states.Encyclopedia of Islam, UzairHava Lazarus-Yafeh, Tahrif, Encyclopedia of Islam In response to attacks on the personality of Ezra, the Byzantine emperor Leo III defended Ezra as a pious, reliable person. The Jewish convert to Islam al-Samaw'al (d. 1175) accused Ezra of interpolating stories such as Lot's daughters to sully David's origins and to prevent the rule of the Davidic line during the Second Temple period. The writings of ibn Hazm and al-Samaw'al were adopted and updated only slightly by later Muslim authors up to contemporary times.
Jewish tradition and literature As in Islam, a fundamental tenet of Judaism is that God is not bound by any limitations of time, matter, or space, and that the idea of any person being God, a part of God, or a mediator to God, is heresy.*Maimonedes, Mishneh Torah, Yesodei Hatorah, Chapter 1 Emunoth ve-Deoth, II:5 Exod. Rabba 29 , “...I am the first, I have no father; I am the last, I have no brother; Beside Me there is no God; I have no son.” The Book of Ezra, which Judaism accepts as a chronicle of the life of Ezra and which predates Muhammad and the Qur'an by around 1000 years, gives Ezra's human lineage as being the son of Seraiah and a direct descendant of Aaron. Tractate Ta'anit of the Jerusalem Talmud, which predates Muhammad by two to three hundred years, states that “if a man claims to be God, he is a liar.”Ta'anit (2:1) Exodus Rabba 29 says, "'I am the first and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God' I am the first, I have no father; I am the last, I have no brother. Beside Me there is no God; I have no son." However the term 'sons of gods' occurs in Genesis.The Bible, Genesis, Ch. 6, v. 2 The Encyclopedia of Judaism clarifies that the title of 'son of God' is attributed a person whose piety has placed him in a very near relationship to God and "by no means carries the idea of physical descent from, and essential unity with, God".
Reuven Firestone says: It is possible that there were some Hashemite groups that went beyond the accepted faith with an important figure such as Ezra. Two ancient books that originally linked the divine or angelic center with Ezra and Enoch from the Tanakh figures.
The title of son of God (servant of God) is used by the Jews for any pious person as is evident according to Encyclopedia of Judaism which states that the title of son of God is attributed by the Jews "to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial relation to God (see Wisdom ii. 13, 16, 18; v. 5, where "the sons of God" are identical with "the saints"; comp. Ecclus. [Sirach] iv. 10). It is through such personal relations that the individual becomes conscious of God's fatherhood."
The International Bible Encyclopedia Online notes that the Targum identifies the angel in Malachi 3:1 as Ezra and notes that because of this interpretation some believed that Ezra is actually an angel and not a human.