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 Topic: Qur'anic studies today

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  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2640 - July 30, 2018, 02:48 AM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 02:10 AM
    I am aware of the topographical arguments for an extra-Arabia provenance for the Quran. But to claim the Muslims were not agreement about Mecca's location by that time Ibn Ishaq was writing is absurd. Prior to Ibn Ishaq, did writer such as Malik b. Anas going for pilgrimage somewhere in Northwestern Arabia? Of course not.


    What I mean is that Mecca is a litterary fiction hence why it doesn't tie up with today's Mecca.

    The only issue with Dan Gibson is that his whole book is focused on showing Mecca= Petra and therefore he miss the point.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2641 - July 30, 2018, 02:58 AM
    Has anyone clicked on the links, looked at the directions, put an early mosque in google earth and checked the direction was my real question.

    We can rely on others to form our opinion but maybe we should do some clicking ourselves? Did you read Kings article for the "muslim heritage"foundation? Enough to be skeptical I would say.  Most of all he seems to be having a tantrum...

    Marc,

    I think Gibson's biggest contributions are

    1/ Making a list of early mosques, the big number of them and their location is by itself a very interesting fact imo..
    2/ Noticing the obvious: these early mosques are not pointing to Mecca

    The rest of his work (which is also significant) is compared to these items above "petite histoire".
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2642 - July 30, 2018, 04:27 AM
    The Deus article concerning Qiblas: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/AJ_Deus/publication/307513392_SURA_2_MANY_QIBLAS_The_Qibla_in_the_Koran_Abu_Lahab_and_the_Birth_of_Islam/links/57c76ae908ae28c01d4f8344/SURA-2-MANY-QIBLAS-The-Qibla-in-the-Koran-Abu-Lahab-and-the-Birth-of-Islam.pdf?origin=publication_detail

    Well... quite speechless here. The article contains a complete destruction of David King. And only mentions Gibson in his conclusion saying he wrote his article to valuate Gibson's method which he doesnt do. He discredits Gibson's method but doesnt say why, doesnt waste any energy on it.

    Instead he comes up with a chaotic system himself that is impossible to follow within his article.

    In his conclusion he does mention that he agrees that mosque Qiblas only pointed to Mecca beginning 8th C.

    So academics out there, maybe someone  wants to really address Gibson's article in a serious way and not out of spite (King) or not in a super-chaotic-superlative-zealous way (Deus).
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2643 - July 30, 2018, 08:10 AM
    Quote from: Marc S on July 30, 2018, 01:09 AM
    The Mecca described in Ibn Ishaq Sira, and in other muslim writings, doesn't look like today's Mecca. Dan Gibson shows this quite well in his book Quranic Geography.


    Yes. It is a reinvented Mecca, on the model of Petra by Bukhari, etc. As if to describe London, you take the model of Leeds.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2644 - July 30, 2018, 08:57 AM
    So what if King wrote his article for a Muslim site? His arguments are to be taken seriously, despite him being polemical.

    I was not referring to that article, dear Mundi, but to his review of Gibson's work on goodreads. Here is the most relevant part of his review:

    Quote
    We need to establish more fundamentals that Gibson also did not deliver: how precisely were the builders able to orient mosques toward any desired location? It turns out that they were exact to roughly one degree in latitude and longitude (!), even if a building would be located 1500 km away. Thus, deviations that are much larger than one degree need to be dismissed as out of range of a desired destination.

    While measuring structural orientations from satellite images is tedious but precise (+/- 0.25°), within a few days, each mosque could have been mapped out precisely by the author. For whichever reason, in a separate table that I obtained from Gibson, he merely states ‘Petra’ as direction with no measurements or deviations provided. After careful re-examination, it appears that any building that sort of looks in the direction of Petra, was taken as evidence. This includes many buildings that are as far off as 10° and more or even 30°. Within the parameters just described, not a single mosque or building on his list points to Petra with one exception in Oman that comes within 1° of Petra (built during the author’s claimed ‘time of confusion’ and attributable to mere chance).

    Thus, would Gibson have been just a little bit more careful, or had his work been reviewed by an alert peer, it would have become clear that the evidence provides no grounds to conclude that Petra had a play in Islam. Quite in contrary, one can make a confident case that Petra has nothing to do with the emergence of Islam.

    The picture that emerges makes it clear why a similar pattern of one focal point has not shown up long ago. The directions of these structures are fairly precise, and there is not a mistake of 2, 3, or more degrees. As the orientation of later mosques shows, they are pretty much smack on. What we could say so far (if anything) is that a) the earliest known Muslim structures were not oriented toward either Mecca or Petra, and from this follows that b) an orientation toward Petra could only confirm a non-Muslim structure.

    On the other end is Gibson’s case that 100% of the mosques from the Abbasid times would be built oriented toward Mecca. However, one of the most important holy sites for the Shi’ites is the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra. This tenth century mosque is not oriented toward Mecca — the hundred-year older Great Mosque of Samarra is. Some traditions indeed suggest that not everybody had made use of the complete Koran. If Sura 2 had been missing for some, or if the related verses were missing, then the orientation of the mosques would not yet have been defined for them. Yet, that would require that they would be oriented toward the ‘old’ focal point, which with certainty is not Petra.

    It is not possible to reconcile Gibson’s thesis with the realities on the ground. Neither do many early mosques have been oriented toward Petra (perhaps a few within a broader margin and perhaps by mere chance) nor has the ‘time of confusion’ ended in the middle of the eighth century.

    Gibson’s chapter about navigation and pre-Islamic poetry is informative, even excellent. In essence, it tells the reader ‘that the Arabs would have no trouble accurately determining the direction of the qibla for their mosques’ – and that is the final nail in the coffin to a theory that rests on an inexact orientation of an arbitrary selection of mosques. 

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2645 - July 30, 2018, 09:46 AM
    Does King mean to say in this article that all mosks whose qibla is oriented towards Petra as claimed by Gibson actually are not ?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2646 - July 30, 2018, 09:53 AM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 02:17 AM
    And I would take Dan Gibson's claims - some of them at least - with a grain of salt. Examples of such are abound.  

    Mahgraye   NOT JUST DAN GIBSON CLAIMS ....  claims of everyone in the field  of  early Islam should  be taken with grains of salt.  And the claims of every faith head in all faiths should be taken with grains of salt and sand ..  
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2647 - July 30, 2018, 11:36 AM
    Thanks for the book review that Deus wrote. It is clearly aligned (or based on?) the article he wrote.

    First concerning KIng. It is not because het wrote his reply for "muslim heritage"that I find it lacking, it is the very emotional style and the type of arguments he uses clearly looking down on Gibson being somewhat the main one. Did you read it Magrayye? And Gibson's reply to it? In any case, if someone thinks Deus is a good reference to take down Gibson, he can also use him to take down King. Deus completely destroys King's opinion on the orientation of early mosques, something Gibson does not do. Gibson just claims that he is covering the time span (7-8C) that King is not (King does the "mathematical period", from 9C on).

    The new concept Deus throws into the argument is that he says  early Islam shows a continuity with pre Islam. He mainly refers to jewish structures but in such a complex way that I havent understood the drift yet... But that in itself is an interesting point Deus makes. If someone could hold his hand and write a simple focussed article on it, it would be wonderful.

    But then he says that the pre and early Islam people could direct their buildings with complete precision (meaning something like 0.1 dg) which is exactly the opposite of King's critique. King says Gibson is wrong because the early Muslims had no way of precisely directing Qiblas, so everything is really towards Mecca even if it is very far off.

    I can agree with Deus that just assuming it couldnt be done is a weak argument. But his ultra precision is not credible either. The fact that his main argument against Gibson (the Samarra mosque)  which is a 10C mosque and is a period Gibson does not cover says a lot. I think summarized, Deus'work takes down King and his work much more than he takes down Gibson. Deus does agree early mosques dont point to Mecca...

    So my conclusion stays. We need more work to be done on Gibson's Qiblas by cool headed researchers that want to review in an objective scientific way. Neither King nor Deus has done it and both critiques contradict each other. 

    Gibson has kind of been ostracized from the scientific community, I wonder why the same has not happened to Deus because he also claims the early mosques dont point to Mecca and his work is much more chaotic.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2648 - July 30, 2018, 12:31 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 08:57 AM
    So what if King wrote his article for a Muslim site? His arguments are to be taken seriously, despite him being polemical.

    I was not referring to that article, dear Mundi, but to his review of Gibson's work on goodreads. Here is the most relevant part of his review:

    Quote
    We need to establish more fundamentals that Gibson also did not deliver: how precisely were the builders able to orient mosques toward any desired location? It turns out that they were exact to roughly one degree in latitude and longitude (!), even if a building would be located 1500 km away. Thus, deviations that are much larger than one degree need to be dismissed as out of range of a desired destination.


    Who wrote that statement ?? I wonder did he  or any one  list all the Mosques that were built between say  600 AD to 1200 AD  and describe their position/orientation  w.r.t praying  for Salat ?? .. The so-called Qibla??

    otherwise that statement    "deviations that are much larger than one degree need to be dismissed as out of range" need  to be dismissed out rightly...
    Quote
    1.  From Petra back to Makka – From “Pibla” back to Qibla by  David A King 

    2.Response to David King by  Dan Gibson

    3. Introduction to mosque architecture

    4). List of Old Mosques


    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2649 - July 30, 2018, 01:11 PM
    Yeezevee,


    Spot on!

    Deus uses here an argument against Gibson (ultra-precision required) which is opposite to King (precision is impossible). So both critics use opposite arguments to discredit  Gibson. Deus says Gibson is not precise enough, King says Gibson claims precision that is not possible.

    I think the truth is in the middle. The precision Deus advocates is BS. The lack of precision King wants to be the norm is too easy way out of explaining misdirected Qiblas.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2650 - July 30, 2018, 02:45 PM
    The most interesting findings is that the early mosques are not oriented towards "Mecca" in the "Hijaz". It shows that these Arabs, have no idea (at all) of what is supposed to be their own history recounted by the historiographers of the 9th c.
    It is simply not possible to accept that.Therefore, these people does not come from  "Mecca" in the "Hijaz". And the story recounted by the historiographers of the 9th . is either inexact , not reliable, or false.
    That is for me the most important.
    As Gibson is not an historian, he cannot realize that Petra due to its location (included in the Roman Empire and its network of cities in Palestine, etc), his sociological composition (heavily Grecized and Christianised) cannot be the place where a man states publicly during 20 years+ that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob talks to him regularly that this extraordinary event cannot remain totally unknown outside of this city. It seems improbable for any scholar of Late Antiquity, unless this city is on planet Mars.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2651 - July 30, 2018, 03:16 PM
    Yeah. Every scholars claims should be taken with a grain of salt. One cannot be inconsistent.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2652 - July 30, 2018, 03:19 PM
    The problem is if the Arabs did not have the means to accurately direct the Mosques towards Mecca in Western Arabia, then Gibson's argument concerning the early Mosques is too weak, considering that Gibson entire argument is built on the assumption that the Arabs had the means to accurately direct their Mosques towards Mecca.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2653 - July 30, 2018, 03:28 PM
    Altara,

    Quote
    As Gibson is not an historian, he cannot realize that Petra due to its location (included in the Roman Empire and its network of cities in Palestine, etc), his sociological composition (heavily Grecized and Christianised) cannot be the place where a man states publicly during 20 years+ that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob talks to him regularly that this extraordinary event cannot remain totally unknown outside of this city.


    Now you fall in the trap of attaching too much importance to the islamic mythology. Of course Mohammed was not preaching for 20 years the contents of super boring Surah 2. But he may have lived somewhere in this ex-nabatean realm. How homogeneous was Petra and eg Aila (Aqaba, lots of excavations been done there recently)? These ex- Nabateans did not suddenly go away because their province was annexed. Did they keep a form of own identity?

    Their area must have been struck quite severly by the 7th C with trade going down. What was the growing population supposed to do for a living? We know from Procopius' writings that in the East the Saracens were raiding the Byzantine empire in 6th C. Were enough related people living in cities like Petra and Aila (fell apparently around 630 without any fighting). Were pagan beliefs remaining (we know German tribes kept a lot of their traditions going in parallel with Christianity) and incorperated in the new doctrines?

    Maybe Petra (or an other sanctuary) was still very much the focus of Saracenes/Nabateans. And the setting for the written quranic texts (maybe completely dissociated from general-Mohammed) was artificially Petra, a place "everyone knew". Like a french author using the setting of Paris as the background of his book...

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2654 - July 30, 2018, 03:35 PM
    Magraye,

    On Gibson:

    Gibson claims in contrast to King and in accordance with Deus, that arabs did have the means to accurately direct the Qibla. Now Gibson claims they directed these Qiblas to Petra which Deus doesnt really bother to debunk (saying if it not within 1 degree of Petra, it doesnt count).

    I have checked some of the mosques  and those are quite convincing. Of course we need to be sure that the building is actually from the time we think it is.

    Some are not convincing like the Chinese one, but arent discrediting either. Just not enough info or too close to Mecca/Jeruslam direction.

    What I dont know is that there might be left out old 7 C mosques who dont support his thesis. I was hoping the academic world would contribute here and really examine different cases in detail.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2655 - July 30, 2018, 03:40 PM
    Yes. But this argument would work if one ascertain totally different direction. It is not the case ; as Gibson shows they point (relatively) accurately towards Petra. Thus I think they have the means.
    Therefore, what happened? Suffice to reflect with a brain.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2656 - July 30, 2018, 03:54 PM
    Regarding CPP, I will soon respond to Altara's claim that it is an Marwanid-era manuscript.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2657 - July 30, 2018, 03:56 PM
    Emran El-Badawi's book The Qurʾān and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions has been translated into Arabic and it will soon be published.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2658 - July 30, 2018, 05:29 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 03:56 PM
    Emran El-Badawi's book The Qurʾān and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions has been translated into Arabic and it will soon be published.

    Hmm..  Emran El-Badawi   and  Qurʾān /Aramaic Gospel  connection.,   

    Did he ever say/write/publish  that there was NO Prophet  No Muhammad of classical Islam??
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2659 - July 30, 2018, 05:39 PM
    That there was no Muhammad at all or that the Muhammad of the sira did not exist?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2660 - July 30, 2018, 05:41 PM
    Quote from: mundi on July 30, 2018, 03:28 PM
    Altara,

    Now you fall in the trap of attaching too much importance to the islamic mythology.


    If you had read me carefully, dear Mundi, you'd see that I'm not falling into any trap.
    But you did not.

    Quote
    But he may have lived somewhere in this ex-nabatean realm.

     

    And the news that God talk to an Arab did not spread? Where all of this has happened, in Kepler-22 b?

    Quote
    How homogeneous was Petra and eg Aila (Aqaba, lots of excavations been done there recently)? These ex- Nabateans did not suddenly go away because their province was annexed. Did they keep a form of own identity?


    Annexed in 106 , Petra was active in the 7th c.

    Quote
    Their area must have been struck quite severly by the 7th C with trade going down. What was the growing population supposed to do for a living?


    Read People and Identities in Nessana by Rachel Stroumsa.

    Quote
    We know from Procopius' writings that in the East the Saracens were raiding the Byzantine empire in 6th C. Were enough related people living in cities like Petra and Aila (fell apparently around 630 without any fighting). Were pagan beliefs remaining (we know German tribes kept a lot of their traditions going in parallel with Christianity) and incorporated in the new doctrines?


    1/ Yes.
    2/Not related to 1.
    3/idem. Read People and Identities in Nessana by Rachel Stroumsa.

    Quote
    Maybe Petra (or an other sanctuary) was still very much the focus of Saracenes/Nabateans. And the setting for the written quranic texts (maybe completely dissociated from general-Mohammed) was artificially Petra, a place "everyone knew". Like a french author using the setting of Paris as the background of his book...


    1/Source?
    2/Why not ? (I'm not agree...) but it is interesting.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2661 - July 30, 2018, 05:42 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 03:56 PM
    Emran El-Badawi's book The Qurʾān and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions has been translated into Arabic and it will soon be published.



    Good news.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2662 - July 30, 2018, 05:51 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 05:39 PM
    That there was no Muhammad at all or that the Muhammad of the sira did not exist?


    "sirat rasul allah" is a STORY book by  Ibn Ishaq .,  So question again is  Emran El-Badawi...  Did he ever say anywhere

    Quote
    "THAT THERE WAS NO PROPHET OF ISLAM AND QURAN WAS NOT THE WORD OF ALLAH/GOD??"

    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2663 - July 30, 2018, 06:01 PM
    The second question is, with all due respect, meaningless, since no scholar has ever written that the Quran is the word of God. A strawman, in other words. On the historical accuracy of the later sources, all I can say is that no scholar think that its entirely accurate. Even the moderates ones admit its salvation nature. But I do not have a specific quote form Badawi.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2664 - July 30, 2018, 06:17 PM
    Thank you Altara for the Stroumsa reference. I will try to look into it. There is a lot of evidence that Negev was very Chrisitianized, but do we understand the extent?

    Do you say that the 6 C attacks of the Saracenes mentioned by Procopius are unrelated to the rise of the Arabs in 7th C? This is an honest question. Since the 7th C Christians called the Arabs the Tayyaye, I assumed (maybe unfounded) that there was a relationship between these 6C incursions and the 7th C invasion. So if you have ideas on this, please share.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2665 - July 30, 2018, 06:34 PM
    Quote from: Mahgraye on July 30, 2018, 06:01 PM
    The second question is, with all due respect, meaningless, since no scholar has ever written that the Quran is the word of God. A strawman, in other words.


    1). ..... No scholar has ever written that the Quran is the word of God....

    2). ...Scholar X,Y,Z wrote/published/said .that QURAN IS NOT  WORD OF ALLAH/GOD..

    I am sure you see the difference between the two statements., 

    Now dear  Mahgraye.,  you have listed umpteen names of authors who wrote/published on Islam ..  I wonder whether you could name some folks/scholars   who said that 2nd statement ?

     
    Quote
    On the historical accuracy of the later sources, all I can say is that no scholar think that its entirely accurate. Even the moderates ones admit its salvation nature. But I do not have a specific quote form Badawi.

     
    By  historical accuracy means ..  you mean  to say
    Quote
    "There was a person "Muhammad"  and he indeed was the one who said/preached/spoke/responsible  .. what is there in Quran.."  .. and off course moderates ones consider a possibility "that  entire Quran is NOT from Muhammad but here and there some words are from him.."

    did I get that right from you dear Mahgraye?

    And and I AM NOT strawmaning your post., what all I am trying to get  is what Islamic scholars/professors..... wrote ...and why they wrote/write stories on faiths..
    Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything   
    I renounced my faith to become a kafir, 
    the beloved betrayed me and turned in to  a Muslim     
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2666 - July 30, 2018, 06:43 PM
    Quote from: mundi on July 30, 2018, 06:17 PM
    Thank you Altara for the Stroumsa reference. I will try to look into it. There is a lot of evidence that Negev was very Chrisitianized, but do we understand the extent?


    Petra is heavily Christianized as well.
    Quote
    Do you say that the 6 C attacks of the Saracenes mentioned by Procopius are unrelated to the rise of the Arabs in 7th C?


    It shows that Arabs make raids.


    Quote
    This is an honest question. Since the 7th C Christians called the Arabs the Tayyaye, I assumed (maybe unfounded) that there was a relationship between these 6C incursions and the 7th C invasion. So if you have ideas on this, please share.


    Then what about Petra?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2667 - July 30, 2018, 07:38 PM
    Quote
    Then what about Petra?


    The Nabatean realm stretched further than the roman Arabia Petraea. Madain Saleh was not part of it, neither was Tayma.

    Where did the 6th C Saracen raiders come from? Do we have any idea if they were ethnically related to the Nabateans? For this Arba invasion to have succeeded, big numbers were needed. Where could these people have come from?

    Logical would be that soon after the first 7th C Mohammed raids, young men from the border cities (Petra, Aila) were ready to join their relatives and benefit from the spoils..

    A turn of loyalty can go very fast when the prospect of richness is there. Plenty of modern countries with a complete reversal of people in power changing over just a few years)

    If all these men were joined by a same cultural background (with eg Petra, Mecca or another holy city in their minds), it could explain this rapid emergence.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2668 - July 30, 2018, 07:55 PM
    Altara - Do you agree with Luxenberg that the Quran was originally an Orthodox Trinitarian text?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #2669 - July 30, 2018, 08:31 PM
    Dear Mahgraye,

    What you think?
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