Adam

Allah announced to the angels that He would place a khalifah (successor) on the earth, and though the angels questioned this, Allah affirmed that He knew what they did not (2:30). Allah created Adam and taught him the names of all things, then showed that Adam's knowledge surpassed that of the angels (2:31-33).

Allah commanded the angels to prostrate to Adam, and they all did except Iblis, who refused out of arrogance, claiming he was better because he was created from fire while Adam was from clay (7:11-12). For his refusal and pride, Iblis was expelled and vowed to mislead Adam's descendants (7:16-17).

Adam and his wife were placed in the Garden and permitted to eat freely, but forbidden to approach one particular tree (2:35). Iblis deceived them until they ate from it, and they became aware of their fault (7:20-22). Adam received words of repentance from his Lord, turned back to Allah, and was forgiven (2:37).

They were sent down to the earth to live and strive, with the promise that guidance would come, and whoever followed it would have no fear or grief (2:38). Thus began human life on earth, and Adam stood as both the first man and the first prophet, receiving guidance from his Lord.

The Quran gives Adam's creation and fall; the authentic Sunnah adds the very first moments of his life and a striking exchange with Musa about qadar.

Adam was not left alone. The Qurʾān presents the creation of his wife, Ḥawwāʾ, as an act of mercy: she was made so that he would find sukūn — rest, stillness, tranquillity — in her. This is said of the first couple directly, and then held up as a sign (āyah) for all their descendants.

The very same origin — a single soul from which the mate was drawn — opens Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, and the closeness of the two is captured in one of the Qurʾān's most tender images: each spouse is a garment for the other, covering, adorning, and drawing near.

A theme common elsewhere — that the woman seduced the man into sin and so carries the fault — has no basis in the Qurʾān. Wherever the tree is mentioned, the verbs are dual: the two of them were deceived by Iblīs, the two of them tasted and ate (7:22), and the two of them repented together, in one voice. There is no “temptress Ḥawwāʾ” in the revelation.

Indeed, where a single name is singled out over the tree, it is Adam's, not Ḥawwāʾ's. In Sūrah Ṭāhā the responsibility — and then the mercy that follows it — is placed squarely upon him.

What, then, of the well-known ḥadīth that woman “was created from a rib”? It must be read for what it actually is — a command to gentleness, not a verdict of deficiency.

The whole frame of the report is istawṣū bi'l-nisāʾ khayran — “treat women well.” The rib is an image for a nature that is to be accommodated with patience, not forced; a variant wording in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim even warns that “breaking her is divorcing her,” making plain that harsh “straightening” only destroys the marriage. Scholars have differed over whether the phrase is literal — recalling the origin of the very first woman, Ḥawwāʾ — or figurative, a description of temperament; this is a genuine and respectable ikhtilāf. Either reading carries no dishonour: the Qurʾān itself declares that man and woman alike were created “from one soul” (4:1), of one essence and equal worth before Allah.