Ṭūbā


Ṭūbā is a term often associated with a tree that Muslims believe grows in Al-Jannah.
The term is only mentioned once in the Quran in the context of blessedness and it is not mentioned as a tree by name. The only other source that relates the arguably same term to a tree is a hadith. The term has caught the imagination of writers over the years. For example, Sohrevardi developed a story surrounding the old Persian mythology and suggests that it is indeed a Tree in the heaven where the mythical bird Simurgh lay eggs. Similarly, in 1449, Mehmed Yazıcıoğlu wrote of a similar tree in The Creation of Paradise in his manuscript called Muhammediye:
According to Islamic tradition, when the wife of the Prophet asked him the reason of kissing his daughter a lot. He replied that during Ascension, I ate the fruits of Tuba and when I returned I became intimate with my wife and Fatimah was born. So, whenever I kiss Fatimah I smell the fragrance of that tree of Paradise.
The holy city of Touba, Senegal, is named for the tree.
The Arabic female given name Tuba or Touba derives from the tree. Tuba is also a modern Arabic borrowing into Turkish and has become a common female name since the 1970s.