Connecting the Dots: Diacritics, Scribal Culture, and the Qurʾān in the First/Seventh Century
Modern historians assert that the earliest manuscripts of the Qurʾān were written in an Arabic scriptio defectiva, devoid of orthographic aids such as consonantal diacritics and vowel markers. In fact, the earliest extant manuscripts—those in the Ḥijāzī script, dated to the first/seventh century— do exhibit consonantal diacritics, though only sporadically and insufficiently to create a completely unambiguous text. Previous studies have provided inconclusive results regarding the uses of these spare diacritics and have suggested that scribes may have purposefully excluded them from Qurʾān manuscripts in order to allow different readings of the text to coexist in the same text. Focusing on the few diacritics that do appear in early manuscripts, this paper situates early Qurʾān manuscripts within the context of other Arabic documents of the first/seventh century that exhibit similarly infrequent diacritics. Shared patterns in the usages of diacritics indicate that early Qurʾān manuscripts were produced by scribes relying upon very similar orthographic traditions to those that produced Arabic papyri and inscriptions of the first/seventh century
The House and the Book: Sanctuary and Scripture in Islam (2017 IQSA Presidential Address)
The killing of animals in the context of religious ritual seems to have virtually disappeared during Late Antiquity, and the development of rabbinic Judaism might suggest that a religion focused on texts and their interpretation stands at the opposite pole to one that has a central sanctuary with a sacrificial ritual at its center. How and why, then, did Islam come to maintain the fundamental importance of both institutions: of scripture (the Qurʾān and other texts) and of rituals involving animal offerings associated with its sanctuary in Mecca? This question involves both the origins and early history of the institutions, and why and how they maintained their importance and relevance later on. As for their origins, it is suggested that both need to be thought of as the result of historical developments that extended beyond the time of the Prophet and that while the sanctuary and its rituals reflect the Arabian identity asserted by Islam, the scripture responds more to the needs of Islam as it developed outside Arabia. Regarding their continuing relevance, that of the scripture does not seem problematic, whereas that of the central sanctuary and its rituals does. Two developments concerning the latter are discussed here. First, there is the way in which the ḥajj came to be, not merely associated with, but very much focused on the Kaʿbah. Secondly, it is suggested that the animal offerings involve a redefinition of the concept of sacrifice towards the maintenance of social bonds and charitable giving. Finally, it is suggested that in Islam scripture and central sanctuary may work in opposite ways to promote cohesion and identity.
Why Does the Qurʾān Need the Meccan Sanctuary? Response to Professor Gerald Hawting’s 2017 Presidential Address
In this response to Prof. Hawting’s Presidential Address, I offer my views on the centrality of the Meccan sanctuary to the message of the Qurʾān in the Meccan period, its subsequent salience in the Medinan period, and the evidence for its continued importance for the Muslims of the seventh century. Reverence for the Meccan sanctuary, I argue, was pivotal to the early community’s self-understanding as a discrete community, both distinct from the “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitāb) and as a successor community with a shared biblical lineage. I contend, moreover, that reverence for a sanctuary in Mecca and its attendant rites was regarded as a touchstone feature of the religiosity of the newly hegemonic conquerors from Arabia by the earliest contemporary observers of the conquests and their aftermath.
