“We wanted to bestow favour on those who were oppressed in the land. We wanted to make them leaders and heirs and grant them power in the land, make Pharaoh and Hāmān and their hosts see what they feared.”
(Al-Qur’ān – 28:5-6)
The Divine intent in the ayah 28:5 is palpably evident. As for the ayah 28:6 mentioned above, Western Orientalists have heaped a mountain of criticism thereon. They emphatically state that Hāmān was a courtier of the Persian King Xerxes, whom the Bible calls King Ahasue’rus, who lived in the 5th century. It is known that Xerxes ruled over Persia several centuries after Moses, between 486 and 465 B.C. They insist on this despite the fact that the Qur’ān mentions him as Pharaoh’s vizier.
Now, if these Orientalists were not blinded with prejudice, they would have realised that their contention implied that before the said courtier of Xerxes no person by the name of Hāmān ever existed in the world! Do they have any historical evidence to support such a contention? If any Orientalist has found any authentic list detailing the ministers, nobles and courtiers of the Pharaoh who is so mentioned here, why, then, is such a list not published? If they have such information, it would surely help establish the point they are trying to make and could be used quite potently against the Qur’ān, but clearly it is not something that they possess.
For a detailed account of Hāmān by Western Orientalists, S.D. Goitein’s Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, pp. 17-18, may be referred to.