The study of the Qurʾān in light of pre-Islamic Syrian Christian texts has a long tradition among Western scholars. Indeed, the profound significance of Syriac for a better understanding of the Quran has been a recurring theme in academic exchanges. Still, despite the importance of Syriac, a conference devoted to the relation of the Qurʾān with Syrian Christian traditions has yet to take place. In line with existing scholarship, the conference The Qurʾān and Syriac Christianity: Recurring Themes and Motifs takes stock of this trend while providing new profound insights into the continuities of the Qurʾān with Syriac Christianity.This three-day international conference pioneers in its focus on the relationship between the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Syriac Christianity. By taking recurring themes and motifs as a starting point, the conference emphasizes differences between the Quran and Syrian Christian traditions as well. As the conference seeks to investigate how the Qurʾān reacts to pre-Islamic Syrian Christian traditions, approaches to be taken and themes to be addressed during the three-day event include:
1. The Qurʾān ‘ s employment and reshaping of themes and motifs known from Syrian Christianity from the advent of Syriac literature to the emergence of East (Nestorian) and West (Jacobite, Miaphysite) Syrian traditions
2. The Qurʾān’s conversation with pre-Islamic West or East Syrian traditions in particular
3. The co-relation of Meccan and Medinan layers of the Qurʾān according to the Nöldekean chronology or its further refinements by Angelika Neuwirth and Nicolai Sinai with West or East Syrian traditions
4. The relationship of the intra-qurʾānic parallels with divergent Syriac traditions
To explore the co-relation of the Quran with Syriac traditions, the conference brings together an international group of specialists in Syriac Christianity, Eastern Christianity, and Semitic Studies more broadly, experts in comparative religions and religious studies, as well as scholars of the Quran , Islamic theology, and Islamic Studies. This wide range of presented fields provides us with an opportunity to analyze the connections of the Qurʾān to pre-Qurʾānic Syrian Christian traditions from different angles and with diverse methodological tools. The conference also serves as a meeting place for early career scholars and established, senior academics.
Research presentations will be streamed online and can be accessed upon pre-registration. To register, please contact Bilal Badat: bilal.badat @zith.uni-tuebingen.de
The conference is organized by Ana Davitashvili .
In the review, Lowry writes “More recent efforts in Western scholarship have looked anew at the Qurʾān’s literary structures with both curiosity about and appreciation for their aesthetic, communicative, and compositional dimensions. But the new approaches to form and structure are themselves highly varied and align with some larger tendencies in the field of qurʾānic studies in the West. The editor of the volume under review, Marianna Klar, has offered her own clear-eyed assessment of some recent approaches to the study of qurʾānic structures in two important articles in the Journal of Qur’anic Studies, in which she argued, among other things, that the drive to detect macro- and microsymmetries has led some interpreters to ignore obvious thematic dimensions of the sūrahs they investigate. This is all to say that the edited volume under review, Structural Dividers in the Qur’an (SDIQ), is a timely and welcome—and enlightening—contribution to debates about the Qurʾān’s literary form and how it should be studied…”
Creating the Qur’an presents the first systematic historical-critical study of the Qur’an’s origins, drawing on methods and perspectives commonly used to study other scriptural traditions. Demonstrating in detail that the Islamic tradition relates not a single attested account of the holy text’s formation, Stephen J. Shoemaker shows how the Qur’an preserves a surprisingly diverse array of memories regarding the text’s early history and its canonization. To this he adds perspectives from radiocarbon dating of manuscripts, the linguistic history of Arabic, the social and cultural history of late ancient Arabia, and the limitations of human memory and oral transmission, as well as various peculiarities of the Qur’anic text itself. Considering all the relevant data to present the most comprehensive and convincing examination of the origin and evolution of the Qur’an available, Shoemaker concludes that the canonical text of the Qur’an was most likely produced only around the turn of the eighth century.
In 
The University of Tübingen Qur’an as a Source for Late Antiquity Research Project team announces “
International Qur'anic Studies Association 
