In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 3 no.10), Feras Hamza (University of Wollongong in Dubai) reviews Christian Lange’s Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
“There was a time not long ago in Islamic Studies when one was hard pressed to find much about the Islamic afterlife, Paradise and Hell, or eschatology in general…A watershed in the field was the 2009 symposium held in Göttingen, entitled Roads to Paradise, which despite its title, included papers on several different aspects of the afterlife, including eschatology in general and Hell in particular. However, the voluminous proceedings of the symposium were not published until this year. During the eight-year period between the Göttingen symposium and the publications of its proceedings, Christian Lange’s research has constituted a mainstay in this subfield of Islamic Studies with his Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination(2008), a major European Research Council-funded project from 2011–2015 that resulted in his Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions(2015), as well as several smaller publications on key related topics. In short, Lange’s work over the last decade has become a major reference for scholars interested in Muslim ideas about the afterlife and the understanding of eschatology within Muslim piety, practice and tradition. His latest work, under review here, is a consummation of several years of Lange’s immersion in and thinking about the question of the afterlife in Islam…”
Want to read more? For full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), members can log in HERE. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.