Review of Seyfeddin Kara, In Search of ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib’s Codex
The textual history of the Qurʾān has always engendered debates and disagreements among Muslims and non-Muslim Western scholars alike. Such textual history has been mostly reconstructed by relying on Sunni narrations which identify the first and third caliphs, Abū Bakr and ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, as the ones who endeavoured to promote the compilation of Islam’s sacred text. In so doing, such studies often seem to have shunned the traditions relative to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib’s codex.In his new volume, In Search of ʿAlī Ibn Abī Ṭālib’s Codex: History and Traditions of the Earliest Copy of the Qurʾān, Seyfeddin Kara takes into account how the Shiʿi claim—that the fourth caliph and first Shiʿi Imam carried out the compilation of the Qurʾān before anyone else—has frequently been perceived as politicised bias. This, our author observes, as many scholars have done before him, has contributed to the crystallization of a negative attitude in Western academia towards the study of Shiʿi ḥadīth compilations. What is admirable and innovative in this new work is Kara’s goal of refusing to espouse any distorted, standardized preconception, and his yearning to shatter any sectarianized perspective. In order to achieve this, Kara sets for himself a series of very complex tasks: 1) an analysis of Muslim sources, namely, both Shiʿi and Sunni traditions reporting on ʿAlī’s collection of the Qurʾān; 2) an attempt to identify an earliest conceivable date for such traditions; and 3) whenever possible, these traditions’ genuineness.
Review of Harald Motzki, Reconstruction of a Source of Ibn Isḥāq’s Life of the Prophet and Early Qurʾān Exegesis
Harald Motzki, famous for his isnād-cum-matn method of analysing ḥadīth, provides a thorough examination of the way in which Ibn Isḥāq, the author of one of the more famous of the sīrahs (biographies) of Muḥammad, gathered his sources, particularly his use of one source named Muḥammad b. Abī Muḥammad, about whom little is known. In so doing, Motzki’s Reconstruction of a Source of Ibn Isḥāq’s Life of the Prophet and Early Qurʾān Exegesis takes the reader on a journey through a number of sources, along which the reader can learn much about how Ibn Isḥāq used his sources, about the final product subsequently produced by his student Ibn Hishām, and about this little-known transmitter Muḥammad b. Abī Muḥammad.
Review of Michel Cuypers, A Qurʾānic Apocalypse
That the Qurʾān as a text has apocalyptic affinities has been the focus of scholarly research for the past century. Of late, due to the work of Fred Donner and others, defining the Qurʾānic apocalypse has come into vogue.[1] Michel Cuypers’ A Qurʾānic Apocalypse: A Reading of the Thirty-Three Last Sūrahs of the Qurʾān is a welcome addition to this genre. However, one should note that Cuypers’ work is quite different from other research and readings on the subject. While most scholars seek to place the Qurʾān within an apocalyptic framework, and then relate the text to outside events, or to extract history—such as it is—from the text, Cuypers seeks to read the entire text as if it were an apocalypse in terms of its rhetoric. This is a bold approach, and one that opens itself up to critique because of its totalizing reading of the text. In other words, while numerous scholars have identified apocalyptic (or apocalyptic-eschatological) themes within the Qurʾān, Cuypers seeks to read thirty-three sūrahs as if they were an apocalypse in sequential order.
Review Abdur Raheem Kidwai, God’s Word, Mans Interpretations
Colleagues and fellow scholars of Islam, how many times have you been asked about the best English translations of the Qurʾān and how many times have you mumbled in response something along the lines of “Arberry is good, there is Yusuf Ali, Abdel Haleem’s is more recent I guess”? Abdur Raheem Kidwai’s God’s Word, Man’s Interpretations is the book to read for a better, more learned answer concerning the English translations of the Qurʾān that have appeared since 2000. Kidwai’s admirable effort in this book can truly spare the scholars of Islam the time of sifting through the ever-growing numbers of recent translations—that is, if one can look past his unflinching policing on behalf of the Sunni-Jamāʿī interpretations of the Qurʾān and his unapologetic disdain for every other approach to the Qurʾān including what he calls “the Orientalist enterprise” (142).
Review of Francisco del Rio Sanchez, Jewish Christianity and the Origins of Islam
While the volume under review is dedicated to the Qurʾān’s relationship to Jewish Christianity, a number of its contributions call into question the very usefulness of this category. Accordingly, the work is more than a consideration of the relationship between supposedly Jewish Christian groups such as the Ebionites, or supposedly Jewish Christian scriptures such as the Pseudo-Clementines, and the Qurʾān. It offers a broad consideration of the nature of Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity and the ways in which the Qurʾān engages with this sectarian milieu. The volume, which emerged from an ASMEA panel in 2015, is a significant contribution to the study of the Qurʾān in its late antique context.
Review of Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires
In recent years, the field of Islamic Studies has witnessed a growing trend centered on reinterpreting early Islam. The reinterpretation concerns historical episodes, events, or figures, and stands in a clear dissonance with traditional narratives depicted by classical Muslim historians. The method utilized relies primarily on attempts to reread the Qurʾān by disassociating it from later qurʾānic exegesis. More importantly, this rereading, though principally concerned with early Islamic history, distances itself from traditional Muslim historiographical accounts. This trend has flourished particularly in the years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, perhaps as a response to increased public hostility, in the Western World, towards Islam and its prophet.
Review of Karim Samji, The Qur’an: A Form-Critical History
The urge to provide an inventory of the types of speech included in the Qurʾān is an old one. As Karim Samji points out, in one passage of his famous Qurʾān commentary Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) interprets the seven “letters” (aḥruf) in which the Qurʾān was revealed as seven types of speech contained in the sacred text: command (amr), rebuke (zajr), exhortation (targhīb), admonition (tarhīb), debate (jadal), narrative (qaṣaṣ), and parable (mathal) (270). However, this urge has not been met with sustained interest and methodical investigation on the part of modern scholars in Qurʾānic Studies. Karim Samji’s The Qurʾān: A Form-Critical Historyis therefore an important contribution to Qurʾānic Studies, the first attempt to apply biblical form criticism to the Qurʾān in a sustained manner to provide an overview of the main genres contained in Islam’s sacred text. It is a useful and stimulating addition to qurʾānic scholarship, both because it explains to a Qurʾānic Studies audience a great deal about form criticism of which they may not be aware and because it sheds light, especially from a comparative Biblical Studies perspective, on facets of the Qurʾān. The work evinces deep familiarity with the history of scholarship on form criticism in Biblical Studies, as well as awareness of most of the relevant work in Qurʾānic Studies, including several studies which may not be known to investigators in Qurʾānic Studies, even those who have been paying attention to scholarship related to form criticism in this field.
Review of Pier Tommasino, The Venetian Qur’an
One of the main problems in contemporary scholarship is the loss of multilingual expertise of the scholars. The centrality of English has simplified the picture, but at the same time has permitted the emergence of students who do not know any other language and of scholars and writers who can propose ideas in English with no awareness of what has been written elsewhere and in other languages. Given such a situation, the English translation of Pier Mattia Tommasino’s study of the Italian edition of the Qurʾān attributed to the publisher Andrea Arrivabene, is a much-welcome effort to give the wider public a chance to know one of the most significant essays in the field of the last years. The original Italian appeared in 2013 and is now offered to the reader in a version updated only in the bibliography, and translated by Sylvia Notini.
Review of Richard Serrano, Qurʾān and the Lyric Imperative
As the title suggests, Richard Serrano’s Qurʾān and the Lyric Imperative examines the Qurʾān, but the intention is not to explain the holy book of Islam. The Qurʾān, as the author puts it, “continues to defy explanation, despite the legions engaged in the vast Islamic and Orientalist intellectual industry intent on doing just that” (1). Instead, the book examines the connections between the Qurʾān and poetry in the classical Arabic tradition and the ways in which those connections have served a central role in preserving people’s understanding of the text.
Review of Robert Gregg, Shared Stories, Rival Tellings
In this rather hefty tome, Robert Gregg sets out to share with us the myriad ways the Bible and biblical lore has been read over the centuries across multiple cultural, linguistic, and religious contexts. This book’s comparative yet innovative nature opens up new avenues for looking at this vast interpretive corpus. In particular, Gregg engages equally, openly, and with the same level of academic curiosity with all the material he presents here, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. Despite its heft, this is more a “popular” book than monograph, but that does not make it any less of a good read (it is very readable) or academically useful. While aimed at the educated generalist audience, this volume proves indispensable to anyone interested in comparative biblical exegesis and wants to familiarize oneself with trends in corpora outside of one’s normal fields. Even for those of us who were Gregg’s students, and familiar with this material, but especially for those of us who were inspired by Gregg and have made careers writing about this same material, this book still has much to teach us. The many ways through which Gregg approaches and interrogates his material in this book remains as important as the data collected in its pages. Thus, I read through this book oscillating between two reactions: “Oh yeah, I remember that one!” and “Wow, I’ve never looked at that material in this way.” Both were equally satisfying and exciting reactions.
Review of Holger Zellentin, The Qur’an’s Reformation of Judaism and Christianity
The title of this important collection of scholarly articles already gives away the hypothesis the editor intends the dozen, first rate studies of qurʾānic passages included in the volume to commend. Namely, the view that one might best understand the Arabic scripture’s relationship with contemporary Judaism and Christianity by recognizing, as he says, “the Qur’an’s attempt to reform rather than to replace the religion of the Jews and the Christians of its time.” (3). This characterization of the Qurʾān’s purpose is already debatable, albeit that one readily recognizes that the text does envision the continuing existence of the “Scripture People” within its purview, whose beliefs and practices are nevertheless criticized and whose social well-being is subjected to demeaning restrictions (Q al-Tawbah 9:29). The problem is that in several Medinan passages the Qurʾān explicitly distinguishes between “Those who believe, those who practice Judaism, and the Nazarenes (i.e., the Christians)” (Q al-Baqarah 2:62; Q al-Māʾidah 5:69; Q al-Ḥajj 22:17). It would seem that the Qurʾān really does commend replacement rather than just reformation on the basis of shared narratives. One suspects that in speaking of “reformation” in the present context, a term that readily suggests comparison with a major event in western Christianity of later times, the intention is to highlight the fact of the Qurʾān’s dialogue with Jews and Christians in the milieu of its origins, and to suggest familiarity with Jewish and Christian narratives of shared biblical and non-biblical figures, which the Qurʾān re-configures to fit its own, differing construction of revelatory meaning. More on this point later.
Review of Mark Durie, The Qur’an and Its Biblical Reflexes
Mark Durie’s The Qur’an and Its Biblical Reflexes is a highly original work and a substantial contribution to the field of Qurʾānic Studies. He engages with a great deal of secondary literature, but his study is also based on extensive direct reading of the text of the Qurʾān itself, so there is nothing second-hand about his approach. He presses everything he uses into the service of a very distinctive argument, so that what he says of the Qurʾān could also be said of his own work: it marches to the beat of its own drum. Durie writes clearly and engagingly, regularly re-stating his aims and recapitulating his developing argument.
