A place between two places : the Qurʾānic barzakh

470 Pages·2017·5.587 MB·English

by  Georgina Archer

A Place Between Two Places
Islamic History and Thought
1
Series Editorial Board
Peter Adamson Isabel Toral-Niehoff
Ahmad Khan Manolis Ulbricht
Jack Tannous Jan Just Witkam
Advisory Editorial Board
Binyamin Abrahamov Konrad Hirschler
Asad Q. Ahmed James Howard-Johnston
Mehmetcan Akpinar Maher Jarrar
Abdulhadi Alajmi Marcus Milwright
Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi Harry Munt
Massimo Campanini Gabriel Said Reynolds
Agostino Cilardo Walid A. Saleh
Godefroid de Callataÿ Jens Scheiner
Farhad Daftary Delfina Serrano
Beatrice Gruendler Georges Tamer
Wael Hallaq
Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research
on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic world,
stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any
period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. This series
contains original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac,
Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes.
A Place Between Two Places
The Qurʾānic Barzakh
George Archer
gp
2017
Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA
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Copyright © 2 0 1 7 by Gorgias Press LLC
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
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mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the
prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.
2017 ܓ 1
ISBN 978-1-4632-0612-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Names: Archer, George, (Writer on Islam),
author.
Title: A place between two places : the Quranic
barzakh / by George Archer.
Description: Piscataway, NJ : Gorgias Press,
[2017] | Series: Islamic history
and thought ; 1 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011341 | ISBN
9781463206123 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Intermediate state--Islam. |
Islamic eschatology.
Classification: LCC BP166.82 .A73 2017 | DDC
297.2/3--dc23
LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011341
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v
Acknowledgments .................................................................................. vii
Conventions ............................................................................................. ix
Chapter I. Introduction, or “That Second Kingdom” ....................... 1
Barzakh ............................................................................................. 2
Contextual Background – Underworlds: Sleep and Death
in Antiquity ............................................................................ 15
Contextual Background – The Saints Beside Paradise:
Sleep and Death in the Biblical Lore ................................. 28
A Junction of Two Analyses ........................................................ 53
Chapter II. Method, or “The Barrier Between Us and Our
Ancestors” ...................................................................................... 63
Structural and Morphological Comparisons ............................. 66
The Ancient Arab Mind and Orality .......................................... 71
Ars Memoriae: Rings of Bricolage ................................................. 84
Possible Objections ....................................................................... 94
Chapter III. An Excavation of the Cave .......................................... 107
The Center Sūra-Ring and the Pivot: The First Day and the
Last Day (al-Kahf 18:47–59) .............................................. 110
The First Sūra-Ring: A Childless God and a Sea of Ink (al-
Kahf 18:1–8, 102–110) ........................................................ 119
The First Half of the Second Sūra-Ring: The Course of the
Sun (The Sleepers, al-Kahf 18:9–26) ................................. 126
The Second Half of the Second Sūra-Ring: The Course of
the Sun (The Two-Horned One, al-Kahf 18:83–101) .... 142
The First Half of the Third Sūra-Ring: The Course of the
Water (Recollections of Isaiah 5, al-Kahf 18:27–46) ....... 161
The Second Half of the Third Sūra-Ring: The Course of
the Water (Moses’ Two Adventures, al-Kahf 18:60–82)171
Some Conclusions – the Sūra of the Barriers ......................... 186
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vi THE QURʾĀNIC BARZAKH
Chapter IV. Sleep Cycles: The Intra-Qurʾānic Development of
the Barzakh ................................................................................... 193
The First Meccan Period ............................................................ 198
The Second Meccan Period ....................................................... 216
The Third Meccan Period .......................................................... 245
The Medinan Period ................................................................... 257
The Qurʾānic History of the Barzakh ....................................... 286
Chapter V. Dreams of Muḥammad: the Medieval Barzakh ........... 291
The Cave of Souls: The Qurʾānic Barzakh in the Umayyad
Period ................................................................................... 295
Sleep, Dreams, and the Dead in Early Narrative Theology . 320
The Torment and Trials of the Grave: The Intermediate
State in Ḥadīth Literature ................................................... 349
The Torment of the Grave as Orthodoxy ............................... 373
Chapter VI. Orality Translation, Soul-Sleep, and the
Monotheistic Imagination .......................................................... 387
The History of Near Eastern Intermediate States as
Cosmology and Theology ................................................. 388
Why the Barzakh Matters ........................................................... 405
Orality Translations ..................................................................... 414
Bibliography and Works Cited ........................................................... 425
Index ....................................................................................................... 449
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to offer my thanks to the faculty, staff, and students at
the Department of Theology at Georgetown University. Amongst
these I would like to note Dan Madigan and Paul Heck in
particular for their feedback and critiques. I would also like to
thank Sidney Griffith for his many insights and boundless curiosity.
I would like to acknowledge the support and patience of Brian
Sliwak, Bridgit Sliwak, Rebecca Johnson, Lauren Wilson, Taraneh
Wilkinson, Pamela Klasova, Abdallah Soufan, Jason Welle, Rahel
Fischbach, Peter Herman, Jason VonWachenfeldt, Tasi Perkins,
and Rachel Friedman.
Although they never knew what on earth I was doing with my
days, I can never repay the support of my family, each of whom I
would like to thank. To my parents, whose love manifested itself as
a remarkable patience with my academic nonsense.
Most especially, I offer my eternal thanks to Bill, who is by
any measure the most extraordinary person I have ever known.
I could not write enough about the support of you all, even if
the seas were made of ink.
George Archer
Alexandria, Virginia
Jumādā al-Thānī 16, 1437
March 25, 2016
vii

CONVENTIONS
Notes on languages. All transliterated Arabic, including within
citations, has been adjusted to match the system used by the
Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Greek terms have been transliterated
according to the “Scientific” system of the Library of Congress
standards for “Greek, Ancient and Medieval (before 1454).” All
other languages referenced that do not use the Latin alphabet will
be transliterated as found in their cited modern sources. In the
interest of style, the grammatical constructions of the English
language have been introduced (for example, ḥadīth will be
pluralized as ḥadīths, not aḥādīth; I will refer to Khārijites and
Khārijism, not Khawārij).
For clarity, all Qurʾānic references are given first in the
original Arabic. For translations, most are those of A. J. Droge, The
Qurʾān: A New Annotated Translation, (Bristol, Connecticut: Equinox
Publishing, 2013). When warranted, I have reworked that
translation, or replaced it entirely with my own. These translations
have also been checked against other English translations of the
material, especially: A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, (New York:
Collier Books, 1955); Tarif Khalidi, The Qurʾan, (New York:
Penguin Books, 2008); and the “Qurʾanic Arabic Corpus,” of the
Language Research Group at the University of Leeds,
corpus.quran.com. Biblical citations are from the New International
Version with my own edits. All other translations are those of their
respective modern scholars. Some citations from English
translations have been edited as needed. Mostly this has been for
consistency: for example, Muḥammad’s title will always appear as
“Messenger” and “Prophet,” although a given translator may have
used “Emissary” or “Apostle”; the Deity will always be “God,” not
“Allāh,” etc.
Notes on gender and divine names. Any individual in
general, or one whose gender is undefined, will be referred to by
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x THE QURʾĀNIC BARZAKH
the feminine pronouns and possessives. For example, “If someone
were to read her favorite book…” God will not be assigned a
gender unless in a translation or reference to a text with clearly
gendered pronouns and possessives. For example, translations
from the Qurʾān will render God “he,” “him,” and “his.”
Straightforward divine names will be capitalized. For instance
“God,” “the Merciful,” “the Living,” etc.
Notes on dating. All dates are C.E. (the “Christian Era,” also
nebulously called the “Common Era,”) unless marked otherwise as
B.C.E. (“Before the Christian Era”). Referring to large periods of
time is a perennial issue. For simplicity, I will call the time before
the ʿAbbāsid period (750) “Late Antiquity.” The following 1,000
years, in which the studies of the Qurʾān are overwhelmingly being
undertaken by self-identified Muslims using Islamic methods will
be the “Middle Ages,” and the period after 1798 indicating
European colonialism in the Islamic world “Modernity.” These are
my own completely artificial divisions, and could easily and
correctly be debated in any number of ways.
Notes on citing classical sources. There is unfortunately no
standard convention for citing classical Islamic texts that is
meaningful according to both modern-critical and traditional
scholarship of Islam. Regarding the Qurʾān, I am very hesitant of
using typical modern citations such as 1.4 or Q 1:4. Besides
ignoring the traditional method of citation by the classical names of
each sūra, replacing the accepted titles with numbers alone erases
the independence of the sūras from one another. Consider referring
to Psalms 42:2 as Jewish/Protestant Bible 16:42:2. This assumes
that this book is merely next in an obvious and meaningful
sequence, which is simply not true. Because we do not know why
the received Qurʾānic text is ordered as it is, the classical names of
the sūras, while not consistent or even necessarily indigenous to the
Qurʾān, have value. However, the numbers of the sūras are still of
use and so common in modern literature that I have decided to use
a hybrid method of citation which (as far as I can tell) was first
created by Munawar Ahmad Anees and Alia N. Athar.1 It includes

1 Munawar Ahmad Anees and Alia N. Athar, Guide to Sira and Hadith
Literature in Western languages (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1986),