Harut and Marut: Who Were the Two Angels of Babylon?
Two angels in Babylon who taught forbidden knowledge, but only after warning every student: "We are only a temptation."
Harut and Marut are two angels named once in the Quran (2:102). At Babylon they taught knowledge that could separate a man from his wife, but first warned: "We are only a temptation."
Harut and Marut appear once in the Quran, in a verse about sorcery at Babylon. People learned magic, it says, from devils and from "that which was revealed to the two angels in Babel, Harut and Marut. Nor did they (the two angels) teach it to anyone till they had said: We are only a temptation, therefore disbelieve not." What they taught could separate a man from his wife, but, the verse adds, it could harm no one except by God's permission (2:102).
Later commentators, including al-Tabari in the 10th century, told a longer story. The angels mocked human weakness, so God gave two of them human appetites and sent them to earth. A beautiful woman named Zuhara tempted them. They drank wine, sinned, and killed a witness, and chose to be punished on earth rather than in the hereafter. In some versions Zuhara learned the word for ascending to heaven and was turned into the planet Venus. The angels hang in a well in Babylon to this day.
This looks very much like the Watcher story of 1 Enoch, in which angels descend, desire human women, and teach forbidden arts. A Jewish text, the Midrash of Shemhazai and Azael, has a close parallel that even includes a woman who escapes to become a star. Scholars have also proposed that the names echo two Zoroastrian divine beings, Haurvatat and Ameretat. Many Muslim scholars rejected the Zuhara tale as unreliable, since the Quran says nothing of it.
For readers drawn to the idea of ancient teachers from above, Harut and Marut are the Quran's clearest case: outsiders stationed in an ancient city, passing on dangerous technical knowledge with a warning attached. The verse is careful about blame: the angels teach, but they warn, and the students choose. The Quran treats the knowledge as a test of faith, while later storytellers turned the two into fallen angels hanging in a pit.
In one legend the woman who seduced the two angels used the secret word they taught her to fly up to heaven, where she became the planet Venus.
The Quran's verse is brief; the seduction story comes from later commentary and was disputed by many Muslim scholars, while historians see it as a borrowing of the Enochic Watcher myth.
