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Theme Changer

 Topic: Qur'anic studies today

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  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #120 - January 15, 2015, 08:49 PM

    Fascinating article by Sean Anthony on a particular philological crux that I had never seen before:

    https://www.academia.edu/1119373/_Further_Notes_on_the_Word_%E1%B9%A2ibgha_in_Qur%CA%BEan_2_138_Journal_of_Semitic_Studies_59.1_Spring_2014_117-129

    Ultimately, however, I think Sean fails to convince.  He argues that the 2:138 term "sibgha" of "Allah" should be interpreted as "dye," i.e. "dye of Allah," and that "dye" should be understood as a Late Antique trope for the effect of Christian baptism.  In other words, he wants to assume the traditional literal Arabic reading is adequate, and is being used in a sophisticated metaphorical sense that plays on prevailing Late Antique metaphors about baptism.

    But this is not linguistically satisfying.  I think it is of critical importance to emphasize, as Sean does not address anywhere in the article, that the hapax legomen "sibgha" in 2:138 is shortly preceded by 2:135, a famous hanif verse.   The term sibgha is being associated with Abraham and the pre-Christian/Jewish pure religion of Allah, the exact same context that 2:135 is arguing about using the (surely) theologically related terms hanif/milla.  *And the orthography and language of 2:135 is mangled in its Classical Arabic transcription*.  This is arguably one of Luxenberg's greatest successes, to show the Syriac grammatical and semantic structure behind the "hanif" term in 2:135, showing that an *emphatic Syriac epithet was mistranscribed in the Classical Arabic as if it were an accusative Arabic noun*.  See pp. 47-48 of the following article, in which King discusses Luxenberg's thesis on this point.

    http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/share/research/centres/clarc/jlarc/contents/King%20A%20Christian%20Qur%27an.pdf

    Now, if we take it that Luxenberg is right about the mangled Syriac substrate of 2:135 (which I do), it is perfectly reasonable to assume that 2:138 of the standard Qur'anic text, which is part of the same textual unit, suffers from similar problems in transcribing a term which is similarly *about the religion of Abraham*, in parallel with 2:135's use of "hanif."  Contrary to Sean's presumption against textual problems, the text is plainly defective here, and the opposite presumption holds.  It's clear that these particular verses were retranscribed and compiled by later individuals who *no longer adequately understood the peculiar grammar, terminology, and orthography they were dealing with*.  The linguistic problems with 2:138 must be read alongside the linguistic problems with 2:135, which they parallel, and a satisfactory solution must be found for the entire unit of text.

    And on that front Sean's article helpfully discusses how prior generations of scholars have dealt with those problems from a linguistic/philological perspective.  Following those scholars, to my mind, it's much easier to believe that the text has been mangled (as Bellamy and others had concluded), and that the term is either a Syriac calque or a mistranscription, than to accept Sean's relatively unconvincing (to my mind) arguments about its relationship to metaphors of baptism as 'dye.'

    Now, a fascinating subject would be this:  Who were these late individuals who had trouble transcribing the text, and why did they have such trouble?  Clearly a more Syriac-laden base text was being adopted and retranscribed in a different 'pure Arabic' context, at a time when the orthographic conventions and lexicon of the base text had become unclear and confusing.  Why?  What was the historical context here?  Inquiring minds wish to know.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #121 - January 28, 2015, 04:43 PM



    New book

    Envisioning Islam - Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World

    http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15378.html

    Quote
    "A sophisticated and well-conceived study of the evolving depictions of Muslims in Syriac texts that will shed new light on the socially complicated history of early Islam."—Sydney H. Griffith, Catholic University of America

    The first Christians to encounter Islam were not Latin-speakers from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speakers from Constantinople, but Mesopotamian Christians who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Under Muslim rule from the seventh century onward, Syriac Christians wrote the most extensive descriptions extant of early Islam. Seldom translated and often omitted from modern historical reconstructions, this vast body of texts reveals a complicated and evolving range of religious and cultural exchanges that took place from the seventh to the ninth century.

    The first book-length analysis of these earliest encounters, Envisioning Islam highlights the ways these neglected texts challenge the modern scholarly narrative of early Muslim conquests, rulers, and religious practice. Examining Syriac sources including letters, theological tracts, scientific treatises, and histories, Michael Philip Penn reveals a culture of substantial interreligious interaction in which the categorical boundaries between Christianity and Islam were more ambiguous than distinct. The diversity of ancient Syriac images of Islam, he demonstrates, revolutionizes our understanding of the early Islamic world and challenges widespread cultural assumptions about the history of exclusively hostile Christian-Muslim relations.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #122 - January 28, 2015, 05:05 PM

    Also by Michael Philip Penn

    Monks, manuscripts, and Muslims: Syriac textual changes in reaction to the rise of Islam

    http://syrcom.cua.edu/Hugoye/Vol12No2/HV12N2Penn.pdf

    Quote
    Syriac scribes and readers often changed the texts that they were reading. In some cases, these modifications were motivated by the political and religious challenges brought about by the Islamic Conquests and subsequent Muslim rule. Such emendations provide important, material witnesses for how Syriac Christians reacted to the rise of Islam. They also challenge modern scholars to reevaluate the ways we read manuscripts and how we understand Syriac manuscript culture.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #123 - January 30, 2015, 03:54 PM

    From Researching Islam

    The Qurʾānic Milieu ("Where Was the Koran Written?")

    http://research-islam.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/the-quranic-milieu-where-was-koran.html
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #124 - January 30, 2015, 04:01 PM

     
    Hello Zeca  I wonder whose website is that?

    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 #125 - January 30, 2015, 07:46 PM

    It's Klingschor's website. Pretty sure he's the author. Interestingly, he seems to assume a great deal of connection between the Quran and Muhammad, which I think  Zoatar has persuasively argued against here in the forums.

    إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

    Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
    Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

    I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #126 - January 30, 2015, 08:13 PM

    If you read the Klingschor interview that Billy posted on CEMB back in 2013, he seems to be taking a more traditional Islamic view on Qur'anic authorship for the purpose of argument without actually endorsing its reliability.  I'm not sure he would disagree with my views generally (I have the same opinion about the likely historical context of the early Meccan surahs), but he seems to have been moving from a more 'traditional' framework to a more 'revisionist.'

    http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=24254.0

    "11. You base your conclusions on Muslim historical sources mostly. How do you feel about the historians like Patricia Crone and Tom Holland who tend to be radically dismissive of the authenticity of Islām’s early history?

    I only conduct my discourse within the confines of Islāmī Tradition to demonstrate the point that even if you work within the hermeneutical framework of classical Islām, the religion still shows itself to be intellectually untenable. I actually agree with Crone and Holland’s views on the unreliability of Islāmī Tradition, based upon the critical research of Ignác Goldziher, Joseph Schacht and Herbert Berg. Although the various Revisionist hypotheses (e.g., John Wansbrough, Yehuda Nevo, Christoph Luxenberg, etc.) haven’t yet gained widespread consensus, it is now generally agreed amongst Islāmologists that Islāmī Tradition is unreliable (Donner, Narratives, p.25)."
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #127 - January 30, 2015, 08:19 PM

    Btw, it's strange that Klingschor would go through all of the Qur'anic references to ruined cities, including the Qur'anic reference to "People of the Tanglewood," and not mention Gerd Puin's rather brilliant demonstration (in "the Hidden Origins of Islam") that this mysterious phrase likely refers to the old city of Leuke Kome, which is depicted on the map in Klingschor's article smack in the middle of Nabatea, and fits perfectly with the rest of his argument (Nabatean, Maritime, agricultural context).

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #128 - January 31, 2015, 01:23 AM

    I agree that, as of 55/675, there was nothing interesting in present Mecca worth bowing to. Crone (these days) isn't contesting that Mecca existed but she says it was, literally, a cow-town:
    https://www.hs.ias.edu/files/Crone_Articles/Crone_Quraysh_Leather_Trade.pdf

    The Arabs and Agapius record that Mecca was the base of the Zubayrid clan (ctl-F for "az-Zobair"):
    http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/agapius_history_02_part2.htm

    I've been accepting this much for the sake of argument.

    I could understand a qibla to Jerusalem. By 55/675, I'd add Madina. We have Farazdaq in that city discussing pilgrimage to Ilal and Hira (without quite defining either one):
    https://books.google.com/books?id=mDgMwSUs2Y4C&pg=PA84

    But what's that site halfway between Madina and Jerusalem, that al-Hajjaj is pointing his masajid to? Is this the original Hira? Is it a compromise between Madina and Jerusalem (pointedly NOT aiming to the Zubayrids' House)?
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #129 - February 02, 2015, 09:59 PM

    Ian David Morris on Twitter (@iandavidmorris what's your position on Makkah's locality?)

    https://mobile.twitter.com/iandavidmorris/status/562260455918682113
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #130 - February 02, 2015, 10:28 PM

    Morris right on all points by my lights, although some of the comments are correct that we need to explain why Mecca became the locus of later Muslim tradition ... I have my own theories (defensible military retreat for the Zubayrids, who were mapping the prophet's history onto their own power base and mythologizing it as a political weapon against the Umayyad state, no real determinate history about Mecca so any claim you like could be mapped onto the blank slate, Abd al Malik inherited this counter-tradition and coopted it so as to secure the allegiance of the followers, since he claimed to be the legitimate leader of all the believers).  Much of this is shown in the numismatic evidence, in which the Mohammed motto begins being used by the Zubayrids first starting in 685.  Great article on the numismatics:

    https://www.academia.edu/212830/The_Evolving_Representation_of_the_Early_Islamic_Empire_and_Its_Religion_on_Coin_Imagery

    As the article concludes, "To sum up, the Marwanids finally took over as the essential symbols of Islam on coins the Zubayrid invocation of Muhammad as messenger of God and the Arabic shahada."

    That's the key point.  I'd strongly suggest that coinage is not all the Marwanids took over from the Zubayrids!!!!  It would be inconceivable that the Marwanids copied and integrated the coinage theology into their state, but did not copy other features of the theology, including the Zubayrid legends about the prophet's early biography in Mecca, where the Zubayrid leader came to his bloody and horrible end at the hands of al Hajj.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #131 - February 08, 2015, 05:13 PM

    Well let me put this tube of  our Language expert Arabic expert high school drop out  born in England Greek Geek  . Hamza tzortzis  here

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKvRY-b0yts

    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 #132 - February 09, 2015, 09:09 PM



    Textual Criticism and Qur'an Manuscripts - Keith E. Small
    Quote
    This unique work takes a method of textual analysis commonly used in studies of ancient Western and Eastern manuscripts and applies it to twenty-one early Qur'an manuscripts. Keith Small analyzes a defined portion of text from the Qur'an with two aims in view: to recover the earliest form of text for this portion, and to trace the historical development of this portion to the current form of the text of the Qur'an. Small concludes that though a significantly early edited form of the consonantal text of the Qur'an can be recovered, its original forms of text cannot be obtained. He also documents the further editing that was required to record the Arabic text of the Qur'an in a complete phonetic script, as well as providing an explanation for much of the development of various recitation systems of the Qur'an. This controversial, thought-provoking book provides a rigorous examination into the history of the Qur'an and will be of great interest to Quranic Studies scholars.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Textual-Criticism-Quran-Manuscripts-Keith/dp/0739177532

    Reviews

    http://manuscripta-orientalia.kunstkamera.ru/files/mo/2011/02/bookreviews03.pdf

    https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/textual-criticism-the-new-testament-and-the-quran/

    It gets a mention in this article from the Economist: 'In the beginning were the words'

    http://www.economist.com/node/21542162

    An interesting quote from that article

    Quote
    A burst of new Koranic scholarship erupted at SOAS in the 1980s. These days, it is one of several British campuses where scholars say they find it hard to get funding for work that threatens orthodoxy—a change they ascribe to the influence of conservative Saudi donors. But in France, the home of literary theory, and Germany, the fatherland of textual analysis, free-ranging study of the Koran continues. If you want to argue that partial versions of Hebrew and Christian stories are visible in the Koran, or that its historical portions are inaccurate, nobody will stop you.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #133 - February 09, 2015, 10:14 PM

    A series of interviews with academics doing translations from classical Arabic

    http://arablit.org/2014/11/15/a-corpus-not-a-canon-translating-classical-arabic-for-the-modern-reader/
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #134 - February 11, 2015, 05:54 PM

    Robert Hoyland on the Arab conquests
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7C7R_hgmL5w
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QknXyD-CRrY
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #135 - February 11, 2015, 06:18 PM

    New book on pre-Islamic Christianity in the Sinai peninsula.  A key subject that is appalling overlooked, since the interaction between Christianity and nominally 'Arab' cultures in the Sinai, Southern Palestine, and Northern Hijaz is almost certainly the milieu where the earliest parts of the Qur'an were formed, as Christianity penetrated and interacted with the Arab-speaking region.

    http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520283770
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #136 - February 11, 2015, 06:22 PM

    Zoatar I love your new avatar Cheesy

    إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

    Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
    Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

    I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #137 - February 18, 2015, 03:37 PM

    Interview with Suleiman Mourad

    http://newleftreview.org/II/86/suleiman-mourad-riddles-of-the-book
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #138 - February 18, 2015, 03:47 PM

    'Growing pains of Qur'anic studies'

    https://iqsaweb.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/stewart_growing-pains/
    Quote
    On the one hand, the explosion of interest in the Qur’an over the past several decades is a blessing, as it has produced a sharp rise in the rate at which scholarship in Qur’anic studies is being produced, as well as in the number of different approaches. Entire fields of inquiry that had been moribund for the latter half of the twentieth century have now come alive, including study of the manuscript traditions of the Qur’an and the relationship between the Qur’an and Jewish and Christian texts. On the other hand, such burgeoning interest means that, as with Biblical scholarship, the number of people writing on the topic is large, the number of studies is huge, and one must wade through a morass of published material presenting rehashed versions of old theses in order to find significant advances.

    There is nothing wrong with a professor of creative writing, like Reza Aslan—or even the local motel night-clerk for that matter—publishing on the Qur’an, as long as the individual in question has something worth saying. To cast doubt on the person’s right to do so is indeed to make an ad hominem argument, and if one wanted to waste time, one could trump up a case and characterize Aaron Hughes as an expert in Jewish philosophy who is less than ideally qualified to issue judgments about the Qur’an or early Islamic history. Indeed, there are few doctoral programs in Qur’anic studies per se, so we could probably whittle down the category of professional scholars of Qur’anic studies to nearly nil. But, as a medieval Arabic adage has it, lā taʿrif al-ḥaqq bi’l-rijāl fa-taqaʿ fī mahāwī al-ḍalāl (“Do not know truth by the man, lest you fall into the abyss of error”). The issue is not whether the proponent of an idea is an amateur or a professional. Amateurs are capable of producing important results as long as they do their homework; conversely, professionals are capable of error if they don’t do theirs. The proof is in the pudding. After all, Michael Ventris, the architect who deciphered Linear B—to my mind one of the most brilliant achievements in the humanities in the twentieth century—was by all accounts an amateur. The problem with Aslan’s posts on this blog is that they do not present anything new and interesting about the Qur’an, and so fall into that benign but unfortunate category of scholarship-lite™, which, as the Qur’an becomes increasingly popular, will not go away anytime soon. The appropriate response is probably silence, or perhaps a disgruntled yawn in the privacy of one’s living room.

    [...]

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #139 - February 18, 2015, 04:39 PM

    New book on pre-Islamic Christianity in the Sinai peninsula..........
    http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520283770

    That book is too expensive Zaotar ., May be Author doesn't like to sell it to public  except to college class rooms in AMRIKA..

    any ways that pre- "Islamic Christianity in the Sinai peninsula"..... I consider that as Islamic Christianity or  Saracen  Islam



    And Most of those allah punishments in Quran are from that  Islamic Christianity  narrations that were in Arabian peninsula before the birth of alleged Islamic scriptural  prophet cartoon character "Muhammad"    

    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 #140 - February 18, 2015, 04:53 PM

    Quote

    ........There is nothing wrong with a professor of creative writing, like Reza Aslan—or  even the local motel night-clerk for that matter—publishing on the Qur’an.........


    Oh boy..  Cheesy Cheesy

    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 #141 - February 18, 2015, 05:32 PM

    New article by El-Badawi about the impact of Aramaic on the Qur'an.  I actually requested that he post this on academia.edu, and he kindly did so, so here it is:

    https://www.academia.edu/10132877/_The_Impact_of_Aramaic_especially_Syriac_on_the_Qur_%C4%81n_Religion_Compass_8.7_2014_220-28

    It gives a pretty good and neutral overview of the different current scholarly approaches to this fascinating issue, although it focuses on discussing his own work, and doesn't delve into technical detail on any of the issues.  I'm not sure I agree with his characterization of Luxenberg's position as being that the Qur'an 'was originally a Syriac liturgical text.'  Luxenberg's actual contention is that *certain portions* of the Qur'an originally operated in that capacity, but were later incorporated into a Qur'anic manuscript and 'Islamicized' by textual misreading, additions/revisions, and classical exegesis.  He claims to have the same position as Luling on the different layers of Qur'anic text.  Luxenberg certainly does not contend that all of the surahs were originally written in Syriac!  In fairness to El-Badawi's discussion, Luxenberg has never given a particularly coherent explanation of how he views the different Qur'anic layers as having been composed, until recently stating that he basically agrees with Luling on the fundamental structure of those layers.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #142 - February 18, 2015, 05:38 PM

    Btw, glad that Aslan has been given a critical reception at IQSA, I've been worried that IQSA has been morphing away from an exciting group that conducts cutting-edge Islamic scholarship, and more towards an ecumenical 'random grab bag of people interested in pontificating about the Qur'an.'  Aslan's involvement with the group, as well as the recent involvement by Neuwirth, had suggested it might be heading in the latter direction.  Which would be sad, as it's easily the most consistently high-quality group out there right now, with Neuwirth's faction and Inarah lagging significantly.

    There's a danger in trying to accommodate too many factions.  The way that Qur'anic scholarship has split into groups that are aggressively pursuing their own agendas has, I think, actually been quite productive, destroying the incompetent somnolent traditional consensus and replacing it with original scholarship in many different directions.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #143 - February 18, 2015, 05:58 PM

    Thanks for the El-Badawi article. Some more articles he's uploaded here:

    https://uh.academia.edu/EmranElBadawi
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #144 - February 20, 2015, 07:30 PM

    Tesei with a *monstrous* new essay on the connection between the the Alexander Legend and the Qur'an's account of our two-horned friend, following up and expanding on van Bladel's epic essay:

    https://www.academia.edu/10863446/_The_prophecy_of_%E1%B8%8E%C5%AB-l-Qarnayn_Q_18_83-102_and_the_Origins_of_the_Qur%CA%BE%C4%81nic_Corpus_._Miscellanea_arabica_2013_2014_273-90

    Best essay I've seen yet from Tesei, and this issue is critical evidence for pinning down the milieu, context, and time in which the Qur'anic surahs were composed.
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #145 - February 27, 2015, 07:51 PM

    Ian David Morris summarises his current research.

    http://www.iandavidmorris.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PIMIC-mid-term-report-Ian-D.-Morris.pdf
    Quote
    The title of my fellowship is Central administration and the role of the courts in Early Islam. Given my interest in the first two centuries, I decided to study the royal court in this period. It’s a fairly natural timeframe in which to work. It begins with the proto-Muslim movement in central Arabia, and follows the Arabs through the conquest of the Middle East, when the political institutions of the new Islamic empire crystallised.

    PIMIC is concerned with the evolution, convergence and divergence of medieval institutions across civilisational boundaries. My work tackles this question directly by tracing institutional influences between Byzantium, Iran and the Islamic empire in the early medieval Middle East. I am an Arabist or Islamicist, so my secondments in London and Paris have been devoted to the comparative study of Iranian and Byzantine courts, to help me see points of contact and contrast.

    With that in mind, I have a diagram for you. (I’m so sorry.) Here’s time; here’s the period of the Arab conquests. Now, the Byzantine empire was seriously damaged by the conquests, but it survived. The Sasanian Persian empire was destroyed by the conquests, but left a strong administrative and cultural legacy. The Islamic empire developed out of the conquests, and in order to rule over this vast territory, from Spain to Pakistan, it borrowed some of the imperial ideology and the administrative infrastructure of the two defeated empires. The conquests spurred the development of new institutions, but the formation of the Islamic state continued to draw from late antique tradition over time. This is a well-established model.

    What I mean to emphasise is the native Arabian substratum of the Islamic court. Certain patterns of social organisation in the decentralised, tribal milieu of central Arabia were exported into the Middle East and adapted to a new socio-economic reality. The household of a wealthy bedouin Arab was the blueprint of the Islamic court; the slaves and freedmen who managed his affairs became the courtly officials and bureaucrats who managed the central administration of the empire. As far as I know, this is a new approach.

    The first and obvious stumbling block is our lack of reliable sources. The Islamic historical tradition is very late and highly problematic. One way to find useful information in the sources is to collect names and tribes and arrange them into a prosopography – a collective biography. The radical historian Patricia Crone showed just how fruitful prosopography could be when applied to early Islamic history. Her book from 1980, Slaves on Horses, observed that governors in the conquest era are attested in coins, inscriptions and contemporary non-Arabic sources; and the Arabic historical tradition reproduces these names with a surprising degree of accuracy. On this basis, we can reconstruct tribal and factional allegiances. Political history is possible.

    My contention is that the historical impulse that records the names of politicians must also have recorded the names of their servants. Servants managed the affairs of the court, from security to ceremonial to paperwork. And, thanks to the prosopographical approach, we know who they were: freed slaves, adopted into the Arab elite as tribal clients.

    My work up until this point has focused on the ḥājib. This is a courtly officer who is routinely translated as a ‘chamberlain’, but I want to problematise that translation. The ḥājib was a freedman client of the caliph whose duty was to assess visitors and to admit them into the court or politely turn them away. He was basically a palace doorkeeper. A ḥājib could be asked to perform many other tasks, but these were not part of the job description; they were the ad-hoc odd-jobs of a trusted subordinate. To make a modern comparison: interns can be asked to make the coffee, but it’s not their raison d’être. The ḥājib was a general political aide with particular responsibility for doorkeeping.

    The current scholarly consensus is that the Islamicate chamberlain is borrowed from the Sasanian court. I’m challenging that diffusionist model. The ḥājib does not match any of the courtly officers familiar from the Sasanian or the Byzantine realm. I have found that scholars have either misread the sources or taken great leaps of interpretation in order to link the ḥājibs with other so-called chamberlains. They were neither custodians, nor majordomos, nor masters of ceremonies. They were distinct.

    Furthermore the historical tradition shows very clearly that ḥājibs served powerful people in Arabia before the conquests: not only caliphs, but also tribal elites and even prophets. A ḥājib was a general political aide with particular responsibility for doorkeeping. This is entirely compatible with pre-conquest Arabian society. There is no good reason to suppose that the ḥājib is borrowed from elsewhere.

    In other words, there is a discernible institutional thread from the poverty and socio-economic simplicity of Arabia Deserta to the immense wealth and complexity of the last great empire of Late Antiquity.

    Let’s talk about outcomes. My work has already caught the attention of some orientalists: I’ve been asked to write the entry on the ḥājib for the third edition on the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the standard reference work in my field. On the level of theory, I hope to contribute to the reorientation of orientalism that has been going on for some time. My continuationist model challenges Muslim sacred history by implicating the founding fathers of Islam in coercive – but perfectly understandable – political practices. More importantly, my findings should encourage others to look for institutions or potentially institutional behaviour in stateless societies. If we deny Arabia institutions, we deny it the depth and personality of real history. Arabia is made timeless; irrelevant to the study of History as such.

    The British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper infamously said of African history that it was nothing more than “the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe”. He did not believe that stateless, tribal societies had political history. Many students of early Islam operate with the same assumption. We can do better.

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #146 - February 27, 2015, 08:40 PM

    Tesei with a *monstrous* new essay on the connection between the the Alexander Legend and the Qur'an's account of our two-horned friend, following up and expanding on van Bladel's epic essay:

    https://www.academia.edu/10863446/_The_prophecy_of_%E1%B8%8E%C5%AB-l-Qarnayn_Q_18_83-102_and_the_Origins_of_the_Qur%CA%BE%C4%81nic_Corpus_._Miscellanea_arabica_2013_2014_273-90

    Best essay I've seen yet from Tesei, and this issue is critical evidence for pinning down the milieu, context, and time in which the Qur'anic surahs were composed.


    Thanks for that, Zaotar - it still shocks me to think that verses I for so long recited with reverence (I love Sheikh Husary's recitation of Sura al-Kahf) - are just copied from a previous very human work that is a mixture of legend, fiction, and a mish-mash of the life of Alexander and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    Not the divine word of Almighty God then!!??  Cry
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #147 - February 27, 2015, 08:43 PM

    Zaotar, do you know if the Syriac text that is the source for the Qur'an's story of Thul-Qarnayn (The Neṣḥānā d-leh d- Aleksandrōs - “the victory of Alexander”) is available in English?

  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #148 - February 27, 2015, 10:51 PM

    No I don't know if it is.  Syriac literature is rarely translated, as far as I can tell, which sux (and probably helps to explain why its influence on the Qur'an has for so long remained underappreciated by Western scholars besotten by the pagan Jahiliyya romance of Classical Arabic).  Guess you must befriend a Syriacist and ask them for aid ...
  • Qur'anic studies today
     Reply #149 - February 28, 2015, 12:01 AM

    That is an interesting project description by Morris, I guess my sympathies are on the classic 'early political history not really possible beyond contemporary inscriptions/texts' side that he is trying to refute, but that's what new scholarship is supposed to do, challenge the classic views.  My suspicions are that the Arab courts grew from a confluence of urbanizing Arabs in Arabia Petraea + Mesopotamia, not from the Bedouins in Arabia Deserta.  And that much of the later 'tribal history' is as anachronistic as the tribal history in the Torah.  Though I know Crone bitterly inveighs against that attitude in this fierce article:

    https://www.hs.ias.edu/files/Crone_Articles/Crone_Qays-Yemen.pdf
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