Category Archives: Guest Posts

Two Free Online Courses on the Qur’an

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Contributor: Holger Zellentin

We are excited to announce two new initiatives presenting the Qur’an in between Judaism and Christianity: a new MOOC starting January 15, 2018, and the immediate online publication of a related lecture series. Both projects were sponsored by the British Academy, the University of Nottingham and the Karimia Institute, and convened by Holger Zellentin (University of Cambridge) and Jon Hoover (University of Nottingham).

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About a year ago, we sought to bring cutting-edge research on the Qur’an in its relationship to Judaism and to Christianity to the broader public. In order to reflect the growing sense of a scholarly consensus in the field, we invited a number of outstanding scholars to present their research in Nottingham: Omar Ali-de-Unzaga (The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London), Mehdi Azaiez (Katholieke Universiteit Levuven), Harith bin Ramli (Cambridge Muslim College), Islam Dayeh (Free University of Berlin), Emran El-Badawi (University of Houston), Dirk Hartwig (Free University, Berlin), Asma Hilali (now Université de Lille), Marianna Klar (School of Oriental and African Studies), Shuruq Naguib (University of Lancaster), Gabriel Said Reynolds (Notre Dame University), Lena Salaymeh (University of Tel Aviv), Walid Saleh (University of Toronto), Nora K Schmid (Free University of Berlin), and Nicolai Sinai (University of Oxford) joined the organizers.

The lectures were designed to engage the public in three ways. First, we teamed up with the Karimia Institute, a Muslim community and charity based in Nottingham under the guidance of Dr Musharraf Hussain al-Azhari OBE. Members of the community constituted the primary audience of the live lectures, and engaged the academics in a series of insightful, respectful and vivid discussions.

Secondly, we recorded all lectures and discussions in their entirety and have now published the lectures on a dedicated website. We believe that both the academic acumen of the lectures and the spirit of the discussions themselves will be a wonderful resource for scholars, students and community leaders across the world for many years to come. Please feel free to share the news.

Finally, Holger Zellentin and Jon Hoover have teamed up with Shuruq Naguib (University of Lancaster) and Rachel Dryden (University of Cambridge) in order to build an open online course based on the same lecture series. We selected especially relevant excerpts of the lectures and, with the generous assistance of the University of Nottingham and FutureLearn, we developed the materials into a proper MOOC. We promise it’s worth having a look at the teaser video here, where you can also sign up. The great thing about the course is that you can explore all of it for free, and with no obligation to do anything! All you have to do is sign up on FutureLearn, and, once the course is running, you can access all the materials for the period of one month. Should you like what you find, feel free to spread the word to your students, friends, colleagues, family- we have worked hard to make the complex materials accessible to the broadest possible public. We hope to run the course once every two years or so, so it will also be a resource for many years to come (but note that it will only be accessible for four-week intervals at a time).

Please let us know what you think about the course. In the meantime, have a happy, blessed, and hopeful 2018!

Here are the two websites once more:

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/theology/research/quran-lecture-videos-2016.aspx

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/quran-judaism-and-christianity

Moreover, please note that beginning on February 19 (running for eight weeks) Gabriel Reynolds will be hosting a free MOOC through EdX entitled “Introduction to the Qur’an.”  This is the new and updated version of the course (which initially ran in 2015).  It is meant to provide a basic introduction to the academic study of the Qur’an and likewise includes lectures, discussion with scholars and religious leaders, and live interactive sessions.  For more information and to enrol visit:

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-the-quran-the-scripture-of-islam

Prof. Reynolds and I have been in correspondence as we have developed these two open courses. We both think that they complement each other very well, and you might consider sharing, or even enrolling in both.

 

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

The Status Quaestionis of ʿArabiyyah, Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Quran

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By Marijn van Putten∗

When speaking about the language of the Quran, it is these days almost universally accepted that it was composed in the ʿArabiyyah, a poetic koine that functioned as an intertribal form of communication of high poetic culture.[1] This ʿArabiyyah was close – if not identical – to what eventually came to be thought of as Classical Arabic.

However, this assumption is far from obvious. If we look at the Quranic Consonantal Text, the only linguistic layer of the Quran which can with any certainty be taken as stemming from a time close to the revelation, we find that its orthography is woefully inadequate to write the ʿArabiyyah. The hamz goes completely unwritten (e.g. يسل yasʾalu), nunation is unwritten (e.g. عظيم ʿaẓīmun), and the orthography insists on distinguishing the final ā of final weak verbs and nouns that have a final root consonant w from those with a final root consonant y, even when followed by pronominal clitics, even though in the ʿArabiyyah these vowels are supposed to be pronounced identically (e.g. دعا daʿā, دعاه daʿā-hu but  هدى hadā, هديه hadā-hu).

It is of course possible that the orthography does not adequately represent the ʿArabiyyah. It certainly is not the first time that we are confronted with an orthography which deviates significantly from the language it is supposed to write. The Quran, however, is unique in that its orthography points to a linguistic situation which is less archaic than the language it is supposed to represent. This is different from other languages with a large disconnect between their spoken language and orthography that represents it. Invariably, in such cases the orthography represents a stage of the language significantly more archaic than the way it is spoken presently.

To maintain that the Quranic text represents the ʿArabiyyah requires a large amount of trust in the accurate transmission of the reading traditions of the Quran as Ibn Mujāhid canonized them in the fourth century AH. This trust is not warranted. By the time Ibn Mujāhid canonized the reading traditions, the ʿArabiyyah had become much more than just a “poetic koine”: it had become a highly linguistically unified language of high culture that permeated all forms of religious and scientific writing. It is extremely improbable that this diglossic situation would have had no effect on the way that authors such as Ibn Mujāhid would treat the language of their holy book. If not a given, it is at least extremely likely that they adapted the language of the Quran to more closely resemble Classical Arabic, consciously or unconsciously.

So far, this discussion has proceeded on the assumption that there truly was a highly unified poetic koine in the pre-Islamic period. Some scholars have even gone as far as stating that the Arabic before Islam was itself extremely unified,[2] and that the exclusive association with poetry and high culture is something that only develops in the Islamic period, when the influx of new speakers created a new, more simplified, variety of Arabic. In other words, pre-Islamic Arabic would simply be identical to the ʿArabiyyah. In recent years, this second position has become untenable. The epigraphic record shows that there is a remarkable amount of linguistic variation in pre-Islamic Arabic. The pioneering work by Ahmad Al-Jallad has demonstrated that Safaitic,[3] Hismaic,[4] and early and late Nabataean Arabic[5] are all remarkably different from each other and from the ʿArabiyyah. This is certainly, in part, due to a diachronic distance between these different varieties, but it should be noted that not a single one of these varieties could be the ancestor of the ʿArabiyyah by the simple fact that none of them retain nunation. Anything that looks close or identical to the ʿArabiyyah as defined by the Arab grammarians has remained elusive in the epigraphic record. But also many modern dialects of the Arabian peninsula such as Rāziḥīt,[6] Tihāmī Arabic, and Shammari Arabic[7] cannot be taken as direct descendants of the ʿArabiyyah or even something close to it as they retain ancient Semitic features lost in the ʿArabiyyah.

Even the conceptualization of the ʿArabiyyah as a highly unified poetic register is not without its problems. First, we have several instances of pre-Islamic poetry, not transmitted through the Muslim tradition, but in the epigraphic record in a variety of different scripts, namely, the Nabataean Arabic ʿEn ʿAvdat inscription,[8] the Safaito-Hismaic Baal Cycle poem[9] and the Safaitic War Song.[10] The elusive ʿArabiyyah has had three chances to appear in the pre-Islamic record, in a context where we would actually expect it, yet it has not. However, there are certainly indications that the muʿallaqāt reflect, at least partially, accurate representations of the pre-Islamic period. Labīd’s torrents that flush over the landscape like a pen that renews the zubur (zuburun tajiddu mutūna-hā ʾaqlāmu-hā) makes much more sense if we take the zubur to refer to the pre-Islamic Ancient South Arabian zabūr sticks than books or scripture of ink on parchment.[11] This sense of the word zabūr appears to be lost to the classical commentators.

Second, in the same way that the diglossia would likely have distorted any trace of non-ʿArabiyyah reading of the Quran, we cannot exclude the possibility that classicizing forces acted upon the highly regarded pre-Islamic poetry. As such, the statement that the ʿArabiyyah is remarkably unified may simply be a result of the historical context of their collection. The collection of pre-Islamic poetry takes place centuries after this poetry was supposedly composed, in a sociolinguistic environment where diglossia is the norm. Pre-Islamic poetry may therefore simply look homogenous because it was unified towards the ideal of the ʿArabiyyah.

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Q3:87 جَزَاؤُهُم lacking the ʿarabiyyah case-marking in the Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus

Third, the assumption that the ʿArabiyyah was linguistically unified seems to be explicitly denied by the classical tradition itself. Sibawayh describes a remarkable amount of linguistic variation, most of which does not surface at all in pre-Islamic poetry. It could however not be argued that Sibawayh was describing anything other than the ʿArabiyyah; any dialect of Arabic lacking full case inflection completely escapes attention in his monumental Kitāb. Nevertheless, transcriptions of Arabic into Greek in the early Islamic papyri as well as in the psalm fragment[12] leave little doubt that already before Sibawayh’s time varieties of Arabic without case inflection and nunation existed and formed the everyday norm. It is not possible that all the linguistic variation that Sibawayh describes developed from the ʿArabiyyah in the Islamic period either. He describes features that are more archaic than what is reflected in what becomes the normative form of ʿArabiyyah, that is, Classical Arabic,[13] which reflects only a subset of the variation that Sibawayh describes.[14]

This is also clear in light of the fact that the Quranic reading traditions reflect significantly more linguistic variation than pre-Islamic poetry does. This is the case in spite of the fact that the Quranic reading traditions were bound to the Quranic Consonantal Text and could therefore not introduce features that too massively deviated from whatever the rasm suggested. Pre-Islamic poetry was not subject to such constraints, but nevertheless happens to look exactly like Classical Arabic. This important point often gets overlooked because the ʿArabiyyah of pre-Islamic poetry is extremely close to the reading tradition that Arabists are most familiar with, that of Ḥafṣ. It is probably not a coincidence that the reading tradition that ends up becoming the most dominant tradition in the world today is also the closest to Classical Arabic. It is, however, still unclear whether Ḥafṣ’ rise to popularity is due to its close similarity to Classical Arabic or vice-versa.

Nevertheless, several linguistic features of pre-Islamic poetry remain unassailable. The rhyme of the poetry relies heavily on vocalic rhyme which more often than not consists of the case vowels. Any understanding of the varieties of pre-Islamic poetry without case vowels is certainly wrong. However many other features could have been quite different without ever affecting some of the restraints imposed upon it by the metre and form. For example, nunation could have been lost with compensatory lengthening, which would have yielded long case vowels. This would not give any metrical problems as a CVV syllable is metrically identical to a CVC syllable, e.g. *baytun > baytū. Such forms are in fact attested in modern Yemeni Arabic of the Tihāmah which have forms like bētū ‘a house’ besides im-bēt ‘the house’.

Likewise, the shape of the definite article may have differed significantly. In Yemen today we find varieties of Arabic with a definite article im-, in- and iC-[15] besides those with normal Arabic distribution. We similarly find evidence of different definite article shapes in pre-Islamic Arabic such as a non-assimilating al-, and forms like an- and completely assimilated forms like aC-. These would pose no challenges to the metrical structure of the poetry.[16] In other words, some of pre-Islamic poetry could have had a completely Tihāmī-like nominal system baytū, baytī, baytā; im-baytu, im-bayti, im-bayta and it would have posed no problem to the metre of pre-Islamic poetry.[17]

The retention of a fourth vowel ē, in the final weak verbs with y as their third root consonants as we find it in the Warš ʿan Nāfiʿ reading tradition, could also have been part of some forms of pre-Islamic poetry. I argued in a recent study,[18] this “ʾimālah”[19] is not a shift from ā to ē, but rather an ancient retention of a contrast that has been lost in Classical Arabic, the Ḥafṣ tradition and pre-Islamic poetry (as it has reached us) alike.

Many other forms of variation would leave some traces in metrical irregularities, and in fact they sometimes do. In Muʿallaqah of Imruʾ al-Qays, for example, we find that the 3sg.m. pronominal suffix is long, despite being in a context where Classical Arabic would require it to be short, e.g. ʾiḏā hiya naṣṣat-hū wa-lā bi-muʿaṭṭali (line 34). In Muʿallaqat Ṭarafah, on the other hand, we find that it is treated as short, e.g. ḥiqāfay-hi šukkā fi l-ʿasībi bi-misradi (line 17). The invariably long suffix also appears in the reading tradition of Ibn Kaṯīr.

Another issue in pre-Islamic poetry that requires an explanation is its mixed linguistic character. A line like tarā baʿara l-ʾarʾāmi fī ʿaraṣāti-hā (Muʿallaqat Imriʾ al-Qays, line 3) has lost post-consonantal hamz in tarā < *tarʾā, but not in ʾarʾāmi. Exceptions to sound changes occur, but they do require an explanation. It is important to note that a reading tarā baʿara l-ʾarāmi fī ʿaraṣāti-hā with loss of the hamz would be metrically regular and therefore there is, in fact, no reason to assume the hamz was preserved in this word.

It seems to me that metrical and linguistic irregularities in pre-Islamic poetry are too often taken as poetic licenses, rather than indispensable – albeit highly obscured – insights into possible dialectal differences in the ʿArabiyyah. If one ignores these pieces of information, we cannot help but conclude in an absolutely circular manner that pre-Islamic poetry is linguistically homogenous.

So how does all this relate to Quranic studies? As I have pointed out at the beginning of this article, the orthography of the Quran is very ill-suited for writing the ʿArabiyyah. This may of course be purely orthographic practice, but this cannot be assumed without further investigation. Due to the enormous advances in epigraphy in recent years, we now know that Arabic in the pre-Islamic period is far from linguistically homogenous and instead is surprisingly diverse. Moreover, the conviction that there existed a state of linguistic homogeneity in light of classical sources like the reading traditions and Sibawayh’s al-Kitāb does not seem to follow from the evidence presented.

Even if we do assume that there was a “poetic koine”, an archaizing, oral poetic register not dissimilar to Epic Greek, as so eruditely argued for by Michael Zwettler,[20] it does not follow that Quran was composed in this register. Epic Greek’s archaizing nature is entirely dependent on ancient metrical formulae; the strict metrical requirements of the dactylic hexameter helped resist contractions and loss of consonants that would introduce metrical irregularities. While one can certainly argue that pre-Islamic poetry had similar metrical requirements, this is simply not the case for the Quranic text. As such, Zwettler failed to notice the contradiction of claiming that the Quran was composed in impeccable ʿArabiyyah prose, while this means it would lack the traditional oral formulaic framework that gave the poets the ability to compose in this highly archaic poetic language.

What we are left with is an open field for enquiry. What was the language of the Quran like? How does it relate to early Islamic Arabic? How does it relate to the ʿArabiyyah? How can we tell? Ahmad Al-Jallad,[21] Phillip Stokes[22] and myself[23] have attempted to answer such questions by starting with the only truly contemporary source of Quranic Arabic that we have: the Quranic Consonantal Text. By closely examining orthographic idiosyncrasies, rhyme and the reading traditions, we can start to unravel just what kind of language Quranic Arabic is, and what the linguistic situation of the early Islamic period was like. Through this examination we may start to understand how Classical Arabic developed and how classicizing trends may have developed.

∗Marijn van Putten is a linguist at Leiden University who specializes in Arabic and Berber historical linguistics. His current post-doctoral research project “Before the Grammarians: Arabic in the formative period of Islam” aims to reconstruct the language of the early Islamic period, using sources such as early Islamic papyri, Quranic documents and transcriptions in non-Arabic scripts. He is currently working specifically on the reconstruction of Quranic Arabic as it can be deduced from the Quranic Consonantal Text.

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.

 

[1] Nöldeke, T. et al. 2013. The History of the Quran. Leiden & Boston: Brill, p. 260; Rabin, C. 1955. “The Beginnings of Classical Arabic”, Studia Islamica 4, p. 23f.; Rabin, C. 1951. Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor’s Foreign Press, p. 3-5; Zwettler, M. 1978. The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry, p. 101-102; Versteegh, K. 1997. The Arabic Language, Columbia University Press: New York, p. 46ff.

[2] One such a suggestion comes from Blau, J. 1977. “The Beginnings of the Arabic Diglossia. A Study of the Origins of Neoarabic”, Afroasiatic Linguistics 4:3, pp. 175-202.

[3] Al-Jallad, A. 2015. An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. Leiden & Boston: Brill.; Al-Jallad, A. & A. al-Manaser. 2015. “New Epigraphica from Jordan I: a pre-Islamic Arabic inscription in Greek letters and a Greek inscription from north-eastern Jordan”, Arabian Epigraphic Notes 1: 51-70.

[4] Al-Jallad, A. forthcoming. “The earliest stages of Arabic and its linguistic classification” in: The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics.

[5] Al-Jallad, A. forthcoming. “One wāw to rule them all: the origins and fate of wawation in Arabic and its orthography”.

[6] Behnstedt, P. 1987. Die Dialekte der Gegend von Ṣaʿdah (Nord-jemen). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Watson, J.C.E., B.G. Stalls, K. Al-Razihi & S. Weir.  2006. “The language of Jabal Rāziḥ: Arabic or something else?” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 36, pp. 35-41; Putten, M. van. 2017. “The Archaic Feminine ending -at in Shammari Arabic”, Journal of Semitic Studies 62:2, p. 365, fn. 9.

[7] Putten, M. van. 2017. “The Archaic Feminine ending -at in Shammari Arabic”, Journal of Semitic Studies 62:2, pp. 357-369.

[8] Kropp, M. 2017. “The ʿAyn ʿAbada Inscription Thirty Years Later: A Reassessment”, in: A. Al-Jallad (ed.) Arabic in Context. Leiden & Boston: Brill; Al-Jallad, A. forthcoming. “One wāw to rule them all”.

[9] Al-Jallad, A. 2015. “Echoes of the Baal Cycle in a Safaito-Hismaic Inscription”, Journal for Near-Eastern Religions 15, pp. 5-19.

[10] Al-Jallad, A. 2017. “Pre-Islamic ‘Ḥamāsah’ Verses from Northeastern Jordan: A New Safaitic Poetic Text from Marabb al-Shurafāʾ, with further remarks on the ʿĒn ʿAvdat Inscription and KRS 2453”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 47,pp. 117–128.

[11] As already observed by Maraqten, M. 1998. “Writing Materials in Pre-Islamic Arabia”, Journal of Semitic Studies 43:2, p. 301-302.

[12] Most recent edition of this text can be found in Blau, J. 2002. A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic. Jersualem, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, pp. 68-71. A monograph by A. Al-Jallad discussing the linguistic features of the psalm fragment is currently in preparation.

[13] By Classical Arabic I mean the variety of Arabic as described by, e.g. W. Fischer. 1972. Ein Grammatik des klassischen Arabisch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, the variety that forms the basis for Modern Standard Arabic.

[14] For example, Sibawayh describes varieties of ʿarabiyyah that have lost the hamz, and varieties of ʿarabiyyah that have retained the ancient ē vowel in some medial weak verbs such as xēfa ‘to fear’ and ṭēba ‘to be suitable’. Neither feature occurs in Classical Arabic, nor is it attested in pre-Islamic poetry, yet Sibawayh does not seem to hold any negative views of such forms.

[15] C here indicates complete assimilation to the following consonant, regardless of the type of consonant.

[16] Other attested pre-islamic forms of the definite article such as haC– and han-, however, would.

[17] This system is not at all removed from what we find in what the Arab grammarians call Ḥimyarī; see chapter 5 of Rabin, C. 2015.  Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor’s Foreign Press.

[18] Putten, M. van. 2017. “The development of the triphthongs in Quranic and Classical Arabic”, Arabian Epigraphic Notes 3, pp. 47-74.

[19] ʾimālah is one of the most misused terms in Arabic linguistics. The term is essentially the Arabic phonetic term for the vowel e. However, it is mostly thought of as a development from a historical *ā to a ē or ī. This is often incorrect, and when correct, an incomplete description.

[20] Zwettler, M. 1978. The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry. Its Character and Implications. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

[21] Al-Jallad, A. 2017. “Was it sūrat al-baqárah? Evidence for antepenultimate stress in the Quranic Consonantal Text and its Relevance for صلوه Type Nouns”  ZDMG 167:1, pp. 81-90.

[22] Putten, M. van & P. W. Stokes. in preparation. “Case in the Quran”.

[23] Putten, M. van. 2017. “The development of the triphthongs”; Putten, M. van. forthcoming. “The Feminine Ending -at as a Diptote in the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text and Its Implications for Proto-Arabic and Proto-Semitic”, Arabica 64; Putten, M. van. in preparation. “Hamzah in the Quranic Consonantal Text”; Putten, M. van. in preparation. “Some notes on the QCT syllable structure and Consonantism”.

Marginal Notes on: ASWS 73 — the root HGR in pre-Islamic Arabic Ahmad Al-Jallad∗

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The meaning of the root hgr in Arabic has attracted much attention recently, especially with regard to the meaning of the word muhājir as it is used in the Qur’an and early Islamic texts; see for example Lindstedt 2015. The meaning ‘to migrate’ in Arabic has come under scrutiny and I was asked on Twitter if it was attested in Safaitic, as this sense seems to be unique to Classical (and later) Arabic. The root hgr is found in Ancient South Arabian, where it broadly speaking refers to ‘settlements’ (city, town), and a similar range of meanings is found in Geʿez, but none of these languages attests the meaning ‘to migrate’.

The lexeme hgr does in fact occur in Safaitic in a context strongly favoring the meaning ‘to migrate’. I thought it would be useful to expand on the Safaitic occurrence of this word, as it would be the first pre-Islamic attestation with this meaning. This will, hopefully, allow the Safaitic evidence to be used properly in future debates on the etymology of Qur’anic muhājir.

The term is attested in the inscription ASWS 73, which was discovered in 1998 and edited first in the MA thesis of Bani Awaḏ in 1999. I re-edited the text in 2016, giving the translation now found on OCIANA but without going into great philological detail regarding the term hgr. While the text is only know from the poor photograph below, the word hgr is absolutely clear. The reading and translation of the text as given in Al-Jallad (2016: 97) is as follows:

first

Photograph of ASWS 73 (courtesy OCIANA)

second

The word HGR outlined

ASWS 73

l rbʾl bn ḥnn bn ẓʿn bn ẖyḏ bn ʿḏr w wrd ḥḏr f mlḥ f ḏkr f ʾmt f ʾmt w ngʿ ʿl- ḥbb w ʿl- h-ʾbl rʿy-h hgr m-mdbr s¹nt myt bnt

“By Rbʾl son of Ḥnn son of Ẓʿn son of H̲ yḏ son of ʿḏr and he went to water cautious of drought, then (again) in Aquarius, then Aries, then Libra, and then Libra (again, i.e. for two years in a row), during which he grieved in pain for a loved one and for the camels, which he pastured, having migrated from the inner desert, the year Bnt died.”

Commentary:

The text begins like most Safaitic inscriptions with the lam auctoris introducing the subject of the inscription:

l rbʾl bn ḥnn bn ẓʿn bn ḫyḏ bn ʿḏr

By Rabbʾel son of Ḥonayn son of Ẓaʿn son of H̲ayāḏ son of ʿaḏar

This is the only inscription carved by this individual in the OCIANA corpus.

 

The rest of the inscription describes a drought, using the common verb wrd ‘to go to water’.

w wrd ḥḏr f mlḥ f ḏkr f ʾmt f ʾmt

“and he went to water cautious of drought, then (again) in Aquarius, then Aries, then Libra, and then Libra (again, i.e. for two years in a row)”

This verb is often used in conjunction with migrations and the constellations, and sometimes with the watering location explicitly mentioned, e.g. wrd h-bʾr b-h-nmrt ‘he went to water at the well near Namarah’. On the names of the constellation and the yearly cycle in Safaitic, see Al-Jallad 2016.

 

The second clause gives the circumstances under which this migration took place and dates the writing of the text:

w ngʿ ʿl-ḥbb w ʿl-h-ʾbl rʿy-h hgr m-mdbr s¹nt myt bnt

‘and he grieved in pain for a loved one and for the camels, which he pastured, having migrated from the inner desert the year Bnt died’

w ‘while’: the conjunction /wa/ introduces a circumstantial clause.

ngʿ ‘he grieved in pain’: A common verb of grieving, likely the N-stem of the wgʿ ‘to feel pain’ (Al-Jallad 2015: 351; Abbadi and Al-Manaser 2016).

ʿl-ḥbb w ʿl-h-ʾbl ‘for a loved one and the camels’ : The objects of ngʿ  are introduced by the preposition ʿl-, ḥbb ‘a loved one’ or a personal name, and ʾbl the collective noun ‘camels’. The grieving for the camels may suggest that they, along with a loved one, perished during the drought.

rʿy-h hgr m-mdbr ‘which he pastured, having/while migrated/ing from the inner desert’: an asyndetic relative clause modifying camels; Safaitic, unlike Classical Arabic, permits asyndetic relative clauses with definite antecedents (Al-Jallad 2015: 188-190). Rʿy is the common verb ‘to pasture’ (Classical Arabic raʿā) with a clitic feminine singular pronoun, -h, referring back to camels. hgr is a circumstantial adverb, likely a G-stem participle, the complement of which is m-mdbr ‘from the inner desert’. It can be taken as a continuous action or a perfective.

The crux of this clause is therefore the interpretation of hgr. In my 2016 edition, I suggested that it meant ‘to migrate’, equivalent to the Arabic L-stem (form III). This meaning is supported by the following facts.

1) The inscription already describes a movement to a place of water because of the lack of rain, indicating a migration from the inner desert where it would be impossible to pasture during a drought.

2) the phrase m-mdbr ‘from the inner desert’ is attested some thirty times in the corpus, mostly as the complement of the verb ṣyr ‘to return to a place of water’ (HaNSB 226; SIJ 827; WH 927 etc.), but also once with ʾty ‘to come’ (KRS 262). Thus, the phrase implies movement away from the desert.

These facts suggest that hgr is then a verb of motion. The G-stem of hgr in Classical Arabic means to ‘abandon’ or ‘cut off’, e.g. hajara-hū ‘he forsook him’ or ‘he left it, abandoned it’. If Safaitic hgr were equivalent to the Arabic, then we should expect mdbr to be its direct object rather than being introduced by the preposition m- ‘from’; this meaning is attested in Safaitic as well (see below). Instead, the present hgr seems to correspond to the Classical Arabic form III (L-stem) hājara ‘he went forth from his desert to the cities and towns’. This meaning suits the context well since areas of permanent water have permanent settlements, such as Namarah (mentioned above). Thus, it may have begun as a denominal verb meaning ‘to go towards settled areas’ then meaning ‘to migrate (from desert to settlement)’. The meaning ‘territory’, possibly referring to settled areas, for hgr is also attested in Safaitic (see below).

Other attestations of hgr:

Lexemes derived from hgr are rare in Safaitic. The following cases are known to me:

hgr ‘to cut off, abandon’

C 4393: hgr-h ʾs2yʿ-h f h lt slm ‘he companions abandoned him so, O Lt, may he be secure’

 

hgr = ‘territory’

h rḍy ġnmt m-hgr s2nʾt

‘O Rḍy, [grant] spoil from the territory (=settled areas?) of enemies’

 

hgr = ‘to cut off’ or ‘to migrate’

WH 1230: l zgr bn ʾbgr h-dr w kmd hgr  ‘by Zgr son of ʾbgr, in this region, and he went into hiding while migrating/having been cut off’

The laconic language of this inscription does not allow us to zero in on the exact meaning of hgr.

 

References:

Al-Jallad, A. 2015. An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions. (SSLL 80). Leiden: Brill.

Al-Jallad, A. An Ancient Arabian Zodiac. The Constellations in the Safaitic Inscriptions. Part II. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 27, 2016: 84–106.

[ASWS] Banī ʿAūād, ʿAbdel ar-Raḥman. Dirāsat nuqūš ṣafawiyyah ǧadīdah min ǧanūb wādī sārah/ al-bādiyah al-ʾurdunniyyah aš-šamāliyyah. Unpublished MA thesis, Yarmouk University. 1999.

[HaNSB] Ḥarāḥšah [Harahsheh], R.M.A. Nuqūš ṣafāʾiyyah min al-bādīyah al-urdunīyah al-šimālīyyah al-šarqīyah — dirāsah wa-taḥlīl. Amman: Ward, 2010.

[KRS] Inscriptions recorded by Geraldine King on the Basalt Desert Rescue Survey in north-eastern Jordan in 1989.

[SIJ] Winnett, F.V. Safaitic Inscriptions from Jordan. (Near and Middle East Series, 2). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957.

[WH] Winnett, F.V. & Harding, G.L. Inscriptions from Fifty Safaitic Cairns. (Near and Middle East Series, 9). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.

 

∗Ahmad Al-Jallad is a University Lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He specializes in the early history of Arabic and North Arabian.  He has done research on Arabic from the pre-Islamic period based on documentary sources, the Graeco-Arabica (Arabic in Greek transcription from the pre-Islamic period), language classification, North Arabian epigraphy, and historical Semitic linguistics.  He has written the first grammar of Safaitic, a corpus of Ancient North Arabian inscriptions from northern Jordan and southern Syria; its second edition, with a dictionary of more than 1400 entries will appear soon with Brill.

His current book project ‘The Word, the Blade, and the Pen: Three thousand years of Arabic’ (Princeton University Press) tells the story of the Arabic language, from its first attestations in the Iron Age until the age of the Internet. For more, see here.

 

This essay originally appeared online on Doctor Al-Jallad’s blog, and has been republished here with his kind permission.

 

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.

Dr. Tauseef Ahmad Parray’s “Towards Understanding Some Qura’nic Terms, Concepts, and Themes”

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book

Synopsis:

Towards Understanding Some Qura’nic Terms, Concepts, and Themes provides an excellent opportunity to gain or renew acquaintance with the meaning and message of such a masterpiece as the Qur’an. It helps readers prepare better to understand the Islamic scripture. Dr. Parray has carefully assessed the needs and wants of English speaking readers. For his work provides a helpful overview of the contents of the Qur’an by way of having elucidated its main contours and rubrics. Dr. Parray’s elucidation of these rubrics helps readers realize at the very outset that the Qur’an is a special type of text which is to be approached in its own particular perspective. In a more helpful vein Dr. Parray has carefully identified some Key Terms and Basic Concepts of the Qur’an. This once again, provides readers with a kind of road map with clear, intelligible signs, guiding them to the kernel of the Qur’an. Equally beneficial is his account of eleven key Qura’nic terms on which hinges the Qura’nic discourse. Included amid these are Worship, Piety, and Knowledge in particular. For these serve as to shed light on Islamic tradition and the community which formed around it. His exposition of the major themes of the Qur’an is directed at familiarizing readers with the recurrent ideas embedded in the Qura’nic discourse. He identifies man-God and intra-social relationships as main concerns of the Qura’nic address to mankind. Of special interest are Dr. Parray’s discussions on such timely and immediately relevant issues as the ‘Shura-Democracy nexus’, ‘Religious Pluralism and its Scriptural Foundations’, and ‘Ijtihad’. These chapters are destined to provide much food for thought to readers, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. More importantly these bring out the relevance and timeliness of the Qura’nic message.

***

Note: This excerpt is from ‘Foreword’ (pp. 7-12), of the author’s recently published work, ‘Towards Understanding Some Qura’nic Terms, Concepts, and Themes’ (Karachi, Pakistan: Qirtas Publishers, June 2017); ISBN: 9789699540446; Pages: 296; Price: 340/- (Pakistani Rupees)

 

 About the Author: Dr Tauseef Ahmad Parray is presently working as Assistant Professor, Islamic Studies in Higher Education Department, Jammu & Kashmir (India). He completed his PhD from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India (2009-14), and Post-Doctorate from ‘Iqbal International Institute for Research & Dialogue’ (IRD), International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI), Pakistan (Mar-Aug’2014). From 2010, he has published in numerous reputed academic journals and magazines (of Islamic Studies and Social/ Political Science), from over a dozen countries around the world. His major areas of interest are: Islam and Democracy; Modern Islamic Political Thought; Islamic Modernist/ Reformist Thought in Contemporary South Asia; and Modern Trends & English Scholarship in Qura’nic Studies. Email: tauseef.parray21@gmail.com

 

 

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.

Mizan Special Issue: “The Evolution and Uses of the Stories of the Prophets”

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Michael Pregill
Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations
Boston University

 

The new issue of Mizan: Journal for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations has just been published and is now online at http://www.mizanproject.org/journal/. The thematic issue, “The Evolution and Uses of the Stories of the Prophets,” coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of Tilman Nagel’s 1967 thesis “Die Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ: ein Beitrag zur arabischen Literaturgeschichte,” a groundbreaking contribution that has played a seminal role in the modern study of the subject. The papers we present here in the journal issue were originally delivered at a conference convened in Naples in fall 2015 by Marianna Klar, Roberto Tottoli, and myself in anticipation of this important occasion: “Islamic Stories of the Prophets: Semantics, Discourse, and Genre” (October 14–15, 2015).

Mizan Cover

The study of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, the Islamic tales of the prophets, has a well-established pedigree in the Western academy. Nagel’s work in the 1960s provided a solid foundation for future research, but it is one that subsequent scholars have built upon somewhat irregularly, and much work remains to be done. Unfortunately, the study of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ per se has not flourished in the last couple of decades with quite the same vigor as the study of Qurʾān and tafsīr, though the study of qiṣaṣ has surely benefitted, at least indirectly, from the extremely energetic expansion of both of those fields in recent years.

Nagel’s thesis discusses the ancient roots of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ among early traditionists, as well as highlighting important literary works in which this early (or allegedly early) material is gathered. He goes on to delineate the literary genre of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ proper, discussing major works carrying this title or something similar such as mubtadaʾ, badʾ al-khalq, and so forth. Nagel’s thesis represents the first attempt to delineate the contours of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ both as a genre and a broader tradition in a serious and methodical way.

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Pursuers sawing the tree in which Zechariah is hiding (detail) (p.75, Isl. Ms. 386, University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Library, Ann Arbor).

Perhaps the most obvious and explicit contribution Nagel’s work made was to draw greater attention to critical works of the qiṣaṣ genre such as those of al-Kisāʾī, al-Thaʿlabī, and Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī (d. 454/1062). It is important to note, however, that this focus on classic specimens of the genre was balanced by Nagel’s keen appreciation of the larger tradition that crystallized in the specific works that constituted that genre, evident in the significant amounts of qiṣaṣ material found in works of historiography, tafsīr, adab, and the like. Understandably given the prominence of qur’anic material in establishing views of prophetic figures among Muslims, tafsīr has held a certain pride of place in scholarly treatments of the Islamic versions of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and so forth. Thus, one clear desideratum in the field of qiṣaṣ studies, (such as it is) would be the exploration of representations of prophetic figures in other genres, as well as careful study of the genre of qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ itself as a whole and the major works that it comprises.

This journal issue aims to make a small contribution to advancing the field by showcasing new research in qiṣaṣ studies. The articles featured here demonstrate that current scholarship on qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ adopts a variety of disciplinary perspectives, reflects diverse concerns, and approaches the broader qiṣaṣ tradition in all its breadth and nuance, particularly focusing on the overlooked aspects of that tradition. Many of these articles discuss material from the post-classical period, especially historically neglected material from Shi’i literature, popular epic, and modern literary settings.

The future growth of the field may lead to such a degree of diffusion of approach and subject matter as to challenge the whole presupposition that there even is or could be a field of qiṣaṣ studies, although it is clear what all the articles in this issue at least have in common. All prioritize the question of what is distinctively Islamic in various Muslim reinterpretations of qiṣaṣ narratives over that of sources or influences; in fact, most of the articles here do not address the question of origins or precursors at all, or at least downplay this question. Thus, our contributors collectively emphasize that qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ is not really about ‘biblical prophets in Islam’ or even ‘biblical-qurʾānic prophets’ but rather simply Islamic prophets—with the meaning of “Islamic” varying enormously from author to author and context to context.

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Joseph’s brothers and the wolf before Jacob (detail) (p.48, Isl. Ms. 386, University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Library, Ann Arbor).

This brings us back full circle to the work of Nagel we commemorate and celebrate here, in that his pioneering work on qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ as a genre originally aimed at discerning what was or has been distinctively Islamic about the Islamic stories of the prophets. This journal issue hopefully makes clear that the question of how Muslims have articulated specifically Islamic expressions and forms of meaning through the stories of the prophets is of perennial relevance, from the Qurʾān down to the modern era, and that qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, as genre and discourse, is of significant value for examining conceptions of Islam itself in a range of Muslim communities and traditions.

 

Mizan is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published under a Creative Commons license and supported by the generosity of ILEX Foundation. The journal features an integrated annotation functionality and we encourage readers to engage our authors through this medium (using this functionality requires a quick registration process in order to prevent spamming of the site and maintain a civil and professional environment).

We are currently accepting proposals for short features to be published on the Mizan Project and Mizan Pop sites, as well as proposals for future thematic issues of the journal. Interested parties are encouraged to contact me directly at mpregill@bu.edu.

 

 

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.

Psychological Readings of the Qurʾan

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By Gabriel Said Reynolds (University of Notre Dame) 

 

In his 1996 work Dieu et l’homme dans le Coran the French Dominican scholar Jacques Jomier devotes a chapter to ”The Psychological Certainty of Muslims” (“La certitude psychologique du musulman”).  The premise of this chapter is that Muslims are especially confident of the truth of their faith.  Jomier explains:

In many circumstances Muslims appear sure of their faith, persuaded that it is self-evident, even suspecting (in certain extreme cases) that those who do not share their faith are insincere.[1]

dieu

From Jomier’s perspective some Muslims are so certain of their religion that they imagine even non-Muslims secretly recognize the truth of Islam (he finds this idea implicit in a verse of the Qurʾan– Q 2:42 – which tells the Jews not to conceal the truth that they know).  Jomier presumably developed his notion regarding “the psychological certainty” of Muslims from his many years living in Egypt (1945-1981).  He does not, however, seek to prove this notion in any systematic way.

Are Muslims in fact especially “certain” of their religion?  Pew has found (in a 2011 survey) that only 35% of American Muslims answered yes to the proposition “Your religion is the one true faith” (compared to 30% of American Christians).[2]  It may be that a higher percentage of Muslims from Islamic countries such as Egypt would answer yes to this question.  Pew did not ask the same question when it surveyed Egyptian Muslims in 2012.  In that survey, however, Pew did find that 78% of Egyptian Muslims report that “there is only one true way” to interpret the teachings of Islam, a result which may correspond, indirectly, with Jomier’s notion of certainty.[3]

In any case, my point here is not to prove or disprove Jomier’s notion of the “psychological certainty of Muslims.”  Instead I’d like to draw attention to his explanation for this supposed phenomenon.  According to Jomier there is something in the nature of the Qurʾan itself which engenders certainty.  Jomier points to the simplicity and binarity of the Qurʾanic style.  The Qurʾan, he argues, leaves the audience with only two stark choices: submission to God or rebellion against Him.  Commenting on Qurʾan 6:50 (where the Prophet is commanded to say, “Can the blind and the seeing be deemed equal? Will you not, then, take thought?”), Jomier observes, “All of one’s attention is drawn to the question regarding which no doubt is possible.”[4]  Elsewhere he describes the “binary” style of the Qurʾan in more general terms: “There is God or there is not God, there is the blind and the seeing, truth and falsehood, the believer and the unbeliever, the good to do and the evil to avoid, paradise and hell.”[5]

Jomier’s efforts to describe how the rhetorical turns of the Qurʾan engender psychological certainty are taken up in a second French language work: L’action psychologique dans le Coran, “Psychological Action [or Operation] in the Qurʾan” by Dominique and Marie-Therèse Urvoy.[6]  The Urvoys develop the ideas of Jomier still further, attempting to identify certain “strategies” of the Qurʾan’s rhetoric, strategies intentionally deployed to win the unyielding allegiance of its audience.  Under the rubric of “Subliminal Processes” in the Qurʾan the Urvoys include something they name the “subtle insertion” (literally, “sliding in,” Fr. “glissement”) of secondary messages.  They argue that the Qurʾan has a way of adding in “almost insidiously” a secondary message, parallel to the development of a principal theme, in a manner which is “practically subliminal.”[7]  The ideas of the Urvoys far exceed a simply analysis of the Qurʾan’s logical strategies of argumentation, such as that found in Rosalind Ward Gwynne’s Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning in the Qurʾan.[8]  Indeed the Urvoys seem to go further still than Jomier in insisting that the Qurʾan’s author intentionally (“almost insidiously”) imbedded certain patterns in the text in order to win total devotion from his audience.

The studies of Jomier and the Urvoys on these matters are fundamentally problematic.  They assign a contrived motive to the Qurʾanic author which exceeds simple argumentation.  In addition they underestimate the intellectual independence of the Qurʾan’s audience.

Still it is worth noting that their arguments – strangely enough – have certain connections to Islamic apologetical works which are meant to underline the supposed brilliance of Qurʾanic rhetoric.  Notably Jomier was particularly interested in the arguments of Muhammad Ahmad Khalafallah (d. 1991), the author of the well-known 1951 work al-Fann al-qasasi fi al-Qurʾan al-karim, “Narrative Art in the Noble Qurʾan.”  Jomier was one of the first scholars to draw attention to this work – and to the controversy which it engendered — in a long 1954 article entitled “Quelques positions actuelles de l’exégèse coranique en Egypte révélées par une polémique récente.”[9]  As Jomier notes, the original form of Khalafallah’s work – that is, his dissertation at King Fuʾad University (now the University of Cairo) – was entitled Min asrar al-iʿjaz, “On the Secrets of [the Qurʾan’s] Inimitability.”  Khalafallah originally wrote this study of Qurʾanic “inimitability” to combat the views of “atheists, Orientalists, and missionaries.”[10]

In order to wage this combat Khalafallah sought to show that the Qurʾan need not be judged by the historical accuracy of the stories which it tells, since those stories were written not with the goal of relating “historical truth” but rather “literary truth” (al-ḥaqīqa al-adabiyya).[11]  In other words, from his perspective the Qurʾan relates stories in a way meant to convince its audience of its message, and in a special way to inspire fear and piety among them.  At one point Khalafallah comments that the Qurʾan’s stories appeal to the “emotional logic” (manṭiq al-ʿaṭifa) of its audience, and not to the “logic of intellectual reflection” (manṭiq al-naẓar al-ʿaqli).[12]  This does not take us very far from the Urvoys’ notion of the Qurʾan’s psychological “action.”

A more recent pious exploration of the Qurʾan’s supposed ability to convince or enrapture its audience is found in Navid Kermani’s God is Beautiful.[13]  Kermani, who focuses on the reception history of the Qurʾān, describes in vivid detail Islamic stories meant to redound to the doctrine of Qurʾanic inimitability.  He is particularly interested in those traditions which speak of pious believers who were so affected by hearing the Qurʾan that they were struck down and died.[14]  Now Kermani does not imagine that his readers will all accept the idea of Qurʾanic inimitability.  As he puts it, Kermani does not expect every reader to “sway to the rhythm of the Qurʾān recitations.”[15]  He does, however, seem convinced that there is something remarkable in Qurʾanic rhetoric, and in its sound, which leads its audience to be swept away.  At the same time Kermani does recognize that there are certain historical and sectarian factors which led to the development of the Islamic doctrine of the Qurʾan’s inimitability.[16]

Still it seems to me that the critical works of Jomier and the Urvoys, and the more apologetical works of Khalafallah and Kermani are two sides of the same coin.  The notion that there is something contrived, magical, or miraculous in Qurʾanic rhetoric that overwhelms its audience is simplistic.  Of course there are many pious Muslims (and non-Muslims) who are enthralled with the rhetoric of the Qurʾan.  Some converts attribute their conversions to the qualities of the Qurʾan (ʿUmar, the second caliph, is said to have accepted Islam after hearing a recitation of the Qurʾan).  But others are not.  One of the Prophet’s own scribes, Ibn Abi Sarh, is said to have left the Prophet’s service, and Islam, when he came to believe that his messages did not come from God.  Christians and other non-Muslims are compelled in the Islamic world to hear the Qurʾan time and again over loudspeakers and yet still do not convert to Islam.

In other words, religious convictions cannot be attributed simply to the logic, rhetoric, or aesthetics of a scripture.  Instead such convictions are connected to a social context.  Religious “certainty” is necessarily linked to the experience of belonging which believers find in a community of faith.  “Certainty” is accordingly found not only with Muslims but presumably found also with others – such as evangelical Christians or Latter Day Saints – from groups in which esprit de corps (or ʿasabiyya) is strong.  It is also connected to the efforts of missionaries (or “daʿwa practitioners”) whose vocation is to increase devotion among believers while bringing unbelievers into the fold.  In other words, the Qurʾan, like other scriptures, does not find its meaning in a vacuum.  The Qurʾan has meaning in context.

[1] J. Jomier, Dieu et l’homme dans le Coran (Paris : Cerf, 1996), 161.

[2] http://www.people-press.org/2011/08/30/muslim-americans-no-signs-of-growth-in-alienation-or-support-for-extremism/

[3] http://www.pewforum.org/2012/08/09/the-worlds-muslims-unity-and-diversity-executive-summary/

[4] Jomier, 170.

[5] Jomier, 168.

[6] Paris : Cerf, 2007.

[7] Urvoy and Urvoy, 71.

[8] London: Routledge, 2004.

[9] MIDEO 1 (1954), (39-72), 66.

[10] J. Jomier, “Quelques positions actuelles de l’exégèse coranique en Egypte révélées par une polémique récente (1947-51),” MIDEO 1 (1954), (39-72), 66 .  See M.A. Khalafallah, Al-Fann al-qasasi fi al-Qurʾan al-karim, 4th edition (First edition 1951) (London: Al-Intishar al-ʿArabi, 1999),  10.

[11] The term “literary truth,” however, would disappear from the printed version of Khalafallah’s work.  See Jomier, 63.

[12] Al-Fann, 155.

[13] N. Kermani, God is Beautiful, trans. T. Crawford (Maldin, MA: Polity, 2015).  Original German: Gott ist schön (Munich: Beck, 1999).

[14] In particular he focuses on the work of al-Thaʿlabi (d. 427/1035): Qatlā al-qurʾān, ed. Nāṣir b. Muḥammad al-Manīʿ (Riyadh : Maktabat al-ʿUbaykān, 2008).

[15] Kermani, 251.

[16] See Kermani, 196.

 

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© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.

Publisher’s Corner: Lockwood Press

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Lockwood Press is proud to be partnering with the International Qur’anic Studies Association in the publication of both the IQSA Journal (Vanessa De Gifis, editor) and its new series, IQSA Studies in the Qur’an (David Powers, editor). The first volume scheduled for the new series is A Qur’anic Apocalypse by Michel Cuypers, to appear in Spring 2018.

jiqsa

Lockwood Press, under the direction of Billie Jean Collins, is committed to the dissemination of scholarship in Arabic, Islamic, and Qur’anic studies through its various academic journals and publications, including the distinguished Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies series, edited by Joseph E. Lowry, Devin J. Stewart, and Shawkat M. Toorawa and supported by an equally distinguished board of international scholars.

The RAIS series features monographs, collected articles, study texts, translations of fundamental works, reprints of classic works, and handbooks and other reference works. Published titles include Bonebakker and Fishbein, A Reader of Classical Arabic Literature, and Aron Zysow’s seminal Economy of Certainty. With two to three new titles published each year, the series has quickly distinguished itself as a major resource in the field. Titles planned for 2018 include Arabic Belles-Lettres by Shawkat Toorawa and Joseph Lowry and Selected Studies in Modern Arabic Narrative: History, Genre, Translation, a collection of the works of Roger Allen.

 

Look for these publications and others at AAR, MESA, and AOS, among other conference venues throughout the year. We, the Lockwood Press staff, look forward to meeting you there!

 

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2017. All rights reserved.

Tayyar Altıkulaç and His Contributions to Qur’ānic Manuscript Studies

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By Ahmed Shaker*

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A facsimile edition of the Topkapı muṣḥaf (Photo by Ahmed Shaker, IRCICA Kütüphanesi 2016)

 The study of early Qur’ānic manuscripts emerged in academia as early as the late 18th century. François Déroche identifies the origins of this quest with the Danish theologian and orientalist Jacob Georg Christian Adler (1756-1834). Adler, who was fascinated by Kūfic inscriptions, spent time studying early Qur’ānic fragments kept at the Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library) in Copenhagen, Denmark.[1] Today ‒ thanks to Alba Fedeli ‒ it has become possible to draw the history of Qur’ānic manuscript studies from 1856 to 1999.[2] Nevertheless, in her concise chronology, Fedeli does not mention the works of Tayyar Altıkulaç, who is best known for his contributions in reproducing several ancient manuscripts of the Qur’ān ‒ mostly attributed to ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ‒ in facsimile editions,[3] in collaboration with the Research Centre For Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) in Istanbul. This article is intended to expand Fedeli’s chronology by placing Altıkulaç and his al-muṣḥaf al-sharīf volumes, dedicated to codices attributed to the caliphs ʿUthmān and ʿAlī, into the framework of Qur’ānic manuscript studies.

  1. A Short biography

Born in Devrekani in 1938, Tayyar Altıkulaç learnt Qur’ān by heart at the age of nine. He completed his intermediate and secondary education and graduated from Istanbul High Islamic Institute in 1963. Later, he was assigned as a teacher and director to İmam Hatip school besides teaching in Islamic institutions up until 1971. During this period, Altıkulaç studied Arabic language and literature at the University of Baghdad, preparing his doctoral thesis in tafsīr. Moreover, he held several religious-administrative positions in Turkey, in order: Vice-President of Religious Affairs (1971-1976); General Directorate of Ministry of Religious Education (1976-1977); Member of Ministry of Education Board (1977-1978); and lastly, he served as the President of Religious Affairs until exempted from office, as per his request, in 1986.

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Speaking of his academic activities, Altıkulaç has played a great role in the formation of Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, Center for Islamic Studies (İSAM), TDV Encyclopedia of Islam in which he authored and reviewed more than 1500 entries. he was also the first person to record a full recitation of the Qur’ān in Turkey. Consequently, he showed a great respect for Qirā’āt tradition, which led him to edit and publish some classic works of this genre such as al-Murshid al-wajīz by Abū Shāmah al-Maqdisī (Beirut 1975) and Maʻrifat al-qurrāʼ al-kibār by al-Dhahabī (Istanbul 1995, 4-Vols). Yet, his interests were not limited to teaching and scholarship but expanded into political roles as he took over the presidency of the Committees of National Education, Culture, Youth and Sport in the Turkish parliament for two terms, between 1995 and 2002. Also, he was among the founders of the Adalet ve Kalkınma, the current ruling party in Turkey.

  1. The Maṣāḥif Journey

Altıkulaç’s interest in old manuscripts of the Qur’ān go back to the late 1960s. By then, he was charmed by the existing information on the surviving copies of the Qur’ān, offered by two authors, mainly Muḥammad ʻAbd al-ʻAẓīm al-Zurqānī, one of Al-Azhar’s ʿulamāʾ, and Muhammad Hamidullah, the Hyderabadi scholar.

Al-Zurqānī (d. 1948) discussed some ancient copies of the Qur’ān located at Egyptian libraries and archives which many people attributed to the third caliph, ʿUthmān b.ʿAffān. Yet, he questioned the authenticity of such attributions; arguing that early muṣḥafs were free from decorations, akhmās (fifth-verse markers), aʿshār (tenth-verse markers), and fawātiḥ al-sūwar (sūrah headings). Therefore, they could not be from the time of ʿUthmān. He then goes further to speak about the famed monumental muṣḥaf attributed to ʿUthmān at Al-Hussein Mosque (today at the Central Library of Islamic Manuscripts) in Cairo. Written in Kūfic script and showing signs of regional codices’ orthography, Al-Zurqānī concluded that it was very likely transcribed from one of the master muṣḥafs sent by ʿUthmān to the main cities of the Caliphate, possibly Medina or Damascus.[4]

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Muhammad Seif El-Shazli restores the Al-Husseini Mosque muṣḥaf in Cairo (Photo by Frédéric Neema, May 10, 1993)

After reading Al-Zurqānī’s account, Altıkulaç was passionate to lay his hands on this enormous muṣḥaf himself. During the summer of 1969, he travelled to Cairo explicitly for that purpose. Unfortunately, due to lack of official cooperation and, partially, his lack of experience at that early stage he did not succeed. Thankfully, four decades after this incident, he was able to examine the muṣḥaf, touch its sheets, and have it digitized on a CD. He wrote: “It weighs 80 kg […] I visited Cairo twice to see this muṣḥaf, and in one of the visits I showed disbelief, so I tried to lift it up myself. I realized—even though I didn’t weigh it precisely—it’s not less than 80 kg because its leaves are made of animal skins. In fact, all these maṣāḥif are made of gazelle skins.”[5]

Furthermore, Muhammad Hamidullah (d. 2002) maintained that master Qur’ānic codices sent by ʿUthmān to be lost due to catastrophes. In contrast, he listed three generally known muṣḥafs, of which all are attributed to ʿUthmān: one copy in Topkapı Palace Museum in Istanbul, another in Tashkent where it was reproduced as a facsimile in 1905, and lastly, a copy at India Office Library (today part of the British Library) in London. The latter is rather exciting as it bears a colophon, reading: katabahu ʿUthmān ibn ‘Affan! (copied by ʿUthmān ibn ‘Affan).[6] Evidently, Hamidullah was looking forward to study these copies as he was interested in early written witnesses to the text. In fact, he published a scaled black-and-white edition of the well-known Tashkent Muṣḥaf in 1985, though his edition did not include any paleographical or codicological analysis.

The preceding information served as a ‘guide’ for Altikulaç to start his scholarship on the early codices of the Qur’ān, as we shall see in the next section.

  1. IRCICA and al-Maṣāḥif al-Sharīfah

At the turn of the 21st century, Research Centre For Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) started its project by gathering ancient Qur’ānic codices and publishing them in  facsimile editions. In 2002, IRCICA published a Qur’ān from 582 AH/1186 CE known as muṣḥaf Fāḍil Bāshā, kept at Gazi Husrev-begova biblioteka in Sarajevo. This work was then followed in 2005 by the reproduction of another Qur’ān from 1217 AH/1803 CE known as muṣḥaf Qāzān (Kazan), which is believed to be the first printed Qur’ān in the Muslim world. Starting in 2007, IRCICA directed its attention towards reproducing early Qur’āns that are attributed to the caliphs ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, assigning this duty to Tayyar Altikulaç. Altikulaç’s job was to prepare these old codices for academic publication, hence providing a set of supplements such as introductions, commentaries, annotations, and a comprehensive transcription of the Qur’ānic folios to be placed side-by-side with the reproduced images. During the years 2007-2016, Altıkulaç published four early codices attributed to ‘Uthmān, held in several libraries and museums: Topkapı Palace Museum (H.S. 44/32), Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum (No. 457) in Istanbul, Central Library of Islamic Manuscripts and Museum of Islamic Art (No. 24145), both in Cairo, in addition to one codex attributed to ‘Alī in Ṣan‘ā’. More recently, he published two scattered Ḥijāzī fragments from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Arabe 328a-b) and the Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen (Ma VI 165). The latter has been radiocarbon dated to 649-675 CE with 95.4% confidence.[7] Furthermore, a new monograph has appeared in Turkish, entitled Günümüze Ulaşan Mesahif-i Kadîme. İlk Mushaflar Üzerine Bir İnceleme (Old extant copies of the Qurʾān. A study of the earliest copies). Written in concise and instructive style, the book aims to summarize the studies carried out by Altıkulaç on the works mentioned beforehand.

Altıkulaç’s observations on the Qur’ānic manuscripts he studied can be summarized in the following points[8]:

  1. Almost all these codices that have reached us are from the second half of the 1st century or the first half of the 2nd century AH (i.e. the Umayyad period; 661-750 CE).
  2. In terms of rasm or orthography, the Tashkent muṣḥaf is related to the Kūfa muṣḥaf, which is among the muṣḥafs sent by ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān to several Islamic cities; the Topkapi and Ṣan‘ā’ muṣḥafs are related to the Medina muṣḥaf; TİEM (No. 457) and St. Petersburg (E-20) are related to the Basra muṣḥaf; Central Library of Islamic Manuscripts (Cairo) muṣḥaf is probably related to the Kufa muṣḥaf; and London (Or. 2165) and Paris (Arabe 328) muṣḥafs are related to the Damascus muṣḥaf. They are either copied directly from the ʿUthmānic muṣḥafs or from copies that were copied from them.
  3. These manuscripts were written in distant locations in vast geographical areas, over the span of 1300 years.
  4. They were all transcribed by different scribes.
  5. The dimensions, number of folios and lines, as well as codicological characteristics of these manuscripts are dissimilar to one another.
  6. There is no difference among them in terms of sūrahs, the arrangement of āyahs within the sūrahs and their sequence. Nevertheless, some minor rasm variants and scribal errors have been observed.
  1. Closing remarks

During May 2016, I had the opportunity to visit Turkey. There, I met Tayyar Altıkulaç at ISAM in Üsküdar; a district located on the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus. As we arrived in, he was transcribing the text of a Kūfic muṣḥaf on his computer. Later, he told me it is from Mashhad in Iran.[9] Accompanied by his assistant Elif Behnan Karabıyık, we spent a great time talking mostly about Qur’ānic manuscripts. However, we were surprised upon hearing that he intends to stop working, mainly because of aging. Though I believe his passion for early codices of the Qur’ān will lead him through. In 2014, for instance, he published an almost-complete Qur’ānic codex after receiving a letter from a German professor informing him of the existence of “a large-size Ḥijāzī Qur’ān” in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo and encouraged him to study it.

By reproducing seven Qur’ānic codices and fragments (see appendix 1), Altikulaç had done a great contribution to the emergent field of Qur’ānic manuscript studies. Based on his reproductions, scholars and researchers are now given the chance to conduct further studies and observations, with regards to palaeography, codicology, art history, and other related disciplines.

*Ahmed Shaker is an independent researcher whose work focuses on early Qur’anic manuscripts.

Appendix 1: Bibliography of al-Maṣāḥif al-Sharīfah

The following is a complete list of the al-maṣāḥif al-sharīfah editions published so far. It should be noted that the titles cited below are bilingual and are written in either English/Arabic or Turkish/Arabic.

Altıkulaç, T. (2007). al-Muṣḥaf al-Sharīf attributed to ʻUthmān ibn ʻAffān (The copy at the Topkapı Palace Museum). 1st ed. Istanbul: Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

Altıkulaç, T. (2007). Hz. Osman’a nisbat edilen Mushaf-ı şerîf (Türk ve İslâm Eserleri Müzesi Nüshası). 1st ed. İstanbul: İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi.

Altıkulaç, T. (2009). al-Muṣḥaf al-Sharīf attributed to ʻUthmān ibn ʻAffān (the copy at Mashhad Imam Husaini in Cairo). 1st ed. Istanbul: Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

Altıkulaç, T. (2011). al-Muṣḥaf al-Sharīf attributed to ʻAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (the copy of Sana’a). 1st ed. Istanbul: Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

Altıkulaç, T. (2014). Mushaf-ı şerîf (Kahire İslâm Sanatları Müzesi Nüshası). 1st ed. Istanbul: Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

Altıkulaç, T. (2015). Mushaf-ı şerîf (Biblioethèque Nationale, Paris). 1st ed. Istanbul: Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

Altıkulaç, T. (2016). Mushaf-ı şerîf (Tübingen Nüshası). 1st ed. Istanbul: Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

[1] Déroche, F. (2014). Qurʼans of the Umayyads: A Preliminary Overview. 1st ed. Leiden: Brill, p.1.

[2] See Fedeli, A. (2015). Early Qur’ānic manuscripts, their text, and the Alphonse Mingana papers held in the Department of Special Collections of the University of Birmingham. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham.

[3] On facsimile editions of early Qur’āns, see Gacek, A. (2001). The Arabic Manuscript Tradition: A Glossary of Technical Terms and Bibliography. 1st ed. Leiden: Brill, p.255; Shaker, A. (2015). “Facsimile Editions of Early Qur’an Manuscripts: A Survey.” International Qur’anic Studies Association blog. Available online at: https://iqsaweb.org/2015/10/26/shaker_facsimile-editions.

[4] Zurqānī, M. (1995). Manāhil al-ʻirfān fī ʻulūm al-Qurʼān. 1st ed. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʻArabī, pp.330-331. Cf. Muṭīʻī, M. (2009). al-Kalimāt al-ḥisān fī al-ḥurūf al-sabʻah wa-jamʻ al-Qurʼān. 1st ed. Cairo: Dār al-Baṣā’ir, p.77.

[5] Altıkulaç, T., Shaker, A. and Hassan, M. (2014). Al-Maṣāḥif al-mansūbah ilā ʿUthmān and ʿAlī. 1st ed. [ebook] Qur’anic Studies Blog, p.13. Available at: https://quranmss.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/masahif_lecture.

[6]  Hamidullah, M. (1969). Introduction to Islam. 1st ed. Paris: Centre culturel islamique, p.22; Hamidullah, M. and Iqbal, A. (1993). The emergence of Islam I: History of the Qur’ān. 1st ed. [ebook], pp.35-38.

[7] Universität Tübingen (2014). Koran manuscript from early period of Islam. Tübingen University fragment written 20-40 years after the death of the Prophet, analysis shows. [online] Available at: https://www.uni-tuebingen.de/uploads/media/14-11-10Koranhandschrift_UB_Tuebingen_en.pdf [Accessed 21 May 2017].

[8] See Altıkulaç, T. (2010). “Oldest Surviving Mushafs.” In: U. Mujde, ed., The 1400th anniversary of the Qur’an. Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art Qur’an Collection, 1st ed. Istanbul: Antik A.Ş. Cultural Publications.

[9]  Attributed to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and kept at the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi, this Kūfic codex was recently reproduced as a facsimile edition in a cooperation between the Center of Publication and Printing of Holy Qur’an and Astan Quds Razavi, edited by Tayyar Altikulaç. (Hawzah News Agency, August 2, 2016, available at http://en.hawzahnews.com/detail/News/344161

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