Uzayr (Ezra)

Uzayr is mentioned in the Quran in two places. The first (Surah al-Baqarah 2:259) narrates a man who passed by a ruined town and asked: 'How will Allah bring this to life after its death?' Allah caused him to die for 100 years, then resurrected him and showed him how his food had not rotted but his donkey's bones had turned to dust, then were restored before his eyes. The experience was a direct, personal proof of resurrection. Most scholars identify this man as Uzayr (Ezra). The second mention (Surah al-Tawbah 9:30) is more pointed: 'The Jews say: Uzayr is the son of Allah' — a claim the Quran attributes to some Jews of that era and firmly rejects, equating it with the Christian claim about Jesus. 'Allah's curse be upon them — how are they deluded?' The Jewish veneration of Ezra as the preserver and restorer of the Torah after the Babylonian captivity appears to have been extreme enough in some communities to border on divine attribution. Uzayr is identified in Islamic tradition with Ezra of the Biblical record — the scribe-priest who led Jews from Babylon back to Jerusalem after the Persian conquest and reconstituted the Torah. He is one of the figures whose exact status in Islam (prophet, wali, or just a righteous man) is not definitively settled by the Quran or Sunnah. The Quran's primary use of him is as evidence of the resurrection and as a rebuttal of the claim of divine sonship.