In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 7, no.5), Holger Zellentin (Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen) reviews Zishan Ahmad Ghaffar’s Der Koran in seinem religions- und weltgeschichtlichen Kontext: Eschatologie und Apokalyptik in den mittelmekkanischen Suren (Leiden: Ferdinand Schöningh / Brill, 2020).
In the review, Zellentin writes “In Ghaffar’s view, the Qurʾān retells and transforms many of the historical and eschatological narratives circulating at its time, and especially those suggesting or even explicating the messianic role of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, who ruled 610–641 CE. Instead of prevalent messianic and apocalyptic imperial ideologies, according to Ghaffar, the middle Meccan sūrahs – in arguable contrast to the later Medinan ones – offer a theology of individual piety and divine mercy that portrays the only relevant eschatological battle between good and evil as occurring within each individual, rather than on the world stage…”
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