69قُلنا يا نارُ كوني بَردًا وَسَلامًا عَلىٰ إِبراهيمَMuhammad Asad[But] We said: "O fire! Be thou cool, and [a source of] inner peace for Abraham !"1 -Nowhere does the Qur'an state that Abraham was actually, bodily thrown into the fire and miraculously kept alive in it: on the contrary, the phrase "God saved him from the fire" occurring in 29:24 points, rather, to the fact of his not having been thrown into it. On the other hand, the many elaborate (and conflicting) stories with which the classical commentators have embroidered their interpretation of the above verse can invariably be traced back to Talmudic legends and may, therefore, be disregarded. What the Qur'an gives us here, as well as in 29:24 and 37:97, is apparently an allegorical allusion to the fire of persecution which Abraham had to suffer and which, by dint of its intensity, was to become in his later life a source of spiritual strength and inner peace (salam). Regarding the deeper implications of the term salam, see note 29 on 5:16.