Characters Round or Flat? Hud and Salih in Context

Characters Round or Flat? Hud and Salih in Context

David Penchansky, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 2. Characters, Narratives, and Strategies in the Qur’anic Text

E.M. Forster described two kinds of characters in stories, round and flat. A round character has complex and often contradictory motives, and is full of details. A flat character is motivated by a single desire or ideé fixe. (These categories were introduced to me in an article by Evan Kindley in The New York Review of Books.) At first glance, Hud and Salih, two of the Arabian prophets introduced in the Qur’an, seem flat. The stories follow one another in Surat Hud (verses 50–68) and are structurally almost identical. Hud warns the people of Ad against the worship of gods other than the one God. They spurn the warning and God destroys them but saves the prophet. God sends the prophet Salih to Thamud which results in a similar sequence of events. However, distinctive elements in each story suggest otherwise. For instance, in the first story, the people of Ad accuse Hud of possession by their gods. In the second story, Salih reveals “the she-camel of God” as a sign and a challenge to the people of Thamud. Two more quotes from Kindley give shape to my research interest: “Character [is the] container that gives shape to the materials it contains”, and “the load-bearing mechanisms for ideas that exceed them”. I propose to examine characterization techniques in the Sura 11 account of Hud and Salih.

Confrontation between the Early Christians & their Enemies in Qur’an 61:14 & its Allusion to Luke 10

Mohammad Ghandehari, Independent Scholar
IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 2. Characters, Narratives, and Strategies in the Qur’anic Text

Aṣ-Ṣaff 61:14, reporting the victory of a group of Israelites who believed in Jesus over their enemies, has been challenging for both classical commentators and modern scholars. Modern scholarship has regarded this account significantly different from that of Jesus in the New Testament, maintaining that “this verse is not related or reflect not so much anything in the Gospels”. However, there are some pieces of evidence showing that the Qur’an is aware of the story of the mission of the seventy-two disciples in the Gospel of Luke and the Qur’anic verse alludes to Luke 10 (vv. 1 & 16–23). The account of the faithful group in the Qur’an is analogous to the way the disciples of Jesus are described in Luke 10 (their identity, the number of the group and the way Jesus sends his disciples). In both Qur’an and Luke, there is a confrontation between the disciples and their enemy, in which the strengthening that the faithful received from God was spiritual in nature, which resulted in final domination of the disciples of Jesus over their enemies. Addressing these parallels, in this paper, I will examine how the Qur’anic text relates to the Lukan narrative.

Who is Solomon of the Qur’an? An Inquiry into the Pragmatic Mind of Muhammad

Mustapha Tajdin, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Humanities and Social Sciences, UAE SA
International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 2. Characters, Narratives, and Strategies in the Qur’anic Text

It is common Knowledge that the Qur’an is replete with ancient biblical lore. In this paper, I discuss how Solomon, the biblical figure, is reformulated in the Qur’an in order to achieve some immediate goals relevant to Muhammad and his religio-political mission. I use pragmatism in its philosophical and linguistic meanings to uncover the discursive strategies the Qur’an employs for persuading its audience and refuting its opponents’ religious doctrines. Muhammad’s mindset, as expressed throughout his ministry, was highly practical and pragmatic, a fact that explains his intelligent reference to ancient biblical stories. The paper focuses on Solomon’s dealings with the queen of Sheba and demonstrates that the details in the Qur’anic story, which have no parallels in biblical or extra-biblical narratives are critical to our understanding of Muhammad’s mind and mission.

 

On Ḥanīf as an Arabic Qur’anic Term

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.

 

Reading in Abraham Hinckelmann Qur’an Edition and Sources

Abdallah El-Khatib, Qatar University, Qatar
IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 6. Carriers of the Text and Readings 1: Manuscripts, Illustrations, Amulets, and Printed Editions

Abraham Hinckelmann’s edition of the Qur’an in 1694 was a milestone in the history of Qur’an printing in Europe. This paper tries to shed light on this edition by presenting an introduction to the history of Qur’an printings in Europe. Secondly, by presenting the Qur’an manuscripts and exegetical works which Hinckelmann used. Thirdly, this paper presents some analysis about Hinckelmann’s introduction. Fourthly, I provide some remarks on the text he produced in comparison to the original text. Lastly, the aim of this paper is to give the reader a whole picture on the circumstances in which this edition was written.

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.

Deadlines Approaching! IQSA Annual Meetings 2022

Denver_Panel

The Call for Papers submission deadlines for both of IQSA’s Annual Meetings are fast approaching!

First, the extended deadline to submit paper and panel proposals for the IQSA 2022 Annual Meeting in Palermo is just 3 days away—March 7th, 2022! To submit paper and panel proposals, email to iqsa@fscire.it. This year, the International Qur’anic Studies Association’s Annual Meeting will be hosted by the Giorgio La Pira Library from September 5-7, 2022.

In addition to IQSA’s Annual Meeting in Palermo this September, members also have the opportunity to present or participate in IQSA’s Affiliate SBL/AAR Annual Meeting! The International Qur’anic Studies Association has opened its call for papers for its Annual Meeting to be held in Denver, Colorado from November 18–21, 2021 in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. Paper proposals should be submitted through the SBL’s automated online submission system under the corresponding “Affiliates” link by March 15, 2022 though 11:59 PM (23:59) Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5) (note: IQSA membership is required for proposal submission).

Questions? Email us at contactus@iqsaweb.org! We look forward to seeing you at IQSA’s events this year.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2022. All rights reserved.

New Publication: Jews and the Qur’an (Princeton U. Press, 2021)

Princeton University Press recently published Jews and the Qur’an by Meir Bar-Asher (2021). Interested readers can purchase the book here at the publisher’s website. 

jewsPublisher’s Description: In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Meir Bar-Asher examines how Jews and Judaism are depicted in the Qur’an and later Islamic literature, providing needed context to those passages critical of Jews that are most often invoked to divide Muslims and Jews or to promote Islamophobia. He traces the Qur’anic origins of the protection of Jews and other minorities living under the rule of Islam, and shows how attitudes toward Jews in Shi‘i Islam are substantially different from those in Sunni Islam. Bar-Asher sheds light on the extraordinary contribution of Jewish tradition to the Muslim exegesis of the Qur’an, and draws important parallels between Jewish religious law, or halakha, and shari‘a law.

An illuminating work on a topic of vital relevance today, Jews and the Qur’an offers a nuanced understanding of Islam’s engagement with Judaism in the time of Muhammad and his followers, and serves as a needed corrective to common misperceptions about Islam.

Hardcover

Price:
$24.95 / £20.00
ISBN:
9780691211350 
Published (US):
Nov 30, 2021
Published (UK):
Jan 4, 2022
Copyright:
2021
Pages:
192

Meir M. Bar-Asher is the Max Schloessinger Professor of Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books include Scripture and Exegesis in Early Imāmī Shiism and The Nusayrī-‘Alawī Religion: An Enquiry into Its Theology and Liturgy. He lives in Jerusalem.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2021. All rights reserved.

Qur’anic Studies in Indonesia / Studi Al-Qur’an di Indonesia, Oct 14 – Dec 30

The International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) and the Asosiasi Ilmu Al-Qur’an dan Tafsir se-Indonesia (AIAT) are happy to announce a new series of talks over Zoom: “Qur’anic Studies in Indonesia.”

Convenors: Johanna Pink and Lien Iffah Naf’atu Fina

Date and Time: October 14 – December 30, 2020. All talks will take place from 8–9pm Western Indonesian Time.

Website: Please go HERE.

NEW REGISTRATION LINKS:

You may join the first two sessions (October 14 and 21) at this link:
https://uni-freiburg.zoom.us/s/84192138019
Meeting ID: 841 9213 8019 Password: 486433059

The remaining sessions from October 28 through December 30 will be accessible through this link:
https://uni-freiburg.zoom.us/s/82700585905
Meeting ID: 827 0058 5905 Password: 478453898

Hope to see you on Zoom!

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2020. All rights reserved.

Recent Publication—The Qur’an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage by Angelika Neuwirth (Oxford University Press, 2019)

IQSA is excited to share a recent publication from the eminent Qur’an scholar Angelika Neuwirth. Neuwirth’s Der Koran als Text der Spätantike has been translated into English by Samuel Wilder and published under the title The Qur’an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage.

neuwirth

SYNOPSIS
 Typical exegesis of the Qur’an treats the text teleologically, as a fait accompli finished text, or as a replica or summary of the Bible in Arabic. Instead Neuwirth approaches the Qur’an as the product of a specific community in the Late Antique Arabian peninsula, one which was exposed to the wider worlds of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, and to the rich intellectual traditions of rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism. A central goal of the book is to eliminate the notion of the Qur’an as being ahistorical. She argues that it is, in fact, highly aware of its place in late antiquity and is capable of yielding valuable historical information. By emphasizing the liturgical function of the Qur’an, Neuwirth allows readers to see the text as an evolving oral tradition within the community before it became collected and codified as a book. This analysis sheds much needed light on the development of the Qur’an’s historical, theological, and political outlook. The book’s final chapters analyze the relationship of the Qur’an to the Bible, to Arabic poetic traditions, and, more generally, to late antique culture and rhetorical forms. By providing a new introduction to the Qur’an, one that uniquely challenges current ideas about its emergence and development, The Qur’an and Late Antiquity bridges the gap between Eastern and Western approaches to this sacred text.

Readers can purchase this book online at Oxford University Press, or find a copy at their institutional or local library.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2020. All rights reserved.

 

New Publication: Approaches to the Qur’an in Contemporary Iran (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Oxford University Press, in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, has recently published a new volume in its Qur’anic Studies Series, Approaches to the Qur’an in Contemporary Iran, edited by Alessandro Cancian (Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies).approaches

The volume is composed of seventeen chapters that touch upon different aspects of the impact, understanding and use of the Qur’an in contemporary Iran. It covers the last two centuries of reflection on revelation and scripture in the Persian-speaking world. The collection is meant to provide academics working in the fields of the intellectual and religious history of early modern and modern Iran, as well as in Qur’anic Studies, with a comprehensive overview of the richness and plurality of Iran’s engagement with the Qur’an. It achieves this by bringing together different approaches from theology, mysticism, exegesis, reformism, cinema, music, and visual and popular culture.

Lloyd Ridgeon, Reader in Islamic Studies at the University of Glasgow, gave the following review of the volume:

This essential work, composed of chapters authored by some of the world’s leading academics in Islamic and Iranian studies, provides a comprehensive analysis of how the Qur’an is received in modern Iran. The collection’s range of topics has been carefully considered, shedding light on modern hermeneutical problems, mystical ways of perceiving the sacred text, and its significance in modern cultural forms including cinema and music, among others. The chapters have been researched with meticulous care to detail. Approaches to the Qur’an in Contemporary Iran looks set to become a classic work.

 

For more information on the contributions to this volume, see the table of contents below:

Introduction: Alessandro Cancian

Section I: Power, Authority and Exegesis

1 Rational-analytical Tafsīr in Modern Iran: The Influence of the Uṣūlī School of Jurisprudence on the Interpretation of the Qur’an 19
Seyfeddin Kara

2 Striving Beyond the Balance (al-Mīzān): Spiritual Practice and the Qur’an in the Ṭabāṭabāʾī Ṭarīqa 41
Sajjad Rizvi

3 Privileging the Qur’an: Divorce and the Hermeneutics of Yūsuf Ṣāniʿī 77
Liyakat Takim

4 Al-Amr bi’l-maʿrūf and the Semiotics of Sovereignty in Contemporary Iran 101
Neguin Yavari

5 The Limits of a ‘Fixed’ Qur’an: The Iranian Religious Intellectual Movement beyond the Historical Methods 123
Banafsheh Madaninejad

6 Soroush’s Theory of Qur’anic Revelation: A Historical-Philosophical Appraisal 149
Yaser Mirdamadi

 

Section II: Alternative Approaches: Between Marginality and Legitimacy

7 A Sufi Defence of the Qur’an: Ḥusayn ʿAlī Shāh’s Rebuttal of Henry Martyn 185
Reza Tabandeh

8 Abrogation and Falsification of Scripture according to Shi‘i Authors in Iraq and Iran (19th–20th Centuries) 225
Rainer Brunner

9 Speaking the Secrets of Sanctity in the Tafsīr of Ṣafī ʿAlī Shāh 243
Nicholas Boylston

10 Exegesis and the Place of Sufism in Nineteenth-Century Twelver Shi‘ism: Sulṭān ʿAlī Shāh Gunābādīand his Bayān al-saʿāda 271
Alessandro Cancian

11 In the Company of the Qur’an by Muḥyī al-Dīn Ilāhī Ghomshei 291
Leonard Lewisohn

 

Section III: The Arts, Material Culture and Everyday Life

12 A Contemporary Illustrated Qur’an: Zenderoudi’s Illustrations of Grosjean’s Translation (1972) 325
Alice Bombardier

13 Women, the Qur’an and the Power of Calligraphy in Contemporary Iran 353
Anna Vanzan

14 The Divine Word on the Screen: Imaging the Qur’an in Iranian Cinema 375
Nacim Pak-Shiraz

15 Notes on Ritual Prayer in Iran: Qunūt Choices among a Group of Shi‘i Women 409
Niloofar Haeri

16 Twelver Shi‘i Women’s Appropriation of the Qur’an in Contemporary Iran 421
Ingvild Flaskerud

17 The Qur’an as an Aesthetical Model in Music? The Case of Muḥammad Riḍā Shajariyān between the Qur’an and radīf 445
Giovanni De Zorzi

Want to read more? Buy this book online.

 

Text accessed and reproduced with the kind permission of Alessandro Cancian.

 

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2019. All rights reserved.

 

 

Preliminary Considerations on the Corpus Coranicum Christianum: The Qur’ān in Translation – A Survey of the State of the Art | December 5 – 7, 2018, Berlin

The Corpus Coranicum project requires little introduction to the readers of this blog. Its emerging daughter project, hosted by the FU Berlin, Corpus Coranicum Christianum, developed out of the doctoral research conducted by Manolis Ulbricht, co-supervised by Angelika Neuwirth, on the early Greek translation of the Qurʾān preserved in Nicetas of Byzantium’s Refutation of the Qurʾān (c.870). At present, the long-term goal of this interdisciplinary project is to study qurʾānic translations from the seventh century to the early modern period, in the principal ‘Christian’ languages, i.e. Greek, Syriac, and Latin, comparatively, and to make these texts available online through a synoptic digital edition. The aim of this initial workshop was three-fold: (i) to bring together scholars from various disciplines working on qurʾānic translations; (ii) to establish a methodological framework for a future digital database and a comparative analysis for translation techniques; and (iii) to explore avenues for further collaboration.

corpuscor

The scope of the sources included in this preliminary workshop was intentionally broad, ranging from full translations to quotations, or mere allusions to the qurʾānic text. As most source material is available in Latin, the Corpus Coranum Latinum made up the most prominent part of the programme, with three panels. In a first panel devoted to the earliest sources, the translations by Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo were assessed with regards to the issue of the readership (Nàdia Petrus Pons) and the presence of scientific vocabulary (Julian Yolles). In addition, the qurʾānic quotations included in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin translations of Arabic scientific treatises were examined (Charles Burnett). A second panel examined the sources through which Latin Christians read the Qurʾān, with papers on the Latin glosses in Latin and Arabic Qurʾāns (José Martínez Gázquez), Robert of Ketton’s use of Ṭabarī’s tafsīr (J. L. Alexis Rivera Luque), and the question of the character of Ramon Marti’s Islamic sources (Görge K. Hasselhoff). The focus of the third panel was on early modern Qurʾān translations, with papers on the sixteenth-century translation by Egidio da Viterbo (Katarzyna K. Starczewska), the seventeenth-century translation and commentary by the Jesuit, Ignazio Lomellini (Paul Shore), and the recently discovered 1632 translation by Johann Zechendorff (Reinhold F. Glei). Finally, a presentation of the ERC-funded project on the Qurʾān in European cultural history, which will commence soon, should also be mentioned here (Jan Loop).

The single panel of Greek Qurʾān translations covered both the first appearances of the Qurʾān in Byzantium, as well as the late Byzantine Period. The former period was addressed with papers on the linguistic character of the eighth – ninth-century Greek translation, especially its non-classical vocabulary (Erich Trapp), and the historical background of Muslim-Byzantine rivalry behind its emergence (Jakub Sypiański). The late period involved papers appraising the knowledge of the Qurʾān and Islam by Gregory Palamas (Evangelos Katafylis) and John VI Cantacuzene (Marco Fanelli)

Papers on the Corpus Coranicum Syriacum, the language least represented at this workshop, were presented on the qurʾānic quotations in the Arabic disputation of Abū Qurra with the Caliph al-Maʾmūn, which were compared with those contained in the Garshuni version of the Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā (Yousef Kouriyhe), and on the double/triple occurences of qurʾānic verses in Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī’s Disputation against the Arabs (Alexander M. Schilling).

A special panel on the interdisciplinary nature of the overall project and its implications was entitled Corpus Coranicum Christianum – A Digitalized Trial Version. It consisted of papers on the Greek translation preserved by Nicetas of Byzantium (Manolis Ulbricht), the Syriac excerpts from the Qurʾān in Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī’s Disputation against the Arabs (Bert Jacobs), and the Latin translation by the seventeenth-century Fransiscan Germanus de Silesia (Ulisse Cecini). Prior to the workshop, these three scholars had agreed to provide micro-editions of selected common passages (Q 3:42-7; 90:1-4; 112), which were digitally processed in an online interactive edition by Joel Kalvesmaki (see http://textalign.net/quran/). The trial session continued with a presentation on the make-up and functions of this tool (Joel Kalvesmaki), and concluded with a brief comparison of the translation techniques applied to the selected materials.

Besides the work on the sources themselves, the workshop gave special attention to the use of digital humanities in the study of qurʾānic translations. This included an introductory workshop on the goals and techniques of the DH (Nadine Arndt, Oliver Pohl), as well as presentations on the Paleocoran Project (Oliver Pohl), the interactive digital edition of the New Testament (Holger Strutwolf), Ediarum (Nadine Arndt), and the valence of TEI for editing synoptic editions (Joel Kalvesmaki).

The proceedings of this first Corpus Coranicum Christianum workshop are planned for publication. A second workshop will be held in the near future.

Bert Jacobs, KU Leuven

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2019. All rights reserved.