Call for Papers: Syriac and Arabia Symposium (Hugoye Symposium VI)

Call for Papers: Syriac and Arabia Symposium (Hugoye Symposium VI)

bethBeth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute is holding its sixth Hugoye symposium on April 24-25, 2020, at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. This year’s topic is Syriac and Arabia. While there has been much on the contribution of Syriac to the Abbasid translation movement, research on the connections between Syriac and Arabic before Islam and during the early years of Islam is in its infancy. This workshop aims to bring together scholars who cross the Syriac studies and Arabic/Islamic studies divide in the hope of forming a framework for the study of the Syriac-Arabic interface. Scholars interested in participating may send via email a proposal between 750 and 1,000 words. Submission deadline is February 29, 2020. Submissions are to be sent via email directly to George A. Kiraz at gkiraz@ias.edu. Scholars are expected to fund their travel to/from and accommodation in Princeton. The Institute will provide meals and a conference celebratory dinner. Speakers will be invited to contribute to a collected volume on an agreed-upon theme.

 

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

 

 

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.

1

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.

2

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.

3

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.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2018. All rights reserved.

Workshop: Linked Data and Syriac Sources, Amsterdam, March 2018

Around 30 scholars from more than a dozen different countries met in Amsterdam in mid-March for two days of discussions and presentations on developments in digital humanities in Syriac language and literature.

1

George Kiraz of the Beth Mardutho Institute presents an update on the SEDRA project.

Participants were welcomed to the workshop and Amsterdam by Professor Joke van Saane, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Theology at VU Amsterdam and Professor Wido van Peursen, the workshop organizer and host.

Following an overview of digital Syriac projects in the Netherlands (CALAP, Turgama, Polemics Visualized, Topic Visualizer for Syriac texts, LinkSyr: Linking Syriac Data (CLARIAH), Linked Data and Syriac Sources, Electronic Peshitta Text, e-CSCO), Professor van Peursen explained the methodology behind the projects, which aim to produce more reliable versions of Syriac texts than are currently available.

Hannes Vlaardingerbroek (Leiden/Amsterdam), presented an overview of the LinkSyr project, which is using data in the form of tagged and untagged morphological terms from existing projects and materials and collating them into one dataset, with 160,000 items already tagged of what will eventually comprise more than 1 million terms. However, there is not enough data to train reliable HMM language models: existing tagging methods for Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic, use large corpora to train language models, which are not currently available for Syriac. Syromorph (BYU) claims high accuracy but is not yet compatible with the LinkSyr data. Mathias Coeckelbergs (Brussels and Leuven), discussed the nature of the data in more detail and longer-term plans, such as linking terms to the syriaca.org database, providing automatic reading tools for non-Syriac specialists and more efficient search facilities. The data has some limits, as it works by recognizing surface forms, which can have multiple translations. Eventually, it is hoped the classification of URIs will be more data-driven and searchable for specific collections of texts.

Following this, George Kiraz (Beth Mardutho) described the process for converting Syriac lexicons from image to text files, creating an on-line, searchable dictionary, as part of the SEDRA project. While SEDRA was designed specifically for Syriac, the project has the technical capability to be expanded to include other Semitic languages and is looking for funding to achieve this longer-term aim.

David A. Michelson (Vanderbilt) provided an update on the syriaca.org project, which has minted URIs for places, persons, primary source texts and citations (bibliographic items), and published them online. URIs relating to factoids (events), ontology (keyword classification) and manuscripts are available as raw data. The project is currently looking for someone to do the same for artifacts. Daniel L. Schwartz (Texas A&M) talked participants through the various features the sitee offers.

Jamie Walters (Oxford-BYU Syriac Corpus) talked participants through the structure and functions of the Oxford-BYU website and the new edition of Hugoye, to be launched this summer.

2

Jamie Walters showcases the Oxford-BYU Syriac Corpus

Daniel Stökl ben Ezra (EPEH Paris), demonstrated the interface and search functions offered by the ThALES lectionary database, which includes material in Syriac and Arabic.

In the afternoon a number of breakout sessions discussed lexicography, named entities, liturgy, text corpus creation, scholars’ needs and interests, how to bridge Syriac linked data and the Syriac community and linking to other traditions such as Arabic and Ethiopic and brainstormed recommendations and suggestions for future projects.

The workshop provided a rare opportunity for face-to-face discussion and exchange amongst scholars working with Syriac in a variety of fields and it is to be hoped that the connections that were made at the workshop continue to develop to the benefit of current and future projects.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2018. All rights reserved.

Jesus and Islam (Jésus et l’islam) – NEW Documentary

By Emran El-Badawi

Jésus et l'islam (arte.tv)

Jésus et l’islam (arte.tv)

Six hours and thirty minutes is the duration of the new seven part documentary series on Jesus and Islam. The film Jésus et l’islam / Jesus und der Islam is presented in three versions (French, German and English) and features twenty six academic specialists from around the world–including several current and former IQSA members. The specialists include historians, philologists, theologians, archeologists, experts on manuscripts and other subjects. The film was directed by Jérôme Prieur and Gérard Mordillat and is a production of Archipel 33, ARTE and in collaboration with the Centre National du Cinema and the Bibliothèque Nationale.

The documentary film was aired the week of December 8 and has been widely acclaimed in the French and German media. The film itself was in production for years, where directors Prieur and Mordillat methodically crafted a documentary exploring the role of Jesus in shaping Islam. The most important text for consideration, therefore, was the Qur’an–Islam’s holiest scripture and oldest historical document. In doing so the directors have asked the experts questions about the distinctly Islamic theological perspective on Christ and how and why it differs from Christianity. As the film demonstrates answering such questions can be complex and even controversial. Therefore, it also introduces viewers to the different academic schools (traditionalist, revisionist or otherwise) and their perspectives on the Qur’an, Jesus and Muhammad.

Jérôme Prieur and Gérard Mordillat (arte.tv)

Jérôme Prieur and Gérard Mordillat (arte.tv)

Each part of Jesus and Islam explores a major theme. The seven themes are:

  1. The crucifixion according to the Qur’an
  2. The origins of the text
  3. The son of Mary
  4. The prophet’s emigration
  5. The religion of Abraham
  6. The book of Islam
  7. Jesus according to Muhammad
Jésus selon Mahomet (seiul.com)

Jésus selon Mahomet (seiul.com)

The seventh part of the series also inspired a book, Jésus selon Mahomet,in which the directors discuss their own views and perspectives. Prieur and Mordillat are seasoned writers and film directors who, among other things, specialize in documentary films on the history and formation of the Abrahamic religions. Their earlier works include Corpus Christi, L’Origine du Christianisme and L’apocalypse.

There will be an exclusive, members only screening of Jesus and Islam at the next IQSA annual meeting on November 18-21, 2016 in San Antonio, Texas, USA. CLICK HERE  to renew your IQSA membership for 2016 NOW!

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2015.

On the Qur’an and Modern Standard Arabic

by Gabriel Said Reynolds*

Moses Set Out on the Nile in a Reed Basket. Engraving by Bernhard Rode, ca. 1775; photo accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

Moses Set Out on the Nile in a Reed Basket. Engraving by Bernhard Rode, ca. 1775; photo accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

Qurʾan 20:39 recalls how God instructed Moses’ mother to place her infant son in a tābūt and set him upon a river, that he might escape Pharaoh. In Modern Standard Arabic, tābūt can mean “box, case, chest, coffer” or “casket, coffin, sarcophagus,” and many translators render tābūt in the Qur’an in light of one or another of these meanings. Asad (“chest”), Hilali-Khan (“a box or a case or a chest”), Yusuf Ali (“chest”), Hamidullah (“coffret”), and Paret (“Kasten”) all choose the first meaning; Quli Qaraʾi (“casket”) chooses the second.

The awkward image of the infant Moses floating on the Nile in a casket illustrates the problem of understanding Qurʾanic terms in light of their meanings in Modern Standard Arabic. Not all translators do so. Pickthall and Arberry, among others, render tābūt, “ark.” This dramatically different translation presumably reflects the influence of Qurʾan 2:248, where the Qurʾan uses tābūt for the Ark of the Covenant.

In fact, Q 2:248 is the key to understanding tābūt in Q 20:39. Tābūt reflects the Hebrew term tebā (itself a borrowing from Egyptian), the term used for the basket in which Moses’ mother places him (Exodus 2:3; tebā evidently means “basket” here because it is made Q2out of reeds). Tebā is also used for the ark that Noah builds (Genesis 6:14, 15, passim). As Arthur Jeffery (Foreign Vocabulary, 88-89) notes, Qurʾanic tābūt is closer in form to Aramaic tībū (used in Targum Onkelos for both Noah’s ark and Moses’ basket) and even more so to Ethiopic tābot. The connection with Ethiopic tābot might be particularly important since it (like Syriac qebūtā) is used for Noah’s ark, Moses’ basket, and the Ark of the Covenant.

In any case, my point here is not to make an argument about a particular etymology for tābūt but rather to illustrate the danger of relying on Modern Standard Arabic in our reading of the Qurʾan. The way in which the Qurʾan uses tābūt for both Moses’ basket (Q 20:39) and the Ark of the Covenant (Q 2:248) reflects the Biblical background of this term. Therefore, in Qurʾan 20:39, tābūt might be understood in light of this background to mean simply “basket” (even if this meaning is not found in Hans Wehr’s dictionary).

Tābūt is not the only example of the problem of Modern Standard Arabic understandings of the Qurʾan. Qur’an 3:44 alludes to the account of the contest between the widowers of Israel over Mary. In the version of this account in the (2nd century) Protoevangelium of James, all of the widows hand their staffs (as lots) to the priest Zechariah, in whose care Mary has been kept in the Jerusalem Temple. From the last staff, that of Joseph, a dove emerges, indicating that he is God’s choice. The term that the Qurʾan uses for these staffs is qalam (pl. aqlām), from Greek kalamos (“reed”). Yet qalam also came to mean “pen,” and indeed this is its common meaning in Modern Standard Arabic. Thus if one reads the Qurʾan in light of Modern Standard Arabic, Q 3:44 would seem to involve throwing pens around.

A final case, the term dīn, has theological consequences. As Mun’im Sirry points out in his recent work Scriptural Polemics: The Qurʾan and Other Religions (esp. 66-89), many modern commentators understand Qurʾanic occurrences of dīn to denote “religion,” and indeed translators almost always render dīn “religion” (for Q 3:19 I did not find any cases where it is translated otherwise). This has important consequences, especially with verses such as Q 3:19 and 85, which can be read to mean that Islam is the only acceptable religion. Yet in light of Semitic and non-Semitic cognates (such as Syriac dīnā), Qurʾanic dīn might have—in some instances at least—a more general meaning of “judgment” (hence the phrase yawm al-dīn). In other instances, dīn might mean something closer to religious disposition, rather than religion in the modern sense of a communal system of faith and worship. Accordingly, students of the Qurʾan should be wary of reading dīn, or any Qurʾanic term, through the lens of Modern Standard Arabic.

* Gabriel Said Reynolds researches the Qur’an and Muslim/Christian relations and is Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the Department of Theology at Notre Dame.
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2014. All rights reserved.

Rethinking Genre and the Qur’an: Question-and-Answer Literature

By David Bertaina

The observation that many Qur’anic passages are dialogical has been apparent to its readers from medieval to modern commentators. Its utterances frequently consist of dialogues between God, its announcer and audience, as well as Biblical and non-Biblical characters. Scholars have devoted substantial attention to character dialogues and the study of genre. However, we have not yet fully exploited the potential relationship between the Qur’an and Late Antique question-and-answer literature.

Syriac text (in MS London British Museum Add. 14,533, ca. 8th-9th c.) including twenty-three questions posed by Thomas the monk in the cloister on Mar Bassos in Egypt to John Philoponus (Yahya al-Nahwi, d. ca. 570). Each question consists of two parts, an orthodox thesis and a Tritheistic antithesis, and ends with a yes-or-no dilemma concerning possible answers.

Syriac text (in MS London British Museum Add. 14,533, ca. 8th-9th c.) including twenty-three questions by Thomas the monk in the cloister on Mar Bassos in Egypt to John Philoponus (Yahya al-Nahwi, d. ca. 570). Each question consists of two parts, an orthodox thesis and a Tritheistic antithesis, and ends with a yes-or-no dilemma concerning possible answers.

We might think of the Qur’anic text as divine responses to questioning audiences. Indeed, as Sidney Griffith argues in The Bible in Arabic (2013), the Qur’an insists that it recalls, answers, and corrects earlier Jewish and Christian notions regarding scripture and revelation. For example, Q 2:140 adjudicates between Jews and Christians regarding the true ancestry of the Biblical Patriarchs: “Question: Were Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes [of Israel] Jews or Christians? Answer: Who knows better, you or God?” In this illustration, the Qur’an recollects a disputation in order to answer it in kind. Why might the Qur’an find this method of question and answer so popular?

Bertaina_MS Jerusalem St Mark Syriac 129

Syriac text (in MS Jerusalem Saint Mark’s Monastery Syriac 129) containing ten questions and answers by Quryaqos of Tagrit, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch (793-817), to Deacon Isho of Tarmanaz. This text shows the enduring popularity of the genre. (Image courtesy of David Bertaina)

One suggestion is that the Qur’an found its literary inspiration from the Late Antique context in which it materialized. By the sixth century, Jewish and Christian authors commonly used the question-and-answer genre for instruction, scholarly debates, and oral contests. For instance, 1 Kings 10:1 mentions that the Queen of Sheba tested Solomon with a series of questions during her visit to Jerusalem. Most Jewish, Christian, and Muslim commentaries interpreted these questions to be riddles. But in a Late Antique Syriac question-and-answer text, it begins: “Question: What is your God, and what does he resemble, or to what is he likened?Answer: My God is something from which everything else derives, and is exalted above everything; and he has no comparison, and there is nothing that is like him, because everything (else) is changeable and subject to opposition.” The resonance with passages in Q 112 and 42:11 are remarkable, particularly if we think of 112 as an answer (qul) to a question.

My hope is that more scholars of Qur’anic studies may be interested in exploring the possible role of question-and-answer material in the Qur’an’s development. As a starting point, I would suggest that this process did not consist of direct borrowing or influence from Syriac texts. Nor is it appropriate to reduce Qur’anic material to Syriac or Christian Arabic debates or a mixture of interreligious conversations. Rather, the Qur’an is an active agent that witnessed question-and-answer events, suggesting its familiarity and comfort with Late Antique question-and-answer styles, both in oral and written form. Given that bilingual Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians were familiar with this material, we should not be surprised to witness the Qur’an employ its own arguments in a similar vein.

Further research is needed to grasp the implications of the question-and-answer genre’s relationship to real oral discussions reported in the Qur’an. Likewise we need to understand more fully the ways in which bodies of knowledge were transmitted and transformed via question-and-answer material. The International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) remains an excellent venue for continuing this conversation.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2014. All rights reserved.

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

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)

(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.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2014. All rights reserved

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)

(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

  1. Sources and Method
  2. Prophetic Tradition in the Late Antique Near East
  3. Prophets and their Righteous Entourage
  4. The Evils of the Clergy
  5. The Divine Realm
  6. Divine Judgement and the Apocalypse
  7. 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

  1. Islam
  2. Scriptures of Islam
  3. Biblical Studies

For complete product information on El-Badawi’s book please go here.

* Accessed from the publisher’s product page.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2013. All rights reserved.

A Course on the Qur’an as Literature

By Emran El-Badawi

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)

(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.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2013. All rights reserved.

PhD Students in Qur’anic Studies: Interview Series Part 1

A conversation between Mehdi Azaiez and Tommaso Tesei

Since its creation, IQSA has been defined as a network of a diverse range of scholars and educators, serving to advocate for the field of Qur’anic studies both in higher education and in the public square. Within this scope, IQSA will present three interviews over the following weeks with PhD students working in the field of Qur’anic studies. We begin with Tommaso Tesei, a PhD Student working mainly on the Qur’an’s cultural relationship with the Late Antique world.

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Tommaso, what are your academic achievements in the field of Qur’anic studies ?

My interest in Qur’anic studies has matured over the last three years, from my doctoral studies at both La Sapienza University in Rome and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris to my research for the European Research Council project, “The Here and the Hereafter in Islamic Traditions” (University of Utrecht, Sept.–Dec. 2012). Most recently I have undertaken work as a Mellon doctoral fellow with the “Qur’an Seminar” (University of Notre Dame, Dec. 2012–Sept. 2013).

What is the aim of your research?

My research emerges from current trends in Qur’anic Studies that seek to excavate and explore the religio-cultural ties between the Qur’anic text and its historical environment. The major aim is to inquire into the relationship between the Qur’an and the cultural and intellectual history of the Late Antique Near East. To this end, my study focuses on three main issues: [1] the study of two consecutive pericopes found in Surat al-Kahf (Q 18:60–82, 83–102); [2] Qur’anic cosmological imagery; and [3] the Qur’an’s teachings about death and the afterlife, that is, its eschatology. In the following lines I will provide some details about each issue.

Could you introduce these three topics and their importance for the field of Qur’anic studies?

1. The study of verses 60–82 and 83–102 of Surat al-Kahf represents the topic of my PhD thesis, scheduled to be defended in June of 2013. The narratives contained in these two pericopes are characterized by their strong analogies with several Late Antique legends concerning Alexander the Great, which occur in Greek, Hebrew and Syriac literature. The Syriac Christian versions of these legends are particularly interesting for my study, as they occur in two works composed in 629 CE and c. 635 CE, respectively, and are thus contemporary to the period in which the Qur’an’s prophet purportedly preached. Therefore, the comparative study of the two Qur’anic pericopes with these Syriac legends offers an exceptional opportunity to investigate the relationship between the Qur’an and its cultural environment. A major aim of my thesis is to highlight, through this specific case study, the Qurʾan’s engagement with previous and contemporary Judeo-Christian literature.

Beyond focusing on the literary, thematic and cultural connections between the Qur’anic pericopes and the Alexander legends, my research also sets out to explore: the purposes behind the Qur’an’s introduction of these narratives into its theological discourse, its method of adapting them to its theological agenda, and its interest in omitting or adding elements that either are or are not found in the Christian and Jewish versions of the accounts concerning Alexander.

2. My research in Qur’anic cosmology principally seeks to investigate the extent to which the Arabic scripture shares the beliefs about the shape of the universe that were widespread within its historical environment.. Through this analysis I also intend to improve our understanding of the Qur’an’s text itself. Indeed, several Qur’anic verses and passages can be better explained if read in light of Late Antique cosmological imagery.

The situation is comparable to that of a passage in a contemporary book mentioning the existence of a black hole. This passage, of course, would appear cryptic or nonsensical without any knowledge of the astronomy of our historical period. An illustrative example is the formula ǧannātun taǧrī min taḥtihā l-ˈanhāru (lit. “gardens from beneath which the rivers flow”), which frequently marks the Qur’anic descriptions of Paradise. Indeed, this sentence seems to refer to a cosmological concept fairly prevalent during Late Antiquity, according to which the rivers of Paradise (or Eden) reach the inhabited part of the world by flowing under the sea. In this case, the expression min taḥtihā, “from beneath which,” would represent an allusion to both the place of origin and the subterranean course of the paradisiacal rivers. Moreover, the presence of the determinative article before the word ˈanhār suggests that the Qur’an is speaking of (all) the rivers. This would reflect the ancient Near Eastern (and Biblical) idea that the rivers of the Earth have a divine origin and a source located in a paradisiacal land.

3. My third and final research interest is mostly concerned with the relation between the Qur’an’s eschatology and the eschatological systems of various other religious communities of the Late Antique Near East—principally Jewish and Christian but also Mandaean and Manichaean. This comparative approach offers an entry-point for scholars to investigate the doctrines—eschatological or other—professed by the Qur’anic text.

Being primarily an exhortative text, the Arabic scripture generally seeks neither to establish a systematic theology nor to provide its audience with elucidations on its theological statements. For instance, the Qur’an does not explain in detail whether the resurrection will be physical or what fate the dead will undergo while they wait for resurrection and judgment. At the same time, the Arabic scripture repeatedly makes allusions to doctrines dealing with these and other questions—doctrines that were widespread in the Late Antique Near East. The early Muslim community was therefore ostensibly familiar with these doctrines.

Thus, a thorough comparative analysis of the eschatological creeds professed by contemporaries of the early Muslim community is crucial to a correct understanding of the Qur’an’s theological presentation of death and the afterlife. My major aim is to reestablish—starting from the clues and allusions found in the Qur’anic text—the system of ideas underlying the eschatological doctrines professed in the Qur’an.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2013. All rights reserved.