The Quran in Context (Texts and Studies on the Qur'an) PDF
Preview The Quran in Context (Texts and Studies on the Qur'an)
The Qurʾān in Context Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān Editorial Board Gerhard Böwering Yale University Jane Dammen McAuliffe Bryn Mawr College VOLUME 6 The Qurʾān in Context Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu Edited by Angelika Neuwirth Nicolai Sinai Michael Marx LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010 This book is printed on acid-free paper. This volume has emerged from the conference “Historische Sondierungen und methodische Reflexionen zur Korangenese: Wege zur Rekonstruktion des vorkanonischen Koran,” January 2004, Berlin. The conference and the publication of its proceedings were assisted by a grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyrights holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. ISSN 1567-2808 ISBN 978 90 04 17688 1 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands contents v Contents Introduction Nicolai Sinai and Angelika Neuwirth 1 Part One: The Qurʾan’s Historical Context The Martyrs of najrān and the end of the Ḥimyar: on the Political History of south Arabia in the early sixth Century Norbert Nebes 27 Arabia in Late Antiquity: An outline of the Cultural situation in the Peninsula at the time of Muhammad Barbara Finster 61 Mecca on the Caravan Routes in Pre-Islamic Antiquity Mikhail D. Bukharin 115 early Islam in the Light of Christian and Jewish sources Harald Suermann 135 The evolving Representation of the early Islamic empire and its Religion on Coin Imagery Stefan Heidemann 149 Arabo-Aramaic and ʿArabiyya: From Ancient Arabic to early standard Arabic, 200 ce–600 ce Ernst Axel Knauf 197 Literacy in Pre-Islamic Arabia: An Analysis of the epigraphic evidence Peter Stein 255 Arabs and Arabic in the Age of the Prophet Jan Retsö 281 vi contents sources for the History of Pre-Islamic Religion Tilman Seidensticker 293 The ʿIbād of al-Ḥīra: An Arab Christian Community in Late Antique Iraq Isabel Toral-Niehoff 323 An early Christian Arabic Account of the Creation of the World Kirill Dmitriev 349 The Qurʾan and the Prophet’s Poet: two Poems by Kaʿb b Mālik Agnes Imhof 389 Part Two: Contextualizing the Qurʾan The Qurʾan as Process Nicolai Sinai 407 Quantitative text Analysis and Its Application to the Qurʾan: some Preliminary Considerations Nora K. Schmid 441 Al-Ḥawāmīm: Intertextuality and Coherence in Meccan surahs Islam Dayeh 461 The House of Abraham and the House of Amram: Genealogy, Patriarchal Authority, and exegetical Professionalism Angelika Neuwirth 499 Glimpses of a Mariology in the Qurʾan: From Hagiography to Theology via Religious-Political Debate Michael Marx 533 The “seal of the Prophets”: towards an Understanding of Muhammad’s Prophethood Hartmut Bobzin 565 contents vii Reading the Qurʾan as Homily: The Case of sarah’s Laughter Gabriel Said Reynolds 585 The Qurʾanic Commandment of Writing Down Loan Agreements (Q 2:282)—Perspectives of a Comparison with Rabbinical Law Reimund Leicht 593 Islam in its Arabian Context François de Blois 615 Lost in Philology? The Virgins of Paradise and the Luxenberg Hypothesis Stefan Wild 625 The etymological Fallacy and Qurʾanic studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity Walid A. Saleh 649 The Relevance of early Arabic Poetry for Qurʾanic studies Including observations on Kull and on Q 22:27, 26:225, and 52:31 Thomas Bauer 699 Qurʾanic Readings of the Psalms Angelika Neuwirth 733 The Codification of the Qurʾan: A Comment on the Hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough Gregor Schoeler 779 The second Maṣāḥif Project: A step towards the Canonization of the Qurʾanic text Omar Hamdan 795 List of Contributors 837 viii contents contents 1 IntRoDUCtIon nicolai sinai and Angelika neuwirth The academic discipline of Qurʾanic studies today is most strikingly characterized, not by any impressive scholarly achievements of the field itself, which has been appropriately diagnosed by Fred Donner as being “in a state of disarray,”1 but by the large-scale interest of the media that the Qurʾan’s origin and interpretation have solicited dur- ing the last decade or so 2 Indeed, the lacunae of the field—impossible to overlook when confronted with the impressive list of what has been achieved in biblical or classical studies—have developed into a veritable litany: There is no critical edition of the text, no free access to all of the relevant manuscript evidence, no clear conception of the cultural and linguistic profile of the milieu within which it has emerged, no consensus on basic issues of methodology, a significant amount of mutual distrust among scholars, and—what is perhaps the single most important obstacle to scholarly progress—no adequate training of future students of the Qurʾan in the non-Arabic languages and literatures and cultural traditions that have undoubtedly shaped its historical context Yet the general public’s interest in Qurʾanic studies, oddly opposed as it may seem to the sorry state of the discipline itself, may not be an altogether negative thing; it holds out a vague promise of exciting discoveries that may attract younger scholars and inspire more senior 1 Donner, “Recent scholarship,” 29 2 The take-off point for this rather unprecedented rise in the attention given to the Qurʾan in Western media can be dated to January 1999, when toby Lester published his article “What is the Koran?” (The Atlantic Monthly 283: 43–56) Media attention to the Qurʾan was subsequently stoked by the near-coincidence between the publica- tion of Christoph Luxenberg’s Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran in 2000 and the new public interest in all things Islamic that followed the attack on the World trade Center in 2001; a perfect illustration of the extent to which public awareness of Lux- enberg’s book has been shaped by the specter of Islamic terrorism is provided, for example, by Ibn Warraq’s piece “Virgins? What Virgins?” published in The Guardian, January 12, 2002 Most recently, the Qurʾan has made it onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal with Andrew Higgin’s article “The Lost Archive” (January 12, 2008)
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