Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin has pointed out that early Christian and Islamic traditions call Hermes Trismegistus the builder of the
Pyramids of Giza[26] and has a major place in
Islamic tradition. He writes, "Hermes Trismegistus is mentioned in the
Quran in verse
19:56-57: '
Mention, in the Book, Idris, that he was truthful, a prophet. We took him up to a high place'". The Jabirian corpus contains the oldest documented source for the
Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, translated by
Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber) for the
Hashemite Caliph of
Baghdad Harun al-Rashid the
Abbasid.
Jābir ibn Hayyān, a
Shiite, identified as Jābir al-
Sufi, was a student of
Ja'far al-Sadiq,
Husayn ibn 'Ali's great grandson. Thus, for the
Abbasid's and the
Alid's, the writings of Hermes Trismegistus were considered sacred, as an inheritance from the
Ahl al-Bayt and the
Prophets. These writings were recorded by the
Ikhwan al-Safa, and subsequently translated from
Arabic into
Persian,
Turkish,
Hebrew,
Russian, and
English. In these writings, Hermes Trismegistus is identified as
Idris, the infallible Prophet who traveled to outer space from
Egypt, and to heaven, whence he brought back a cache of objects from the Eden of
Adam and the
Black Stone from where he landed on earth in
India.
[27]
According to ancient Arab genealogists, the
Prophet Muhammad, who is also believed to have traveled to the heavens on the night of
Isra and Mi'raj, is a direct descendant of Hermes Trismegistus.
Ibn Kathir said, "As for Idris... He is in the genealogical chain of the Prophet Muhammad, except according to one genealogist... Ibn Ishaq says he was the first who wrote with the Pen. There was a span of 380 years between him and the life of Adam. Many of the scholars allege that he was the first to speak about this, and they call him Thrice-Great Hermes [Hermes Trismegistus]".
[27] Ahmad al-Buni considered himself a follower of the hermetic teachings; and his contemporary
Ibn Arabi mentioned Hermes Trismegistus in his writings. The Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya of
Ibn Arabi speaks of Hermes's travels to "vast cities (outside earth), possessing technologies far superior than ours"
[28] and meeting with the
Twelfth Imam, the Ninth (generation) from the Third (
al-Husayn the third Imam) (referring here to the Masters of Wisdom from the
Emerald Tablet), who also ascended to the heavens, and is still alive like his ancestor Hermes Trismegistus".
[29]
A late Arabic writer wrote of the
Sabaeans that their religion had a sect of star worshipers who held their doctrine to come from Hermes Trismegistus through the prophet Adimun.
[30]
Antoine Faivre, in
The Eternal Hermes (1995), has pointed out that Hermes Trismegistus has a place in the
Islamic tradition, although the name
Hermes does not appear in the
Qur'an.
Hagiographers and chroniclers of the first centuries of the Islamic
Hegira quickly identified Hermes Trismegistus with Idris,
[31] the
nabi of
surahs 19.57 and 21.85, whom the
Arabs also identified with
Enoch (cf. Genesis 5.18–24). Idris/Hermes was termed "Thrice-Wise" Hermes Trismegistus because he had a threefold origin. The first Hermes, comparable to
Thoth, was a "civilizing hero", an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world; he carved the principles of this sacred science in
hieroglyphs. The second Hermes, in
Babylon, was the initiator of
Pythagoras. The third Hermes was the first teacher of
alchemy. "A faceless prophet," writes the Islamicist
Pierre Lory, "Hermes possesses no concrete or salient characteristics, differing in this regard from most of the major figures of the Bible and the Quran."
[32] A common interpretation of the representation of "Trismegistus" as "thrice great" recalls the three characterizations of Idris: as a messenger of god, or a prophet; as a source of wisdom, or
hikmet (wisdom from
hokmah); and as a king of the world order, or a "sultanate". These are referred to as
müselles bin ni'me.