Tag Archives: Review of Qur’anic Research

Advertising with IQSA

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The International Qur’anic Studies Association is now extending advertising opportunities for interested publishers! See below for new print and online advertising offerings.

  1. Advertise in the Annual Meeting Program Book – Every year the International Qur’anic Studies Association holds an Annual Meeting in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature/American Academy of Religion, attracting a wide audience in the scholarly community from across the nation. The accompanying Program Book published by IQSA is read by hundreds at the Annual Meeting and thousands around the world, providing a critical platform for relevant businesses market their publications and services. Email contact@iqsaweb.org to reserve an advertising space today!
  2. Advertise in Print – IQSA provides advertising space in three of its flagship publications: the Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (JIQSA), the monthly Review of Qur’anic Research, and the forthcoming monograph series IQSA Studies in the Qur’an (ISIQ). Email contact@iqsaweb.org for details.
  3. Advertise Online – While IQSA does not currently hold a a physical headquarters, its website serves as the central meeting point and face of the organization visited by hundreds of members and non-members every day. Email contact@iqsaweb.org to inquire about advertising with us online via www.iqsaweb.org.
  4. Send an Email to IQSA Members – IQSA will send emails on behalf of publishers and other advertisers of interest to our members. The publisher/advertiser is responsible for composing the email. Please contact the Executive Office at contact@iqsaweb.org for more information.

Review of Qur’anic Research, Vol. 3 no.4 (2017)

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In the latest installment of IQSA’s Review of Qur’anic Research, Devin Stewart (Emory University) reviews David Hollenberg’s Beyond the Qurʾān: Early Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl and the Secrets of the Prophets (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2016). The book is a discussion of taʾwīl, allegorical or symbolic interpretation of the Qurʾān, based mainly on Ismāʿīlī works from the tenth and eleventh centuries. It presents three main arguments: an overarching historical argument about the Ismāʿīlī daʿwah and other similar movements, and two more focused arguments on the nature of Ismāʿīlī taʾwīl and its use of biblical material.

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For full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), members can log in HERE. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

 

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

Review of Qur’anic Research, Vol. 3 no.3 (2017)

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In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research, Johanna Pink (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg) reviews The Qur’an and Its Readers Worldwide edited by Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford University Press, 2015). This volume presents readers with an unprecedented broad perspective on the global field of Muslim qurʾānic exegesis. It brings together ten chapters that bear witness to exegetical approaches from all over the world: Bosnia, Turkey, South Asia, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, the U.S., East Africa, Germany, and China. Consequently, it contains examples from Muslim majority societies as well as diasporic communities from the early twentieth century to the present.

For full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), members can log in HERE. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

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

Review of Qur’anic Research, Vol. 3 no. 1 (2017)

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In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research, Fred M. Donner reviews Michael Penn’s When Christians First Met Muslims: A Sourcebook of the Earliest Syriac Writings on Islam (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015). Since the publication of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook’s Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1980), several collections of non-Muslim sources used to reconstruct the history of Early Islam have appeared in conversation, bringing together languished manuscripts that were previously unpublished and often untranslated into one place. A major milestone was the appearance of Robert Hoyland’s Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (1997), a collection whose value has hardly diminished in the two decades since its publication. Also critical in this regard is Andrew Palmer’s The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles (1993). Michael Penn’s When Christians First Met Muslims is a welcome addition to this list of useful compendium of non-Muslim sources that describe the origins of Islam.

For full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), members can log in HERE. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

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

2016 Year in Review & Happy 2017

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It’s been a fruitful year for IQSA. In 2016 we furthered our work in the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), helped launch the the Qur’an Seminar Commentary,  and completed work on the first issue of the Journal of the International Qur’an Studies Association, now in design and production. We also welcomed hundreds of friends and colleagues from around the world to our  Annual Meeting in San Antonio. As the year winds to a close we reflect on our association’s achievements with gratitude to our members, contributors, and readers around the world. We also take this time to renew our dedication to providing valuable resources and opportunities for collaboration in Qur’anic studies in 2017.

2016 has also come with its challenges as well. We acknowledge the passing of renowned Qur’an scholars–and dear friends– during 2016. These include Ali Mabrouk as well as Andrew Rippin. The outpouring of support for the Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize, and professor Rippin’s legacy has been unprecedented–thank you.

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The work of IQSA wouldn’t be possible without the active support of our members. So start your new year off right by joining or renewing your membership in IQSA! Three tiered membership remains in place for 2017 ($25, $50, $75), with students and select junior or international colleagues paying as little as US$25 (USD). We do our best to keep membership dues low while offering high quality, academic and professional member benefits. Your membership and support are what make this exchange possible–thank you.

To become a member, please click HERE, where you will be asked to fill out a membership form and pay the appropriate membership fees. After completing this process, you will receive login information to save for your records and use to access member benefits at any time. You can then create your own profile for our member directory.

Membership benefits for 2017 include:

We appreciate your membership!

U.S. taxpayers! Are you still looking to make an end-of-year tax deductible charitable donation? Consider supporting Qur’anic scholarship with a donation to IQSA. We are a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions. You can donate to IQSA online by clicking HERE.

Finally, please do not forget to follow our Blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and to join the private IQSA Discussion Group. Thanks for your support!

We wish you a very Happy Holidays! كل عام وأنتم بخير

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2016. All rights reserved.

Arabs and Empires Before Islam

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IQSA members – the final Review of Qur’anic Research for 2016 is up! In the latest installment of RQR, Dr. Ilkka Lindstedt reviews Arabs and Empires Before Islam (Greg Fisher, ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2015). With contributions by over 20 leading experts of pre-Islamic Arabia, it is a formidable achievement in the field of pre-Islamic Arabian studies. It presents the history of Arabia from antiquity to the 630s CE, taking into account the subject’s diversity and presenting a variety of source materials.

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Much importance is given to the surviving material evidence in the present volume. It provides, for example, interpretations of significant new inscriptions and reinterpretations of previously published ones, many of which have previously been dispersed in hard-to-access publications, and explains their worth for the study of history. It has been (and unfortunately still is) a common habit of Arabists to look first and foremost at the Arabic historiography of the Islamic era and other literary evidence when discussing pre-Islamic Arabia. This is probably a question of habit and training: Arabists and Islamicists usually know well, for example, the Arabic works of the ninth–tenth centuries by Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 206/821-22), Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833), and al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), but they are not aware of the magnitude of the surviving pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphic record (numbering almost 100,000 known items at the moment).

Not an IQSA member? Registration for the 2017 calendar year is open! Click HERE to sign up for benefits like access to the Review of Qur’anic Research and much more!

 

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2016. All rights reserved.

Les trois piliers de l’Islam: Une lecture anthropologique du Coran

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chabbi-coverIn the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research, Gabriel Said Reynolds reviews Jacqueline Chabbi’s Les trois piliers de l’Islam: Une lecture anthropologique du Coran. In this volume, Chabbi makes the case that Islam as we know it from medieval sources is not the same as Islam as it was in its original Arabian context. According to Chabbi, academic scholars and pious Muslims alike too often fail to recognize elements of Islam which were introduced in later centuries, and too often assume that medieval ideas about the Qurʾan reflect what the Qurʾan meant to its original, Arabian audience. Les trois piliers de l’Islam is her effort to set things straight, to recover Islam’s original message.

Full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR) is available in the members-only area of our IQSA website. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

Qur’anic Studies, a Political Philology?

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Cover of Koranforschung – eine politische philologie? (Walter de Gruyter, 2014)

In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research 2 no. 5, Mareike Koertner reviews Angelika Neuwirth’s Koranforschung – eine politische Philologie? (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014). In this book Neuwirth presents a concise work of her larger theories of contextualizing the qur’anic text within the intellectual framework of Late Antiquity. She suggests that the study of the reception of biblical materials in the Qurʾan must be analyzed by considering the cultural and religious context in which the Qurʾan emerged and evolved. The qur’anic text heavily interacted with its audiences and is a result of a process of cultural re-negotiation that included elements from the environment in Mecca, the living heirs of the biblical traditions who resided in Medina, and, Muhammad and his community. In answering her question of if the qur’anic studies is a political philology, Neuwirth explains the various meanings of “political.”

Full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR) is available in the members-only area of our IQSA website. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

The Aesthetic Experience of the Qur’an

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kermani coverIn the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research 2, no. 3, Lauren E. Osborne reviews Navid Kermani’s God is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran (Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2015). In this book, Kermani argues that the aesthetic experience of the Qurʾan has always been linked to understanding the text as a whole since its initial reception. This aesthetic experience is mainly focused on the hearing. Through his analysis, Kermani brings an innovative hermeneutic strategy to Qur’anic studies. His work also provides an innovative way of analyzing early accounts of the reception of the Qur’an. His work covers close readings of an impressive number of sources, bringing into focus an essential aspect of experiencing the Qur’an.

Full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR) is available in the members-only area of our IQSA website. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

The Jews of Medina and the Challenge of Early Islamic Historiography

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Cover of Mazuz, Religious and Spiritual Lives of the Jews of Medina (Brill, 2014). Image from brill.com.

In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research 2, no. 2, Michael Pregill reviews Haggai Mazuz’s The Religious and Spiritual Lives of the Jews of Medina (Leiden: Brill, 2014). This work not only seeks to establish the historicity of much of the data the traditional sources offer us on the culture, customs, and traditions of the Jewish communities of the Ḥijāz in Muhammad’s time, but proposes to offer a conclusive demonstration of the squarely halakhic nature of these Jews. According to Mazuz, much of what the classical Islamic sources relate about Muhammad’s Jewish contemporaries can be correlated with data about Jewish ideas and practices found in the Babylonian Talmud and other mainstream rabbinic sources, which he interprets as proof that these Arabian communities were essentially rabbinic in orientation.

Full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR) is available in the members-only area of our IQSA website. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!

© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2016. All rights reserved.