Islamic Origins

A number of recent articles have debated whether Sūrat al-Qadr refers to Christmas.  This article argues that Q 97 is much more closely modeled on Ephrem's Nativity Hymn No. 21 than is usually understood, although prior scholars (most prominently Guillaume Dye and Nicolai Sinai) have already remarked on the close relationship between these texts.  Expanding on those insights, it is argued here that the sūrah's cryptic central term 'qadr,' literally meaning 'measurement,' should be understood as an Arabic term that designated the paradoxical process of incarnation that is discussed at length in Ephrem's hymn.  The sūrah repeats the Syriac hymn's central message, which is that the Lord's descent and incarnation, a paradoxical measuring and definition of the infinite deity, has enabled his worshipers to become 'divinized', joining as companions of the angels in song when they celebrate this unique night.  From a diachronic perspective, the article further discusses how this Syriac Christian conception of the divine incarnation and its ritual celebration was transformed, rearticulated, and reinterpreted during the process of articulating Qur’ānic revelation concepts.  Particularly important here is the later interpolation that Dye and Sinai have identified in Q 97:4 which attempted to render this archaic sūrah less 'polytheistic,' meaning Christian.  Last, the article concludes with several hypotheses about the Sitz im Leben of Q 97, and discusses how this overtly-Christian text could have been incorporated into what became the Qūr'an.

[Author's note, 4/24/18: This draft article is obsolete following publication of the revised material on this subject in my book "Evolution of the Early Qur’ān: From Anonymous Apocalypse to Charismatic Prophet," in Apocalypticism: Cross-disciplinary Explorations, edited by Carlos A. Segovia, Isaac W. Oliver, and Anders K. Petersen. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2018. As such, as I have removed the attached text file.]

The modern study of the quranic Jesus has basically moved in a single direction, as generally scholars have approached the Jesus passages contained in the Qur’an from a thematic standpoint. Somewhat inoffensively, therefore, they tend to distinguish between the passages in which Jesus’s birth is reported, those that mention his miracles and his mission to Israel, those relative to his death, those which briefly mention him as a prophet or a righteous among others, and those that discuss his divine sonship thus denying the very basis of mainstream Christian doctrine – which, consequently, most modern scholars regard as the primary target of the Qur’an’s counter-Christology. It is this last point, moreover, that has largely overdetermined all modern interpretations of the quranic Jesus. Accordingly, most scholars take the quranic passages allusive to Jesus’s birth, life, and death as being merely illustrative of some key episodes of Jesus’s “biography” as told in the gospels; in their view, therefore, such passages convey a purely descriptive purpose, even if their narratives often draw on apocryphal sources, or else display new “data.” In contrast, the passages that criticise the notion that Jesus is God’s son are interpreted by them to contain the Qur’an’s own theological message about Jesus. Things are much more complex, though. It may well be, for example, that some if not all of the alleged descriptive Jesus passages hide more than they seem to offer at first sight; or, to put it in more forceful terms, that they serve an ideological purpose which is anything but descriptive. Also, it is not altogether clear how one ought to articulate and interpret the quranic passages that refer to Jesus as God’s messiah instead of God’s son, those which deny Jesus’s divine sonship, those that impugn the Christian trinity, and those which contend that God is childless: do they all belong to the same redactional layer?, and, more importantly, even if one agrees that they all aim at the same idea, which is their exact theological intent? Lastly, is it possible to reread the Christology of the Qur’an (i.e. the latter’s treatment of God’s Word and of Jesus’s messiahship) against the background of the Near-Eastern Christological developments of the 7th century? And if so, how should they and how should they not be linked?; that is to say, what specific type of contextual connection between them should be acknowledged in order to pay justice to their apparently complex intersection and what particular type of subordination should be avoided in turn? So far, these questions have either never been asked, or have been approached from a viewpoint that systematically takes from granted, somewhat naively to say the least, the cut-clear religious boundaries of the Islamic faith in the early-to-mid-7th century (the decades in which, presumably, the quranic corpus was put together).

In contrast, by putting forward a “symptomatic reading” (Althusser) of the relevant quranic passages – a reading that attempts at disclosing their “buried problematic” through a careful examination of their rhetoric and imagery – my book offers three hypotheses that may be summarised as follows:

• Originally, the earliest redactional layers of the Qur’an bear witness to a non-Jesus-centred Christology that was later re-shaped in light of, and subordinated to, a less-ambiguously monotheistic creed introduced at a later stage in the development of the quranic corpus together with a prophetical kerygma.

• In turn, all the Jesus passages contained in the Qur’an belong to two distinct and successive redactional layers contemporary with the Arab conquest of Syria-Palestine and Iraq and, more precisely, with Mu‘awiya’s and ‘Abd al Malik’s rules, respectively: the first of these layers presents evident and recurrent anti-Jewish overtones and upon close analysis proves to be pro-Christian, while the second one is overtly anti-Christian.

• It is therefore incorrect to read the Qur’an’s Jesus passages from the point of view of the latter anti-Christian texts. On the one hand, the Qur’an’s pro-Christian Jesus passages must be replaced in their historical context, and hence read vis-à-vis the well-documented Jewish criticism of Jesus (and Mary) current in the aftermath of the Persian invasion of the Near East. On the other hand, the early Christology of the Qur’an must be examined against the development of a peripheral religious culture in the southern- and eastern limes of the Byzantine empire (from pre-Islamic Yemen to pre-Islamic Iraq).

It is primary intended, then, for scholars working in the fields of quranic studies, emergent Islam, and early Christian-Muslim relations. Additionally, it could be of some interest for scholars of late-antique Christianity working on the extra-biblical literary traditions about Jesus.

The quranic Noah narratives provide a fascinating window into the making of Muhammad as an eschatological prophet. This book examines their form, content, and sources as a means of deciphering the scribal and intertextual nature of the Qur'an and the Jewish-Christian background of the messianic controversy out of which Islam emerged. The view that Muhammad was once tentatively though of as a new Messiah challenges our picture of Islam's origins.

This paper attempts to reconstruct aspects of the phonology and morphology
of the Arabic of the Islamic conquests on the basis of Greek transcriptions in
papyri of the first Islamic century. The discussion includes phonemic and
allophonic variation in consonants and vowels, and nominal morphology.
The essay concludes with a discussion on possible Aramaic and South
Arabian influences in the material, followed by a short appendix with
remarks on select Arabic terms from the pre-Islamic papyri.

Bu çalışmada oryantalistik Kur’ân araştırmalarının en tartışmalı konularından biri olan Kur’ân’ın Ya-hudi kökenli olduğu iddiası konu edilmiştir. İlgili iddia, onu modern dönemde ilk kez akademik bir çalışmada ortaya koyan Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) üzerinden ele alınmıştır. Abraham Geiger’ın bu çalışması hem akademik hem de dinî çevrelerde büyük yankı uyandırmış ve kendisinden sonra aynı yöntem kullanılarak pek çok çalışmanın yapılmasına zemin hazırlamıştır. Her ne kadar durum böyle olsa da bu çalışmada ondan önceki dönemde bu iddianın varlığı sorgulanmış ve iddianın ilk örnekleri-ne Orta Çağ Yahudi âlimlerinin eserlerinde rastlandığı tespit edilmiştir. Üç başlıktan oluşan çalışmada ilk olarak Abraham Geiger öncesi Yahudi köken iddiasının tarihî seyri mercek altına alınmıştır. Bu bağlamda Kur’ân’ın nüzul döneminden başlamak suretiyle Ortaçağ Yahudi literatürü incelenmiş ve Geiger’a gelinceye değin ilgili iddianın örnekleri tespit edilmiştir. Geiger’ın iddialarının özgünlüğünü tahlil etme ve selefleriyle benzer yahut farklı noktalarını tespit etme açısından bu tarihçenin önem arz ettiği düşünülmektedir. İkinci başlıkta önce Geiger’ın hayatı ve eserleri hakkında bilgiler verilmiş, yaşadığı dönemin dinî ve sosyo-kültürel şartlarının çalışmaları ve zihin dünyası üzerindeki etkisi sor-gulanmıştır. Akabinde Yahudi köken iddiasını detaylı bir şekilde temellendirmeye çalıştığı doktora tezi üzerinden iddiasında takip ettiği yöntem ve temel iddiaları ortaya konulmuştur. Üçüncü ve son baş-lıkta ise Geiger sonrası oluşan Yahudi köken literatürü incelenmiş, eser-yazar bilgileri üzerinden örnekler verilerek iddianın son dönemdeki seyrine dikkat çekilmiştir. Çalışma neticesinde, oryantalist Kur’ân araştırmalarında ciddi bir yer tutan Yahudi köken iddiasının tarihsel seyri Abraham Geiger öncesi ve sonrası incelenmek suretiyle ortaya konulmaya çalışılmıştır.

In this study, the claim that the Qur'an is of Jewish origin, which is one of the most controversial issues of orientalistic Qur'anic studies, is discussed. This work of Abraham Geiger aroused great repercussions in both academic and religious circles and laid the groundwork for many studies after him using the same method. Although this is the case, in this study, the existence of this claim in the previous period was questioned and it was determined that the first examples of the claim were found in the works of medieval Jewish scholars. In this study, which consists of three titles, firstly, the historical course of the Jewish origin claim before Abraham Geiger was examined. In this con-text, starting from the revelation period of the Qur'an, medieval Jewish literature has been examined and examples of the relevant claim have been identified until Geiger. This history is considered to be important in terms of analyzing the originality of Geiger's claims and identifying similar or diffe-rent points with his predecessors. In the second title, firstly, information about Geiger's life and works was given, and the effect of the religious and socio-cultural conditions of the period he lived in on his works and mind was questioned. Then, the method and basic claims he followed in his claim were revealed through his doctoral thesis, in which he tried to justify the claim of Jewish ori-gin in detail. In the third and last title, the Jewish origin literature that emerged after Geiger was examined, and the recent state of the claim was presented by giving examples on the information of the work-author. As a result of the study, the historical course of the Jewish origin claim, which has a serious place in orientalistic Qur'an studies, has been tried to be revealed by examining pre and post-Abraham Geiger.

This paper argues that the application of the tools and methods of Redaction criticism to the Qur'an can yield extremely fruitful results.
Studying, more specifically, surah 19 (Maryam), it shows that this surah displays several layers of composition. The earliest layers are described as a "text of convergence" with Christians. It is shown that all the details of the text have their source in written, liturgical and popular Christian traditions, most specifically those related to the Jerusalem Marian liturgy of the early 7th century. Analysing the profile of the author shows that this surah was most probably composed after the conquests by a Christian monk who "converted" to the faith of the newcomers, or put his pen at their service. It also show that Q 3:33-63 is later than the early layers of Q 19:1-63, and that Q 19:34-40 was added to Q 19 later than the composition of Q 3:33-63.
This raises interesting questions about the chronology and composition of the Qur'an. Solutions to various specific riddles in surah 19 are also suggested.

RE: Facades, illusions & ideological concepts created & promoted by ancient royalty out of necessity; effective creation of an alternate version of reality. It is only by knowing this information that the true nature of ancient texts may be understood correctly. Not knowing, means making incorrect assumptions & conclusions. Important!

The assassinations of the Prophet Muḥammad's antagonists were, according to the sīra, the harsh measures he took toward the consolidation of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. These incidents' narratives are often labeled in modern scholarship as "completely free of any tendentiousness." This contention seems, however, to be grounded in the lack of full cognizance of the sources' ulterior motives and of the extent of literary devices deployed in the traditional biography of the Prophet. The present study identifies the topoi appearing in the murder accounts of the Prophet's political opponents that shed light on the extent of these stories' dependence on each other and on the possibility of literary borrowing between them. This analysis shows that the use of literary tools in the sources are more widespread than what may appear at first sight. Our accounts exhibit striking resemblances with one another in both form and content, a point seriously undermining the trustworthiness of the sīra as a straightforward source for reconstructing the Prophet's life.

"Critical notice of : The Qur'ān inContext. Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur'ānic
Milieu, edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx,Leiden,
Boston:Brill (TextandStudiesontheQurɛān6), 2010, 864pp."

"""The āthār are our main source for the study of the first 150 years of Islam. They constitute a voluminous literature with layers of early and late traditions from different cities, tribes, and sects. Determining the date and provenance of a report is a complex task that calls for the development of a variety of methods. This study presents a technique that should be added to the scholars' toolbox. It uses correlations between the contents of traditions and the cities represented in their isnāds to put a bound on the date of a tradition.

The essay presents three case-studies about women's participation in group prayers."""

The subject of the present paper is a prophetic tradition found in some compendia of eschatological aḥādīth which has received considerable scholarly attention since Wilferd Madelung dedicated an article to it in 1981. Whereas Madelung shares the opinion of earlier scholars that only some of the incidents ‘prophesied’ by this tradition are historical, this study aims to show that it is a wholly ex post facto composition which, in its various strata, remarkably captures episodes from the Zubayrid war of propaganda against their rivals as well as their later attempts to redeem the memory of their lost cause as a just one. The discussion closes by producing a highly singular Syrian tradition most certainly put into circulation with the intent of countering these Zubayrid propaganda efforts.

The metaphor of the camel passing through the eye of the needle is found in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25) and the Qur'an (7:40). The Gospels seem to suggest that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Qur'an, on the other hand, puts the metaphor in the context of disbelievers who are arrogant (istakbarū) toward God's signs. At the outset, it would seem that the passage's contexts in the Gospels and the Qur'an are different; however, through a closer analysis of the keywords, there are textual parallels that can be extracted from both texts and go beyond simply the use of this analogy in common, as previous scholars have thought. For instance, the rich man in the Gospels is asking about inheriting eternal life, while the Qur'an also discusses eternal life and inheritance in the same context. These and several other textual parallels suggest that the Qur'an is alluding to the same context for the metaphor as the Gospels do.

The question raised by this meeting seems straightforward: Is there a Jewish-Christian influence at the core of the most primitive Islam, as several former and recent scholars have argued (sometimes in very different ways)?  However, straightforward questions do not necessarily admit straightforward answers – for example because they can be quite ambiguous. Therefore, the path to a putative answer might be full of pitfalls and meanders – and I want to explore here some of them. They pertain to words and formulas included in the question itself, namely “Jewish-Christian,” “influence,” and “most primitive Islam.” This paper will show why these notions raise serious conceptual, epistemological and methodological difficulties.

This paper suggests that 6th-century Yemenite Christianity should be taken into consideration as a relevant, if hitherto often neglected, factor that may help to explain both the emergence of Islam and its South-Arabian component. It also explores the extent to which the interactions between the Christians and the Jews of pre-Islamic Yemen may be said to be of especial relevance to understand the Christology of the Qur’ān. Lastly, it contends that this represents a better approach to deciphering the Jewish and Christian roots of emergent Islam than the hypothesis of a “Jewish-Christian” influence upon the latter.

If compared to Esimiphaios’s, Abraha’s thanksgiving formulas hint at political and cultural shift in 6th-century Yemen. This paper explores whether such shift had too – as suggested by several authors over the past decades – religious motivations; and, if so, which were these. It also analyses the eventual implications of the aforementioned shift for the renewed study of Islam’s origins by examining Abraha’s rhetoric and several key passages in the Qur’ān, in addition to other late-antique sources like the synoptic gospels and Musaylima’s prophetic stanzas. All this in the conviction that to escape a paradigm that has clearly overemphasised the Hijazi background of emergent Islam, one does not need to overemphasise, in turn, its Syrian-Iraqi setting at the expense of the its South-Arabian connections, no matter how decisive the North-Arabian ones prove.

The present study aims to contribute to the quest for the origins of belief in the eschatological figure of the Sufyānī, a matter of hot debate since the late nineteenth century. To this end, three different bodies of evidence are produced and analysed: reports indicating that the Sufyānī was, indeed, thought of as a redemptive personality in some Syrian quarters, traditions on him in the Muslim endtimes literature that contain an ex eventu pronouncement, and reports concerning the propaganda activities of the first Sufyānī claimant, Abū Muḥammad Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd ‘al-Sufyānī’, in the historical record. Making use of hitherto unavailable sources and looking afresh at the rest, it is argued that the myth of the Sufyānī emerged during the counterrevolutionary revolt of Abū Muḥammad al-Sufyānī in 132 AH, with vague residues of it traceable to his earlier military activities, against the Umayyad caliph Yazīd III, in 126 AH.

The murder of the Prophet's chief Jewish opponent, Ka'b b. al-Ashraf, led to grave consequences for the tribe of Banūal-Naḍ ı̄r and for the Jews as a whole. The incident ushered in a series of hostile Mus-lim-Jewish encounters that reached its climax in the battle of Khaybar. Despite the constructive study undertaken by previous scholars, there still seem to be some contradictory elements and vague accounts that have been either utterly ignored or for which a satisfactory explanation is lacking. In the light of certain striking pieces of evidence, scattered in unlikely places in the sı̄ra and tafsı̄r compendia, the present study sets out to examine critically the extent to which the accounts of Ka'b's murder can be trusted. It will be argued that what we are faced with is seriously distorted material with logical absurdities and discrepancies that cannot easily be reconciled. Apart from the historical reconstruction, special attention will be devoted to a momentous historiographical point-that our reports have been doctored for political reasons. This helps us adopt a more realistic view of the individuals whose names occurred in the accounts of the event in question.

This paper addresses itself to the enigmatic phrase snh qaḍāʾ al-muʾminīn that appears in a papyrus sheet from early Muslim Egypt. It takes issue with the earlier interpretations of the phrase, arguing that it is indeed a dating formula that is probably to be read as sanat qaḍāʾ al-muʾminīn and understood as ‘the year according to the reckoning of the believers’. Based on the testimony of this papyrus fragment, it is further argued that the epoch of the Muslim calendar was, in all likelihood, originally meant to count the years from Muḥammad’s foundation of a new community and polity at Medina, a momentous event that the early Muslims conceived of as the dawn of a new age.