Where Was Adam and Eve’s Paradise?
When Adam (AS) disobeyed God, he was banished from that paradise and sent to the earth.
The question some scholars and researchers have tried to answer is what features this paradise had.
God says in Verse 35 of Surah Al-Baqarah: “To Adam We said: '’Dwell with your wife in Paradise and both eat of it as much as you wish and wherever you will. But neither of you should come close to this tree or else you shall both become transgressors.’”
There are different views among scholars and Quran interpreters as to where the paradise in which Adam (AS) and Eve resided was located. Some say it is the same everlasting paradise that good people will enter and live in the hereafter while some others say that paradise was on the earth.
The reason the latter group cites is that Satan will have no access to the everlasting paradise whereas he entered the paradise where Adam (AS) and Eve resided and deceived them:
“Satan, trying to seduce him, said, ‘Adam, do you want me to show you the Tree of Eternity and the Everlasting Kingdom?’” (Verse 120 of Surah Taha)
Moreover, entering the everlasting paradise means staying in it forever. According to a Hadith, Imam Sadiq (AS) said that Adam’s (AS) paradise was among the world’s gardens on which the sun and the moon shone and if it had been the everlasting paradise, he would have never been banished from it.
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Now the question is where Adam’s (AS) paradise was located on earth.
According to the Torah, there was a river in that paradise which was divided into four streams of Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel (Tigris), and Phrath (Euphrates).
But regardless of the view of the Torah about these rivers, there are various opinions on where Adam’s paradise was located:
1- Some say it was probably in the holy al-Quds. They refer to Verse 58 of Surah Al-Baqarah that says: “(Children of Israel, recall My favors) when We told you, ‘Enter this city, enjoy eating whatever you want therein, prostrate yourselves and ask forgiveness when passing through the gate, and We shall forgive your sins, and add to the rewards of the righteous ones.’”
Al-Quds (Jerusalem) is one of the world’s oldest cities and a sacred place in Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
2- Some others say the paradise in which Adam (AS) and Eve resided was the Paradise of Aden which was located in Mesopotamia, in today’s Iraq.
Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia occupies modern Iraq. In the broader sense, the historical region included present-day Iraq and parts of present-day Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey.
