Dr. Robert M. Kerr's latest statement on the Quranic milieu:
My argument is quite simple: a)to the South of Arabia Petraea we find but few Nabataean Inscriptions, excepting graffiti on the incense route and some oases. One must distinguish between formal epigrapy and informal epigraphy (such as graffiti) b) Ancient South Arabic and Ancient North Arabic inscriptions in pre-islamic times, use derivationsof the Sabaic script (خط المسند); Ancient North Arabian is attested in Northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Southern Syria — If the Qur’an had been written in الحجاز, we would expect it to have been written in this script. For the inscriptions from this region see Khālid ibn Muḥammad ʻAbbās Askūbī ,ثموديييية من منطقة رم بين ثليثوات وقيعان الصنيع جنوبغرب تيماء Riyadh, 2007/1428 with numerous examples. c) The language (or Semitic dialect) which very closely resembles what became classical Arabic is Safaitic which seems concentrated in Southern Syria, Eastern Jordan and NW Saudi Arabia. Dialect geography makes clear that this was not the language of the Hedjaz.
We now have two independent citreria: script and language (or dialect) distribution, both of which point to Syria and Jordan (the Roman provinces of Syria and Arabia Petraea) and not to Arabia deserta or felix.
Another argument, is that if the Qur’an had emerged in the Hedjaz, the we would find traces of Christianity there. Outside of the Roman Empire there was no heresy (cf. the Nestorians in Asia). But in the Hedjaz there are no traces of Christianity. Furthermore, the Christological debates, to which the Qur’an bears witness seem to be concentrated in groups which were concentrated in Syria (i.e. the human nature of Jesus, avoiding alcohol as a rejection of the Eucharist [Council of Gangara]; emphasis on Martyrdom (ܣܗܕܐ into Arabic as شهيد etc.). But we would also need to explain all of the allusions to and from Jewish literature (such as the Talmud — if there were Jewish tribes in Arabia in the 7th century, which I very much doubt, then they would hardly have transported the Talmud on their camels —) which also points to Syria/Iraq (Babylonian Talmud). The decisive area is الجزيرة العربية in the old sense of the word.
Here we can conclude that script, language and theology of the Qur’an, three independent strains of evidence, point to Syria/Iraq/Jordan as the place of origin of the Qur’an.
This in turn explains why we find Syro-Aramaic influence (Fehllesungen) in the Qur’an and why the theological vocabulary of the Qur’an is largely borrowed from Eastern Aramaic (both Syriac and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, the language of the Babylonian Talmud) are Eastern Aramaic dialects as Luxenberg (Syro-Aramaic Reading) and myself (Aramaisms in the Qur’an and their significance, in Ibn Waraq ed., Christmas in the Qur’an) have shown (i.e. just as in Western European languages, such as French or German the Christian theological vocabulary is borrowed from Latin, the language of the missionaries whilst in Russian the borrowing is from Greek, the language of the missionaries to the Slavic peoples). This we also find in Ancient Ethiopic (Ge`ez) since Ethiopia was converted to Christianity by Syriac missionaries. Since there is no evidence of either Christianity (see above) or (Syriac) Christian missions to the Hedjaz, a Qur’an originating in the Hedjaz is even more of an anomaly.
Now we have four independent witnesses: script, language, theology and vocabulary. All point to the Syroo-Mesopotamian region.
As we discussed on the telephone, inscriptions must be viewed in the context in which they were written. So, for example, we find Palmyrene (a dialect of Aramaic) text on an inscription for a deceased Germanic lady in Britain:
https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1065Now nobody will ever claim that Palmyrene was a widely spoken language in Roman Britain! And Germanic Palmyrene speakers … But when we look closely at the text we see that a Palmyrene Aramaic speaker in the Roman Army married a Germanic woman who died whilst he was stationed in Britain. So the two Latin (!) inscriptions from the Yemen (
http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epimap.php…) or Farasan Kabir (
http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epimap.php…) do not indicate that Latin was widely spoken in the Red Sea or Southern Arabia (=Felix).
This applies equally to inscriptions written in a (Ancient North) Arabic predecessor to the language of the Qur’an. The biggest concentration of such in an official context (i.e. formal epigraphy, i.e. written by rulers such as the Namarah inscription (100 km SE of Damascus;
https://www.islamic-awareness.org/…/inscriptio…/namarah.html) point to Syria, not the Hedjaz. Inscriptions, i.e. graffiti along the frankincense road through Arabia are manifold, and in various languages from various times. Such cannot be used to draw a map of the linguistic landscape of a given region at a given time.
The concentration of inscriptions in a script relevant to the Qur’an in a closely related earlier form of the language point to Syria, not to the Hedjaz.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today