Reflecting on 2024: A Year of Growth and Achievement for IQSA

Reflecting on 2024: A Year of Growth and Achievement for IQSA

As we bid farewell to 2024, the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) celebrates a year of dynamic progress and global engagement. From conferences and publications to new initiatives and partnerships, our community continues to thrive as a hub for Qur’anic scholarship.

Annual Meeting in London: A Global Gathering of Scholars

In 2024, IQSA’s Annual Meeting took place in London, hosted by the prestigious Institute of Ismaili Studies from July 15–18. Over 150 scholars and participants convened at the Aga Khan Centre, a beacon of education, cultural exchange, and insights into Muslim civilizations, located in London’s vibrant King’s Cross.

Highlights of the event included a warm Welcome Address by Professor Zayn Kassam (Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies) and a thought-provoking Keynote delivered by Professor Ahmad al-Jallad (Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies, Ohio State University). Beyond the traditional panels and sessions, attendees enjoyed receptions, mentoring luncheons, the annual business meeting, and guided tours of the Aga Khan Centre, further enriching the experience. The gathering underscored IQSA’s commitment to fostering intellectual exchange and mentorship within the field of Qur’anic studies.

IQSA at the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting

IQSA also maintained its presence at the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, hosting a series of sessions from November 23–24. These sessions ranged from “Engaging the Qur’an and Tafsir” to a panel discussion on Tehseen Thaver’s Beyond Sectarianism. As we look ahead, we have exciting new plans for 2025. The Call for Papers opens this January—stay tuned for details!

Publications and Open Access Milestones

The ninth volume of the Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (JIQSA) was successfully published under the expert editorial leadership of Sean W. Anthony (JIQSA), Shari Lowin (Review of Qur’anic Research), and Saqib Hussain (Associate Editor). Additionally, De Gruyter made all articles from JIQSA Volume 8 publicly accessible, with select articles from Volume 9 also available as open access. For information on subscriptions and submissions, visit our journal homepage at De Gruyter.

Celebrating Excellence: Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize

We were delighted to award the seventh annual Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize—honoring early-career scholars presenting at IQSA’s Annual Meeting—to Paul Neuenkirchen for his paper, “Fear/Remembrance of God, Prayer, and Constancy as Ways of Fighting Demons Between the Qurʾān and Late Antique Ascetic Writings.” This award not only includes a cash prize but also the opportunity for an expanded, peer-reviewed version of the paper to be published in JIQSA. The 2024–2025 Call for Submissions will open in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out!

Exciting Website Transition

IQSA is thrilled to announce the near-completion of its transition to a new and improved website and membership platform! Members can now join or renew their memberships through our new website. Please note that accounts on the previous platform cannot be transferred, so we encourage all members to set up new accounts. Bookmark beta.iqsaweb.org as the old platform will soon be retired.

Stay Connected

Stay up-to-date with IQSA’s latest developments through our blog, Facebook, Twitter, and our Google Discussion Group. For any questions, please feel free to email us at contactus@iqsaweb.org.

As we close the year, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all members, partners, and participants for making 2024 a remarkable year for IQSA. Your contributions fuel our mission to advance the study of the Qur’an and its interpretive traditions.

Here’s to an even brighter 2025!

New Publication—The Qur’an: A Guidebook

qur'anguideIQSA is excited to share the new publication of a book by Roberto Tottoli, Professor at the University of Naples, L’OrientaleI and IQSA member, The Qur’an: A Guidebook (De Gruyter 2023). The essay Reading and studying the Qur’an is an updated English version of the work appeared in Italian (Rome 2021) Leggere e studiare il Corano which deals with the contents of the Qur’an, the style and formal features of the text, the history and fixation of it and an poutline of the reception in Islamic literature.

The aim of the work is to give a reader a description of what he/she can find in the Islamic holy text and the state of the critical debates on all the topics dealt with, focusing mainly on the growing scholarly literature which appeared in the last 30 years. As such, the work is unique in combining the aim to give comprehensive information on the topic and, at the same, time, reconstruct the critical debate in a balanced outline also emphasizing confessional approaches and the dynamics in the study of the Qur’an.

There is nothing similar in contemporary scholarship and the book is a handbook for students and scholars of Islam but also for readers in religious studies who need to know how the main questions related to the Islamic text have been discussed in recent scholarship.

Find more information about the book at this link.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professor Robert Tottoli has a BA in Oriental Languages and Literatures from Venezia Ca’ Foscari (1988), and a PhD from Napoli L’Orientale (1996). He studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem under the direction of M.J. Kister (1993-94), and then taught in Turin (1999-2002) and Naples L’Orientale since 2002, where he has worked as full professor in Islamic studies since 2011. He has been Visiting Researcher/Professor at Princeton University (2014), Harvard (2015), EHESS Paris (2016), Institute for Advanced Study Tokyo (2018), University of Pennsylvania (2019) and member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 2016-17. Since 2019 he has been PI in the European project ERC-Synergy EUQU (The European Qur’an – cPI Mercedes Garcia-Arenal, Cisc, Madrid, PIs John Tolan, Nantes, Jan Lopp, Canterbury).

Prof. Tottoli has carried out research on biblical prophets in Islam (Biblical prophets in the Islamic tradition, Brescia, 1999, English translation 2002), he has dealt with Islamic literature in general and, more recently, with editions and translations of the Qur’an in the modern age (Ludovico Marracci at Work, written with R. Glei, Wiesbaden, 2016). He has translated several texts of Islamic literature into Italian (Malik, al-Muwatta’. Manual of Islamic Law, Turin, 2011, with which he won the King Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz International Award for Translation, 8th Section. 2015) and has edited works on Islam in the West (Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West, London, 2015) or on the history of Islamic civilization (The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, Hoboken, 2018, edited with A. Salvatore, B. Rahimi). Since 2011 he has been writing about Islam for Corriere della Sera.

NEW Review of Qur’anic Research, Vol. 8 no. 1 (2022) 

In the first installment of Volume 8 of IQSA’s Review of Qur’anic Research (2022), Saqib Hussain (University of Oxford) reviews Martin Whittingham’s A History of Muslim Views of the Bible: The First Four Centuries (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021).

Picture1In the review, Hussain writes “In this compact book, Martin Whittingham presents the historical beginnings of Muslim attitudes to the Bible. Billed as the first of two volumes, this installment takes us from the Qurʾān and its position on the scriptures of the “People of the Book” to the turn of the fifth century AH / eleventh century CE, i.e., up to and including the writings of Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064) and some of his contemporaries, whom Whittingham sees as marking a watershed in the way Muslims have viewed and approached the Bible. The planned second volume will continue the story to the present day. While previous studies have focused on key Muslim thinkers or specific aspects of Muslim scholarly use and/or critique of the Bible, the present work ranges far broader in its scope, seeking to present a chronology of evolving attitudes toward the Bible across a wide variety of literary genres. These attitudes are gauged both through explicit statements about the Bible from Muslim scholars, and through what may be implicitly gleaned about such attitudes from the way the Bible is utilized or discussed. The scope of the book is thus both impressive and unique, and Whittingham has produced a work that will surely be required reading for anyone interested in this field…”

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, 2022. All rights reserved. 

 

Review of Qur’anic Research, Vol. 7 no. 2 (2021)

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In the second installment of this year’s the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 7 no.2), Mona Siddiqui (University of Edinburgh) reviews Carlos A. Segovia’s The Quranic Jesus: A New Interpretation (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020).

quranicjesusIn the review, Siddiqui writes “Using a style and lens similar to “The Quranic Noah” (2015), this book is Carlos A. Segovia’s most recent contribution to the literature on the Qurʾān and its relationship to late antique Judaism and Christianity. The book also belongs to the same series, which aims to bring Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into interdisciplinary conversations about the reception and mediation of ideas within these religions. Segovia’s main purpose in this book is to “reread the Jesus passages in light of the Christological developments contemporary with the composition of the quranic corpus” (23). The author’s main concern is that in the modern study of the qurʾānic Jesus, scholars have basically moved in a single direction which is thematic and descriptive and focuses primarily on biographical episodes of Jesus and select verses which create a qurʾānic counter-Christology. This approach overlooks the multi-layered, polyvalent, and “highly complex Christology” (1) contained in the Qurʾān…”

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, 2021. All rights reserved.

The Qur’ān: A Form-Critical History

The corpus coranicum eludes familiar categories and resists strict labels. No doubt the threads woven into the fabric are exceptionally textured, varied, and complex. Accordingly, the introductory chapter of this book demonstrates the application of form criticism to the text. Chapter two then presents a form-critical study of the prayer genre. It identifies three productive formulae and addresses distinct social settings and forms associated with them. The third chapter begins by defining the liturgy genre vis-à-vis prayer in the Qurʾān. Drawing a line between the hymn and litany forms, this chapter treats each in turn. Chapter four considers the genre classified as wisdom literature. It identifies sapiential formulae and sheds light on wisdom contexts. The fifth chapter examines the narrative genre writ large. It also surveys narrative blocks of the long saga. The subsequent chapter on the proclamation genre inspects a set of vocative formulae, which occurs in the messenger situation. The concluding chapter looks at the corpus through synchronic and diachronic lenses. In the end, Qurʾānic genres encapsulate the form-critical elements of formulae, forms, and settings, as well as an historical dimension.* 

quran 

Author: Karim Samji, Gettysburg College, PA, USA
Series: Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East 32
ISBN13: 978-11-058988-4
Publication Date: March 2018 

 

*content courtesy of De Gruyter 

Qurʾān Seminar Commentary OPEN ACCESS

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IQSA is delighted to announce that the Qurʾān Seminar Commentary (De Gruyter 2016), offering new insights on the Qur’an from 25 scholars, is now available for free (see here).  The Qurʾān Seminar Commentary, including contributions in English and French from the perspective of different disciplines, offers a collaborative study of 50 central Qurʾān passages.  A full list of contributors is below.

Contributors:

Mehdi Azaiez
Patricia Crone
Michel Cuypers
Guillaume Dye
Emran El-Badawi
Reuven Firestone
Marcin Grodzki
Gerald Hawting
Asma Hilali
Frédéric Imbert
Nejmeddine Khalfallah
Manfred Kropp
Daniel Madigan
Michael Pregill
Gabriel Said Reynolds
Andrew Rippin
Mun’im Sirry
Emmanuelle Stefanidis
Devin Stewart
Esma Hind Tengour
Tommaso Tesei
Shawkat M Toorawa
Abraham Winitzer
Munther Younes
Holger Zellentin

Take advantage of this free, valuable resource HERE or copy and paste the following link: https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/462559?rskey=6OGxUY&result=1

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.