Texts of Islam

The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Moses: Moses' Stick and Its Deeds

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This is a devotional-exegetical text from the Islamic tradition, drawn from a sacred texts collection and attributed to Al-Bâqir (a revered Shia imam), presenting an elaborated theological account of Moses' staff. The central argument is that the staff is a sacred object with a continuous chain of custody running from Adam through Noah, Abraham, Jethro, Moses, the Prophet Muhammad, and ultimately to the final Imam of the Household — making it an eschatological relic still present and active in the world. The text catalogs an extensive range of miraculous powers attributed to the staff: acting as a light source, transforming into a lion or fruit-bearing tree, splitting seas and mountains, killing serpents, conjuring food, water, honey, and milk, and autonomously defending Moses against a dragon while he slept. A notable interpretive move is the author's cross-referencing of three Quranic verses (Al-A'raf, Al-Qasas, TaHa) that describe the staff-as-serpent using different Arabic words — serpent, demon/djinn, snake — and treating this variation as complementary rather than contradictory, reflecting the object's shape-shifting nature. The author explicitly anticipates skeptical dismissal of these accounts as legend, and preemptively defends their plausibility by grounding them in divine omnipotence and prophetic authority. The distinctively Shia framing — connecting the staff's lineage to the Imams of the Household and the awaited final Imam — sets this apart from more mainstream Sunni or general Quranic commentary on Moses.

The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Moses: Moses' Stick and Its Deeds

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