Ivan Dyulgerov, Sofia University “St. Kiment Ohridski”, Bulgaria IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy Panel 3. Qur’anic Perspective and Other Views
Two antithetical assumptions appear to be similarly implausible: that the Qur’anic vocabulary does not include Biblical and Bible-related borrowings, or that these borrowings tend not to be at least partly Arabicized, i.e., occurring with meanings that more or less differ from what their non-Qur’anic cognates usually denote. Taking this statement as a presupposition, I intend to apply it to the particular case of the Qur’anic word ḥanīf, which has become notorious for the conspicuous discrepancy between its monotheistic Qur’anic semantic and meanings attested in other Semitic languages (such as “pagan” for the Syriac ḥanpā, or “godless” for the Hebrew ḥanēf). By counting on a predominantly semantical approach, I will argue that is hard to consider the Qur’anic ḥanīf as a genuine development of a pre-Qur’anic Arabic term. Furthermore, I will provide support to the hypothesis of Francois de Blois, which confirms antedating insights of Margoliouth and Ahrens, and according to which the loanword in question must have had entered the pre-Qur’anic Arabic milieu within a formulaic phrase attributing to Abraham the state of being ḥanpā “gentile”. Thereafter, I will do my best to demonstrate, however, that the Qur’an did not actually adopt the sense of “gentile” through this term. The suggestion I would like to argue for, instead, is that in the Qur’anic text, ḥanīf acquires a quite different, metaphorical sense. It seems to be derived from the idea of an entirely arched curvedness into the left (ḥanaf) as op- posed to the notion of such a curvedness into the right (qasaṭ). An implementation of the latter is to be found in (Q. 72:14–15) at the outset of which one can read: “Wa-’innā minnā l-muslimūna wa-minnā l-qāsiṭūna – Among us some are muslims (submitted to God) and some of us are perverse”. This is how due to an arguable association between ḥanīf and muslim (as in ḥanīfan musliman – Q. 3:67) an apparent semantical opposition between ḥanīf and qāsiṭ “perverse” might come to light.
New Publication–The Quran: Keyword Collocations (Gorgias Press, 2021)
Gorgias Press recently published The Quran: Keyword Collocations by Elie Wardini. IQSA readers can find more information and purchase the book here.
Publisher’s Description: This bundle brings together the 16 volumes of Elie Wardini’s The Quran: Key Word Collocations. The aim of these volumes is to present the Quran as raw data with as little interpretation as possible. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text. In the present series, Collocation is defined as a Key Word, here adjectives, nouns, proper nouns and verbs, forming the center of a cluster with four co-occurring Key Words (1° and 2° of proximity), the first two to the left and to the right, where available. Every Collocation of each Key Word in the Quran is presented in context, as a rule with six words to the right and six to the left of it, where available or where the formatting permits. The central Key Words have been grouped by root > lemma. Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionaries have been consulted.
Elie Wardini is professor of Arabic at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research has focused on Semitic languages, especially Aramaic-Arabic contact from a diachronic and sociolinguistic perspective.
Summer School in Oriental Languages: July 5 – 14, Venice, Italy
The third Summer School in Oriental Languages, organized by the University of Lausanne, took place at Venice International University, on the island of San Sèrvolo, from July 4 – 14. This year, 33 participants from more than a dozen universities in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and the USA attended courses on a range of Ancient, Late Antique and Modern Oriental Languages such as Arabic, Coptic, Ge’ez, Hebrew, Syriac and Sumerian. A number of minor courses in Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions, Semitic lexicology and non-alphabetic languages were also offered in addition to the main language courses.
Venice International University offers a fanastic location for studying on the Venetian island of San Sèrvolo.
Participants on the summer school were also able to visit the monastery of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, which is based on the island next to San Sèrvolo, and has been home to the Armenian Mekhitarist community since 1717.
Amongst its collection of paintings and objects d’art, the monastery’s library houses a number of manuscripts and books, including some Islamic/qur’ānic ones.
An 8th century Qur’ān fragment in kufic script. Reproduced courtesy of San Lazzaro degli Armeni.
The summer school represents a rare opportunity to study some of the languages that relate to the broader field of qur’ānic/Islamic studies. Thanks to Professor David Hamidovic (Lausanne), for this initiative and also to the administrative coordinator in Lausanne, Salomé Evard and her team. Applications for next year’s summer school will open in Spring of 2019 and IQSA will endeavour to keep you updated.
Summer School in Arabic Codicology, at the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, July 9 – 13, Madrid
The fifth, consecutive, intensive summer school on Arabic Codicology: the Islamic Manuscript Heritage in the El Escorial Collection took place in Madrid, Spain from July 9 – 13. The course was led and directed by Professor Nuria de Castilla (Ecole Pratique d’Hautes Etudes, Paris), and Professor François Déroche (Collège de France, Paris). This year, participants were also able to benefit from the expertise of José Luis del Valle Merino, director of the Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. The course was sponsored by the European Commission Research Project Saadian Intellectual and Cultural LifE SICLE 670628 and co-organised by UCM’s Fundación General.
Professor Nuria de Castilla and some of the participants at the summer school
The aim of the summer school has been to provide the students with basic training in codicology and the research methods they will need when studying and analyzing Arabic manuscripts. Following morning lectures on different aspects of codicology, such as composition, writing surfaces, illumination, paleography and bindings, the afternoons were dedicated to hands-on sessions at the Royal Library, where participants were able to apply the knowledge and skills they had learnt, by examining manuscripts from the Arabic Collection.
The El Escorial Arabic Manuscript Collection (circa 2000 codices) consists mainly of manuscripts from the Library of Sultan Mūlay Zaydān, which became part of the Library of Phillip III of Spain in 1612. The collection is thus one of the very few from the Muslim world to remain virtually intact and is therefore considered to be the most important collection of Arabic manuscripts in Spain and one of the most interesting in Europe.
A hands-on session in the Library
The course not only furthered participants’ knowledge of the collection, but also promoted the creation of international networks and exchange between participants. With an average of 100 applications each year, but capacity for only 16 participants, to date, the course has welcomed participants from all five continents. This year, the course was attended by participants from Argentina, Austria, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Singapore, Spain, Tunisia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Arabic in Context: Celebrating 400 years of Arabic at Leiden University.
The writing of Arabic’s linguistic history is by definition an interdisciplinary effort, the result of collaboration between historical linguists, epigraphists, dialectologists, and historians. The present volume seeks to catalyse a dialogue between scholars in various fields who are interested in Arabic’s past and to illustrate how much there is to be gained by looking beyond the traditional sources and methods. It contains 15 innovative studies ranging from pre-Islamic epigraphy to the modern spoken dialect, and from comparative Semitics to Middle Arabic. The combination of these perspectives hopes to stand as an important methodological intervention, encouraging a shift in the way Arabic’s linguistic history is written…*
Volume Editor:
Ahmad Al-Jallad, Ph.D. (2012) Harvard University, is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University. He has published on the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages, the history of Arabic, and on the epigraphy of Ancient North Arabia, including An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions (Brill, 2015).
Contributors: Ahmad Al-Jallad, Martin F. J. Baasten, Johnny Cheung, Guillaume Dye, Lutz Edzard, Jordi Ferrer i Serra, Francesco Grande, John Huehnergard, Geoffrey Khan, Manfred Kropp, Alexander Magidow, Daniele Mascitelli, Laïla Nehmé, Na’ama Pat-El, Andrzej Zaborski, Marijn van Putten and Adam Benkato
The International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA), a non-profit organization, seeks a copyeditor for freelance contract work on its three scholarly publication projects: JIQSA (annual journal), ISIQ (monograph series), RQR (monthly review of books). This is a deadline-driven position with overlapping seasonal workflows where diverse specialized texts require detailed technical editing in short turnaround times. Work is remote-desk and may be performed from any geographical location in the United States. This is a great opportunity for someone who enjoys high-performance work and is looking to join a collaborative team of scholars in a dynamic professional field.
Position will report directly to Head Editor of JIQSA, but will also collaborate with other members of IQSA’s editorial and executive teams as appropriate.
Position open until filled.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
check texts to ensure they are well written and logically structured
correct grammar and spelling
check illustrations and captions
ensure texts conform to JIQSA Style Guide
check facts and raise queries with Head Editor
look out for potential legal problems and discuss them with the Head Editor
other duties as assigned
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
Education: B.A. in English, journalism, Near Eastern languages, or other relevant field in the liberal arts, humanities or social sciences
excellent written English, including proper spelling and grammar
working knowledge of classical Arabic and relevant systems of transliteration
a meticulous approach to texts and an eye for detail
the ability to maintain high-quality work while meeting tight deadlines
strong concentration and ability to focus on texts that may be lengthy and highly technical
clear judgement in applying house style
the ability to retain authors’ voices after editing
excellent collaboration skills
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
M.A. or graduate study in relevant field
specialist interest in Qur’anic Studies or related disciplines
working knowledge of additional foreign languages (esp. Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, German, or French)
COMPENSATION:
Contract may be negotiated as hourly or by project; rate commensurate with qualifications and experience
Free access to IQSA member benefits
Interested candidates should submit resume/CV and cover letter to jiqsa@iqsaweb.org.
The International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA), a nonprofit organization, currently has a part-time job opening for an Executive Assistant which needs to be filled at once. The position requires about 10 hours per week and pay is $15 per hour. He/she will report directly to the Executive Director, but also work over e-mail/phone with colleagues located remotely. The work can be done from any geographic location in the Unites States, with preference given to candidates in Houston or Atlanta. The candidate will preferably be a recent graduate or graduate student in the fields of humanities, liberal arts or social sciences with editorial experience and some knowledge of non-profits. Candidate must show attention to detail, have a can-do attitude and a professional communication style. Foreign language experience is strongly desired.
The required duties are listed below and can all be performed remotely/from home.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
Manage the weekly blog
Maintain and update WordPress website and membership website
Update organization’s social media (Facebook and Twitter pages)
Setup conference calls using online system
Manage email inquiries sent to organization’s email address
Moderate online discussion group daily
Manage master contact list
Administer and manage membership software
Draft and send emails to all the organization’s members and contacts
Assist in preparations for organization’s annual and international meetings
Edit and format the annual meeting program book using the style guide
Contact Publishers and sell advertisement space
Coordinate communications between Council, Executive Director, and committees
Coordinate and manage payments, reimbursements, and expense sheets
Organize and archive documents
Other organizational, managerial, and editorial tasks as needed
Research best practices to assist in administration’s communication and planning
Seek out relevant news, research and conferences in Qur’anic Studies
QUALIFICATIONS:
Bachelors degree in Humanities, Social Science or related field.
Masters degree or graduate study preferred
Working knowledge of foreign languages and text (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Hebrew, French or German) is a major plus!
Interested candidates should send a CV and 1 page cover letter to Dr. Emran El-Badawi (emran01@gmail.com).
Rethinking Late Antiquity—A Review of Garth Fowden, Before and After Muḥammad: The First Millennium Refocused
By Michael Pregill
Beginning in the 1970s, the work of Peter Brown revolutionized the way scholars approach the “fall of Rome,” the decline of Roman and Sasanian power in the Middle East, and the rise of Islam in Late Antiquity. In his classic The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750 and other works, Brown argued that the emergence of Islam and the establishment of the caliphal empire was not a radical disruption of the course of history, but rather represented the continuity of older cultural, political, social, and religious patterns. Despite the wide influence of Brown’s work and the general recognition of Islam’s importance in the overall trajectory of Mediterranean and even European history, substantial obstacles to a full integration of ancient, early Christian, Jewish, and Islamic phenomena into a general history of the civilization of Western Asia remain.
Although an outdated, isolationist approach to Late Antiquity primarily focusing on late Roman culture and society still dominates some quarters of the academy, many scholars have worked towards a more integrated and comparative approach to the period. The shifts have been gradual and partial. Today there are numerous scholars of rabbinics who explore the wider context of the Babylonian Talmud in Sasanian society; there has lately been a resurgence of interest in the history of the Red Sea region, including Ethiopia and the Yemen, in the centuries leading up to the rise of Islam; and over the last ten years or so, we have seen significant interest in the literary and religious parallels to the Qur’an found in Syriac Christian literature in particular. (Many of the scholars who have been responsible for the last development have generously assisted in the foundation and growth of IQSA, so this is really nothing new to readers of this blog, though developments in late ancient or Jewish historiography may be less familiar.)
Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused
All of these developments point to a recognition that the various cultures and literatures of Late Antiquity cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather must be approached in the wider context of the dynamic exchanges between various communities in the period, the imperial competition between the Romans and the Sasanians, and the spread and consolidation of the monotheistic or “Abrahamic” traditions.
Among the scholars who sought to adopt, refine, and develop Brown’s approach to the period, it was Garth Fowden—currently Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths at Cambridge—who produced what was perhaps the most important work in this area in the 1990s: From Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity. When I was a graduate student, Fowden’s work impacted me profoundly. The book is ambitious in scope, wildly imaginative, willing to explore the period in terrifyingly broad terms, but in pursuit of a single cogent thesis: that the entire history of the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean from the second through the ninth century CE can be understood in terms of a sequence of imperial projects aiming to establish God’s rule on earth. That is, the unifying theme of the era, one that distinguishes it from the civilization of the ancient world and sets the stage for the medieval cultures of Byzantium, Western Christendom, and the Dār al-Islām, is the use of monotheism as the primary justification for statebuilding, for literally global dominion (as far as that was possible in the pre-modern world). In Fowden’s work, the use of religion to justify imperial authority becomes the thread that links Christian Rome, Sasanian Iran, and the caliphates and that allows us to see the significant continuities between them with clarity.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, the only other books I read during my Ph.D. training that exerted a similarly enduring influence on my imagination were Wansbrough’s The Sectarian Milieu (1978)—no doubt familiar to every reader of this blog—and Bulliet’s The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004), which, like Fowden’s Empire to Commonwealth, is another eloquent call for historical thinking on the global scale, for transcending the narrow and artificial boundaries between the culture of “the West” and Islam.)
After a number of years dedicated to other projects, including a fascinating study on the iconography of the late Umayyad palace of Quṣayr ʿAmra, Fowden has now returned to history on the grand scale with Before and After Muḥammad: The First Millennium Refocused. Stunningly, this work is even more ambitious in scope than Empire to Commonwealth. Here Fowden once again seeks to explore the overarching continuities between Christian Rome, Sasanian Iran, and Islam but with even more attention paid to the intertwining discourses that link Greco-Roman, Syrian Christian, Jewish, Arab, Iranian, and European cultures over the course of a thousand years, centering on what he now calls the “Eurasian hinge” of southwest Asia linking the civilizations of the region. Fowden anchors his work in a rigorous interrogation of older conceptions of Late Antiquity, criticizing older scholars’ poor integration of Islam into the period, as well as the common approach of only including the Umayyad caliphate as a late antique empire. This serves to truncate the early medieval period from older trajectories of development that arguably only reached their full fruition around the year 1000. It also artificially severs the Abbasids and Iranian Islam from the prevailing cultural patterns of the Arab-Islamic world, though they are equally rooted in the legacies of biblical monotheism and Hellenism.
(teachmiddleeast.lib.uchicago.edu)
Fowden also locates his work in the context of contemporary debates over the relationship between Islam and the West, stating quite bluntly that “My purpose here is not to join this debate directly, but to overhaul its foundations” (2). His approach in Before and After Muḥammad builds on his earlier work, in that the cultures of the Islamic Middle East and Christian Europe are seen as halves of a larger whole. (Here I was a bit disappointed that Fowden does not engage with Bulliet’s aforementioned work The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, which eloquently argues for an approach to Islam and the West as two halves or wings of a unified civilizational complex that only decisively split in the later medieval period. This is a perspective that is obviously quite compatible with and complementary to Fowden’s.)
Periodization, methods, and labels occupy much of Fowden’s attention here, and he spends significant time critiquing other contemporary attempts to advance beyond traditional frameworks and paradigms (82-91), adopting the new periodization of a unified “First Millennium” as his preferred heuristic lens on the period. This approach has the distinct benefit of locating Augustus at one end of the period and the emergence of the mature scriptural communities of Europe and Western Asia at the other, without privileging Europe over the Islamic world as the “true” heir to Greco-Roman antiquity or reifying anachronistic communalist boundaries between “pagans,” Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Several aspects of Fowden’s approach here depart from that of From Empire to Commonwealth. There is a particular emphasis here on various textual lineages as the foundation of cross-cultural continuity. Thus, he sees the transmission of specific canons of material as one of the primary drivers of cultural development, each moving through an initial phase of revelation to subsequent phases marked by canonization and then interpretation, with the resultant exegetical cultures dominating the cultural landscape from western Europe to eastern Iran by the year 1000. As a student of comparative exegesis (in my case, midrash and tafsir) I found the emphasis on the exegetical here particularly fascinating, though notably, Fowden is not concerned solely with scriptural canons (Tanakh, Bible, and Qur’an) but also philosophical and legal canons, placing particular emphasis on Aristotelianism as a major current of cultural continuity in the First Millennium.
Fowden’s two chapters on “Exegetical Cultures” are thus exhilarating and dizzying—charting Aristotelianism’s movement from Greek to Syriac to Arabic educational institutions, the evolution of law from the Justinianic Code to the Babylonian Talmud to the emergence of Islamic fiqh, and touching on patristic, Karaite, and Muʿtazilite scriptural exegesis for good measure. The final chapter is likewise a tour de force, surveying the culmination of the First Millennium by showing us “Viewpoints Around 1000: Ṭūs, Baṣra, Baghdād, Pisa.” The cities visited in this grand perspective symbolize, respectively, the resurgence of Iranian national consciousness with the Shāh-Nāmeh of Firdowsī; the maturation of gnostic-philosophical-spiritual currents in early medieval Islam with the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ; the emergence not just of the mature Sunni and Shii traditions but of sophisticated and distinctively Islamic modes of apprehending and engaging different faiths; and the reemergence of Europe as a meaningful center of cultural production.
Astonishingly, this work is not the culmination of Fowden’s work in rethinking Late Antiquity. Rather, he advertises this book as a prolegomenon to a new, more comprehensive project on the First Millennium. It is also the companion piece to a forthcoming work charting the evolution of philosophy from Aristotle to Avicenna. Specialists will inevitably find much to quibble with here, especially given Fowden’s propensity to working in broad swathes rather than drilling down to wrestle with thorny details. Moreover, one can imagine assigning this only to the most intrepid undergraduates, despite the major pedagogical implications of Fowden’s reflections on periodization in particular. But overall, this is synthetic historiographic work of great sophistication and lasting value, and Before and After Muḥammad deserves to provoke discussion throughout many scholarly quarters.
New Book: The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions
A new book by Emran El-Badawi on The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions has been published this month. This book is the thirteenth of the Routledge Studies in the Qur’an series, edited by Andrew Rippin.
(Routledge.com)
Description*
This book is a study of related passages found in the Arabic Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospels, i.e. the Gospels preserved in the Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic dialects. It builds upon the work of traditional Muslim scholars, including al-Biqa‘i (d. ca. 808/1460) and al-Suyuti (d. 911/1505), who wrote books examining connections between the Qur’an on the one hand, and Biblical passages and Aramaic terminology on the other, as well as modern western scholars, including Sidney Griffith who argue that pre-Islamic Arabs accessed the Bible in Aramaic.
The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions examines the history of religious movements in the Middle East from 180-632 CE, explaining Islam as a response to the disunity of the Aramaic speaking churches. It then compares the Arabic text of the Qur’an and the Aramaic text of the Gospels under four main themes: the prophets; the clergy; the divine; and the apocalypse. Among the findings of this book are that the articulator as well as audience of the Qur’an were monotheistic in origin, probably bilingual, culturally sophisticated and accustomed to the theological debates that raged between the Aramaic speaking churches.
Arguing that the Qur’an’s teachings and ethics echo Jewish-Christian conservatism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Religion, History, and Literature.
Table of Contents
Sources and Method
Prophetic Tradition in the Late Antique Near East
Prophets and their Righteous Entourage
The Evils of the Clergy
The Divine Realm
Divine Judgement and the Apocalypse
Data Analysis and Conclusion
Author Bio
Emran El-Badawi is Director and Assistant Professor of Arab Studies at the University of Houston. His articles include “From ‘clergy’ to ‘celibacy’: The development of rahbaniyyah between Qur’an, Hadith and Church Canon” and “A humanistic reception of the Qur’an.” His work has been featured on the New York Times, Houston Chronicle and Christian Science Monitor.
Subjects
Islam
Scriptures of Islam
Biblical Studies
For complete product information on El-Badawi’s book please go here.
I offered an undergraduate course last spring for the first time on the Qur’an as Literature. My goal was simple, I wanted my students to read the text closely and interpret its verses themselves. Their apprehension, at first, to commit to this bold exercise soon gave way to an ease and skill with handling the text.
Framing this course on the Qur’an as “literature” emphasized the literary qualities of the text and de-emphasized a theological approach. It meant going deep into the rhyme, rhetoric and homiletic nature of the text. It also entailed divorcing the text, to some extent, from Tafsir. I took some cautionary notes from Andrew Rippin’s article on the pitfalls of “The Qur’an as Literature,”[1], but some of this was new territory for me.
(greenzblog.com)
Part of the course description reads:
This course examines the content and literary style of the Qur’an and in the context of the late antique Near East, ca. 2nd-7th centuries CE. We will read the text alongside the texts belonging to the “People of the Scripture” (ahl al-kitab), i.e. Christians and Jews, and other religious groups explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an. Their scriptures include the Hebrew Bible (al-Tawrah), the New Testament (al-Injil), Zoroastrian texts (cf. al-majus) and Arabian prophetic speech (shi‘r kahin). This comparative approach will provide students with a rich understanding of the Qur’an as an integral part of world literature, and challenge contemporary and traditional assumptions about the text. This approach will also allow the Qur’an to speak for itself, rather than reading it through the eyes of medieval interpretation (Tafsir) or prophetic tradition (Hadith) which began in the 9th century CE. This course also exposes students to some of the scholarly challenges of studying the different layers of a text (Meccan vs. Medinan), identifying its audience, trying to construct the history of its transmission (oral vs. written) without much evidence, and to the limits of translation.
Fortunately, the class size was fairly small, 15 or so, and students came from different religious as well as cultural backgrounds, which made for much lively discussion and debate. Students were pushed to think critically and in a systematic function about the Qur’an, as well as challenge their own assumptions about the text. For students I find two principle barriers that stand between them and the Qur’an. These are the ‘politicization of the text’ on the one hand, and the ‘confusion of the text with traditional interpretation’ on theother. More broadly speaking, I wanted them to appreciate scripture not just as a religious text, but as an integral part of world literature that holds value in the academy.
For an undergraduate course like this, all instruction and materials were in English. Reading materials included How to Read the Qur’an by Carl Ernst(who incidentally has a terrific course on this subject!)[2] and several supplementary articles including: a rhyming translation of Q 93-114 by Shawkat Toorawa, a qur’anic reading of the Psalms by Angelika Neuwirth, and a humanistic reception of the text by me.[3] Students were encouraged but not required to buy a translation of the Qur’an, given the plethora of translations online. (Although for practical purposes we used Yusuf Ali’s translation during class time). Finally, included in the course materials were sections of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, post-biblical exhortations (e.g. Ephrem the Syrian), Zoroastrian texts and Pre-Islamic poetry. For some students it was the first time they had read the Qur’an; for others the first time they read the Bible. In both cases, students expressed how pleased they were at this eye-opening experience and fruitful exchange.
The course benefited a great deal from following stories posted on the IQSA blog (that’s right, this blog!) and the Qur’an Seminar at the University of Notre Dame, which was still running at the time. To my surprise, students were both curious and welcoming of the technical dimensions of Qur’an study. Some of our best discussions, for example, involved scrutinizing the rhyme of Arabic poetry or considering a particular Syriac word. The course naturally explored a number of qur’anic themes like apocalypticism, prophecy, law, etc, as well as introduced students to debates concerning the text’s chronology, speaker and structure. My happiest moment was when a student expressed to me how the course “made the Qur’an part of a much more intellectual conversation.”
Teaching this course was a tremendous learning experience for both the students and myself. The students learned how to navigate a sometimes unwieldy text and appreciate its tremendous contribution to the world in which they live. Collectively, we learned that as long as one approaches any scripture respectfully as well as critically, the task of understanding it becomes that much easier.
[1] Andrew Rippin, “The Qur’an as literature: perils, pitfalls and prospects,” Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 10.1, 1983.
[2] Carl Ernst, How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide with Select Translations, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
[3] Shawkat Toorawa, “’The Inimitable Rose’, being Qur’anic saj‘ from Surat al-Duhâ to Surat al-Nâs (Q. 93–114) in English rhyming prose,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 8.2, 2006; Angelika Neuwirth, “Qur’anic readings of the Psalms” in Ed. Angelika Neuwirth et al. (eds.), The Qur’an in Context, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009; Emran El-Badawi, “A humanistic reception of the Qur’an,” Scriptural Margins: On the Boundaries of Sacred Texts, English Language Notes, 50.2, 2012.
Understanding Meaning in the Sound of the Recited Qur’an
By Lauren Osborne
The following is a brief synopsis of my recent work on the recitation of the Qur’an. The topic of my dissertation is central to the Qur’an’s self-presentation as an oral text and to its role in the lives of believers, yet one that has for the most part been overlooked by scholarship. The vast majority of Muslims cultivate an experience of the Qur’an that is based less on the text as a written object than on the sound and practice of its recitation. Indeed, native and non-native speakers of Arabic devote considerable time and energy to learning to recite and to appreciate the Qur’an’s recitation. Learning to recite the Qur’an is the foundation of Islamic education worldwide, making the sound and experience of the sacred text the first point of contact for most believers. Popular reciters have also attained worldwide fame, as their recordings have circulated via nearly every form of audio media. Today, a simple search online will return innumerable sites devoted to discussion of recitation and to circulation of audio files. Yet despite the significant role played by the sound and practice of Qur’an recitation, scholarship does not have a vocabulary or way of understanding the oral form of the text in relation to its literary or discursive meanings.
While a purely aesthetic experience of the sound of the Qur’an has devotional and experiential value in itself—as shown by the popularity of the practice of recitation and the spread of recordings among Muslims who do not understand Arabic—the Arabic words still bear their meanings even when they exist as sound. It is possible that the sound of recitation may reflect the meanings of the words in different ways; at other times, the sound of the words and their discursive meanings may simply be coexisting. The meaning and the aesthetics are always interrelated, but they may interact in a variety of ways.
(dv247.com)
In order to address the diversity in these modes of meaning that characterize the recitation of the Qur’an, I propose that the practice may be described according to the following four-part scheme. First, the Qur’an presents its own textual meaning and literary features: vocabulary, subject matter, modes of perspective and address, and literary form on the level of units of verses or Suras. Second, the sound of the text is often characterized by systematic rhyme and rhythm. Sometimes this is in conversation with or resembles the Arabic literary tradition of prose characterized by rhyme and rhythm (saj`). Furthermore, the sounds of the words themselves generate certain affective charges through repetition and assonance. Third, the sound of the text is shaped by pitch and melody, often characterized by the modal system of Arab music, the maqām. The melodic aspect of reciting is a skill studied specifically by individuals working to become professional reciters, and participants in competitions are judged in this aspect of their performance. Finally, the feelings of the listener may be characterized by affective experience: emotional states that may or may not be directly tied to the discursive understanding of the text, or these other aspects of its sound.
Using this descriptive framework, in my dissertation I seek to bring these modes of meaning into conversation with one another. With reference to specific recordings, performances, or data collected through fieldwork, I note when I hear any particular aspect of the sound either corresponding with the meaning of the text (or other aspects of the sound, or perceived meaning on the part of the listener) or when these things seem to be simply coexisting. Just as multiple modes of meaning exist on a range from text to sound to perception, I argue that a range of relationships between these modes is also possible. At times the discursive meaning of the text may align with the poetic or melodic meaning, and at times any of these modes may simply coexist but have no direct relationship.
Most recently, I have been working with recordings from Sheikh Mishari Rashid Alafasy, an imam of the Grand Mosque in Kuwait City and an extremely popular reciter of the Qur’an today. Hispersonal websiteprovides not only basic information about his life and career, but also a wealth of media material: photographs, videos, and sound material ranging from anāshīd (religious songs) to hadith to Qur’an. At the moment I’m working with two recordings of Surat al-Furqan, and using these examples to raise questions on how the meanings in words and sound may or may not relate to one another. I do this through analysis of the literary shape and features of the Sura itself—how it conveys its meanings to us in language; discussion of its use of rhyme; and finally, Alafasy’s use of the maqām and other sound-related aspects, such as vocal register or vocal quality.The firstof these recordings is available on Sheikh Alafasy’s personal website, listed as being recorded in California in 1430 A.H. (2008 Gregorian);the secondwas available on his previous site, but can still be found through archive.org. While the overall moods of the recordings are extremely different, they also show us a range of possibilities for shaping the sound of a single text, and even further, the different ways in which the sound and the words may or may not relate to one another.
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