Mary in Islam

Maryam bint Imran (Arabic: مريم بنت عمران, lit. 'Mary, daughter of Imran') holds a singularly exalted place in Islam. The Qur'an refers to her seventy times and explicitly identifies her as the greatest woman to have ever lived. Moreover, she is the only woman named in the Quran. In the Quran, her story is related in three Meccan surahs (19, 21, 23) and four Medinan surahs (3, 4, 5, 66). The nineteenth Surah, Maryam, is named after her.

According to the Quran, Mary's parents had been praying for a child. Their request was eventually accepted by God, and Mary's mother became pregnant. Her father Imran had died before the child was born. After her birth, she was taken care of by her maternal uncle Zechariah, a priest in the Temple. According to the Quran, Mary received messages from God through the archangel Gabriel. God informed Mary that she had miraculously conceived a child through the intervention of the divine spirit, though she was still a virgin. The name of her child, Jesus, was chosen by God—he was to be the Christ, the Promised Messiah in Islam. As such, orthodox Islamic belief has upheld the virgin birth of Jesus, and although the classical Islamic thinkers never dwelt on the question of the perpetual virginity of Mary, it was generally agreed in traditional Islam that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life, with the Quran's mention of Mary's purification “from the touch of men” implying perpetual virginity in the minds of many of the most prominent Islamic fathers. Mary is believed to have been chosen by God, above all "the women of the worlds" in Islam.

Modern scholarship often treats Christian apocryphal traditions mainly extant in the Gospel of James, and a later reworking of the same text called the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, as intertexts of the Quranic account of Mary's life.

The Quran calls Mary, Arabic: مريم إبنت عمران, romanized: Maryam ibnat ʿImrān, lit. 'Mary daughter of Imran', not to be confused with Arabic: عمران, romanized: ʿImrān, lit. 'Amram' , the father of Miriam and Moses. It also mentions that people called her Arabic: أخت هـٰرون, romanized: Ukht Hārūn, lit. 'Sister of Aaron', not to be confused with Arabic: هـٰرون, romanized: Hārūn, lit. 'Aaron', the brother of Moses and Miriam. Her mother, mentioned in the Quran only as the wife of Imran, prayed for a child and eventually conceived. According to al-Tabari, Mary's mother was named Arabic: حنة, romanized: Ḥanna, lit. 'Anne' and her husband died before the child was born. Expecting the child to be male, Anne vowed to dedicate him to isolation and service in the Temple. However, Anne bore a daughter instead, and named her Mary.

Mary is mentioned frequently in the Quran, and her narrative occurs consistently from the earliest chapters, revealed in Mecca, to the latest verses, revealed in Medina.

The birth of Mary is narrated in the Quran with references to her father as well as her mother. Mary's father is called ʿImrān in Arabic, a rendering of the Hebrew name Amram. He is the equivalent of Joachim in the Christian tradition as found in the apocryphal Gospel of James, considered one of the Quran's likely sources in modern scholarship. Her mother, according to al-Tabari, is called Anne, which is the same name as in the Gospel of James. Muslim literature narrates that Imran and his wife were old and childless and that, one day, the sight of a bird in a tree feeding her young aroused Anne's desire for a child. She prayed to God to fulfill her desire and vowed, if her prayer was accepted, that her child would be dedicated to the service of God.

E.H. Palmer, in his late 19th-century translation of the Quran, included in the Sacred Books of the East series, noted that:

Amram; who, according to the Mohammedans, was the father of the Virgin Mary, (Miriam.) A confusion seems to have existed in the mind of Mohammed between Miriam 'the Virgin Mary,' and Miriam the sister of Moses.