Qurʼanic studies today 9781138181953, 1138181951

Table of contents :
Machine generated contents note: PART 1 --
1. Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory of Variant Traditions in the Qur'an / Devin J. Stewart --
2. Lot's Wife: Late Antique Paradigms of Sense and the Qur'an / Nora K. Schmid --
3. Sign of Jonah: Transformations and Interpretations of the Jonah Story in the Qur'an / Hannelies Koloska --
PART 2 --
4. End of Hope: Suras 10 --
15, Despair and a Way Out of Mecca / Walid A. Saleh --
5. Casting: A Close Hearing of Sura 20:1 --
79 / Michael A. Sells --
6. Qur'anic Studies and Philology: Qur'anic Textual Politics of Staging, Penetrating, and Finally Eclipsing Biblical Tradition / Angelika Neuwirth --
7. "Sunna of Our Messengers": The Qur'an's Paradigm for Messengers and Prophets
a Reading of Surat ash-Shu'ara' (26) / Sidney H. Griffith --
8. Textual and Paratextual Meaning in the Recited Qur'an: Analysis of Performance of Surat al-Furqan by Sheikh Mishari Rashid Alafasy / Lauren E. Osborne --
PART 3 --
9. Ma'sal: What the Talal Would Tell Us / Ghassan El Masri --
10. Ahbar and Ruhban: Religious Leaders in the Qur'an in Dialogue with Christian and Rabbinic Literature / Holger M. Zellentin --
11. Reinterpreting the Qur'anic Criticism of Other Religions / Mun'im Sirry.

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Qurʾānic Studies Today

Qurʾānic Studies Today brings together specialists in the field of Islamic studies to provide a range of essays that reflect the depth and breadth of scholarship on the Qurʾān. Combining theoretical and methodological clarity with close readings of qurʾānic texts, these contributions provide close analysis of specific passages, themes, and issues within the Qurʾān, even as they attend to the disciplinary challenges within the field of qurʾānic studies today. Chapters are arranged into three parts, treating specific figures appearing in the Qurʾān, analyzing particular suras, and finally reflecting on the Qurʾān and its “others.” They explore the internal dimensions and interior chronology of the Qurʾān as text, its possible conversations with biblical and non-biblical traditions in Late Antiquity, and its role as scripture in modern exegesis and recitation. Together, they are indispensable for students and scholars who seek an understanding of the Qurʾān founded on the most recent scholarly achievements. Offering both a reflection of and a reflection on the discipline of qurʾānic studies, the strong, scholarly examinations of the Qurʾān in this volume provide a valuable contribution to Islamic and qurʾānic studies. Angelika Neuwirth is Professor Emeritus of Arabic Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Michael A. Sells is Barrows Professor of the History and Literature of Islam and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.

Routledge Studies in the Qurʾān Former Editor: Andrew Rippin University of Victoria, Canada Series Editor: Walid Saleh University of Toronto, Canada

In its examination of critical issues in the scholarly study of the Qurʾān and its commentaries, this series targets the disciplines of archaeology, history, textual history, anthropology, theology and literary criticism. The contemporary relevance of the Qurʾān in the Muslim world, its role in politics and in legal debates is also dealt with, as are debates surrounding Qurʾānic studies in the Muslim world. For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com The Qurʾan and its Biblical Subtext Gabriel Said Reynold Qurʾanic Hermeneutics Al-Tabrisi and the craft of commentary Bruce Fudge New Perspectives on the Qurʾan The Qurʾan in its historical context 2 Edited by Gabriel Said Reynolds The Qurʾan and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions Emran Iqbal El-Badawi Mary in the Qurʾan A Literary Reading Hosn Abboud Shaping a Qurʾanic Worldview Scriptural hermeneutics and the rhetoric of moral reform in the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn Vanessa De Gifis Qurʾānic Studies Today Edited by Angelika Neuwirth and Michael A. Sells

Qurʾānic Studies Today Edited by Angelika Neuwirth and Michael A. Sells

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Angelika Neuwirth and Michael A. Sells The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Neuwirth, Angelika, editor. | Sells, Michael Anthony, editor. Title: Qurʾanic studies today / edited by Angelika Neuwirth and   Michael A. Sells. Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in   the Qurʾan Identifiers: LCCN 2015039797 | ISBN 9781138181953 (hbk) Subjects: LCSH: Qurʾan—Study and teaching. | Qurʾan—Criticism,   interpretation, etc.—History. Classification: LCC BP130.77 .Q87 2016 | DDC 297.1/2207—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039797 ISBN: 978-1-138-18195-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64665-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figuresvii Contributorsviii Acknowledgments xi Note on Transliteration xii

Introduction

1

PART 1

15

  1 Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory of Variant Traditions in the Qurʾān

17

DEVIN J. STEWART

  2 Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms of Sense and the Qurʾān

52

NORA K. SCHMID

  3 The Sign of Jonah: Transformations and Interpretations of the Jonah Story in the Qurʾān

82

HANNELIES KOLOSKA

PART 2

103

  4 End of Hope: Sūras 10–15, Despair and a Way Out of Mecca

105

WALID A. SALEH

  5 The Casting: A Close Hearing of Sūra 20:1–79

124

MICHAEL A. SELLS

  6 Qurʾānic Studies and Philology: Qurʾānic Textual Politics of Staging, Penetrating, and Finally Eclipsing Biblical Tradition ANGELIKA NEUWIRTH

178

vi  Contents   7 The “Sunna of Our Messengers”: The Qurʾān’s Paradigm for Messengers and Prophets; a Reading of Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (26)

207

SIDNEY H. GRIFFITH

  8 Textual and Paratextual Meaning in the Recited Qurʾān: Analysis of Performance of Sūrat al-Furqān by Sheikh Mishari Rashid Alafasy

228

LAUREN E. OSBORNE

PART 3

247

  9 Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us

249

GHASSAN EL MASRI

10 Aḥbār and Ruhbān: Religious Leaders in the Qurʾān in Dialogue with Christian and Rabbinic Literature

262

HOLGER M. ZELLENTIN

11 Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism of Other Religions

294

MUN’IM SIRRY

Bibliography, Qurʾānic Studies Today Index of Qurʾānic References Index

311 337 353

Figures

3.1  Cubiculum of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, 2nd–4th century CE; taken from: Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, Le catacombe cristiane di Roma: Origini, sviluppo, apparati decorativi, documentazione epigrafica (Regensburg, Germany: Schnell & Steiner, 1998), ill. 29. 3.2  Sarcophagus with Jonah story, Rome, late 3rd century CE, Lateran Museum; taken from: Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, ed., Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, vol. 1, Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967), ill. 11, rep. I.35. 3.3  Endymion Sarcophagus, Rome, 3rd century CE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; taken from: Paul Zanker and Björn Christian Ewald, Mit Mythen leben. Die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage (Munich: Hirmer, 2004), p. 322, ill. 15. 3.4  Jonah Praying, Asia Minor, 280–290 CE, The Cleveland Museum of Art; taken from: James Snyder, Henry Luttikhuizen, and Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk, Snyder’s Medieval Art (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006), p. 4. 5.1  Some Major Early Mūsā Passages in the Qurʾān 5.2 Transdiscursity in Sūra 79 and Sūra 20 5.3 Mūsā, the Fire, and Waḥy in Sūras 20, 27, and 28 5.4 Opening the Breast: Mūsā (Sūra 20) and the Prophet (Sūra 94) 8.1 Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:1–4 8.2 Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:5–6 8.3 Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:7–9 8.4 Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:9–10 8.5 Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:34–35 8.6 Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:62–63

93

94

94

95 125 134 141 147 236 238 239 240 241 242

Contributors

Sidney H. Griffith is Ordinary Professor Emeritus in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America. His publications include: Arabic Christianity in the Monasteries of NinthCentury Palestine (1992); The Beginnings of Christian Theology in Arabic (2002); The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (2008); and The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam (2013). Hannelies Koloska is a research associate at the Corpus Coranicum project at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Her publications include: Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Jauzī: Kitāb aḥkām al-nisā’—Das Buch der Weisungen für Frauen (2009); Offenbarung, Ästhetik und Koranexegese: Zwei Studien zu Sure 18 (al-Kahf) (2015); and “Das Geheimnis der Siebenschläfer: Christliche Heilige und Gleichnisse in Sure 18 (“Die Höhle”),” in Welt und Umwelt der Bibel (2012). Ghassan el Masri is head of the research project “Ruin to Resurrection” at Corpus Coranicum, at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His writings include: “The Qurʾān and the Character of Early Arabic Poetry,” in Qurʾān and Adab, ed. Nuha Shaar (in press); “Contribution à une meilleure compréhension de l’histoire de la Digue de Maʾrib au Yemen,” in Regards croisés d’Orient et d’Occident (2015); “Min al-baʿad ilā al-āḫira: Poetic Time and Qurʾanic Eschatology,” in Les Origines du Coran, le Coran des Origines (2015); and his dissertation “Ad-Dunyā and al-Ākhira in the Qurʾān and in Pre-Islamic Poetry” (Freie Universität Berlin, 2011). Angelika Neuwirth is Professor Emeritus of Arabic Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin (FU), director of the FU research unit “From Logos to Kalam,” and Director of the online research project “Corpus Coranicum: Textgeschichtliche Dokumentation und Historisch-Literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar” at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Her writings include: The Qurʾān in Context, co-edited with Nicolai Sinai and Michael Marx (2010); Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren

Contributors  ix (1979; 2nd ed. 2007); Der Koran als Text der Spätantike (2010); Der Koran, Kommentar I: Poetische Prophetie: Frühmekkanische Suren (2011); Koranforschung eine politische Philologie? (2014); and Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community (2014). Lauren E. Osborne is Assistant Professor of Religion at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Her writings include her dissertation, “From Text to Sound to Perception: Modes and Relationships of Meaning in the Recited Qurʾan” (University of Chicago, 2014), in addition to “The Experience of the Recited Qurʾan,” in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (2016). Walid A. Saleh is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. His publications include: The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) (2004); In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise (2008); and “The Gloss as Intellectual History: The Hashiyahs on al-Kashshaf,” in Oriens (2013). Nora K. Schmid is Researcher at the Collaborative Research Center 980 “Episteme in Motion” at Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany. Her writings include: “Quantitative Text Analysis and Its Application to the Qurʾan: Some Preliminary Considerations,” in The Qurʾān in Context (2010); and “Abū l-ʿAtāhiya and the Versification of Disenchantment,” in The Place to Go: Contexts of Learning in Baghdād, 750–1000 C.E. (2014). She is currently co-editing the volume Denkraum Spätantike together with Angelika Neuwirth and Nora Schmidt. Michael A. Sells is Barrows Professor of the History and Literature of Islam and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. His publications include: Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989); Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994); Early Islamic Mysticism (1996); The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (1996); Stations of Desire: Love Odes of Ibn ʿArabi and New Poems (2000); The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: al-Andalus, co-edited with María Rosa Menocal and Raymond P. Scheindlin (2000); and Approaching the Qurʾan (2nd ed. 2007). Mun’im Sirry is Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. His writings include: Scriptural Polemics: the Qurʾān and Other Religions (2014); “The Qurʾan and Its Polemical Context: Between Chronological and Literary Approaches,” in al-Bayān: Journal of Qurʾān and Ḥadīth Studies (2015); “Muslim Prayer and Public Spheres: An Interpretation of the Qurʾanic verse 9:45,” with A. Rashied Omar in Interpretation 68 (2014); and “Muqatil b. Sulayman and Anthropomorphism,” in Studia Islamica 3 (2012). Devin J. Stewart is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Emory University. His publications include: Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System (1998); Disagreements of the Jurists: A Manual of Islamic Legal Theory (2015); “Sajʿ in the Qurʾān: Prosody and

x  Contributors Structure,” in Journal of Arabic Literature (1990); and “Poetic License in the Qurʾān: Ibn al-Sa’igh al-Ḥanafi’s Ihkam al-Ray fi Ahkam al-Ay,” in Journal of Qurʾanic Studies (2009). Holger M. Zellentin is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Nottingham. His publications include: Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (with E. Iricinschi, 2008); Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (2011); and The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure (2013).

Acknowledgments

With appreciation to the Mellon Foundation for funding the Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative (MISI), which provided the opportunity for Angelika Neuwirth to come to the University of Chicago as a guest professor in the fall quarter of 2012; to the University of Chicago Divinity School and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; to Divinity School Dean Margaret Mitchell as well as Professor Fred Donner, Professor Tahera Qutbuddin, and Professor David Nirenberg for their commitment to the MISI program; to Harry Bastermajian for his dedicated service as MISI coordinator; to Bill Geraci and Elizabeth Sartell for their help with audiovisual questions during the workshop on “Qurʾānic Studies Today”; and to all those who participated in the November 9, 2012, workshop, “Qurʾānic Studies Today.” With special appreciation to Francesca Chubb-Confer, Elizabeth Sartell, and Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, our editorial assistants, who have contributed immeasurably to this volume.

Note on Transliteration

Transliteration style follows the guidelines of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. For quotations of the Qurʾān of any length or complexity, transliteration style reflects, to the extent possible, elisions and assimilations. The guidelines of The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, are followed for most matters of citation, punctuation, and other technical questions. To avoid the proliferation of uppercase terms and italicized words, this volume employs anglicized but wellrecognized expressions for the most common Arabic words – such as “sunna” and “sura” – in cases where those words occur within the prose flow of English (except where “sura” is part of the title, e.g., Sūra 28). In regard to references to scripture, the following conventions have been adopted (quotations, titles of publications, and other special cases excepted): Qurʾān (uppercase with transliteration); qurʾānic (lowercase with transliteration); Bible (uppercase); biblical (lowercase). The following abbreviations are employed: NRSV (New Revised Standard Version), EI1 (Encyclopaedia of Islam, first edition), EI2 (Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition), EI3 (Encyclopaedia of Islam, third edition), EQ (Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān), JQS (Journal of Qurʾanic Studies/Majallat al-Dirāsāt al-Qurʾānīya).

Introduction

This is a volume intended to be both a reflection of and a reflection on the discipline of qurʾānic studies. Contributions provide close analysis of specific passages, themes, and issues within the Qurʾān even as they attend to the disciplinary challenges, promises, or contentions with the field of qurʾānic studies today. The field of qurʾānic studies has developed significantly over the past two decades. Suffice it to note at this point a few milestones in the area of collaborate endeavors and scholarly infrastructure: the establishment of the bilingual Journal of Qurʾanic Studies (JQS)/Majallat al-Dirāsāt al-Qurʾānīya in 1999; the completion of the five-volume Encyclopedia of the Qurʾan (EQ) in 2006; the establishment of the Corpus Coranicum project in 2007; the burgeoning of panels devoted to qurʾānic studies at the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature over the past decade; the founding of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association in 2012; the appearance of the collaboratively produced two-thousand-page Study Qurʾan in 2015; and development of web-based Qurʾān programs with hypertext interfaces for recitation, grammatical analysis, tajwīd indications, transliterations, and concordances, along with a growing webaccessible corpus of classical and modern Arabic commentaries.1 The idea for this volume stems from a Fall 2012 conference, “Qurʾānic Studies Today,” that was organized by Angelika Neuwirth and Michael Sells at the University of Chicago.2 Several essays in the volume are by conference participants, and all address the issues that were of core concern at the conference. Our intention in organizing the conference and in editing this volume has been to reflect the depth and breadth of scholarship on the Qurʾān. Our introductory essay outlines our shared perspectives on the critical interpretive issues with which contemporary scholarship is engaged. Angelika Neuwirth has composed the larger part of the introduction. Michael Sells has written the section of the introduction titled “Aurality and Interdiscursivity.” Although our positions are engaged and in some sense programmatic; we did not expect the participants in the conference, and we do not expect the contributors to this volume, to agree with our priorities or perspectives.

Philology Contested There are few universally accepted premises for the scholarly reading of the Qurʾān in Western scholarship; however, one of these is the assumption that the

2  Introduction Qurʾān entertains a close relation to the Bible. The authority enjoyed by the Bible in qurʾānic debates – reflecting its authority among educated individuals of the Qurʾān’s Late Antique milieu, Jews and Christians, and arguably also syncretists – can hardly be overestimated. In view of this status, it is not out of place, therefore, to refer to the Bible with the honorific introduced by Northrup Frye, who titled it “The Great Code.”3 This label is not only apt for lending expression to the elevated status that the Bible has attracted in the entire realm of Near Eastern cultures, where it was present as a subtext of innumerable liturgical and literary texts and moreover of oral debates; it also highlights the holistic aspect of its reception. Frye’s observation that “what matters is that ‘the Bible’ has traditionally been read as a unity, and has influenced Western imagination as a unity”4 can easily be translated into the Near Eastern context, where it is shared by the Late Antique educated elite, among them members of the nascent qurʾānic community. This community, from a certain time onward, was aware of the existence of different parts of the Bible that are attributed as scriptures to the Jews and Christians, respectively. These parts in their entirety, however, are regarded as emanations of “the Book” as a whole, al-kitāb, which is understood as a transcendent scripture from which pericopes are subsequently sent down to the various prophets. One of these dispatches – according to the early community’s view, which is reflected in the text – gradually materialized into a new scripture with the Qurʾān.5 How, then, does the Qurʾān compare to the Bible? Looking at its reception, Frye’s appraisal of the Bible’s presence as a subtext of much of European culture would mutatis mutandis easily apply to the Qurʾān as well. The Qurʾān is omnipresent in the literature, even the architecture, beaux arts, and music of wide ranges of the Islam-imprinted world, whose “Great Code” it constitutes. It is, however, hard to ignore that very few Western scholars have viewed the Qurʾān as a text holistically and that the focus is rather on small units of the text in isolation. Nor is there much interest in the event of the Qurʾān, in its emergence from an Arabian milieu of Late Antiquity, among scholars outside the disciplines of archaeology and ancient history. The question of whether the Qurʾān constitutes a Fortschreibung, a “continuation” of the Bible, adding to it new dimensions of meaning, or a mere imitation, a theologically diffuse recycling of biblical tradition, is still controversial. This volume contains a number of essays that directly or indirectly have a bearing on that controversy.6 Because the controversy is staged in the arena of philology, a brief reflection on the task of our discipline, qurʾānic philology, should precede the individual essays in our volume. Drawing on Sheldon Pollock’s now classical assessment of the current situation of philology and his compelling initiative to rethink the discipline, three principal questions arise. Firstly, is it sufficient to focus on the Qurʾān exclusively in the shape established by the redactors, only contextualized with earlier traditions, as an endeavor to trace its historically founded “true meaning”? Second, is it methodologically sound to completely detach the text from the responses of its recipients, those contemporary with the text’s publication and those that accumulated later to constitute the vast exegetical library of Islam? And third, can we afford to completely “erase our scholarly selves from the philological act”7 and

Introduction  3 thus escape the impact of the intellectual challenges that we are exposed to in our own cultural milieu? Related problems have been debated since the onset of philological activity. Sheldon Pollock himself has recovered a significant precedent: In 1872 a now-obscure pamphlet was published by a young – and, for nonclassicists, now equally obscure – philologist. The philologist was Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff,8 and the pamphlet was Zukunftsphilologie! (Future Philology!), an attack on Friedrich Nietzsche’s just-published ‘The Birth of Tragedy.’ The dispute between the two authors was . . . about the method and meaning of classical studies. For Wilamowitz, true knowledge of any social or cultural phenomenon of the past could only be acquired by examining every feature of its historical context, and by doing so completely abstracting it from present-day perspectives. For Nietzsche, the approach of the newly professionalized discipline of philology had completely deadened antiquity and perverted the true aim of its study. . . . Viewed through a wider lens, this was a struggle between historicists and humanists, Wissenschaft and Bildung, scholarship and life, of a sort not unique to European modernity.9 Indeed, a similar debate soon arose in another philological discipline – Jewish studies. One of the most brilliant scholars in the field (indeed the founder of modern Jewish studies), Gershom Scholem, launched an attack against the scholars of the German Jewish reform movement of the “Wissenschaft des Judentums”10 who had introduced historical-critical scholarship into the field. Scholem – viewing their activities through a Nietzschean lens – flung against them his famously devastating verdict accusing them of being the gravediggers of Judaism.11 Critical historical scholarship, in Nietzsche’s and Scholem’s view, threatened to exert a lethal effect as it would turn a living textual tradition into a sterile object of analysis. Taking this critique seriously, is historical critical scholarship then a problematic, even outdated approach? The “historical-critical approach” stands for a complex canon of methodological steps.12 Although this approach in biblical studies – not least because of its disinterest in the final shape of the text and indeed its tendency toward deconstruction – has long been viewed critically and has been challenged by a variety of new methods,13 it is hard to renounce it altogether. As a matter of fact, historical-critical qurʾānic scholarship shares an indispensable objective with biblical historical scholarship: the recontextualization of texts with the documents of their local and temporal milieu. It is this cultural background that alone can make the innovative contribution of the qurʾānic discourse to the debates of its time recognizable. Underlying this approach is the principle that texts, first and foremost, need to be read as witnesses of the cultural dynamics of their time rather than serving as identity documents of the cultures to which they themselves contributed. This fruitful and necessary aspect of the historical-critical approach is at the center of several of the studies presented here.14

4  Introduction This important principle was introduced into qurʾānic studies by the scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums,15 the same group that was so harshly criticized by Scholem. It was Abraham Geiger’s work from 1833 – “Was hat Muhammad aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen” in particular – which set the course for a new reading of the Qurʾān. This group of scholars, working until the exclusion of Jewish scholarship in German universities from 1933, was to lay the basis of the historical study of the Qurʾān. They succeeded in locating the emergence of the Qurʾān, which previously had been considered as an exotic, or at least a local Arabian, and theologically deficient text, into a milieu shaped by complex Jewish, Christian, and pagan traditions: an “epistemic space” that we would today term “Late Antiquity,” thus putting the Qurʾān on a level equal with other religious writings. This achievement can hardly be overrated. The contextualization of the Qurʾān with the texts of its milieu has recently enjoyed a comeback not only in Europe16 but also in much of current North American scholarship.17 Yet, we have to be aware that the historical-critical approach, the consideration of the text as such, cannot provide more than a part of the entire task. Rather, it ought to be considered as a propaedeutic step that needs to be complemented by additional methods – literary criticism first and foremost. That there is a need to reconnect the text to its recipients – Sheldon Pollock’s second demand – is obvious. The Qurʾān, severed from its traditional context, would be a truncated text. The Qurʾān has generated a vast library of heterogeneous textual genres that are pertinent and often indispensable for its understanding; primarily the sīra, hadith literature at large, and more specifically the comprehensive commentaries. It is easily forgotten that the philological tools Western scholarship disposes of have been developed in Islamic tradition, which from the earliest times onward (the eighth century CE/second century AH/) was concerned with disciplines such as lexicography, grammar, and orthography. Other branches, such as the sīra, have provided Western scholarship with the most plausible historical framework for the Qurʾānic Event itself in both traditional and modern critical inquiry. Moreover, to understand the epistemic and theological dimension of the Qurʾān as the “Great Code” of Islamic culture, studying the commentaries and traditions produced by it is essential. Reception history starts, however, much earlier. It is intrinsic in the genesis of the text itself. This is made evident through the so-called canonical approach developed by Brevard S. Childs and modified by Christoph Dohmen and Manfred Oeming,18 who opened it up to diachronic investigations. They propose to understand the genesis of a canon as a process of growth. “Canon,” in this context, no longer covers the officially codified final form of a text but rather refers to the binding covenantal character inherent in the texts, affirmed by the continuous references of later-emerging text units to an earlier text nucleus. Translated into the qurʾānic context, this would mean that there are recurrent instances of intratextuality within the text. Based on multiple criteria, it appears possible to identify a qurʾānic text nucleus around which the canonical process may have unfolded in the monothematic, short suras that focus on the simple discourse of human gratefulness and ungratefulness and divine reward and punishment. These texts

Introduction  5 are continuously referred to and commented on in the longer and more complex suras that mirror new and more sophisticated discourses. In this way, the ensuing discourse remodels the simple form of divine-human interaction in the light of the experience of the biblical prophets and the elect people, the Israelites. This discourse gives way again, after the hijra, to a new discourse in which biblical scripture was contested between the community and the living heirs of the biblical tradition, particularly the Jews of Medina. The canonical process, therefore, does not manifest itself only in the development of new discourses that emerge from each other or unfold around each other. They are not exclusively textual phenomena, but socially conditioned ones, because they are personalized in an exegetical community that performs canonizing tasks. Viewed from a social perspective, the text’s referring back to earlier communications indicates its embeddedness in a live debate between the proclaimer and his listeners. The observation that the nascent community had a role to play in the qurʾānic communication process has of course not gone unnoticed in the early Islamic tradition. As early as the eighth century CE/ second century AH, Muslim scholars were arguing that certain passages had been revealed on the occasion of certain events in the life of the prophet (“occasions for revelation” or asbāb al-nuzūl). Such revelations were therefore explained with regard to their being embedded in a concrete historical and social situation. The critical examination of these numerous, if also frequently conflicting, Islamic traditions was initially at the heart of the Western attempt to establish the internal chronology of the Qurʾān. This was an effort first undertaken by Gustav Weil (1808–1889)19 and again by Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930).20 Whereas both were in agreement on the general principle, however, they reached slightly different conclusions. Today this kind of reference has been discarded in much of historical critical scholarship, which regards the Islamic testimonies codified a century or more after the events as historically unreliable. This verdict is, of course, debatable. Aziz al-Azmeh has justly insisted that a disqualification of historical sources for the sole reason that they are not contemporary with the events they describe is futile.21 It is of course true that much of Islamic tradition, including the asbāb narratives, reflects a fundamentally new hermeneutic vis-à-vis the Qurʾān. It is no longer the struggle over the contested truth – carried out against syncretists, Jews, or Christians – but the construction of the memory of the formative events of the past that occupies the center of interest. It should, however, be stressed that to investigate the reception of the qurʾānic message during the prophet’s ministry, the only textual source that we can rely on immediately is the qurʾānic text itself, which is at the same time the earliest discursive text put to writing in Arabic language. To re-establish the historical scenario of the qurʾānic emergence, this text needs to be investigated as to the traces of interlocutors involved in its debates. Such a procedure is, of course, alien to historical students who critique sīra texts for not being illuminating enough to glean immediate knowledge about the historical facts. Qurʾānic texts are equally non-informative when screened for positive historical knowledge. Yet they do reveal important information about the context of the text’s addressees and thus

6  Introduction about the social and ideological milieu of the Qurʾānic Event. Most importantly, however, once read with the tools of literary scholarship, they grant insight into the community’s gradual attainment of a religious identity of its own.22 Sound historical study has to apply interdisciplinary tools, among which literary criticism should be regarded as the most important for the study of the Qurʾān. Not only has the sīra yet to be read with literary criteria in mind, but the Qurʾān, to begin with, needs to be reread as a literary text. The two approaches – historical and literary – have until now been pursued almost completely separately from one another.

Literary Scholarship For the important step of reconnecting textual and contextual studies to take place, literary criticism is needed. It is the formal shape of the text that provides the clue to its literary genre and, therefore, its social purpose and ultimately the expectations of its recipients. In view of the Qurʾān’s dialectical structure,23 “drama” has been proposed as a proper generic attribution,24 a plurivocal text where the individual scenes and acts build upon each other, the later ones being in dialogue with the earlier ones. This is in tune with the qurʾānic textual format where the debate between the proclaimer and his listeners – the first recipients – frequently entails the reinterpretation of earlier communicated messages in the light of newly acquired insights. Although this model of understanding the Qurʾān is not the only possible way, it will be presented here in some detail. The Qurʾān, read as the transcript of a prophetical proclamation embedded in communal debates, reflects a historically significant development, that is, the gradual emergence of a community with a religious identity of its own, the nascent Islamic umma. To reconstruct the subsequent steps of the qurʾānic argument that led up to the eventual construction of the community’s identity, we need to rely on the sura as an innovative literary genre intended as the qurʾānic medium to convey a particular new message.25 The suras correspond to the scenes of the drama, each marking a distinctive progress in the argument. It comes as no surprise, then, that already the earliest manuscripts dating from the second half of the seventh century CE/first century AH26 present a text arrangement with distinctly separate suras. Many of these suras are the outcome of a revision process that occurred during the communication of the text. It is only in their final forms that they express the consensus of the community – achieved in the course of their repeated recitation during the prophet’s ministry. That this consensus was attained through a continuous communal rethinking is evident from the so-called later additions made to many of the earlier suras to update and align them with successively acquired new theological insights of the community.27 Such revisions of earlier texts, which have been acknowledged as such in learned Islamic tradition as well,28 deserve, as Nicolai Sinai has stressed,29 to be contextualized with the related phenomenon of the Targum in Jewish tradition. The Targumim are interpretative translations of biblical pericopes that were undertaken to make the “antique” Bible readings delivered in the

Introduction 7 synagogue service relevant to communities who were acculturated at a later stage of development in Late Antiquity.30 In the qurʾānic case, “Targumization” was not a later intervention but occurred during the proclamation process itself. Textual additions, then, are a sign of intra-textual dynamics. The freedom to practice this kind of updating was insured by the particular mode of the communication that occurred not “as a single, complete pronouncement” (jumlatan waḥidah), but in stages, a little at a time. The Qurʾān is primarily an oral scripture, the charter of a prophetical communication open to continuous communal rethinking.31

Aurality and Interdiscursivity Qurʾānic orality is multidimensional. The Qurʾān presents itself as direct speech to and through the qurʾānic prophet to the prophet’s contemporaries and a wider audience that is un-delimited temporally and spatially. Beyond the Qurʾān’s self-presentation as direct speech made up of a series of diachronically separate addresses to the prophet, some of which evoke, resituate, quote, or echo earlier ones as well as biblical and non-biblical discourses that most likely were circulating in Arabic, other aspects of qurʾānic orality and aurality need also to be mentioned. In regard to orality, it is widely recognized that the Qurʾān contains features similar to those identified as formulaic elements within oralperformative traditions. Historically, reciters played a central role in the Qurʾān’s transmission and dissemination. To the present day, orality remains a central feature in its role within the religious and wider cultural and civilizational communities that have formed themselves around it. It is recited constantly by innumerable individuals of all ages and skill levels and, with the developments in audio technology – from radio to audiocassettes to the Internet – the oral text has become an even more pervasive part of everyday life. It is now possible to access a given passage in recitation, in dozens of recitations, in various styles, by master reciters with the same ease that one can open the printed text to particular page. Associated with but not confined to these dimensions of orality are the aural characteristics of the Qurʾān, characteristics that have been explored in recent years by Adūnīs, Navid Kermani, Thomas Hoffman, and Michael Sells.32 Through its intensive employment of rhyme, assonance, consonance, paronomasia, and various modalities of resonance or echo, qurʾānic discourse forms an internal sound chamber, with dense patterns of resonances within each passage, defined as a prophetic or literary unit, or both, and across differing passages within the Qurʾān. The malleability of the Qurʾān in terms of cadence, metricality, verse length, and rhyme heightens its aural character. In contrast to classical Arabic poetry, with its intricate meters, only one of which is to be employed within a single poem, and its use of monorhyme, the more malleable qurʾānic cadence, rhyme, and verse length resist the naturalization of poetic acoustics and by doing so keeps them in a state of heightened drama. Those same features reinforce the internal diachrony of the Qurʾān, implied or actual, that is a central concern of many of the essays in this volume. In view of the preponderantly oral and aural nature of qurʾānic discourse, it is useful to adjust the foundational terminology of two of the more productive

8  Introduction literary-critical tendencies of recent years: close reading and intertextuality. Methods of close reading have brought into focus the intricate workings within literary texts. The abstention from assumptions concerning authorial intent, the replacement of the authority of the author with a scrutiny of the implied author and implied audience, and the bracketing, within the lens of the close reading itself, of extra-textual biography have led to major contributions in our understanding of address, narration, time-space, character, narrational and story duration, point of view, and authorial, narrative, poetic, and audience personas. It is important to note in this regard that methods that employ bracketing need not and arguably should not ignore extra-textual information any more than a photographer or scientist should ignore the reality of what appears outside the focal frame. In recent years, such close readings have been associated primarily with novels and short fiction that are self-referentially written and directed toward an audience of readers. As productive as these recent literary-critical tendencies have been, words such as “the text” and “the reader” bear within them certain semantic fields and literal meanings that inevitably influence the analysis. In his essay in this volume, Michael Sells argues that qurʾānic studies can be most enriched by such literarycritical perspectives after the oral and aural nature of the Qurʾān is acknowledged from the ground up, meaning, in terms of basic terminology, that “close reading” be replaced with “close hearing” and “the reader” with “the audient.” The concept of intertextuality, like the methods of close reading with which it has been associated, has been at the heart of recent literary-critical endeavors, despite the well-known contentions over the definition of the term itself. Mary Orr’s work has discussed intertextuality with attention to the critical categories of quotation, allusion, emulation or imitation, and misprision.33 The suppleness and open-ended nature of the concept intertextuality has brought critical attention to literary features and relationships that were not easily locatable through traditional categories. One area of at least partial consensus is that intertextuality indicates a significant relationship between one text (written or oral) and an earlier one. It is the responsibility of the critic of course to establish the nature and the significance of the relation so identified. Here again, the full resources of a literary-critical tendency will be open most productively to qurʾānic studies once the essential terminological adjustment is made: rather than textuality (inter-, intra-, or trans-), we might better speak of discursivity. The Qurʾān, viewed as a whole, is marked by interdiscursive relationships: allusions to, debates with, reappropriations, recastings, or strategical misprisions of earlier, non-qurʾānic discourses. It is permeated as well by transdiscursive elements: self-quotations, partial quotations, allusions, recastings, partial echoes, inverse echoes, and ironic echoes. Yet the Qurʾān comprises multiple separate discourses, each of which is saturated intra-discursively with its internal resonances and interdiscursively with the discourses that proceeded or followed it. A close hearing may be reticent in making immediate stipulations regarding the chronology of suras or the prophetic, as opposed to literary unity of suras, but it will be rigorously attentive to implied prophetic diachrony and the question of whether a given prophetic unit may be contained within or itself contain a given sura.

Introduction  9

The Qurʾān and Late Antiquity As a fair number of the articles collected here proceed from the premise that the Qurʾān can be classified as a phenomenon of Late Antiquity,34 a few words about Late Antiquity are merited. Late Antiquity is often understood as a historical epoch determined by particular political turning points, although the delimitations of that epoch are controversial among historians. Peter Brown, whose seminal work brought Late Antiquity to the attention of scholars across the borders of disciplines, has proposed the period of 200–750 CE, again orienting himself with respect to political developments. Although Brown’s end date of 750 in principle would allow one to consider the Qurʾān as a Late Antique text and invite a study of its role within that era, Brown does not discuss the position of the Qurʾān within Late Antiquity at all. His late dating of the end of the epoch is justified by his concession that while the Umayyads continued to uphold earlier established hierarchical structures, they did not figure as active players in Late Antiquity but as tolerant contemporaries of the late antique Christians. To quote Brown, “In this sub-Christian guise the Arabs had found a place in the sun.”35 The Qurʾān, in Brown’s view, is a foreign import into the otherwise culturally empty Hijaz: “It was a stroke of genius on the part of Muhammad to turn this essentially foreign message into a principle on which the conflict-ridden society of the Hijaz could reorganize itself.”36 Although James Montgomery has eloquently protested against the image of the “empty Hijaz,”37 the essentialist gaze on the Qurʾān and on Islam as such – as an intrusion into its late antique Eastern Mediterranean38 milieu rather than the document of a debate that mirrors universal discourses of the time – has remained prevalent among historians of Late Antiquity.39 These historians understand Late Antiquity as a period strongly determined by Christian culture, showing far less interest in the striking phenomenon of the transgression of confessional borders. Scholars of Judaism such as Daniel Boyarin and Peter Schaefer, however, have clearly demonstrated that it was the constant exchange of exegetical ideas that propelled the emergence of a Jewish as well as of a Christian identity. The process we observe in the Qurʾān – continuous debate – points in the same direction. Why ignore these textual symptoms of an origin of a shared epistemic space with other religious cultures? We should not read “Late Antiquity” in the sense of a politically determined epoch but rather as an epistemic space, a “Denkraum,” where particular textual practices are employed by diverse communities. These practices are partially techniques of debate and rhetorical devices and partly ideologically new rereadings of earlier traditions that are transferred from particularistic texts into universal ones40 or from tribally oriented texts into appeals to the pious individual.41 It is in this cultural milieu that we must locate the scenario of the proclaimer’s communication to his listeners. What do we know about the first recipients and their education? It is hard to aptly describe the first listeners who were not yet Muslims; their Muslim identity only emerged in the course of their “qurʾānic education,” listening to and debating the prophetic proclamation. Throughout this process they are best described as individuals familiar with plural Late Antique

10  Introduction traditions, locally Arab, but first and foremost biblical. Our claim of an epistemic space shared by Jews and Christians, within which the new community originated, can be corroborated through reference to more recent biblical scholarship that has highlighted an essential transformation of the Bible in Late Antiquity. James Kugel has alerted us to a popularization undergone by the Bible during the centuries before the Qurʾān: Examined through the lens of wisdom writings, the original meaning and even the original genres of Israel’s ancient texts were . . . reconfigured by a whole new way of reading – it was this way of reading that Jews and Christians canonized as their Bible. Along with it came the great flood of interpretive motifs created by the ancient interpreters. . . . One would not be wrong to think of this transformation as . . . a kind of massive act of rewriting.42 Kugel could have added that “this way of reading” of biblical tradition was also what the nascent Islamic community adopted and developed. But the Qurʾān – as is the case in most Late Antiquity scholarship – is still excluded from his scope. Through the recent work of Sidney Griffith, Kugel’s observations have been updated. Griffith widens the horizons of the impact of the “transformed Bible” to include the Qurʾān, which in his work figures among the manifestations of what he calls the “interpreted Bible,” or the recollections of biblical narratives interpreted and expanded through homiletic reworkings.43 Griffith’s article in this volume exemplifies this new reading of the Qurʾān in the light of the “interpreted Bible.” The concept of the “interpreted Bible” is immensely useful to evade the often impossible decision as to the intertextual relation of a given qurʾānic text and the predecessor tradition. We have to assume that there was a plethora of Bible-related traditions, many emerging from new readings of the Bible, others from ancient Oriental lore beside the Bible, and others again from Hellenic thinking imposed on biblical materials. Scholars in Jewish studies such as Haim Schwarzbaum and others44 have introduced the useful collective designation “Aggadah” for these traditions, assuming a somewhat wider range of common religious lore than Griffith’s “interpreted Bible” would suggest. Once we reckon with the presence of sections of this immense corpus of orally transmitted religious lore in the milieu of the Qurʾān’s emergence, the Qurʾān becomes recognizable not as a text dependent on and thus secondary to the lore of earlier religious confessions but as another interlocutor in the ongoing debate, which crystallizes in a steadily growing shared treasury of traditions, many of which had been circulated of old. The Qurʾān, then, does not appear as a “re-user” of earlier materials but rather as a “producer” in its own right: the Qurʾān enters and continues the universal process of cultural translation ongoing in Late Antiquity. Not unlike the rabbinic and ecclesiastic debates of the time, the Qurʾān enters the scene as an active player, as a creative participant in the process of rereading “antique” traditions – such as the Bible, ancient Arabic poetry, and Hellenic philosophy – with new perspectives.

Introduction  11

A Word on Organization We have divided this volume into three parts: Part 1 features essays treating specific figures as they appear throughout the Qurʾān. It includes Devin Stewart’s analysis of the qurʾānic Shuʿayb narratives, which follows on his critical overview of the method of John Wansbrough and Wansbrough’s discussion of the Shuʿayb passages; Nora Schmid’s diachronic analysis of qurʾānic references or allusions to the wife of Lot; and Hannelies Koloska’s diachronic analysis of the Jonah narratives. Part 2 features essays that focus on the analysis of particular suras: Walid Saleh’s reading of Sūras 10–15 as reflecting a moment of crisis in the career of the prophet; Michael Sells’ analysis of the early Mūsā story in Sūra 20 (ṬāHā), verses 1–79; Angelika Neuwirth’s reading of both the early and later Mūsā narratives in ṬāHā;45 Sidney Griffith’s essay, which focuses upon Sūra 26 (ash-Shuʿarāʾ); and Lauren Osborne’s essay, which treats Sūra 25 (al-Furqān) first as a literary text with its own thematic emphasis upon issues of sound and recitation and then from the standpoint of musicology and performance study through an analysis of its performance by Mishari Rashid Alafasy. Part 3 features essays that reflect on the Qurʾān and its “others.” It includes Ghassan el Masri’s analysis of qurʾānic evocation of deserted cities in relationship to the theme of abandoned places within the classical Arabic nasīb; Holger Zellentin’s study of “Judaeo-Christian legal culture, as solidly (yet never fully) reconstructable with the help of the Didascalia, the Clementine Homilies, and the Qurʾān itself”; and Mun’im Sirry’s analysis of qurʾānic polemics regarding religious others along with positions taken in regard to such polemics by modernist commentators. We would emphasize that such an organization is merely meant as an initial organizing structure. The multidimensional conversations among the essays in this volume form a conversation through and across the three parts of the volume.46

Notes 1 On the Journal of Qurʾanic Studies, see http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/jqs; Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001–2006); on Corpus Coranicum, see http://www.corpuscoranicum.de/; on the International Qurʾanic Studies Association, see https://iqsaweb.wordpress.com/; Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard, and Mohammed Rustom, The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: HarperOne, 2015); among the Internet resources for qurʾānic research and studies, see http:// al-quran.info/#home; http://corpus.quran.com/; http://tanzil.net; http://www.alim.org; and for online Arabic commentary literature, see http://www.altafsir.com. 2 “Qurʾānic Studies Today,” November 9, 2012, University of Chicago. 3 Northrup Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982). He explains: “here is a book that has had a continuous fertilizing influence on English literature from Anglo-Saxon writers to poets younger than I. And yet no one would say that the Bible is a work of Literature. Even Blake who went much farther than anyone else in his day in identifying religion and human creativity, did not

12  Introduction

4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

13 14 15

16

17

call it that: he said ‘The Old and New Testament are the Great Code of Art,’ a phrase I have used for my title after pondering its implications for many years” (xvi). Frye, The Great Code, xiii. Daniel Madigan, The Qurʾān’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). See the texts by Sidney Griffith, Michael Sells, Walid Saleh, Hannelies Koloska, Nora Schmid, and Angelika Neuwirth in this volume. Sheldon Pollock, “Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World,” Critical Inquiry 33 (2009): 931–61. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Zukunftsphilologie! Eine Erwiderung auf Friedrich Nietzsches’ “Geburt der Tragödie” (Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1872). Pollock, “Future Philology?,” 931–32. The new awareness of the problem has recently inspired the establishment of a research project directed by Islam Dayeh at Freie Universität Berlin; see the website http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/frie drichschlegel/fsgs/kooperationen/Zukunftsphilologie/index.html. Dirk Hartwig, “Die ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ als Gründerdisziplin der kritischen Koranforschung: Abraham Geiger und die erste Generation jüdischer Koranforscher,” in Jüdische Existenz in der Moderne: Abraham Geiger und die Wissenschaft des Judentums, ed. Christian Wiese, Walter Homolka, and Thomas Brechenmacher (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2013), 297–319. Gershom Scholem, “Überlegungen zur Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Judaica 6 (1997): 7–52. The verdict “gravediggers of Judaism,” primarily aimed at Leopold Zunz and Moritz Steinschneider, is discussed and contextualized by Peter Schäfer; see his epilogue to Scholem, “Überlegungen zur Wissenschaft des Judentums,” 96. The first step, lower criticism, was already applied – though not systematically – by Nöldeke in Geschichte des Qorāns, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: T. Weicher, 1909–1938). It was resumed – together with the further steps form criticism and genre criticism – by Angelika Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1981). Form criticism was the focus of John Wansbrough’s revolutionary work, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Wansbrough attempted to reshape qurʾānic studies after the model of biblical scholarship, which mirrors the genesis of canonical text as resulting from gradual stages of compilation. Devin Stewart’s contribution to this volume lucidly disentangles the web of Wansbrough’s somewhat hermetic scholarly work, submitting it – perhaps for the first time – to a systematic criticism. See also the contribution to this volume by Neuwirth. See John Barton, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See in particular the essays in this volume by Walid Saleh, Nora Schmid, Hannelies Koloska, and Angelika Neuwirth. For Geiger and the Wissenschaft des Judentums, see Dirk Hartwig, Walter Homolka, Michael Marx, and Angelika Neuwirth, eds., “Im vollen Licht der Geschichte”: Die Wissenschaft des Judentums und die Anfänge der Koranforschung (Würzburg: Ergon, 2008). It is implemented in a scholarly project pursued at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Corpus Coranicum; see Michael Marx, “Ein Koranforschungsprojekt in der Tradition der Wissenschaft des Judentums: Zur Programmatik des Akademienvorhabens Corpus Coranicum,” in Im vollen Licht der Geschichte, 41–54; see also the website http://www.bbaw.de/en/research/Coran. See more recently the methodological claims raised by Aziz al-Aẓmah, The Arabs and Islam in Late Antiquity: A Critique of Approaches to Arabic Sources (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2014). See in particular Gabriel Said Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010), and ibid., ed., New Perspectives on the Qurʾān: The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context (London: Routledge, 2011).

Introduction  13 18 Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); Christoph Dohmen and Manfred Oeming, Biblischer Kanon, warum und wozu? Eine Kanontheologie (Freiburg: Herder, 1992). 19 Gustav Weil, Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre, aus handschriftlichen Quellen und dem Koran geschöpft und dargestellt (Stuttgart: Metzlerschen Buchhandlung 1843); ibid., Historisch–kritische Einleitung in den Koran (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1878). 20 Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorāns. 21 Aziz al-Aẓmeh, The Arabs and Islam in Late Antiquity. 22 Neuwirth, Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community: Reading the Qurʾān as a Literary Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 23 Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “ ‘Debate with Them in a Better Way’: The Construction of a Qurʾānic Commonplace,” in Myths, Historical Archetypes, and Symbolic Figures in Arabic Literature, ed. Neuwirth et al. (Stuttgart: Steiner in Komm, 1999), 163–88. 24 Neuwirth, Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, xix–xl. 25 See Angelika Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1981). The sura as a genre has not been given due attention. 26 François Déroche, La transmission écrite de Coran (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 27 See Angelika Neuwirth, “Oral Scriptures in Contact: The Qurʾānic Story of the Golden Calf and Its Biblical Subtext,” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 306–27. 28 See Tilman Nagel, Medinensische Einschübe in Mekkanischen Suren (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995). 29 See Nicolai Sinai, “Qurʾānic Self-Referentiality as a Strategy of Self-Authorization,” in Self-Referentiality in the Qurʾān, ed. Stefan Wild (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 103–34. 30 Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 142–45. 31 See the frequent verse introductions “they will question thee” (yas’alūnaka ‘an), found in Q 2:219, Q 2:220, Q 2:222, Q 5:4, Q 7:187, Q 8:1, and Q 17:85, for example. 32 Adūnīs, al-Naṣṣ al-qurʾānī wa-āfāq al-kitāba (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1993); Navid Kermani, Gott is schön: Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003); Thomas Hoffmann, The Poetic Qurʾān: Studies on Qurʾānic Poeticity (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007); Michael A. Sells, “Sound and Meaning in Sūrat al-Qāri’a,” Arabic 40.3 (1993): 403–30; Ibid., “A Literary Approach to the Hymnic Sūras of the Qurʾān” in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾān, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 3–25; Approaching the Qurán, 2nd ed. (Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2007), 161–223. For further references, see the article by Michael Sells in this volume. 33 In this regard, see Mary Orr, Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003). 34 See the essays by Walid Saleh, Sidney Griffith, Angelika Neuwirth, Hannelies Koloska, and Nora Schmid in this volume. 35 Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150–750 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, rev. 2006), 193. 36 Brown, World of Late Antiquity, 191. 37 James Montgomery, “The Empty Ḥijāz,” in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One, ed. James Montgomery (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 37–97. 38 See Rene Pfeilschifter, Die Spätantike: Der eine Gott und die vielen Herrscher (Munich: Beck, 2014). 39 Cf. the rather mild criticism by Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 128: “until the present no truly synthetic study of the early Islamic community as part of the late antique oikoumené has appeared.”

14  Introduction 40 An example will be discussed in Neuwirth’s contribution to this volume. 41 Angelika Neuwirth, “A ‘Religious Transformation in Late Antiquity’: From Tribal Genealogy to Divine Covenant,” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 53–75. 42 James Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (New York: Free Press, 2007), 670–71. 43 Part of the above paragraph is from Angelika Neuwirth, “Locating the Qurʾan in the Epistemic Space of Late Antiquity,” in Books and Written Culture of the Islamic World, ed. Andrew Rippin and Robert Tottoli (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 159–179, see 167–168. Griffith also argues that the biblical traditions current in the time of the Qurʾān’s emergence were orally transmitted; indeed, he claims that “the collection and production of the Qurʾān as a written Arabic text from the mid to late seventh century . . . was one of the factors that provided the impetus for the translation of the Jewish and Christian scriptures into Arabic in early Islamic times” (89). 44 Haim Schwarzbaum, Biblical and Extra-Biblical Legends in Islamic Folk Literature (Walldorf-Hessen: Verlag für Orientkunde Dr. H. Vorndran, 1982); Bernhard Heller, “Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews: The Relation of the Aggadah to Islamic Legends,” Jewish Quarterly Review 24 (1934): 393–418, and 25 (1934): 29–52. 45 The essays of Neuwirth and Sells were written independently of one another. It was a matter of serendipity that the two essays happened to focus on the Mūsā narratives in Sūrat ṬāHā. 46 Thus Devin Stewart offers a detailed examination of John Wansbrough’s often obscured but nevertheless central grounding in a certain understanding of biblical studies before presenting Wansbrough’s analyses of the qurʾānic Shuʿayb, his critique of them, and his own analysis of the same passages. For example, Lauren Osborne brings together a reading of the references to recitation and performance in Sūrat al-Furqān with her analysis of contemporary styles of recitation, with special attention to recitations of Sūrat al-Furqān by the popular reciter Alafasy.

Part 1

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1 Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory of Variant Traditions in the Qurʾān Devin J. Stewart

John Wansbrough’s paired works Quranic Studies and The Sectarian Milieu have been recognized for their radical departure from mainstream scholarship on the Qurʾān and early Islamic history. Unfortunately, their difficulty has prevented many scholars in Islamic studies from constructive engagement with the theories proposed therein. In addition to dense style and technical terms in Greek, Latin, German, and Hebrew, unstated assumptions and unexplained methods made all the more obscure because of the absence of introductions and conclusions have presented a challenge to comprehension. It would aid investigators to understand the main intellectual background of these works, which Wansbrough merely hints at rather than sets forth methodically. They are based primarily on the methods of Formgeschichte (“Form-History”) developed by scholars of the New Testament who sought, by investigating the synoptic Gospels, to gain access to the earlier, folkloric texts from which they had been formed and thereby to understand the nature of the early Christian community in which those texts had been produced and circulated. The following remarks discuss Wansbrough’s indebtedness to Formgeschichte and critique the theory of variant traditions he proposes in Quranic Studies. In the preface to Quranic Studies, Wansbrough criticizes the current state of qurʾānic scholarship: “To argue a case for the Qurʾān as scripture may seem gratuitous. As the record of Muslim revelation the book requires no introduction. As a document susceptible of analysis by the instruments and techniques of biblical criticism it is virtually unknown.”1 Scholars of Islamic studies have often similarly lamented the fact that biblical criticism has not been applied to the Qurʾān, an observation that is justified in general though not true categorically. However, Wansbrough’s lament does not specify what is meant by biblical criticism, which encompasses a large number of distinct critical approaches that can be classed under the already broad rubrics of textual criticism, historical criticism, source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, canonical criticism, feminist criticism, and so forth. Wansbrough’s Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (1978) certainly respond to the dearth of critical study to which he refers and do employ biblical critical methods. However, awareness of the particular strand of biblical criticism on which he draws is a

18  Devin J. Stewart requirement necessary for an appreciation of his assumptions, methods, and theories that appear arbitrary or anomalous. Many of Quranic Studies’ main arguments have been passed over in silence in part because it is a difficult book to read and comprehend. As reviewers have repeatedly noted, Wansbrough assumes the reader will readily understand quotations and technical terms in Hebrew, German, Latin, and Greek; to alleviate this problem, Andrew Rippin’s new edition of the work includes a glossary.2 In addition, Wansbrough’s prose is dense. Stephen Humphreys remarks, “He affects a ferociously opaque style which bristles with unexplained technical terms in many languages, obscure allusions, and Teutonic grammar.”3 Despite being “laced with brilliance and insight,” William A. Graham reports that Quranic Studies is “an exceedingly cumbersome and gratuitously difficult work.  .  .  . Here is AngloSaxon revenge for every dense and massive tome of Germanic erudition ever published. Compared to this, Reckendorf’s Arabische Syntax makes for light bedside reading.”4 Wansbrough disingenuously describes Quranic Studies as a collection of disparate essays. He omits an introduction and a conclusion to the work as a whole and also omits introductions and conclusions to the individual chapters. As Graham remarks, “The simple use of clear introductory statements, transitional explanations, and concluding summaries for the discrete arguments of the essays would have worked wonders for the comprehensibility of the whole.”5 The new edition might have done a useful service to the field had it provided an introduction that explained the work’s overall arguments and structure, clarifying its theoretical bases as well as the connections between its sections.6 In an effort to make Wansbrough’s ideas more accessible, several scholars have explained and commented on parts of his work, but they have not resolved the main difficulties it presents by tracing its intellectual genealogy, addressing it instead from the point of view of qurʾānic and Islamic studies. Scholarship addressing Quranic Studies has focused on a limited number of issues and especially on the claim of a late redaction of the Qurʾān. Gregor Schoeler critiques Wansbrough on this account, arguing that the compilation and redaction of the Qurʾān under ʿUthmān (r. 644–656) is, if not proven, at least extremely probable because it is unanimously supported by tradition. The dispute over the writing down of hadith presupposes an already complete and published Qurʾān by the beginning of the second Islamic century. Moreover, now fragments of a Qurʾān manuscript have been found in Ṣanʿāʾ that date to as early as the second half of the seventh century.7 Andrew Rippin, Herbert Berg, and others have written commentaries and explanations of Wansbrough’s theories in general, pointing out, for example, that the mere existence of the Qurʾān as scripture at a certain date does not prove that it had been canonized by that time.8 Gerald Hawting has written a significant defense of Wansbrough’s claim that the Qurʾān cannot have been written in the Arabian peninsula, addressing what is perhaps the strongest piece of contrary evidence, the material in the Qurʾān that is related to pre-Islamic pagan traditions, and arguing that the references to pagan beliefs do not derive from pre-Islamic Arabian pagan beliefs but are rather part of a strategy often seen on the part of monotheists, of accusing opponents of pagan beliefs.9 Wansbrough’s

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  19 specific claims about the text of the Qurʾān and the process by which it came into being and was canonized have received little attention.10 It is worth noting that even if Wansbrough’s dates are wrong, his suggestions about the process of the text’s formation may still be correct. Even less constructive, in my view, has been the attack on Wansbrough’s use of traditional Jewish terms such as masoretic, haggadic, and halakhic to describe various types of exegesis in Islamic tradition. Only scholarly parochialism can lead one to reject them out of hand; the important issue is whether they serve as useful shorthand conveying actual differences in the commentaries’ conventions and approaches. Adequate Arabic terms drawn from Islamic literature might have been substituted in this case, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the application of terms derived from Jewish tradition to describe commentaries on the Qurʾān, particularly in light of the obvious connections between the traditions, and no more than there is in using terms derived from ancient Greek in modern biology or physics. Supporters of Wansbrough have lamented the fact that his theories have not garnered the attention that they deserve. Critics have often dismissed his theories and method out of hand, without serious rebuttal, and in some cases without evidence that they have read or understood his work. Many have ignored or overlooked the fact that Wansbrough presented his findings as tentative and provisional, and others have criticized the work simply because it does not take for granted the traditional account of the Qurʾān’s compilation during the reign of ʿUthmān and the doctrinal edifice upon which Islamic salvation history has been built. Wansbrough’s defenders overstate the case, however, when they present him as a lone iconoclast who was willing to question time-honored doctrinal and ideological assumptions, laboring against naive, positivist historians who obstinately refuse to give them up. Neither Wansbrough’s critics nor his supporters have adequately explained his method, characterizing it as modeled on biblical criticism in general and most often describing it in vague terms as a “literary” as opposed to a “historical” approach. They rarely refer to specific biblical studies in assessing his methods, stressing instead how they differ from methods used in other works on the Qurʾān, the prophet, and the early history of Islam. Berg gives some specifics when he writes, “His literary approach to Islamic texts will not be unfamiliar to biblical scholars who employ the tools of form, redaction, and literary criticisms.”11 It is only Charles Adams who points squarely to the main source of Wansbrough’s method, German form criticism, the aim of which is not merely to use knowledge of genres and generic conventions to analyze biblical texts but rather to reconstruct the stages of development through which those texts passed before becoming fixed in the scripture and, through consideration of those stages, to derive an understanding of the shape of the community under the auspices of which the texts were redacted. As Adams puts it, “The primary aim is a history of the formation of the document itself, but secondarily such studies provide a kind of intellectual history of the community whose documents are under consideration.”12 Here, he reveals the main methods and goals of Quranic Studies and The Sectarian Milieu.

20  Devin J. Stewart Wansbrough’s approach fits most squarely in the tradition of German Protestant form criticism of the New Testament, which was developed in the first half of the twentieth century by Martin Dibelius (1883–1947) and Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976), both students of Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), the founding father of biblical form criticism. Like their teacher, these students were concerned with the identification of literary forms in the biblical text and understanding their original social setting (Sitz im Leben). However, while they saw that an understanding of the conventions of various genres could help the critic interpret biblical passages, they felt that this was a limited or immature pursuit, which they labeled “literary” or “aesthetic,” as opposed to “social,” “sociological,” or “historical.” This shift in focus from genre study as an end to genre study as a means to get at the history of transmission and community formation is mirrored in a shift in terminology. While Gunkel labeled his approach Gattungsforschung “investigation of genres,” Dibelius, Bultmann, and their successors adopted the term Formgeschichte “form history,” which Dibelius coined in his work Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums (The Form-History of the Gospel, 1919), and which Bultmann adopted in Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (The History of the Synoptic Tradition, 1921). They took as established the two-source hypothesis, the idea that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke drew on two main earlier sources, the Gospel of Mark and a collection of Jesus’ sayings and other material, designated as Q (for German Quelle “Source”),13 and sought to investigate the history of the traditions from which these two source texts arose. For them, the true value of form criticism lay in its ability to throw light on the prehistory of the received text. They judged that attention to forms and generic conventions allowed the critic to identify the historical layers that made up a given text, making it possible to separate original passages from later accretions and editorial joins, insertions, and elaborations. This historical understanding then served as a window onto the process of canonization and the formation of the early Christian community. Form criticism and in particular the works of Dibelius and Bultmann have remained extremely influential in New Testament studies until the present, although many of their assumptions have been questioned from the 1920s on.14 In his perceptive review of Quranic Studies, Van Ess aptly remarked, “Generell scheint mir, daß der Verfasser sich zu sehr von der Parallele des Urchristentums hat überwältigen lassen” (“Generally speaking I feel that the author has let himself be overwhelmed by the parallel case of Early Christianity”).15 Wansbrough’s work parallels the work of these German form critics quite closely and shares many of the goals, methods, and assumptions of Dibelius and Bultmann. While one cannot claim that he engaged in a slavish imitation of their work – his books remain too eccentric – the parallels are striking. A proper assessment of Wansbrough’s work requires recognition of a fundamental principle that has not been sufficiently stressed either by critics or by supporters: Wansbrough assumes that the compilation and redaction of the Qurʾān recapitulates the compilation and redaction of the New Testament as understood by Bultmann and the proponents of Formgeschichte.16 Indeed, it appears that Wansbrough conceived of Quranic Studies and The Sectarian Milieu as the qurʾānic counterparts to Bultmann’s seminal

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  21 works Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (1921) and Das Urchristentum im Rahmen den antiken Religionen (1949; literally, Original Christianity in the Frame of the Ancient Religions, translated into English as Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting, 1956).17 Like Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, Quranic Studies attempts to explain how the Qurʾān in its current form coalesced from earlier prophetic logia and traditions circulating in the early Muslim community. Just as Das Urchristentum im Rahmen den antiken Religionen set out to show how the “primitive” Christian community was influenced by Judaism and Greek religion, The Sectarian Milieu attempts to explain how interactions with Judaism and Christianity shaped the nascent religious community of Islam. Moreover, Wansbrough’s works both adopt the overall approach and many of the specific methods and assumptions found in Bultmann’s works. The assumption that the redaction of the Qurʾān closely resembles that of the New Testament is by no means preposterous but certainly open to question. Assessment of the analogy between the two is to my mind the most reasonable and profitable response to Wansbrough’s work. Wansbrough’s explanations and footnotes do not suffice to elucidate his approach, in part because he presents to the reader a condensed account of results, interlarded with erudite, sometimes cryptic side comments, without describing the processes completed to arrive at them. He cites a limited number of sources on biblical criticism, most of which focus on the Hebrew Bible, such as Eissfeldt’s Einleitung in den Alten Testament. On the New Testament, he cites Bruce Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament and J. Derrett’s Law in the New Testament. He does not include any of Bultmann’s studies in the bibliography of Quranic Studies but mentions the distinction between the Christian Urgemeinde of Jerusalem and the Hellenistic kerygma, an idea that Wansbrough derives from Bultmann’s Theology of the New Testament, which he included in the bibliography of The Sectarian Milieu. Although he cites neither Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition nor Das Urchristentum im Rahmen den antiken Religionen, he uses several related works, including Claus Westermann’s (1909–2002) Grundformen prophetischer Rede (1960), and Klaus Koch’s The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-critical Method (1969), which is the English translation of Was ist Formgeschichte?: Neue Wege der Bibelexegese (What is Form-History?: New Paths of Bible Exegesis, 1964). Both represent the application of Formgeschichte, as developed by Dibelius and Bultmann, to Old Testament material. Wansbrough consulted Westermann’s Grundformen to describe types of prophetic speech found in the Qurʾān and to analyze their formal conventions. Klaus Koch (1926–), a student of Gerhard von Rad (1901–1971), wrote Was ist Formgeschichte? as a manual for students of the Old Testament at the suggestion of his teacher. Despite the declared emphasis on the Old Testament, Koch’s work refers to New Testament scholarship very frequently and especially to the scholarship of Dibelius and Bultmann. In interpreting texts, Koch’s standard procedure is to define the limits of the unit of text by separating it out from the context in which it appears, to determine the literary type to which it belongs, and then to discuss the history of its transmission and redaction. He views the latter two operations

22  Devin J. Stewart as the fundamental goals of form criticism. What Wansbrough means by biblical criticism throughout his work is Formgeschichte of this type, and in adopting this approach, he is following Bultmann very closely. Many of Wansbrough’s assumptions feature immediately in the opening paragraph of Quranic Studies: Once separated from an extensive corpus of prophetical logia, the Islamic revelation became scripture and in time, starting from the fact itself of literary stabilization, was seen to contain a logical structure of its own. . . . Both formally and conceptually, Muslim scripture drew upon a traditional stock of monotheistic imagery, which may be described as schemata of revelation. Analysis of the Quranic application of these shows that they have been adapted to the essentially paraenetic character of that document, and that, for example, originally narrative material was reduced almost invariably to a series of discrete and parabolic utterances. . . . A distinctly referential, as contrasted with expository, style characterizes Quranic treatment of most of what I have alluded to as schemata of revelation, exhibited there as components of earlier established literary types. The technique by which a theme is repeatedly signalled but seldom developed may be observed from an examination in their Quranic form of those themes traditionally associated with literature of prophetical expression. Not merely the principle themes, but also the rhetorical conventions by which they are linked and in which they are clothed, the variant traditions in which they have been preserved, as well as the incidence of exegetical gloss and linguistic assimilation, comprise the areas of investigation undertaken in the first part of these studies.18 While supporters are correct in asserting that Wansbrough challenged a number of assumptions often adopted in both traditional and Western scholarship on the Qurʾān, they generally do not acknowledge that he substituted for them another set of assumptions almost as rigid as the first. Influenced by scholarship on the sayings of Jesus and the redaction of the Gospels, Wansbrough assumes that the Qurʾān was edited and constructed from a plethora of short texts that he terms “prophetic logia.” These logia draw on monotheistic imagery and are related to forms familiar from the literature of prophetical expression. Both the monotheist imagery and the literature of prophetical expression are assumed to be entirely biblical in affiliation. The rhetorical conventions as well are presumed to be those of biblical literature. The goal of the critic is to identify these logia by examining the canonical text in which they have been edited and spliced together. Besides the apparent exclusion of preIslamic Arabian tradition, these assumptions constrict the topics worthy of investigation and the range of possible hypotheses regarding the development of the text of the Qurʾān. In addition, he accepts without question a number of assumptions from New Testament Formgeschichte: (1) that the prophetic logia represent the original or most primitive forms; (2) that they were elaborated with the passage of time and as the religious movement grew; and (3) that the canonical scripture is the result of the successive placing of these forms into longer and more complex texts.

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  23 Several key terms suggest the strong connection of Wansbrough’s work with Formgeschichte of the New Testament. The most obvious indication of a debt to New Testament scholarship is the regular use of the term “pericope” to designate short passages of the Qurʾān viewed as the original units or building blocks of the scripture. Greek for “cut-out,” the term “pericope” was used in medieval Christianity to refer to the passages of the Gospels and the Epistles selected for the liturgy. New Testament scholars adopted it as a term of art to designate the short fragments of text that remained intact despite transposition, editing, and so on in their comparative studies of the synoptic Gospels in particular. Following Richard Bell, the other major figure in qurʾānic studies who was influenced by Bultmann, Wansbrough adopted the term for his studies of the qurʾānic text, along with the assumptions that these pericopes represented the original units of the text and that analysis of the qurʾānic text must logically begin with them. Another central term in Wansbrough’s work that is connected with New Testament Formgeschichte is logia, or “sayings.” Wansbrough claims that prophetic logia formed the mass of circulating material from which the text of the Qurʾān was culled. This term goes back to the Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord, a work by Papias of Hierapolis (fl. second c. CE), in which he reported that Matthew had compiled the logia or “sayings” of Jesus in the Hebrew language.19 Drawn to this statement, New Testament critics sought to identify that Hebrew collection of sayings, terming it “lambda” for “logia.” The term “Q,” for German Quelle “source,” came to be used for Matthew’s source to avoid the assumption that it was necessarily identical with the collection Papias mentioned, but it was nevertheless understood that Q was a collection of logia similar to lambda. The term “logia” appears prominently in Bultmann’s work on the history of the synoptic tradition and nearly all subsequent work of the same type. Wansbrough’s use of the term “logia” thus recalls New Testament scholarship focusing on the role of the sayings of Jesus in the redaction of the Gospels, and it figures prominently in his tentative sketch of the Qurʾān’s canonization: Now, that process might be described as the collocation of several elements: a corpus of prophetical logia, the figure of a prophet, a sacred language, and an unequivocally divine sanction for all three. Reconstruction of the manner in which these elements were evolved and adjusted to produce a more or less final and satisfactory synthesis can only be conjectural. . . . Their interaction might be envisaged as follows: attribution of several, partially overlapping, collections of logia (exhibiting a distinctly Mosaic imprint) to the image of a biblical prophet (modified by the material of the Muhammadan evangelium into an Arabian man of God) with a traditional message of salvation (modified by the influence of Rabbinic Judaism into the unmediated and finally immutable word of God).20 Whereas this scenario presents many thought-provoking questions for investigation, the positing of “several, partially overlapping, collections of logia” shows the direct influence of New Testament models.

24  Devin J. Stewart Yet another of Wansbrough’s terms that shows a strong connection with Bultmann’s scholarship is Gemeindebildung, “the formation of community,” which appeared already in Die Geschichte der synoptike Tradition. Wansbrough refers to “the long and many-faceted process of Gemendebildung which culminated in the canonical text of Muslim scripture.”21 As in the scholarship of Bultmann, Wansbrough sees that a close relationship exists between the creation of the canon from prophetic logia and the formation of the early religious community. As a consequence, critical examination of the scripture is understood potentially to reveal the sociological, historical stages by which that formation occurred. Additional, formal aspects of Wansbrough’s work also suggest a connection with Bultmann’s methods. Presentation of the text in schematic format broken into discrete units designated by Roman and Arabic numerals; lists of introductory formulae; lists of terms connected with particular themes; the quick characterization of this or that feature as a late accretion, elaboration, or interpolation; and most of the German terms used in his work are reminiscent of Bultmann’s work and general approach. Quranic Studies may be seen to share three fundamental assumptions with Bultmann’s work. The first of these is that the sacred text was made up of individual pieces, the second, that earlier forms were regularly simpler than later forms, and the third, that the history of the individual pieces can be determined in a more or less obvious and objective way by examining the form of the final version. While each of these assumptions is plausible in some instances, they are questionable as general principles or rigid laws. Wansbrough takes them as given in his work. The methods of Dibelius, Bultmann, and other proponents of Formgeschichte have been critiqued on a number of counts. The assumption that “original” forms, such as the early instances of oral genres like laments, curses, and so on, occur in their “pure” or unadulterated state has been challenged, drawing on data from folklore and anthropology. Already in the nineteenth century, it was recognized that oral genres are often complex and mixed. The assumption that short, simple forms are as a rule older and that long, complex forms are more recent has also been challenged. While the rule probably holds true in some very general way, so that one can confidently consider the stories with which early hominids regaled each other while roasting their dinner less complex than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, its acceptance as a rigid law can be demonstrated false in many historical instances. A more subtle critique has to do with the assumption that attention to the formal features of texts always, or often, allows one to make inferences about their prehistory. There is no doubt that the form-critical approach produced significant, concrete results in certain cases. It was precisely because similar methods had led to a number of crucial discoveries in the history of biblical criticism that Bultmann and others felt justified in generalizing them to such a degree. Julius Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis concerning the Hexateuch, the two-source theory of the synoptic Gospels, and Bultmann’s own identification of the Signs Gospel as a source of the Gospel of John have all enjoyed wide acceptance as historical fact.22 However, critics of Formgeschichte have argued that one cannot always make such historical arguments merely from a consideration of forms, and they have objected to many of the specific conclusions Bultmann and others reached concerning the text of the Gospels.23

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  25

The Variant Traditions Hypothesis A specific hypothesis of Wansbrough that merits critique is his theory of variant traditions. In his view, prophetic logia telling different versions of the same narratives circulated in the nascent Islamic community as separate texts but were later gathered together and included in the Qurʾān that has come down to us. Although these original logia were edited somewhat, their outlines are readily visible in the qurʾānic text. The differences between multiple versions of the same prophetic narratives present in the Qurʾān derive from distinct preexisting versions circulating as folkloric narratives. He substantiates this theory with an analysis of three versions of the story of Shuʿayb, which he labels A, B, and C, from Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7), Sūrat Hūd (Q 11), and Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26), respectively. The story of Shuʿayb, however, is in his view not an isolated example but simply typical. Similar variant traditions existed for most of the other exempla narrating the destruction of earlier nations in the Qurʾān.24 This argument parallels those of Bultmann, for whom “tradition” was a central term. The term “tradition” is central to Bultmann’s work, occurring not only in the title The History of the Synoptic Tradition but also in the two main sections into which he divides the texts “I. The Tradition of the Sayings of Jesus” and “II. The Tradition of the Narrative Material” and throughout his discussion as well. Bultmann uses the term “tradition” to refer to a large collection of transmitted texts, or alternatively “traditional material,” while he usually designates individual accounts and fragments of transmitted text as “units of tradition” or “elements of tradition.” He argues that “traditional material” or “materials” or “elements” were assembled and edited to form the synoptic Gospels, and much of his effort was focused on detecting the history of these textual fragments. This theory is typical of the proponents of form criticism. In some cases, however, he uses the term “tradition” to describe a single passage or fragment of text. For example, he doubts B. H. Streeter’s assertion that Matthew must have had access to a parallel tradition (italics mine) for the passage Mark 7:1–33, and he states that Matthew has used the same tradition in 23:16–22 and 5:33–37.25 It is this usage that most closely parallels Wansbrough’s usage in Quranic Studies, and Wansbrough’s overall point of his theory of variant traditions resembles closely the types of arguments made by Bultmann and other adherents of Formgeschichte. Wansbrough presents three versions of the Shuʿayb story from the Qurʾān, labeled A, B, and C. He has done some rearranging of the verses of the three accounts and designated their sections with Roman numerals to facilitate comparison, as follows:

A (Q 7:85–93) I And to Midian their brother Shuʿayb. (7:85) II (He said) if some of you believe in that with which I have been sent, and others of you do not, then have patience until God judges between us, for He is the best of judges. (7:87) III My people, worship God, for you have no other than Him. And a sign has come to you from your Lord. Give full measure and weight, and do not

26  Devin J. Stewart cheat your fellows of their property, nor work evil in the land, now that matters have been put right. There will be benefit to you if you have faith. So occupy not any path, seeking to make it devious, and threatening and barring from the way of God him who believes. (7:85–6) IV But remember that you were few and He increased you, and consider the destiny of those who work evil. (7:86) V And the assembly of those of his people who regarded themselves as authorities said: We will expel you from our midst, Shuʿayb, and those who believe with you, unless you return to our law. (7:88) VI He replied: And if we do not wish to? We should be guilty of denying God were we to return to your law after He delivered us. It is not for us to return unless our Lord God wishes it. His wisdom comprehends all things, upon God do we rely. Lord, judge in truth between our people and ourselves, for You are the best of judges. (7:88–9) VII And the assembly of those of his people who did not accept said: If you follow Shuʿayb then you are lost. (7:90) VIII So disaster overtook them and they were left prostrate in their place. Those who rejected Shuʿayb were as though they had not been, those who rejected Shuʿayb were indeed lost. (7:91–2) IX And he turned away from them saying: My people, I brought you messages from my Lord and advised you, so how shall I have pity on a people who does not accept? (7:93)

B (Q 11:84–95) I And to Midian their brother Shuʿayb. (11:84) II (He said) My people, do you not see that I bear a sign from my Lord, Who has provided well for me. I do not wish to oppose you in that which I forbid, but only to put things right so far as I can. And my success lies with God upon Whom I rely and towards Whom I turn. (11:88) III My people, worship God, for you have no other than Him. Give not short measure and weight, for I see you in wealth and fear for you the punishment of the last day. My people, give full measure and weight in equity, and do not cheat your fellows of their property, nor work evil in the land. That which abides with God will be a benefit to you, if you have faith. For I cannot preserve you. (11:84–6) IV My people, let not rejection of me make you guilty, lest that afflict you which afflicted the people of Noah or of Hūd or of Ṣāliḥ, nor are the people of Lot irrelevant.26 (11:89) V They replied: Shuʿayb, does your prayer command that we abandon that which our fathers worshipped or that we (do not) conduct our affairs as we wisḥ But are you not clement and righteous? (11:87) VI (He said) Ask forgiveness of your Lord and turn towards Him. My Lord is merciful (and) loving. He said: My people, is my family dearer to you than God, for you have cast Him behind you. My Lord understands that which you do. (11:90, 92)

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  27 VII They replied: Shuʿayb, we do not understand much of what you say and regard you as without support. Were it not for your family, we would stone you, for you have no power over us. (11:91) VIII And when Our decree was uttered We delivered Shuʿayb and those who had faith with him, as a mercy from Us. And disaster overtook those who had done wrong and they were left prostrate in their place. As though they had not been, Midian perished as Thamūd had perished. (11:94–5) IX (He said) My people, do in your position (as) I do. You will know him to whom a grievous punishment comes, and who it is who lies. And watch, for I watch with you. (11:93)

C (Q 26:178–188) I . . . II (Shuʿayb said) I am a messenger entrusted to you. (26:178) III Thus said Shuʿayb to them: Will you not fear? Fear God and obey (me). For that I ask of you no reward. I have no reward but with the Lord of the universe. Give full measure, and be not of those who cause loss. Weigh in straightforward equity. And do not cheat your fellows of their property, nor work evil in the land. (26:177, 179–83) IV And fear Him Who created you and those who went before. (26:184) V They replied: You are one of the possessed. And are only a mortal like ourselves, and we think you a liar. But if you speak the truth, then let some part of heaven fall upon us. (26:185–7) VI . . . VII . . . VIII The men of the copse rejected the messengers. Thus they rejected him, and the punishment of the last day, a momentous day, overtook them. In that there is a sign, but most of them have no faith. (26:176, 189–90) IX He said: My Lord knows best what you have done. (26:188) Upon comparing the three versions A (Q 7), B (Q 11), and C (Q 26), Wansbrough finds that A is the most coherent, while C is the least coherent. This suggests to him that C is primitive and probably earlier. This conclusion follows the analyses of New Testament scholars, who assumed that the simpler, shorter forms were more likely original, whereas longer, more complex forms were the products of later editing and elaboration. Wansbrough also finds that versions A and B were probably independent of C. He notes that section I, the formula of commission reporting that God sent Shuʿayb as a messenger to Midian, occurs in A and B but not C. He concedes that section I perhaps can be explained as a gloss of idh qāla in C but argues that it is more likely an independent elaboration. Section IV occurs in A and C, whereas B enumerates the fates of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Lot instead. Section V in C is replaced by sections V through VII in A  and B, providing a more elaborate argument or showdown between Shuʿayb and the unbelievers of his people, another indication for Wansbrough that they are independent of C. Section IX in A, showing that Shuʿayb “turned away” from his people after giving

28  Devin J. Stewart up hope of saving them, might be a late and optional embellishment. Wansbrough suggests that B might represent the “final” shape of the tradition. Following the method of Formgeschichte, Wansbrough detects in the discrepancies among several versions of the story of Midian and their prophet Shuʿayb proof of the existence of variant traditions – distinct oral versions of the story that circulated independently prior to their inclusion in the scripture. In Wansbrough’s view, analysis indicates “the existence of independent, possibly regional traditions incorporated more or less intact into the canonical compilation, itself the product of expansion and strife within the Muslim community.”27 Wansbrough finds that the text provides signs that significant elaboration has taken place: “The Shuʿayb traditions exhibit . . . ample evidence of literary elaboration drawn from recognizable and well-established types of prophetical report.”28 This elaboration has produced different forms of the text that circulated before the Qurʾān’s compilation and canonization. A possible criticism of this argument is that it fails to consider sufficiently the relationship between the pre-scriptural material and the current text, particularly the processes by which oral performances affect the shape of a repertoire of traditional narratives or by which existing stories may have been molded and modified to fit the particular passages in which they occur in the Qurʾān. That this is borne out by the text itself is evident from consideration of the suras in which punishment stories occur. An alternative explanation for the variations between the versions of the Shuʿayb story in the Qurʾān is that these stories serve as examples in suras that adopt the form of a sermon. The versions of the Shuʿayb story differ because the overall points of the several “sermons” in which they occur differ. In other words, each retelling of the story of Shuʿayb has been tailored to fit the context in which it appears, something that can be corroborated by attention to the other example narratives told in parallel with the story of Shuʿayb in each case as well as by attention to the frame of the sura, which reveals the homiletic or hortatory point being made. The story was probably known to the prophet and to his audience in a longer, more detailed form, and when it was cited as an example in the context of a particular sura, it was retold in a shortened, condensed form that emphasized the particular elements most relevant to the point being made in that passage. Wansbrough’s focus on the “microform,” his examination of the Shuʿayb stories in isolation from the suras in which they appear, has led him to misinterpret the evidence, despite his generally correct understanding that the stories have been adapted to a paraenetic framework. Attention to the “macroform,” the integral suras in which the Shuʿayb stories appear, suggests that an underlying narrative has been manipulated in particular ways in each case for rhetorical purposes that are at least partially evident from the rest of that particular sura. The variant forms of the narrative were likely created ad hoc and do not reflect preexisting, variant traditions. Wansbrough’s neglect of the macroform here appears odd, given his recognition of the sermon as a key element in the canonization of the text: “To the long and many-faceted process of Gemeindebildung which culminated in the canonical text of Muslim scripture, the sermon (khuṭba) must have been central, as the instrument of transmission and explication of the prophetical

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  29 logia.”29 One must attribute his focus on the microform to adherence to the methods of Formgeschichte.

Punishment Stories in the Qurʾān Shuʿayb’s story fits into a recognized genre in the Qurʾān: the punishment story, which recounts a prophetic mission to a nation of the past, the nation’s rejection of the message, and the resulting annihilation of that nation’s disbelievers. This substantial genre is intimately related to several major qurʾānic themes and concepts, such as qurʾānic prophetology, the dichotomy between belief and unbelief, and punishment in the world and in the afterlife. Aloys Sprenger termed these stories Straflegenden (“punishment legends”) or der Cyclus der Legenden von Strafgerichten (“the cycle of legends of the infliction of punishment”) and understood them to play a major role in the Qurʾān and in the prophet’s mission. Josef Horovitz wrote a focused study on the Straflegenden as one of the major types of narrative in the Qurʾān. Wansbrough recognizes earlier scholarship on the punishment stories, particularly that of Horovitz, and discusses with great insight what he calls the ubi sunt topos of the Qurʾān. Wansbrough emphasizes the referential and paraenetic style of the “narrative” sections of the Qurʾān, particularly with regard to the punishment stories. He identifies the key nouns used to identify the nations of the past who have suffered divine vengeance for failing to heed their prophets’ messages and warnings as well as the terms that describe the mode of their destruction, the formulae used to introduce their stories, and so on.30 Richard Bell, following Horovitz, discussed the punishment stories under the rubric of “the seven mathānī (repeated things),” which he interpreted as one of the Qurʾān’s terms of self-reference.31 The common term in English has come to be “punishment stories”; Marshall uses “punishment narratives.” Wansbrough sees that “narrative” and “legend” do not apply well to the punishment stories, arguing that they are rather exempla, but he uses “retribution pericopes” as a general term of reference. Horovitz and Bell provide an overview of the genre, and Bell lists the eleven past peoples involved in the punishment stories. Watt adds a table showing their main occurrences in the Qurʾān, and Marshall provides a similar list. They share formal characteristics, occurring for the most part not singly but instead in a series of accounts, each featuring a different prophet, people, and punishment. The series usually follows chronological order according to the qurʾānic view of biblical history, the main examples being Noah and his people, then Hūd and ʿĀd, then Ṣāliḥ and Thamūd, then Lot and his people, then Shuʿayb and Madyan, then Moses and Pharaoh. Despite differences in the details of the individual accounts, the punishment stories usually share key parallel features with the other stories presented in the same series. Horovitz, Bell, and Watt note this already in general, the latter two remarking that the stories have been assimilated to each other in, for example, Sūra 26. Zwettler discusses the punishment stories in Sūra 26 in detail, arguing that the parallel structures in the sura serve to assert the authority of the prophets in general and therefore Muhammad. I discuss the parallel structure evident in Sūrat al-Qamar. Welch analyzes the punishment stories in Sūras 7, 11, 23,

30  Devin J. Stewart 25, 26, 29, and 54 in detail, showing the extensive use of parallel structure and the repetition of specific vocabulary and entire phrases, suggesting that they are not simply joined together arbitrarily in each case but carefully crafted into an organic whole. He distinguishes between two types of parallel structure, which he has termed “parallel schematic format,” exemplified by Sūras 26 and 54, and “cumulative schematic format,” exemplified by Sūras 7 and 11. The extensive parallelism suggests, Welch argues, that the Qurʾān is oral formulaic in nature.32 Parallel structure stresses the idea that salvation history repeats itself. Human nature, it seems, causes peoples to be stubborn and to reject the messages of the prophets sent, who deliver God’s message to them, and God also has a customary way (sunnat Allāh) of treating these recalcitrant unbelievers, which is annihilation after a suitable delay and ample opportunity to heed the prophets’ warnings and accept correct belief (Q 17:77; 33:38, 62; 35:43; 40:85; 48:23). In most cases, the ruins left behind by these episodes – Noah’s ark, the columns of the Temple of Iram, the dwellings carved into the rock walls of their valleys, the pyramids of Pharaoh, the “overthrown cities” (al-muʾtafikāt) of Lot’s people – serve as visible reminders of the repeated pattern and of God’s power. Horovitz and Wansbrough relate the punishment stories to the ubi sunt motif, the discussion of the fate of nations of the past (al-umam al-khāliyah), and suggest a parallelism between ayyām Allāh, “the battles of God,” and the profane tradition of ayyām al-ʿArab, “the tribal battles of the Arabs”; Neuwirth adds the parallels between this motif and that of the aṭlāl or traces of the deserted campsite in Arabic poetry.33 The ruins of earlier civilizations are one of the several major categories of āyāt or “signs” in the observable world. Along with the signs of the vast or amazing features of nature, which indicate the existence of supernatural beings, and signs of the order of the universe, which indicate that supernatural forces are unified and therefore derive from a single deity, the ruins of past nations indicate that formerly powerful groups have been destroyed. In addition to evoking a sense of shame at humankind’s overweening pride and delusions of invincibility, these ruins, as presented in the Qurʾān, are supposed to invoke the realization that the former nations have been annihilated above all for their rejection of God’s message in the form of prophecy. A representative reference to ruins is the following: “Do they not travel through the earth and see what was the end of those before them? They were more numerous than these and superior in strength and in the traces left in the land: Yet all that they accomplished was of no profit to them” (Q 40:82).34 The ruins are meant to serve as an ominous history lesson for the Meccans.35 Most studies of the punishment stories have not stressed sufficiently that they serve a typological function, a fundamental rhetorical strategy of the Qurʾān.36 Scholars have tended to describe this typology as back projection, claiming that the odd aspects of the story of Noah, for example, reflect Muhammad’s experience and not the actual details of the Noah story as seen in the Bible. This comes from a focus on explaining the discrepancies between the biblical and qurʾānic versions of narratives as mistakes and a conception of the task of critics of the qurʾānic text to explain the origins of these mistakes. They therefore state that the prophet projects his own experience back into the past or that the suras reflect Muhammad’s

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  31 experience. Horovitz remarks that the punishment stories reflect and incorporate particular emotions and experiences of Muhammad. Bell and Watt write that the stories have sometimes been adapted to the experiences of Muhammad and his companions. Marshall argues that the punishment stories reflect Muhammad’s experience and reveal a shift in Muhammad’s attitude toward the unbelievers from one of affinity, concern, and frustration to one of detachment and resigned acceptance of their doom. In my view, Zwettler’s characterization of the logical connection is preferable: “the qurʾānic accounts of prior messengers and prophets .  .  . are expressly intended to be understood as typological prefigurements or prepresentations of which the person and career of Muhammad, Prophet and Messenger of God, provide the corresponding recapitulation and fulfillment – the antitype.”37 Whereas this is to a certain extent just a difference in emphasis, the qurʾānic stories of past prophetic missions serve as analogical models for the prophetic mission of Muhammad rather than the other way around. Though Sprenger and Horovitz already noted the connection,38 what has not been brought out sufficiently is that the qurʾānic genre of the punishment story is closely related to biblical literature in which both Sodom and Gomorrah and the plagues of Egypt present important exempla of punishment. Significantly, the plagues are called “signs” in Exodus, using the Hebrew otot, cognate with āyāt, which is of course ubiquitous in the Qurʾān but also has a specific connection with punishment stories. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is perhaps most emblematic of the punishment stories of the Qurʾān in that the physical ruins of the cities were supposed to conjure up in the minds of the readers the idea that the former inhabitants had been destroyed on account of their sins. One might also add the story of Jonah, a near-punishment story, as an important example of this form in biblical literature. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in particular serves a similar paraenetic purpose in several passages of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are termed in the Qurʾān al-muʾtafikāt (Q 9:70; Q 69:9), a term that is probably related to the Hebrew consonantal root “h-f-k” used in Hebrew commentaries on Genesis, which stated that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by “overturning” them. This term derives from the story of their destruction in Genesis 19:25, which reads “and He [God] overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground (wayyihfok et ha-ʿarim ha-ʾel).” The verb is repeated several times in the Hebrew Bible in reference to the same or similar types of destruction: “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pride of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them” (Isa. 13:19); “I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a brand snatched from the fire” (Amos 4:11); “All its soil burned out by sulphur and salt, nothing planted, nothing sprouting, unable to support any vegetation, like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord destroyed in his fierce anger” (Deut. 29:23); “But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a more shocking thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from wickedness; all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants

32  Devin J. Stewart like Gomorrah” (Jer. 23:14); “As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done” (Ezek. 16:48).39 A similar strategy is also evident in Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels: Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.” (Mt. 11:20–24) In later texts, references to Sodom and Gomorrah adopt a standard formula: kemahpekat elohim et Sedom we-et ʿAmora, “like God’s overturning of Sodom and Gomorrah.” The image conjured up is that of barrenness and the unsuitability for human habitation, but they also serve as a reminder of the tremendous power of God that was required to bring the ruins down and the sins that elicited God’s wrath.40 The fact that the Qurʾān refers to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and refers to them as al-Muʾtafikah or al-Muʾtafikāt, which is related to the Hebrew mahpeka “overturning” and must mean here “the overturned (cities),”41 suggests a strong and close connection with the typological use of this motif in the Bible and a direct connection of the qurʾānic punishment stories as a whole with biblical tradition. The Qurʾān refers explicitly to the physical act of overturning Lot’s city in Sūrat Hūd, when it reads, jaʿalnā ʿāliyahā sāfilahā, “We made its high part its low part” (Q 11:82). A clear comparison of Muhammad’s situation with that of earlier prophets, also stressing the implications of visible ruins, occurs in Sūrat al-Ḥajj (Q 22): (42) If they deny thee (Muhammad), even so the folk of Noah, ʿĀd, and Thamūd before thee denied. (43) And the folk of Abraham and the folk of Lot; (44) [And] the dwellers in Madyan. And Moses was denied; but I indulged the disbelievers a long while, then I seized them, and how (terrible) was My abhorrence! (45) How many a township have We destroyed while it was sinful, so that it lies in ruins, and how many a deserted well and lofty tower! (46) Have they not travelled in the land, and have they hearts wherewith to feel and ears wherewith to hear? For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts which are within the bosoms, that grow blind. This passage suggests the centrality of visible ruins in bringing to the fore the typological function of punishment stories by presenting the contemporary audience a tangible relic of the past destruction to serve as a warning of the fate they might face themselves.

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  33

Analysis of Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) An analysis of the complete suras, in which the variant accounts A, B, and C appear, is necessary for an accurate assessment of the reasons behind the discrepancies among them since the Shuʿayb narratives all belong to the form of a punishment story, and as Welch points out, this form as it appears in the Qurʾān is always embedded in another text, the individual sura.42 Both Angelika Neuwirth and Zwettler have rightly emphasized the need to analyze whole suras to arrive at satisfactory interpretations of the individual narratives contained within them.43 The suras in which the punishment stories appear regularly adopt the form of a sermon, the fundamental rhetorical strategy of which is typological: the extensive parallelism among the stories of past destruction suggests that the prophetic missions of salvation history have tended to unfold in a predictable fashion and are cited as evidence that the mission of Muhammad will follow the same pattern. The punishment stories are presented in the middle of tripartite suras as illustrative examples from salvation history. The introductions and conclusions in those suras usually discuss the moral point to be drawn from those examples, making the point of the typological analogy clear.44 A cursory examination of the outlines suggests that all three adopt the basic tripartite form already discussed, with an introduction, middle sections presenting punishment stories, and a conclusion. Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) is formally similar to the suras that Wansbrough discusses in connection with the story of Shuʿayb, Q 7, 11, and 26, although Q 54 does not include the story of Shuʿayb. I  have discussed prophetic typology in connection with this sura, analyzing its structure and rhetoric. One may present it in outline as follows:

Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54): 1–8 9–17 18–22 23–32 33–40 41–42 43–55

Introduction Folk of Noah ʿĀd Thamūd Folk of Lot The House of Pharaoh Conclusion

The sura adopts a tripartite structure, including an introduction, a series of narratives in the middle, and a conclusion. The middle narrative sections tell the stories of the prophetic missions of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lot, and Moses, with emphasis on the audience’s rejection of God’s warning and consequent annihilation. The middle narrative subsections are obviously parallel, something stressed by the use of the term kadhdhaba “reject, deny” in the first verse of each subsection, and the repetition of two verses, with some variation, at the end of each subsection, providing the moral of the story, after a fashion, asking the rhetorical question “Then how was My punishment after My warnings? Indeed we have made the Lesson easy to

34  Devin J. Stewart learn, but is there any who takes heed?!”45 The parallelism between the subsections in the middle of the sura stresses the idea that prophetic careers, despite elements of difference, follow a predictable, regular pattern so that all prophets are alike in a basic sense, and their experiences of interaction with the peoples to whom they are sent follow a similar progression. Both the introduction and the conclusion include elements linking them to the middle sections; they both suggest a parallel pattern in the prophecy of Muhammad, with the difference that the actual historical destructions inflicted on the disbelievers among the prophets’ peoples are rhetorically replaced with the threat of damnation on the Day of Judgment.46 With Welch, we can conclude that the subsections presenting the punishment stories generally exhibit parallelism and are closely related to each other while also reflecting on the situation and career of Muhammad. Wansbrough brackets such parallel elements since he considers the Shuʿayb narratives in isolation. The main point here is that the particular rhetorical emphasis of each sura differs from those of other suras, and it is this particular emphasis that determines, at least to a large extent, the specific differences observed among the versions of individual punishment stories. Thus, for example, Sūrat al-Qamar presents a series of punishment stories in which the emphasis is on the people addressed and the destruction of the unbelievers in each case. The action begins in each case with dramatic use of the verb “kadhdhabat,” “they rejected” – which Horovitz calls a Stichwort47 – referring to a past nation’s rejection of God’s warnings. The prophets are not mentioned by name and are only implied actors in the events that unfold, whereas the emphasis is on the denial of God’s warnings by the peoples to whom the prophets were sent. An analysis of the type Wansbrough makes would have to postulate that a variant tradition existed in which the initial parts of each story, including the commissioning of the prophet, God’s act of sending him to his people, and the initial delivery of the message by the prophet, and the initial rejection by the people, were all missing and all missing in the same fashion in the five punishment stories included in Sūrat al-Qamar. Does the fact that these punishment stories present fewer steps in the story indicate that they are more primitive and thus represent the original form? This seems unlikely. It is the heavy emphasis on the act of rejection at a particular point in time, thus stressing the urgency of taking the opposite action, which distinguishes this sura from others that present series of punishment stories, and this is the main reason that the narratives are acephalous, so to speak, lacking the first few narrative steps.

Analysis of Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7) Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, with a total of 206 verses, includes an introduction of vv. 1–9, a middle section including the stories of seven prophetic figures from “biblical” history, including Adam, Noah, Hud, Ṣāliḥ, Lot, Shuʿayb, and Moses, and a conclusion in vv. 179–206. The elements that break this tight organization may be identified as the section addressing the sons of Adam (vv. 26–58), the section of a generic punishment story, describing towns that were destroyed without mention of specific prophets or peoples (vv. 94–102), the subsections discussing the town

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  35 by the sea and the breaking of the Sabbath (vv. 163–68), and a section treating scriptures and the disbelievers in general (vv. 169–78).48

Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7): 1–9 10–25 26–58 59–64 65–72 73–79 80–84 85–93 94–102 103–62 163–68 169–78 179–206

Introduction Humankind’s Pride; Adam and Iblis Address to Sons of Adam Noah Hūd and ʿĀd Ṣāliḥ and Thamūd Lot and the Folk of Lot Shuʿayb and Madyan The Towns That Were Destroyed Moses and Pharaoh Town by the Sea; Breaking the Sabbath Scriptures and Disbelievers Conclusion

Despite the interruptions, the stories of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lot, Shuʿayb, and Moses are clearly parallel, and Welch has discussed the formal elements of parallelism in the middle sections of this sura in detail. These parallel elements stress three ideas that distinguish this series of punishment stories from those that appear in other suras: (1) that the malaʾ “chieftains” or “council” of the earlier nations played key roles in opposition to the messenger and in promoting stubborn adherence to unbelief; (2) that there was a dramatic clash or series of arguments between the messenger and the chieftains of his people; and (3) that, when the destruction occurred, God saved the messenger and along with him the believers.49 A comparison with Sūrat al-Qamar, for example, reveals that none of these elements occur explicitly in the punishment stories narrated there. The formula of commission – Wansbrough’s I – occurs in this sura at verse 85 because it occurs in all of the parallel accounts in this sura: for Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Moses (vv. 59, 65, 73, 103). Sprenger has pointed out that this sura emphasizes the role of the malaʾ “chieftains, council” – Sprenger has “aristocracy” – of the unbelieving peoples, conveying the idea that they are the root cause of all unbelief and evil in the world. Welch calls attention to the malaʾ as well and points out that the references to the malaʾ follow a cumulative progression: from “Said the Council of his people” in the account of Noah (v. 60), to “Said the Council of the unbelievers of his people” in the account of Hūd (v. 66), to “Said the Council of those of his people who waxed proud” in the accounts of Ṣāliḥ and Shuʿayb (vv. 75, 88).50 One might add the references to the malaʾ of Pharaoh (vv. 103, 109, 127) and to his family (dynasty?) (Āl Firʿawn, v. 130). The saving of the prophets and the believers also appears throughout. In verse 64 Noah and those with him on the ark are saved from drowning. In verse 72, Hūd

36  Devin J. Stewart and those with him are saved. God rescued Lot and his family, with the exception of his wife, in verse 83, and saved Moses and his followers by allowing them to cross the sea in verses 137–38. Wansbrough states that IX, in which Shuʿayb “turned away” from his people (v. 93), is perhaps a late embellishment. I would argue, rather, that it stands in place of being saved in the narrative. A nearly identical statement appears in the account of Ṣāliḥ: “And Ṣāliḥ turned from them and said: O my people! I  delivered my Lord’s message to you and gave you good advice, but you love not good advisers” (v. 79), which is comparable to “So he turned from them and said: O my people! I delivered my Lord’s messages to you and gave you good advice; then how can I sorrow for an unbelieving people?” (v. 93). In both cases, the key verb, “tawallā,” “to turn one’s back on,” stresses the separation of the messenger from the unbelievers and therefore serves as a euphemistic reference to his being saved in contrast to their annihilation. The verb is used in the same fashion in Sūrat al-Qamar with reference to Muhammad: “So turn from them (fa-tawalla ʿanhum) [i.e., the unbelievers], on the day when the Summoner summons to a hateful thing” (Q 54:6). If it is indeed an elaboration, it is parallel to the exact same elaboration in the account of Ṣāliḥ in Sūrat Hūd and, I would argue, parallel to the several references to the messengers’ being saved in other accounts in that same sura. The argument or clash of Shuʿayb with the chieftains of his people (Wansbrough’s V–VII) in vv. 88–90 are also paralleled in the story of Noah (vv. 60–63), Hūd (vv. 66–68), and Ṣāliḥ (vv. 75–77). Attention to the introduction and to the conclusion of the sura suggests that some of the distinctive features of the Shuʿayb account are related to their salient themes. Verses 8–9 portray the differential fates of believers and unbelievers, mirroring the emphasis on being saved as opposed to being destroyed: those whose scales are heavy with good deeds will reap success, and those whose scales are light will lose their souls. As in the rest of the sura, mention of being saved precedes mention of destruction. The destruction is mentioned in verse 4: “How many a city have we destroyed?” While this does not refer directly to a physical destruction in this world, it is typical of the typological use of the punishment stories in which the destruction of former nations is replaced, for the prophet’s contemporary audience, with the threat of damnation in the afterlife. The “chieftains” of the disbelieving nations in the punishment stories are analogous to the awliyāʾ “allies, guardians” mentioned in the introduction, in which Muhammad’s audience is warned: wa-lā tattabiʿū min dūnihi awliyāʾ, “Follow no guardians beside Him” (v. 3). Similarly, the conclusion includes a number of specific passages related to the distinct elements of Shuʿayb’s account. Verses 190–98 draw a contrast between the unbelievers, who call on false partners (shurakāʾ) of God, and the believers, who call on God. In this contrast, I would argue that the partners are here analogous to the chieftains mentioned in the punishment accounts and God. This interpretation is corroborated by the use of the term walī “guardian” pointedly to refer to God in this passage. Muhammad is instructed to declare: inna waliyyiya llāhu lladhī nazzala l-kitāba wa-huwa yatawallā ṣ-ṣāliḥīn, “My guardian is God, Who revealed the Scripture. He is guardian over the righteous” (v. 196).

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  37 The believers are characterized as alladhīna ʿinda rabbika, “those who are with your Lord” (v. 206), which arguably makes them analogous to those who were saved in the earlier accounts: fa-anjaynāhu wa-lladhīna maʿahu fī l-fulk, “Then We saved him and those who were with him on the Ark,” in the case of Noah (v. 64) and fa-anjaynāhu wa-lladhīna maʿahu, “Then we saved him and those who were with him,” in the case of Hūd (v. 72). The believers who are with the Lord are described as “not being arrogant” (lā yastakbirūn), which contrasts with the chieftains, who were arrogant (istakbarū) in the story of Ṣalīh and Thamūd (vv. 75, 76) and Shuʿayb and Madyan (v. 88). The emphasis on the messenger being saved is again transformed into a parallel command that Muhammad turn away from the unbelievers: “Keep to forgiveness, and enjoin kindness, and turn away from the ignorant” (v. 199), this time using the imperative aʿriḍ rather than tawalla.

Analysis of Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) Sūrat Hūd follows a somewhat tighter organization, fitting the tripartite mold quite readily. It concludes an introduction (vv. 1–24), a middle section presenting seven subsections, each a narrative of an earlier prophetic figure and his people – Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Abraham, Lot, Shuʿayb, and Moses (vv. 25–99) – and a conclusion (vv. 100–123).

Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) 1–24 25–49 50–60 61–68 69–76 77–83 84–95 96–99 100–123

Introduction Noah and His Folk Hūd and ʿĀd Ṣāliḥ and Thamūd Abraham Lot Shuʿayb and Madyan Moses and Pharaoh Conclusion: Towns, Destruction, and Judgment

The punishment stories in Sūrat Hūd have been discussed in a number of studies to date.51 Welch has discussed the parallel elements of the punishment stories in detail. This sura, like Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, emphasizes that the messengers and the believers are saved from annihilation. Noah is told to disembark in safety from the ark (v. 48). Lot is instructed to escape at night with his family in verse 81. The text refers to the saving of Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Shuʿayb using an identical phrase: wa-najjaynā X wa-lladhīna āmanū maʿahu bi-raḥmatin minnā, “and We saved Hūd/Ṣāliḥ/Shuʿayb and those who believed with him through a mercy from Us” (vv. 58, 66, 94). As in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, Wansbrough’s formula of commission, the mention of God’s sending the messenger to his people, occurs in the story of Shuʿayb (v. 84) because it occurs as well in the parallel punishment stories of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Moses (vv. 25, 50, 61, 96) in nearly identical phrases: “We

38  Devin J. Stewart sent Noah to his people”; “And to ʿĀd (We sent) their brother Hūd”; “And to Thamūd (We sent) their brother Ṣāliḥ”; “And to Madyan (We sent) their brother Shuʿayb”; and “We sent Moses with Our signs and a clear warrant.” The stories of Abraham and Lot are slightly different in that they do not use the verb “to send” so that God’s agency is not stressed to the same degree: “And Our messengers came to Abraham with good news” and “And when Our messengers came to Lot” (vv. 69, 77). Shuʿayb’s argument with his people is paralleled by passages in the stories of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Lot (vv. 38–39, 51–57, 62–63, 78–80). Overall, Wansbrough is correct in seeing that the versions of Sūrat al-Aʿrāf and Sūrat Hūd resemble each other in many respects and are closer to each other than either is to the version of Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ. However, the emphasis on the role of the “chieftains” of the unbelievers is not as strong in this sura. The malaʾ of the unbelievers appear in the stories of Noah (v. 38) and Moses (v. 96). One might connect with these mentions of the malaʾ the statement in the story of Hūd and ʿĀd: wa-ttabaʿū amra kulli jabbārin ʿanīd, “They followed the command of every stubborn tyrant” (v. 59). A distinctive emphasis of this sura that Wansbrough does not address is God’s curse of the unbelievers, which is described using the term “laʿnah” or the curse buʿdan, which Pickthall renders “A far removal!” Verse 60 says of ʿĀd, “A curse was made to follow them in this world and on the Day of Resurrection. Lo! ʿĀd disbelieved in their Lord. A far removal for ʿĀd, the folk of Hūd.” Very similar to this is verse 99, about Pharaoh and his people: “A curse is made to follow them in this [world] and on the Day of Resurrection. Hapless is the gift that will be given.” Verses 68 and 95, about Thamūd and Madyan, take up the curse buʿdan that appears in the story of ʿĀd but do not include the statement about a curse following them in this world and on the Day of Resurrection: alā buʿdan li-Thamūd, “a far removal for Thamūd”; and alā buʿdan li-Madyan kamā baʿidat Thamūd, “Lo! A far removal for Madyan, even as Thamūd had been removed afar!” One might view as an echo of these last curses the cognate baʿīd, referring to the marked stones cast down upon the people of Lot: wa-amṭarnā ʿalayhā ḥijāratan min sijjīlin manḍūdin musawwamatan ʿinda rabbika wa-mā hiya min aẓ-ẓālimīna bi-baʿīd, “We rained upon [the city] stones of clay, one after another, Marked with fire in the providence of your Lord. And they are never far from the wrong-doers” (vv. 82–83). The theme of God’s cursing the unbelievers is broached prominently in the introduction to the sura: alā laʿnatu llāhi ʿalā ẓ-ẓālimīn, “Lo! The curse of God is upon the wrongdoers” (v. 18).

Analysis of Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) The structure and meaning of Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ has been examined in a number of studies.52 As Zwettler already noted, it includes an introduction (vv. 1–9), a middle section containing seven subsections, each a narrative of the story of a biblical figure – Moses, Abraham, Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lot, and Shuʿayb (vv. 10–191) – and a conclusion (vv. 192–227). The element of oddity here is the placement of the first two subsections in the middle section because Moses appears before Abraham, a contradiction of biblical historical chronology, and both of them occur

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  39 before Noah, Hūd, and Ṣāliḥ, a similar violation. Whereas such violations of biblical chronology occur elsewhere in the Qurʾān, such as in Sūrat al-Naml (Q 27), where the story of Lot and his people follows the stories of Moses and Solomon, they are rare enough to be noteworthy. In this case the main features of typical punishment stories occur in the last five subsections, which are most closely parallel with each other; Abraham’s story in particular does not resemble the other subsections.

Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 1–9 10–68 69–104 105–22 123–40 141–59 160–75 176–91 192–227

Introduction Moses and Pharaoh Abraham Noah Hūd and ʿĀd Ṣāliḥ and Thamūd Lot Shuʿayb and Aṣḥāb al-Aykah Conclusion

In his perceptive study, Zwettler shows that the main aim of the sura is to establish the authority of the biblical prophet or messenger as a mantic seer alternative and superior to the poet and the soothsayer (kāhin), the main categories of seers in pre-Islamic Arabia, thus countering arguments of the prophet’s contemporaries that he was in fact a poet or kāhin of the familiar type. Both Zwettler and Welch have described the formal parallel elements of the sura in detail, which are especially strong in the last five narrative sections presenting the stories of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lot, and Shuʿayb. Zwettler notes that among the salient emphases of this sura are the unbelievers’ rejection of the messengers (kadhdhab .  .  . al-mursalīn), with which each punishment story begins, and the reiterated command: “So fear God and obey me!” Whereas the verb “kadhdhaba” is applied to the unbelievers’ rejection of God’s warnings or signs in other passages, in this sura it refers to their rejection of the messengers themselves. Together these two distinctive elements stress the authority of the messengers and the opposition between rejection of them and obedience to them. Zwettler explains that the sura is typological and that the stories of earlier prophets are meant to serve as a model for the prophet so that the authority of the earlier messengers implies that of Muhammad, and his authority demands obedience on the part of the Meccans. Zwettler also points out the connection between Abraham’s attempts to dissuade his father from idol worship (v. 70ff.) and God’s command to Muhammad to warn his kin (wa-andhir ʿashīrataka l-aqrabīn, v. 214). The conclusion to the sura recapitulates the last five punishment narratives by emphasizing the contrast between God’s messengers, who have legitimate authority because they are conveying a divinely inspired message and therefore must be followed, and poetsoothsayers, who are false messengers inspired by the jinn and should therefore not be followed.

40  Devin J. Stewart Wansbrough observes that the formula of commission (his roman numeral I) does not occur in the story of Shuʿayb and Madyan in this sura. The formula does not occur in any of the five parallel accounts, which all begin in the same fashion, with a nearly identical five-verse strophe, beginning with the unbelievers’ rejection of the messengers.53 The missing elements that Wansbrough notes in his schematic comparison of the version of the Shuʿayb story with those that occur in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf and Sūrat Hūd are missing because they are missing in all of the other parallel punishment stories included in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ. Even if they do not appear here, one may argue, as in the case of Sūrat al-Qamar, that they are nevertheless logically implied: God must have sent each messenger to his people, and the messenger must have delivered the message for the unbelievers among them to reject them. It is noteworthy that none of the parallel accounts in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ mentions that God saved either the messenger alone or the messenger along with the believers. In my view, this does not indicate that that part of the story was added later as an elaboration but only that it was not singled out for emphasis in this instance.

Conclusion Such examples suggest that the specific discrepancies that Wansbrough notes in the cases of the Shuʿayb narrative in Q 7, 11, and 26 are in fact differences in emphasis embedded in the three suras as integral texts, and result from the framing of the story within the macroform, and not merely discrepancies due to different versions underlying the present text in the transmission history of the individual pericopes that make up those three sections of the three suras. Wansbrough does not address another occurrence of the Shuʿayb story in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt, apparently because it is very short – just two verses – and provides little narrative for analysis. Even this instance, though, may serve as a good counterexample to Wansbrough’s explanation, for the very short discussion of Shuʿayb matches in content and form the short presentations of the other figures from salvation history presented in the sura:

Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt (Q 29) 1–13 14–15 16–27 17–23 28–35 36–37 38 39–40 41–69

Introduction Noah and His People Abraham and His People Interruption about God and the Contemporary Unbelievers Lot and His People Shuʿayb and Madyan ʿĀd and Thamūd Korah, Pharaoh, and Haman Conclusion

The short section on Shuʿayb is most similar to the short sections on Noah (vv. 14–15), ʿĀd and Thamūd (v. 38), and Korah, Pharaoh, and Haman (vv. 39–40) in

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  41 the remainder of the sura; the stories of Abraham are somewhat longer and more distinct. The short references focus primarily on God’s destruction of the unbelievers and the ruins left behind as signs. This parallelism suggests, again, that the story of Shuʿayb has been adjusted to fit the particular context of the sura and not that the sura preserves variant traditions of each story. Wansbrough’s analysis of the accounts of Shuʿayb and Madyan in Sūras 7, 11, and 26 fails to convince. The discrepancies among the versions of the story appear to be due more to the particular rhetoric of the suras in which they occur rather than to distinct versions of the underlying story that originally circulated in different geographical regions and then were incorporated, discrepancies intact, into the canonical Qurʾān. It seems most plausible that the story of Shuʿayb existed as a well-known legend or myth in pre-Islamic Arabia.54 Wansbrough is probably correct in referring to the punishment stories as exempla in the Qurʾān, but they in many cases presumably derived from much longer narratives that one might properly refer to as legends. The legend was presumably oral and probably existed in a much longer and more detailed narrative form. One may judge from the ways in which narratives such as those of Noah or Moses are presented in the Qurʾān in comparison with the corresponding biblical texts that specific personal names and place names were probably omitted from the text and that the narrative was condensed to emphasize essential elements of plot. As with the treatment of the Ḥajj and the stories of the other Arabian prophets Hud and Ṣāliḥ, pagan elements have probably been suppressed or transformed to accommodate them to a monotheistic, biblical framework. The details of this transformation are unclear, but it is evident at the very least that the stories of the Arabian prophets have been fit into the chronological framework of biblical history, with Hūd and then Ṣāliḥ coming between Noah and Abraham and Shuʿayb coming between Lot and Moses, that they are presented as prophets or messengers on par with biblical messengers or prophets in the Qurʾan, and that the divine agency in the story is attributed to the biblical God.55 It may be the case that Sūras 7, 11, and 26 reflect different moments in the development of the prophet’s mission, or in the development of the community, so that Wansbrough’s claim makes some sense but only with the proviso that the variant tradition is understood to encompass the entire sura – or before that, a sermon or khuṭba – and not individual pericopes that were circulating independently and being altered and shaped independently. In other words, the sermon form in which the punishment stories were embedded affected the presentation of all of the stories presented in one series in one khuṭba. This may have been what Wansbrough had in mind as he mentions the khuṭba’s role in shaping the traditions, but his example obviously ignores the parallel punishment stories that appear in the same sura, and he does not make clear that the variant traditions would have been modified as a group. Even so, it is difficult to agree with this hypothesis, for it would seem that the differences between the stories are due to differences in emphasis and that the stories are drawn from a common stock of material and shaped ad hoc for the hortatory or other rhetorical purpose at hand rather than representing different historical stages of development or versions circulating in different geographical regions. Fred Donner’s comparison of the different versions of a

42  Devin J. Stewart particular account to the different iterations of a politician’s stump speech is apt.56 Welch, following oral formulaic theory, sees variation as being produced in the process of a particular oral performance, for which he finds evidence in the use of formulaic elements in the suras: “It is not unreasonable to conclude that Muhammad recited the punishment-stories in different forms on different occasions from a common body of key terms, phrases, and formulas in such a way that their basic plot and primary theme could be presented to his ever-changing audience in an almost endless variety of forms – to address the different circumstances of his hearers.”57 Attention to oral performance has led to results that seem to be at odds with a number of the assumptions and conclusions of Dibelius, Bultmann, and the practitioners of Formgeschichte.58 However one envisages the performance of the text, it is clear that the particular context of the performance and the message as emphasized or modified for a specific occasion affects the shape of each individual narrative in the sura in keeping with the sura’s overall structure and rhetorical strategy. This does not rule out the possibility that variant traditions existed, but Wansbrough’s evidence does not support his conclusions regarding them, and if they did exist, they must have played a more limited role in the text. Scholars who, unlike Wansbrough, accept Nöldeke’s chronology of the suras in general have argued that some sort of chronology of the punishment stories can be detected. Marshall, whose main concern is the prophet’s attitude toward his people, the unbelieving Meccans, detects a progression from affinity and sympathy to resigned detachment. The problem with this interpretation, in addition to narrowing the scope of the points and rhetorical strategies that punishment stories might convey, is that it assumes a linear development. Taking the oral formulaic approach, one would have to imagine that the point of a particular sura in which a series of punishment stories occurs might be affected by the audience, specific events, and immediate circumstances of the performance, which could change radically and even revert again to what they were in a short period of time. There is no guarantee that the change would be linear or gradual. Welch states that it is not possible to establish a chronology of the punishment stories but suggests that an assiduous examination of vocabulary and style may enable the critic to reach some conclusions about early and later, more developed forms: “The exact order in which the groups of punishment-stories were first recited by Muhammad, as well as the dating of later versions of the same accounts, cannot be known. . . . It is possible, however, through a careful analysis of the vocabulary, major themes, contexts, and qurʾānic usage of key terms, to determine that certain accounts and lists are considerably earlier and others much later than the most fully developed groups” (meaning those that occur in Q 26, 54, 7, 11).59 It seems possible that stylistic analysis will allow investigators to determine a chronology of the punishment story suras and to say something about the development or shift of ideas over time. The main scholarly work that has taken up the challenge presented by Wansbrough’s theories on their own terms is that of Angelika Neuwirth. Several of her studies have investigated the process of redaction of texts in light of the process of canonization and the formation of the early Muslim community.60 She has avoided

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  43 the excesses of Wansbrough by not assuming that the redaction of the qurʾānic text strictly recapitulates the redaction of the synoptic Gospels and by beginning from clues in the text rather than putting the cart before the horse. The only other work that I am aware of which has taken up these issues is the recent work of Nicolai Sinai focusing on the treatment of Abraham in the Qurʾān.61 Both Neuwirth and Sinai have drawn on the more recent strand of biblical criticism termed “canonical criticism,” which has developed since the 1970s in the works of scholars such as Brevard S. Childs and James A. Sanders.62 The turn to canonical criticism has sidestepped what is perhaps the most important and direct revision of the form critics’ scholarship, which came from the proponents of redaction criticism (Redaktionsgeschichte, literally “redaction history”), which may provide a fruitful approach to the qurʾānic data in that it addresses directly the weaknesses found in Wansbrough’s use of Formgeschichte for analysis of the Qurʾān.63 The seminal works of redaction criticism, all by German scholars, began to appear in the 1950s and include Hans Conzelmann’s (1915–1989) Die Mitte der Zeit – Zur Theologie des Lukas (1954); Willi Marxsen’s (1919–1993) Der Evangelist Markus – Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Evangeliums (1956 and 1959); and Georg Strecker’s (1929–1994) Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit – Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Matthäus (1962). Willi Marxen explains that Formgeschichte ignored the intentions of the compiler–editor, who formed the text to convey particular ideas and arguments and did not merely splice together earlier fragments without an agenda. Bultmann had ignored the third Sitz im Leben, that of the redactor, while recognizing the first Sitz im Leben, that of Jesus’ original mission, and concentrating on the second Sitz im Leben, that of the early community. The form historians were of course aware the redaction had occurred and that certain historical persons had carried it out; however, they assigned the redactors a minimal role in crafting the resulting text and in conveying their own ideas. They usually referred to the redactor as a “collector,” which suggests that he only gathered texts and did not leave a perceptible imprint on them in doing so.64 For example, Dibelius wrote, “The literary understanding of the synoptics begins with the recognition that they are collections of material. The composers are only to the smallest extent authors. They are principally collectors, vehicles of tradition, editors.”65 Whereas the form historians tried to identify and understand the fragments assembled in the Gospels and thereby gain insight into the prehistory of the collected work and the milieu in which the fragments were circulating, the redaction historians sought to understand the ideas that the redactor sought to convey by arranging and editing those fragments in a particular way and thereby gain insight into the ideas circulating in their milieu. Marxsen’s work on the Gospel of Mark presents four focused studies showing how the Evangelist shaped the materials available to him to convey specific ideas about Jesus’ mission. He argues that Mark presented the story of John the Baptist in such a way as to emphasize his role as a forerunner of Jesus. The Galilee is stressed to such an extent in his Gospel that one might term it the “Galilean Gospel,” which suggests the Galilee’s importance as a center of the Christian community in his day. In Marxsen’s view, Mark expanded the early concept of the

44  Devin J. Stewart evangelion as the good news of salvation preached by Paul to the combined sense of the message proclaimed by Christ and of the news that Christ is the risen Lord. Mark’s view was taken up by Matthew and Luke, for whom the evangelion also designated the text of the Gospel. In his analysis of Mark 13, which immediately precedes the passion narrative, Marxsen suggests that Mark’s text reveals a stage in the formation of the community when the Parousia was seen as imminent and the end times had already begun. Even those who disagree with Marxsen’s interpretations, which he presented as hypotheses rather than facts, realize that focus on the work and intention of the redactor leads to interesting and important results that were missed by the form historians. While it may not be possible at this point to assess whether the New Testament and the Qurʾān were canonized in parallel manners, comparison of the Qurʾān to the synoptic Gospels reveals certain similarities that would justify a similar critical approach. The emphasis on orality in the early Muslim community aligns to a large degree with the portrayal of the traditions circulating in the early Christian community. The time frame within which canonization took place was quite short for both the New Testament and the Qurʾān in comparison to the Hebrew Bible. A key question is of course the relative length of the time canonization took for the Qurʾān as opposed to the New Testament. In Wansbrough’s view, they are roughly the same, again, primarily an assumption; most other scholars, even if they do not accept the traditional Islamic account of the Qurʾān’s compilation, agree that the Qurʾān’s canonization proceeded more quickly. Van Ess suggests that the short time frame may be due to the fact that religions of scripture were already the norm in the Near East when Islam came into being, and the canonization of scripture, which had already taken place in Judaism, Christianity, and Manichaeism, was simply an expected process.66 The presence of several similar versions of accounts in the synoptic Gospels, the main impetus for New Testament research for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, may be seen to exist in the Qurʾān, which has several versions of particular narratives, including many of the biblical narratives in the text. In addition, both the New Testament and the Qurʾān draw on earlier biblical tradition and refigure it in particular ways, some of which are comparable in detail. All this suggests that the ways in which the Qurʾān and the New Testament were produced may have been quite similar so that it is at least worthwhile comparing the corresponding historical processes of collection, compilation, redaction, and canonization. Wansbrough’s work aligns clearly with Formgeschichte, and the redaction historians’ critiques would equally apply to his work. While he realizes that redaction has occurred, and that the paraenetic khuṭbah or sermon form was a primary mode in which the prophetic logia were conveyed and reworked, he focuses on the fragments or units of tradition or microforms rather than the larger passages or macroforms (usually contiguous with a complete sura). On the face of it, redaction criticism would seem to apply quite readily to the Qurʾān, which includes variant versions of similar narratives on many topics embedded in different suras that make different rhetorical points, and the punishment stories provide a number of apt examples for such an exercise. The studies of the punishment stories to date,

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  45 as well as Neuwirth’s study of the accounts of John the Baptist, Mary, and Jesus in Sūras 3 and 19, her study of the accounts of the creation of man, and Sinai’s study of the accounts of Abraham have done some of this work, but there remains more to be done. To adopt the approach of redaction criticism risks the appearance of reversion to an orientalist view that treated Muhammad as the author of the Qurʾān and the perpetrator of its mistakes, by recasting him as editor of the text, on a par with the Evangelists. One could also invoke later editors or compilers, such as the committee of ʿUthmān. An example of this sort of criticism may be seen in Sprenger’s work. Both Sprenger and Welch point out that the story of Lot is exceptional in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf and does not match the other punishment accounts in that sura. Sprenger placed three versions of the Lot narrative in parallel to show how the Straflegenden were used in the Qurʾān. In doing so, he portrays Muhammad as the author of the Qurʾān and the redactor of the Straflegenden. He chose versions of the story of Lot and the destruction of his people in Q 27:55–59, Q 7:78–82, and Q 26:160–72. According to Sprenger, because the story of Lot did not include any malaʾ that could take on this aspect of the story, the prophet must originally have omitted it from this sura. However, later compilers who thought it necessary to include Lot in the series of stories for the sake of comprehensive treatment interpolated a slightly modified version of the account in Sūrat an-Naml (Q 27:55–59).67 Canonical criticism avoids this issue to some extent by presenting the editing and shaping of the text as a communal process. Redaction criticism also assumes the existence of relatively stable fragments of text or traditions that are pieced together. Even though the final macro text is created by the editor, the editor is understood to be working with pieces that are not dissimilar from Wansbrough’s pericopes. The main difference is a shift of emphasis from the pericopes that are being spliced together to the overall shape that is created by the splicing. The oral performance theory would envisage the process as one of ad hoc creation of literary forms using oral formulas and common structures that could be modified through improvisation according to particular audiences, settings, and issues. This may not explain well the tight organization that is evident in some of the suras that contain the punishment stories, such as Sūrat al-Qamar. A middle ground, in my view, would be the analogy with the sermon form. Suras of the type that include the punishment stories resemble the form of a sermon. They adopt a tripartite structure, with an introduction, a series of exempla from salvation history, and a conclusion. While the exempla are set in the past, and use the past tense, the introduction and the conclusion are set in the present, the time of the prophet, and use the present tense. The introduction and conclusion generally present or refer to the major issue that the exempla are used to address. The exempla themselves are condensed versions of the stories they present, tailored to the moral or hortatory point being made in the sura as a whole. The exempla are on occasion followed by a comment, outside the narrative, which alerts the audience to the moral of the story. The process of producing the sermon may involve written, oral, or mental preparation rather than an impromptu performance. The key difference between this view and redaction criticism would be

46  Devin J. Stewart that the sura draws on a stock of lore, involving much longer and more detailed versions of the stories being told, rather than on fragments preserved in collections of traditions. Interestingly enough, though, Marxsen uses the sermon as an analogy for the Gospel of Mark at several points in his seminal work. Whereas he did not intend a sermon in the strict sense of the word, he was drawing attention to the role of the redactor in producing a paraenetic document for the early community that “addresses the concrete community of its time,” which may be seen as equally relevant to the Qurʾān.68 He writes: Though analogies most often break down, and though we do not prefer to draw inferences from our present situation, we can still refer to the modern sermon. It too is sociologically oriented in its relation to the congregation, and at the same time receives its peculiar stamp from the preacher. To great extent, the preacher’s and hearer’s points of view can (and will) coincide. But the analogy goes still further. All things being equal, I can get a very clear picture of the preacher and his congregation from a volume of sermons covering say, a year. In this respect historical documents are involved. But at best I get information of the facts reported in the sermon only at second hand.69 The analogy between an individual gospel and a sermon may be fruitfully applied to the qurʾānic material, in which case it becomes an analogy between an individual sura and a sermon.*

Notes * Parts of this study were presented as “The Making of the Story of Shuʿayb: A Critique of Wansbrough’s Theory of Variant Traditions in the Qurʾān,” at The Qurʾān: Text, Interpretation and Translation, Center of Islamic Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, November 7–9, 2007, and as “The Surah as Sermon: Generic Considerations,” Qurʾanic Studies Today Conference, The University of Chicago, November 2012. Research for this study was supported in part by a fellowship from the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry of Emory University. 1 John Wansbrough, “Preface,” Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), xxi. 2 John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation, with foreword, translations, and expanded notes by Andrew Rippin (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004). 3 R. Stephen Humphreys. Islamic History: A Framework for Enquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 83–4. 4 William A. Graham, “Review of Quranic Studies,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 100.2 (1980): 137–41, here p. 138. 5 Ibid., 138. 6 The best summary available is Harald Motzki, “Alternative Accounts of the Qurʾān’s Formation,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 59–75. 7 Gregor Schoeler, “The Codification of the Qurʾan: A Comment on the Hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicholas Sinai, and Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 779–94.

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  47 8 Humphreys, Islamic History, 83–4; Herbert Berg, “The Implications of, and Opposition to, the Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough,” Method  & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 3–22; G. R. Hawting, “John Wansbrough, Islam, and Monotheism,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 23–38; Andrew Rippin, “Quranic Studies, Part IV: Some Methodological Notes,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 39–46; Norman Calder, “History and Nostalgia: Reflections on John Wansbrough’s The Sectarian Milieu,” Method  & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 47–73; Charles J. Adams, “Reflections on the Work of John Wansbrough,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 75–90. 9 G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Cf. Devin J. Stewart, “The Mysterious Letters of the Qurʾān and Other Stylistic Features in the Light of Greek and Babylonian Oracular Texts,” in New Perspectives on the Qurʾān: The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context 2, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2011), 323–48. 10 Exceptions are Angelika Neuwirth, “The Qurʾan, Crisis, and Memory: The Qurʾanic Path towards Canonization as Reflected in the Anthropogonic Accounts,” in Crisis and Memory in Islamic Societies, ed. Angelika Neuwirth et al. (Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2001), 113–52; eadem, “Erzählen als kanonischer Prozess: die Mose-Erzahlung im Wandel der koranischen Geschichte” in Islamstudien ohne Ende, ed. Rainer Brunner, Monika Gronke, Jens P. Laut (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2002), 107–33; Fred Donner, “The Qurʾān in Recent Scholarship: Challenges and Desiderata,” in The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2008), 29–50, here pp. 34–5; Nicolai Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung: Studien zur frühen Koraninterpretation (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 75–96. 11 Herbert Berg, “Foreword,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 1–2, here p. 1. It will be pointed out that Wansbrough does not apply redaction criticism in his work. 12 Charles J. Adams, “Reflections on the Work of John Wansbrough,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 9.1 (1997): 75–90, here pp. 78, 81. 13 The first scholar to do so was Johannes Weiss (1863–1914) in 1890; it soon became widely accepted in New Testament scholarship. 14 I am indebted for my understanding of the history of form criticism primarily to the masterful overview of my colleague Martin Buss, Biblical Form Criticism in Its Context (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). See also William Baird, History of New Testament Research (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2003), 2:269–86; Klaus Berger, Formgeschichte des Neuen Testaments (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1984). For critiques of the form critics’ methods, see Erich Fascher, Die formgeschichtliche Methode: Eine Darstellung und Kritik (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1924); Ludwig Köhler, Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Neuen Testaments (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1927); Kendrick Grobel, Formgeschichte und synoptische Quellenanalyse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck  & Ruprecht, 1937); Eduard Schick, Formgeschichte und Synoptikerexegese: Eine kritische Untersuchung über die Möglichkeit und die Grenzen der formgeschichtlichen Methode (Münster: Aschendorff, 1940); Laurence J. McGinley, Form-Criticism of the Synoptic Healing Narratives: A  Study in the Theories of Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann (Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1944); Reiner Blank, Analyse und Kritik der formgeschichtlichen Arbeiten von Martin Dibelius und Rudolf Bultmann (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1981). 15 Joseph Van Ess, “Review of Quranic Studies,” Bibliotheca Orientalis 35 (1978): 349– 53, here p. 353. 16 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958); English translation: The History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963). 17 The first German edition appeared in 1949. The English translation is Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting, trans. R. H. Fuller (New York: World Publishing, 1956).

48  Devin J. Stewart 18 Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 1. 19 Papia di Hierapolis, Esposizione degli oracoli del Signore: I frammenti, trans. Enrico Norelli (Milan: Paoline, 2005). 20 Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 83. 21 Ibid., 148. 22 Such methods have also produced important results in Islamic studies, although these are not mentioned in connection with Wansbrough’s work. One of the most important achievements using such methods is Sezgin’s identification of al-Bukhārī’s written sources. See Fuat Sezgin, Buhari’nin kaynakları hakkında araştırmalar (Ankara: Ankara University, 1956). 23 See Erich Fascher, Die formgeschichtliche Methode: Eine Darstellung und Kritik, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des synoptischen Problems (Giessen: A. Töpelmann, 1924); Kendrick Grobel, Formgeschichte und synoptische Quellenanalyse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck  & Ruprecht, 1937); Eduard Schick, Formgeschichte und Synoptikerexegese: Eine kritische Untersuchungen über die Möglichkeit und die Grenzen der formgeschichtlichen Methode (Münster: Aschendorff, 1940); Laurence J. McGinley, Form-Criticism of the Synoptic Healing Narratives: A Study in the Theories of Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann (Woodstock, MD: Woodstock College Press, 1944); Reiner Blank, Analyse und Kritik der formgeschichtlichen Arbeiten von Martin Dibelius und Rudolf Bultmann (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1981); Klaus Berger, Formgeschichte des Neuen Testaments (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1984); Martin J. Buss, Form Criticism in Its Context, 308–23, 358–68. 24 Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 20–5, 28–9. 25 Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 27 n.1, 113. 26 In my view, Wansbrough’s interpretation of this final phrase is unnecessary, for the literal meaning is correct: “nor are the people of Lot far off.” The verse is referring to the geographical proximity of the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. 27 Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 21. 28 Ibid., 25. 29 Ibid., 148. 30 Ibid., 2–5. 31 I am not convinced by the identification of the seven mathānī with the punishment stories, although it has been accepted by many. The main objections are that there are more than seven punishment stories to choose from and that they do not always occur in groups of seven in the Qurʾan. This question merits further investigation. 32 Aloys Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Moḥammad nach bisher grösstentheils unbenutzten Quellen, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1869), 1:469–504; Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1926), 10–32; Richard Bell, Introduction to the Koran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953), 119–28 (Bell presents these eleven groups under fourteen headings; “the men of al-Ḥijr” [3] = Thamūd [2]; “the men of the Grove” [5] = Madyan [4]; and al-Muʾtafikāt [12]  =  the folk of Lot [11]); Richard Bell and W. Montgomery Watt, Bell’s Introduction to the Qurʾān (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970), 127–35, esp. 132; Wansbrough, Quranic Studies; Michael Zwettler, “A Mantic Manifesto: The Sūra of ‘The Poets’ and the Qurānic Foundations of Prophetic Authority,” in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of A Literary Tradition, ed. James L. Kugel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 75–119, 205–31; David Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers: A  Qurʾanic Study (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999); Alford Welch, “Formulaic Features of the Punishment-Stories,” in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾān, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 77–116; Devin J. Stewart, “Understanding the Quran in English: Notes on Translation, Form, and Prophetic Typology,” in Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in English and Arabic Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, ed. Zeinab Ibrahim, Nagwa Kasabgy, and Sabiha Aydelott (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000), 31–48; idem, “Review of David Marshall, God, Muhammad and the

Wansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory  49

33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

45

46

Unbelievers: A  Qurʾanic Study,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33.2 (2001): 315–17; Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 617–30. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 16, 22, 29; Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, 2–5, 19–21; Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 223–30. Qurʾan translations are those of the author and are based on consultation with existing translations. Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, 56–7. In general, see Michael Zwettler, “A Mantic Manifesto,” 75–119, 205–31, esp. 96–103, 220 n. 89; Devin J. Stewart, “Understanding the Quran in English: Notes on Translation, Form, and Prophetic Typology,” 31–48; Todd Lawson, “Duality, Opposition and Typology in the Qurʾan: The Apocalyptic Substrate,” Journal of Qurʾānic Studies 10.2 (2008): 23–49; Devin J. Stewart, “Review of Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʾan: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self Image” in International Journal of Middle East Studies 35.4 (2003): 638–40; Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 573–80. Bell, Introduction, 127–28; Bell and Watt, Bell’s Introduction, 133–34; Zwettler, “Mantic Manifesto,” 97 (emphasis in the original). Sprenger, Leben und Lehre, 1:492; Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 13–4. Bible translations from NRSV. J. A. Loader, A Tale of Two Cities: Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, Early Jewish and Early Christian Traditions (Kampen, The Netherlands: J. H. Kok, 1990). Sprenger, Leben und Lehre, 1:492; Hartwig Hirschfeld, Beiträge zur Erklärung des Korân (Leipzig: O. Schulze, 1886), 37; Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 13–4; Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 274. For this reason, Welch is somewhat hesitant to call the punishment story a genre in its own right. Though he does term the punishment story a “distinctive literary genre employed by the Qurʾān to convey one of its major themes,” he hedges that they “do not constitute a ‘genre’ in the sense of a distinctive category of literary composition as a whole, since they occur within various suras that treat other topics . . . but they can be considered as a genre in the sense of sharing the same plot and other characteristic features.” See Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 78, 111 n. 6. One might resolve this issue by stating that the punishment story appears in the Qurʾān as a micro-genre, embedded in a larger text and, like the oaths that begin dozens of suras in the Qurʾān but do not occur on their own, nevertheless follows a number of identifiable conventions of structure and content that merit consideration as a genre. Zwettler, “Mantic Manifesto”; Angelika Neuwirth, “Zur Struktur der Yūsuf-Sure,” in Studien aus Arabistik und Semitistik, ed. Werner Diem and Stefan Wild (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1980), 123–52. This was pointed out by Horovitz in his analysis of Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) in Koranische Untersuchungen, 15, in which he not only shows the parallelism among the five punishment narratives in the middle section of the sura but also notes that the introduction and the closing section of the sura are tightly related to the narrative part. I discuss the relationship of the two in “Understanding the Qurʾān in English.” For analysis of opening–middle–closing texture in biblical texts, see Vernon K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-Rhetorical Interpretations (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 19–21. Neuwirth observes that tripartite structure is a feature of the majority of middle and late Meccan suras, and she argues that it resembles that of a monotheistic liturgy. See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 322. Whereas Pickthall, in his translation, understands that this verse refers literally to the ease with which one may memorize the text of the Qurʾān, my view is that it refers to the lesson or moral of the story that the audience is supposed to derive from the narration of the destruction stories. Stewart, “Understanding the Quran in English.” Horovitz already has suggested that the introduction and conclusion of the sura were tightly related to the punishment stories

50  Devin J. Stewart

47 48

49 50 51 52

53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60

in the middle section (Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 15). Welch describes the parallelism among the individual punishment stories in detail and suggests that the conclusion warns Muhammad’s contemporaries that they could meet a similar fate but writes that the first section of the sura does not serve as a proper introduction to the punishment stories, for it treats the Day of Resurrection (Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 82). However, it is a regular feature of the typological use of the punishment stories that the worldly destruction of past nations is paralleled in the contemporary time frame by the threat of punishment in the afterlife. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 15. On the punishment stories of Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7), see Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 24–5; Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 85–8; Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, 106–8; A. H. Johns, “Shuʿayb, Orator of the Prophets: Reflections on Qurʾanic Narrative,” Journal of Qurʾānic Studies 13.2 (2011): 136–48. Nicolai Sinai notes that some of the punishment stories actually focus on deliverance rather than annihilation. See Nicolai Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung, 103. Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 88. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 21–2; Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 88–92; Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, 97–105. Sprenger, Leben und Lehre, 1:476–83; Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 17–8; Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 79–81; Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, 93–7; Rich Martin, “Structural Analysis and the Qurʾan: Newer Approaches to the Study of Islamic Texts,” in Studies in Qurʾan and Tafsir, ed. Alford T. Welch (Chico, CA: American Academy of Religion, 1980), 665–84; Irfan Shahid, “Another Contribution to Koranic Exegesis: The Sura of the Poets (XXVI),” Journal of Arabic Literature 14.1 (1983): 1–21; idem, “The Sura of the Poets, Qurʾan XXVI: Final Conclusions,” Journal of Arabic Literature 35.2 (2004): 175–220; idem, “The Sura of the Poets Revisited,” Journal of Arabic Literature 39.3 (2008): 398–423; Michael Zwettler, “The Sura of the Poets: Final Conclusions?,” Journal of Arabic Literature 38.2 (2007): 111–66. Zwettler, “A Mantic Manifesto,” 91. On Shuʿayb in general, see A.F.L. Beeston, “The ‘Men of the Tanglewood’ in the Qurʾān,” Journal of Semitic Studies 13 (1968): 253–55; C. E. Bosworth, “The Qurʾānic Prophet Shuʿaib and Ibn Taimiyya’s Epistle Concerning Him,” Le Muséon 87 (1974): 425–40; idem, “Madyan Shuʿayb in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Lore and History,” Journal of Semitic Studies 29.1 (1984): 53–64; A. H. Johns, “Shuʿayb, Orator of the Prophets,” 136–48. See Jaroslav Stetkevytch, Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996); Nicolai Sinai, “Religious Poetry from the Quranic Milieu: Umayya b. Abī l-Ṣalt on the Fate of Thamūd,” BSOAS 74.3 (2011): 397–416; Stewart, “The Mysterious Letters,” 323–48; Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 681–96. Donner, “The Qurʾān in Recent Scholarship,” 29–50, esp. 34–5. Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 110. See, for example, Paul T. Penley, The Common Tradition behind Synoptic Sayings of Judgment and John’s Apocalypse: An Oral Interpretive Tradition of OT Prophetic Material (London: T&T Clark International, 2010) and the studies cited therein. Welch, “Formulaic Features,” 114 n. 30. Angelika Neuwirth, “Vom Rezitationstext über die Liturgie zum Kanon: zu Entstehung und Wiederauflösung der Surenkomposition im Verlauf der Entwicklung eines islamischen Kultus,” in The Qurʾān as Text, ed. Stefan Wild (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 69–107; eadem, “Referentiality and Textuality in Sūrat al-Ḥijr: Some Observations on the Qurʾanic ‘Canonical Process’ and the Emergence of a Community,” in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾan, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 143–72; eadem, “Qurʾān, Crisis and Memory: The Qurʾānic Path towards Canonization as Reflected in the Anthropogonic Accounts,” in Crisis and

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61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68

69

Memory in Islamic Societies, ed. Angelika Neuwirth and Andreas Pflitsch (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2001), 113–52; eadem, “Erzählen als kanonischer Prozess,” 323–44; eadem, “Meccan Texts – Medinan Additions? Politics and the Re-reading of Liturgical Communications,” in Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea: Studies on the Sources, Contents and Influences of Islamic Civilization and Arabic Philosophy and Science, ed. R. Arnzen and J. Theilmann (Louvain: Peeters, 2004), 71–94; eadem, “Structure and the Emergence of Community,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾan, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 140–58; eadem, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 332–560. Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung. The treatment of Abraham is presented as a case study in chapters 5 (97–114) and 6 (115–52). Chapter 4 (75–96) addresses the Qurʾān as a canonical process. Neuwirth in Der Koran als Text der Spätantike (2010) and other studies, and Sinai in Fortschreibung und Auslegung (2009), cite some of the major works in this mode of biblical criticism, including Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1970); idem, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); idem, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972); idem, Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000). Other works include James Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). For some critiques of the canonical approach, see Mark G. Brett, Biblical Criticism in Crisis?: The Impact of the Canonical Approach on Old Testament Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). It is worth pointing out, though, that canonical criticism and studies on canonization have drawn extensively on the methods and results of redaction criticism. Willi Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist: Studies on the Redaction History of the Gospel, trans. James Boyce et al. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1969), 15. Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, trans. Bertram Lee Woolf (New York: Scribner, 1935), 3. Van Ess, “Review of Quranic Studies,” 353. Sprenger, Leben und Lehre, 1:494–95. Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist, 148 n. 102. This argument that qurʾānic suras were put together in the manner that sermons are put together is proposed for the suras that contain punishment stories in particular. The possibility remains, of course, that certain texts or passages of the Qurʾān were produced by the redaction of stable fragments. This might be the case, for example, in Sūrat al-Kahf (Q 18), which appears to contain versions of Christian texts, presumably translated from Syriac, that have been spliced together. Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist, 24 n. 30.

2 Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms of Sense and the Qurʾān Nora K. Schmid

Introduction . . . She sat bereft Amid her sons, her daughters and her husband, All lifeless corpses, rigid in her ruin. Her hair no breeze can stir; her cheeks are drained And bloodless; in her doleful face her eyes Stare fixed and hard . . . no pulse beats in her veins; No way for neck to bend nor arms to wave Nor feet to walk; and all within is stone. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Niobe1) In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Niobe petrifies in pain. Having boasted with her fourteen children and having placed herself above the titans’ daughter Leto, the children of the latter, Apollo and Artemis, kill Niobe’s entire progeny. Mourning for her family, Niobe petrifies. Human fault, man’s hubris against the divine, his vulnerability, the commensurability of punishment, a higher being’s rationality, or to the contrary, its irrational wrath and emotion in general – these thoughts, problems, and questions play into the classical image of the petrifying woman. From Ovid’s Niobe, Clement of Alexandria (d. 215) as well as Prudentius (d. 405) drew parallels with Lot’s wife, a female figure with a similar destiny.2 In Prudentius’ poem Hamartigenia (“The Origin of Sin”), in which human sin is associated with the inherently deceptive nature of language, Lot’s wife comes to embody representation.3 The passage describing Lot’s wife is elaborate, and Prudentius “embarks on one of his most extended imitations of a classical source, in this case Ovid’s description of the metamorphosis of Niobe into a weeping statue.”4 At the same time, Lot’s wife represents Eve and is emblematic of all women; what remains of her, a statue, is associated with the process of figuration and stands for the sundering of human language from meaning.5 Prudentius’ treatment here may serve as an example of the hermeneutic depth discovered in the figure of Lot’s wife. Originally, in Genesis, the fate of Lot’s wife is related in a single verse (19:26), in the context of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a statement of fact:

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  53 (24) Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven; (25) and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. (26) But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.6 However, the masoretic text does not tell how and why Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt.7 Lot’s wife, as the Hamartigenia illustrates, has incited the imagination of interpreters of all kinds – exegetes, translators, poets, and church fathers – who set out to explain, interpret, reflect upon, and creatively employ the figure. Now, the “interpreted Bible” has been recognized by Sidney Griffith as the decisive bridge to qurʾānic discourses and theology.8 James Kugel has demonstrated that the story of Lot and Lot’s wife figures prominently in the “interpreted Bible”: the question of Lot’s righteousness versus his wickedness, the Sodomites’ sexual sins, their pride, Lot’s relationship to Abraham, the wasteland Sodom, the sin of Lot’s daughters, and finally the questions evolving around the fate of Lot’s wife were vividly discussed – as stories told and retold.9 What this essay attempts to show, therefore, is the emergence of the Qurʾān’s own distinctive manner of making sense of the figure of Lot’s wife in the framework of genuinely qurʾānic hermeneutics and against the background of the interpreted Bible. In the Qurʾān, Lot’s wife apparently only has a minor role to play and thus has received negligible scholarly attention.10 A first glance seems disappointing: the verses in which Lot’s wife is actually mentioned (or in which she is not, but could have been) are only a scattered handful. The short references to Lot’s wife throughout the Qurʾān, extracted from their context, seem to leave her featureless, a comparatively meaningless figure sometimes referred to (but under varied designations), sometimes forgotten, here and there accused of sin, “dispossessed” of the most salient feature accorded to her in the Bible: her violent death and her transformation into a pillar of salt. Why? Is this really all that can be said about the figure? In this essay, I will argue that what is at stake hermeneutically with the figure of Lot’s wife in Jewish and Christian interpretations is not simply crossed out or “missing” in the Qurʾān, as a cursory reading may suggest. To the contrary, the Qurʾān is deeply engaged with such discourses. A superficial reading, however, is always in danger of leading to what Samuel Sandmel in 1962 rather humorously called “parallelomania”: “that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction.”11 Consequently, the first part of this essay attempts to sketch the interpretative horizon against which any treatment of the figure of Lot’s wife in the Qurʾān has to be contoured. A  number of discourses are entwined in the qurʾānic reinterpretation, conception, and reinvention of the figure of Lot’s wife, each with its own cultural, intellectual, and literary stakes. Lot’s wife, for instance, appears disparaged as an “old woman” (ʿajūz). The astonishing depreciation that oscillates in some of the qurʾānic passages, simply

54  Nora K. Schmid not present in the Bible (and maybe also the scanty reference to this figure in general), may be rooted in an assignment of the female to the domain of the nonrational that was prevalent in Christian thought. Other discourses are attached to Lot’s wife as well, but a choice must be made. It is above all the qurʾānic figure’s ever-growing resonance with a debate on literal and allegorical interpretations, which have to be understood as fundamentally located on the same interpretative spectrum, that will be examined here. This growing resonance can only be traced by carefully studying the way the fate of Lot’s wife is addressed throughout the process of qurʾānic revelation, which allows us to catch a glimpse of the ongoing negotiation of traditions within the community forming around the prophet. This will be attempted in Part 2 of this essay. Angelika Neuwirth has argued for a process of “ ‘migration’ of the Prophet’s community from its tribal milieu into the text world of the biblical tradition.”12 In the course of this migration, tribal loyalty was replaced by spiritual loyalty toward God, and biblical figures became exempla for the individual. I would like to advance the hypothesis that the figure of Lot’s wife is reconfigured during this process and that she is purposefully introduced into the story of Sodom’s destruction. This can only be properly understood by studying the figure’s development chronologically, with an eye to simultaneous and related developments, and by taking into consideration a broader framework of scriptural interpretation in which the Qurʾān’s own hermeneutics is firmly rooted. Lot’s wife, then, becomes a shorthand for the community’s quest for self-imagination.

1 Lot’s Wife in the Interpreted Bible: Between the Literal and the Allegorical Recently, a fresh interest in scriptural narratives, popular exegetical and communal traditions of the several Jewish and Christian communities, and their relevance for the Qurʾān – from the perspective of an oral intermingling of traditions – has awakened.13 As Sidney Griffith points out, “it is no longer a matter of sources and influences but of traditions, motifs, and histories retold within a different horizon of meaning.”14 According to Kugel, ancient interpreters of all kinds, despite their geographically and culturally diverse backgrounds, shared a set of expectations about the biblical text. He identifies four of these: first, all of them saw the Bible as a cryptic text; second, they assumed that the Bible had lessons and instructions for their own time; third, the biblical text was conceived as containing no contradictions or mistakes; and fourth, the interpreters believed in the divine status and origins of the text. These four assumptions powerfully shaped ancient interpretation and possessed great durability.15 In the following, I will attempt to sketch out individual readings and interpretations of the fate of Lot’s wife in the interpreted Bible and, at the same time, to show what is at stake with each of them hermeneutically, that is, which ratio exegetica underlies them.16

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  55 Early Literal Interpretations Jewish interpretations of the fate of Lot’s wife are mostly literal.17 The Babylonian Talmud (B. Berakhot 54a), for example, tells us of remnants, among them the petrified remains of Lot’s wife, thus affirming the veracity of the literal sense of the biblical verses. On seeing them, one says a blessing: Our Rabbis taught: If one sees the place of the crossing of the Red Sea, or the fords of the Jordan, or the fords of the streams of Arnon, or hail stones [abne elgabish] in the descent of Beth Horon, or the stone which Og king of Bashan wanted to throw at Israel, or the stone on which Moses sat when Joshua fought with Amalek, or [the pillar of salt of] Lot’s wife, or the wall of Jericho which sank into the ground, for all of these he should give thanksgiving and praise to the Almighty.18 Flavius Josephus (d. after 100), a Roman Jewish historian, in his Ioudaike archaiologia (Jewish Antiquities) also interprets the fate of Lot’s wife as a punishment for disobedience against a divine order and assures the reader that he has seen her remnants: But Lot’s wife, who during the flight was continually turning round towards the city, curious to observe its fate, notwithstanding God’s prohibition of such action, was changed into a pillar of salt: I have seen this pillar which remains to this day.19 The title of his work indicates the program: Josephus is interested in “archaiologia,” that is, antiquarian research, ancient history, “a universal history with a biblical center.”20 Lot’s wife is part of such an archaic history – of which physical proof is still available. The same idea of remnants left behind in the landscape, attesting to the literal truth of what is said in the Bible, can be found in the tenth chapter of Book of Wisdom: (6) Wisdom rescued a righteous man when the ungodly were perishing; he escaped the fire that descended on the Five Cities. (7) Evidence of their wickedness still remains: a continually smoking wasteland, plants bearing fruit that does not ripen, and a pillar of salt standing as a monument to an unbelieving soul.21 The Palestinian Targumim basically share the same interest in the physical implications of the event; most of them include a gloss saying that Lot’s wife will remain standing in the form of a pillar of salt “until the day on which the dead will live again.”22 One Targum is interested in the symbolic value of the punishment with salt.23

56  Nora K. Schmid Turning to Allegory: A Counter-Reading24 New interpretative modes originated with the Jews of Alexandria. Kugel stresses the importance of Alexandria as a setting for these developments: This is no insignificant detail: Alexandria became a magnificent Greek-style city, with Greek governmental institutions, Greek schools and theaters and gymnasia, and Greek as its official language. The Jews of Alexandria also came to be Hellenized; soon they were thoroughly Greek in their education and outlook. Thus, when they read the books of the Bible, it was in Greek translation. . . . In seeking to interpret the Bible, they also went about things in a thoroughly Greek way. They allegorized it.25 Developments in the interpretation of Homer’s texts had an impact on Torah instruction and thus later on biblical exegesis as well.26 The study of Homer was an important part of Greek education – as Kugel puts it, “for Greeks, Homer was the text and constituted the average person’s road to literacy and high culture.”27 For many centuries, heathens, Jews, and later on Christians studied classical texts in the same way and learned the same interpretative methods.28 Homer’s texts were considered the apex of beautiful style. However, an increasing malaise with recurring anthropomorphisms and the immoral behavior of Homer’s gods pushed some to interpret problematic passages allegorically as having a deeper sense.29 Kugel defines “allegorizing” as, “the technique by which concrete details in a text – people, events, places in which things occur – are explained as representing abstract entities, ideas, or virtues or vices or philosophical doctrines.”30 Jews, trained in these strategies, transferred the technique to their own scripture.31 The Hellenistic Jewish theologian, philosopher, and biblical commentator Philo of Alexandria (d. 45) is generally credited with having first made extensive use of allegory for the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, convinced that scripture not only has a literal meaning (“the body”) but also a deeper meaning (“the soul”).32 Whereas the immediate sense was pros tous pollous (“for the many”), the hidden sense was pros oligous (“for few”).33 Although there were others before him,34 Philo surely broke new ground for an allegorical understanding of the Bible.35 He is, however, not generally opposed to literal interpretations; to the contrary, he explicitly attempts to examine both the literal meaning of a passage as well as the allegorical meaning in what Dawson terms a “bifocal reading.”36 After all, this is not so astonishing; “allegory always appears with the literal sense, which it may accompany, revise, or displace,” otherwise becoming a literal sense itself. 37 Philo’s attitude toward the letter and allegory is ambiguous and not easily understood.38 Whereas there are instances in which Philo interprets literally, in other instances it becomes clear that he considers literal interpretations to be insufficient.39 Pépin discards evolutionary explanations for this apparent “incoherence” and, instead of positing a shift in Philo’s philosophical thinking, considers Philo’s complex attitude as stemming from the purpose of the individual text: the more literal (and at the same time more apologetical) texts were directed toward Greek

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  57 pagans, whereas the allegorical (and at the same time often moral) texts were rather intended for internal use within the Jewish community.40 With regard to the destruction of Sodom, interestingly, Philo wavers between a literal and an allegorical understanding and from time to time also gives the two. In his De Abrahamo (On Abraham), he depicts the present state of the region of Sodom, where fire still burns next to a populous city and fertile land, “the manifest proof of the realness of catastrophe, of the former prosperity of the land and the carrying out of the divine verdict,” to quote Pépin41 – a very literal understanding: (137) But God, moved by pity for mankind whose Savior and Lover he was, gave increase in the greatest possible degree to the unions which men and women naturally make for begetting children, but abominated and extinguished this unnatural and forbidden intercourse, and those who lusted for such He cast forth and chastised with punishments. . . . (140) And when the flame had utterly consumed all that was visible and above ground it penetrated right down into the earth itself, destroyed its inherent life-power and reduced it to complete sterility to prevent it from ever bearing fruit and herbage at all. And to this day it goes on burning, for the fire of the thunderbolt is never quenched but either continues its ravages or else smolders. (141) And the clearest proof is what is still visible, for a monument of the disastrous event remains in the smoke which rises ceaselessly and the brimstone which the miners obtain; while the ancient prosperity of the country is most plainly attested by the survival of one of the cities of the neighborhood and the land round it; for the city is thickly populated and the land rich in corn and pasturage and fertile in general, thus providing a standing evidence to the sentence decreed by the divine judgment.42 Referring to Josephus and the Book of Wisdom, Pépin is convinced that Philo’s literal interpretation in this case has to be understood against the background of Jewish tradition.43 The same rather literal outlook characterizes his retelling of the story of Lot’s wife in his De fuga et inventione (On Flight and Finding), where he talks about an event he seemingly considers factual, historical: (121) Those with no desire either to find or to seek grievously impair their faculty of reason, by refusing to train and exercise it, and, though capable of being keen-sighted, become blind. This is his meaning when he says that “Lot’s wife turned backwards and became a pillar” (Gen. xix. 26), and here he is not inventing a fable but indicating precisely a real fact. (122) For a man who is led by innate and habitual laziness to pay no attention to his teacher neglects what lies in front of him, which would enable him to see and hear and use his other faculties for the observation of nature’s facts. Instead he twists his neck and turns his face backwards, and his thoughts are all for the dark and hidden side – of life, that is, not of the body, and its parts, and so he turns into a pillar and becomes like a deaf and lifeless stone.44

58  Nora K. Schmid On the other hand, the appearance Lot’s wife makes here is embedded into a passage which talks about mental laziness, deliberate ignorance and aimlessness – in which Lot’s wife thus can ultimately only be understood as an allegory (despite Origen’s own assertion of factualness). In Legum Allegoria (Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis), probably the most characteristic text among Philo’s,45 Lot’s wife appears as an image for a sinner whose repentance is only superficial and thus not accepted by God. Her turning around and glancing backward is explained by her love for Sodom and, thus, by love for the sinful and evil: (213) . . . For many souls have desired to repent and not been permitted by God to do so, but have gone away backward as though drawn by a change of current. This befell Lot’s wife, who became stone owing to her being enamored of Sodom and reverting to the characters that had been overthrown by God.46 Coming to Grips with and Employing Allegory In the beginning, Christian biblical interpretation was not very different from Jewish interpretation. According to Kugel, it only gradually acquired its own interpretative strategies.47 In any case, Christians as well were following on the path of allegorical interpretation. Paul himself mentions allegory explicitly (Gal. 4:25) and interprets biblical passages christologically. After him, Christian interpreters, church fathers, and others used allegory as an instrument to interpret the Bible.48 Explicitly mentioning Paul and Luke, Siegert notes that notably – if not exclusively – educated Christians can be expected to have been accomplished in techniques of scriptural interpretation going back to Homeric hermeneutics.49 Others as well have pointed to Luke’s allegorizing tendencies.50 Interestingly, the memento in Luke 17 contains a very early Christian allegorical interpretation of the events at Sodom, one that also encompasses the fate of Lot’s wife: (31) On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take them away; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. (32) Remember Lot’s wife. (33) Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.51 According to Luke, Lot’s wife perishes not because she is generally sinful but because she does not surrender unconditionally to the eschaton. The logion’s function lies somewhere between parable and allegory.52 The glance backward is interesting to Tertullian (d. ca 220) in his De Monogamia (On Monogamy) as well: What if a man thinks on posterity, with thoughts like the eyes of Lot’s wife; so that a man is to make the fact that from his former marriage he has had no children a reason for repeating marriage?53

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  59 Although Tertullian, whose interpretations are marked by realism and restraint, is not unsuspicious of allegory and partly even rejects it, he has no general objection to it and employs it himself.54 Hanson, attributing to Tertullian a “robust common sense,”55 summarizes pointedly that “[g]nostic allegory impressed him as dangerous more strongly than Christian allegory struck him as felicitous.”56 Tertullian, who is caught up in controversies with Marcion and the Gnostics, does not have a unified exegetical method.57 A quest for conciseness and simplicity motivates him.58 “The eyes of Lot’s wife” reveal allegorizing tendencies; they appear as a metaphor for thinking desirously about offspring, which might lead to the unacceptable practice of marrying more than once. With Origen (d. ca 254), allegorical exegesis already has a firm place in scriptural interpretation.59 A “champion of allegorical interpretation,” who was nevertheless very knowledgeable in the linguistic and textual scholarship of his epoch, he is associated with what is frequently referred to as the “school of Alexandria.”60 For him, scripture has a threefold meaning – literal, moral, and allegorical – corresponding to the material, psychic, and pneumatic aspects of man and cosmos.61 Regarding Lot’s wife, Origen makes explicit his allegorical interpretation, which has a strong ascetic character: But his wife became negligent of the command; “she looked back”; she violated the imposed law; “she became a little statue of salt.” Do we think there was much evil in this transgression, that the woman, because she looked behind her, incurred the destruction which she appeared to be fleeing by divine favour? For what great crime was it, if the concerned mind of the woman looked backward whence she was being terrified by the excessive crackling of the flames? But because “the law is spiritual” and the things which happened to the ancients “happened figuratively,” let us see, if perhaps Lot, who did not look back, is not the rational understanding and the manly soul, and his wife here represents the flesh. For it is the flesh which always looks to vices, which, when the soul is proceeding to salvation, looks backward and seeks after pleasures. For concerning that the Lord also said: “No man putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And he adds: “Remember Lot’s wife.” But the fact that “she became a little statue of salt” appears to be an open indication of her folly. For salt represents the prudence which she lacked.62 The opposition of male versus female, which stands for the opposition of intellect versus flesh and affects, appears elsewhere in Origen’s work.63 In using allegory as an interpretative strategy, he interprets elements with an eye on the earthly, evil, material, and carnal.64 Lot’s wife ultimately comes to serve the same interpretative purpose as she represents “the flesh.”

60  Nora K. Schmid Lot’s wife and an allegorical reading also come together with Jerome (d. 420), who in one of his most famous essay-letters, written during his stay in Rome, exhorts Eustochium to the ascetic life, criticizing contemporary morals: I write this to you, my lady Eustochium – I must call you lady, as the bride of my Lord – for this reason, that from the very beginning of my dissertation you may learn that I am not now about to speak the praises of virginity (which you have so excellently demonstrated by adopting it), nor to enumerate the disadvantages of wives: pregnancy, a wailing infant, the torment of a husband’s unfaithfulness, household cares, and how death at last cuts off all fancied blessings. For married women have their place: honorable wedlock and an undefiled bed. But I would have you understand that as you go out of Sodom, you must be warned by the fate of Lot’s wife.65 Jerome’s letters often deal with scriptural interpretation.66 This quoted passage does not do so in the first place; nevertheless, all of Jerome’s texts addressed to women are “educational devices for biblical instruction.”67 In this treatise on a life of virginity, the reference to Lot’s wife offers a glimpse of his scriptural interpretation: Lot’s wife and her fate serve as an allegory for women’s attachment to earthly things – to which Eustochium is exhorted not to look back as she “goes out” of her own society that assigns a very clear-cut role to women. Kugel reminds us that there was no such thing as the allegorical reading of scripture – in fact, “there were different possibilities for carrying out the abstractfor-concrete method,”68 and different levels of abstraction were envisaged on which things could represent something else. It is due to this fact that the fate of Lot’s wife can be read allegorically in different nuances. However, as an allegory, she often serves a paraenetic purpose; she comes to represent the irrational, carnal, and worldly. Promoting the Literal Sense Anew Only Antioch rivaled Alexandria in importance as an intellectual center in the region. With the “school of Antioch,” from the third century onward, an exegetical direction developed that opposed allegorical interpretation and endeavored to focus on the literal meaning of scripture.69 This was, among other reasons, due to the closeness to Palestinian Jewry and a reaction against prevailing schismatic tendencies in the early Church, soon clad in the garment of allegorical interpretation, as in the case of the Gnostics.70 However, doubts are frequently expressed in scholarship concerning the heuristic value of the neat line that has been drawn for a long time between the two schools.71 To mention just one aspect: Antiochene exegetes have been influenced to some extent by Origen’s writings and ideas.72 Among the writings of Antioch’s exegetes, too, one comes across attempts at understanding Lot’s wife. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386), in a catechesis, advances a very literal reading of the story of Lot’s wife:

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  61 A woman too, against the laws of nature, was turned into salt – flesh was transformed into salt – shall not flesh be made flesh again? If Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, will not the wife of Abraham rise again? By what power was the hand of Moses transformed, which in the space of one hour was made as snow and again restored? Surely by the command of God. Is His command, efficacious then, powerless now?73 Obviously, a literal reading of this passage does not eliminate meaning: In this quote, the power and potency of divine command are foregrounded in the biblical passage. Reading the biblical passage literally – Lot’s wife indeed turning into a pillar of salt, Moses’s hand indeed changing into snow and being restored – confers sense in a different way than an allegorical reading, but it does so nonetheless. John Chrysostom’s (d. 407) perspective on Lot’s wife can be adduced as an example as well: “His wife looked back”, the text goes on, “and was turned into a pillar of salt.” You see, when she heard the angels bidding the good man not to cast a backward glance but to make his retreat with great haste, she disobeyed the command, did not keep their word, and accordingly paid the penalty for her indifference.74 Although Chrysostom, emphasizing unremittingly the akribeia (“precision”) of scripture, promotes the literal sense of the biblical passage, he nevertheless pronounces himself against superficial readings and demands a rigorous examination in quest of the profound sense of scripture, hidden like a treasure of gold in obscurity.75 In some instances, he even makes use of allegory, although he warns against excessive use.76 As the quoted passage shows, for Chrysostom, Lot’s wife is a sinner figure; she departs from the word her husband gives, thus committing treachery. Chrysostom’s translator points at the astonishing brevity of Chrysostom’s treatment of the matter: Chrysostom has been conducting his commentary on these verses at an unusually rapid rate, and this verse, which would normally be such a fertile soil for him with its egregious example of rhathumia, “indifference,” and in a woman to boot, he dispatches with utmost brevity.77 It is a pity that Chrysostom does not dwell more on the passage, but already from the few lines he devotes to Lot’s wife, it becomes clear that literal interpretations are to be located on the same spectrum as allegorical ones. Now, Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373), a prolific hymnographer and theologian, is commonly considered a representative of the Antiochean school of scriptural interpretation.78 But the issue is complex: Syriac Christianity “was caught in a bitter debate between [the] two rival schools of early Christian exegesis.”79 Ephrem

62  Nora K. Schmid on the one hand strictly adhered to the literal, historical sense of scripture; on the other hand, he made creative use of biblical allusions, and his hymns are marked by rich poetic imagery. Thus, symbolic and allegorical exegesis avowedly eschewed by Ephrem was in fact not so far removed from his thinking.80 Reflecting on Lot’s wife, Ephrem writes in his Commentary on Genesis: Lot’s wife disregarded the commandment that had just been given as a test, and she became a pillar of salt. Because Lot’s wife thus remained behind, she doubled the trial of Lot and of his two daughters. But not even by this did they succumb to lay aside the command of the angel.81 To sum up, the figure of Lot’s wife, although certainly not a major figure of the monotheistic thought world, carries an important potential to mean. This potential has been handed through Jewish and Christian tradition, discovered and rediscovered, newly circumscribed, captured, and approached from interpreter to interpreter. Kugel summarizes the particular problem that the figure of Lot’s wife posed for interpretation as it emerges from the “interpreted Bible” as follows: Interpreters found it difficult to understand what was so bad about Lot’s wife turning around. The Bible did not say, so some felt free to search out their own explanations. All interpreters agreed that her deed must somehow have been sinful. (Kugel’s emphasis)82

2 Lot’s Wife: An Unfolding Qurʾānic Conundrum The exact question posed at the end of the last paragraph is raised, as will be shown in what follows, at a certain point in the course of the proclamation of the Qurʾān as well – but this becomes obvious only if one adopts a chronological approach, that is, by reading the text in the supposed sequence of its revelation as the condensation of a historical process.83 In European research, during the second half of the nineteenth century, orientalists began to deal with the issue of qurʾānic chronology for the first time, applying philological methods that were also used in the field of biblical studies. The history of the diverging approaches toward the text of the Qurʾān is long and, for the chronological approach, has already been sketched84 – it need not detain us here. In what follows, I will largely rely on the chronology by Theodor Nöldeke, whose chronological sequence of suras, as established in his monumental work Geschichte des Qorâns (1860),85 remains authoritative until today. Nöldeke’s grouping of suras follows the division known from Islamic tradition – Meccan suras (those that have been revealed in Mecca) versus Medinan suras (those that have been revealed in Medina). In addition to that, the Meccan period is subdivided; three Meccan periods are distinguished. Meccan suras are understood as forming a continuum between two poles: one pole is constituted by short and rhythmic suras, the other pole by long, narrative suras. In recent years, this chronology has been further substantiated, elaborated, refined, and where

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  63 necessary, revised in the framework of historical critical and literary commentaries.86 In accordance with these endeavors, the suras narrating the destruction of Sodom – which, however, is never mentioned by name – and/or focus on Lot’s wife will be chronologically ordered as follows: Q 51 (late early Meccan, according to all); Q 54 (early middle Meccan, according to all); Q 37 and Q 26 (both early middle Meccan, according to Koloska/Schmid and Neuwirth and in contrast to Nöldeke, who considers it middle Meccan, but probably later87); Q 15 and Q 27 (both middle Meccan, according to all); Q 11, Q 29, and Q 7 (all late Meccan, according to Nöldeke); and Q 66 (Medinese, according to Nöldeke).88 A number of articles, among them also critical ones, have recently been devoted to the issue of qurʾānic chronology.89 The present essay, it must be underlined, does not in any way represent an attempt to start from scratch and “prove” Nöldeke’s chronology independently. It relies on research already conducted and simply attempts to corroborate this research by examining the development of the figure of Lot’s wife, a development that clearly unfolds when seen through the lens of historical critical and literary analysis. A circular reasoning that would establish a chronology and then simply fit any sequence of qurʾānic text passages through a convincing narration into this chronology is excluded on two grounds. First, the different stages of the examined figure’s development are on the one hand correlated with the onset or apex of other thematic developments within the text corpus, which according to a chronological ordering based on Nöldeke, would have to be considered as roughly contemporaneous.90 Second, the discourses characterizing the different stages of the development of Lot’s wife resonate with what we know of the evolving thought world outside of the text, whose changing configuration is plausibly circumscribed by the Nöldeke chronology as well.91 Forging Spiritual Loyalty toward God and Differentiating Believers from Unbelievers (Early Mecca and Early Middle Mecca) The first sura, from a chronological perspective, in which the destruction of Sodom occurs, is an early Meccan sura, Q 51:24–37. It is embedded into the story of Abraham, but the wife of Lot does not appear: (Q 51:24)  Hast the story reached thee of Abraham’s honored guests? . . . (31) Said he, ‘And what is your business, envoys?’ (32) They said, ‘We have been sent to a people of sinners, (33) To send down upon them stones of clay (34) Marked with thy Lord for the prodigal.’ (35) So we brought forth such believers as were in it, (36) But we found not therein except one house of those that have surrendered themselves. (37) And therein we left a sign to those who fear the painful chastisement.92

64  Nora K. Schmid Lot’s wife is also not mentioned in one of the probably earliest middle Meccan suras: (Q 54:33)  The people of Lot treated the warning as a lie. (34) We sent against them a squall of pebbles except the family of Lot, whom at dawn we delivered – (35) By our special grace; for thus we reward the thankful. (36) He had warned them of our assault, but they disputed the warning. (37) Even his guests they had solicited of him; so we obliterated their eyes: ‘Taste now my chastisement and my warnings!’ (38) In the morning early there came upon them an abiding chastisement. (39) ‘Taste now my chastisement and my warnings!’ In both suras, the destruction of Lot’s people and the rescue of Lot’s entire kin are foregrounded; a pronounced dichotomy between believers and unbelievers marks them – “stones of clay” (ḥijāra min ṭīn) are sent upon “a people of sinners” (qawm mujrimīn) in Q 51:32–33, “such believers as were in it” (man kāna fīhā mina l-muʾminīn), only “one house of those that have surrendered themselves” (bayt mina l-muslimīn), are “brought forth” from the city in Q 51:35–36. In Q 54:33–34, “the people of Lot” (qawm Lūṭ) is opposed to “the family of Lot” (āl Lūṭ), “the thankful” (man shakara), without exception. Through this dichotomy, the story is aligned with other stories of punishment, where good is opposed to evil – one particularly thinks of Q 105, which tells the destruction of the aṣḥāb al-fīl, annihilated as well by a rain of clay stones. That Lot’s wife has no role to play so far is not surprising if one takes into consideration the importance of consanguine relationship, of genealogical pride, and of the desire for abundant offspring still dominant at this stage. This is a period during which the community witnesses its first social realignments. Glimpses of this attitude can still be caught in the earliest qurʾānic suras, among them notably Q 108 and Q 102, before the Qurʾān mostly addresses them in polemical contexts in an attempt to replace kinship bonds through a new, spiritual loyalty.93 Diversifying the Picture: The Rejection of Sinful Relatives (Middle and Late Mecca) The figure of Lot’s wife makes her first appearance in the very early middle Meccan suras, Q 37 and Q 26, although she is not named: (Q 37:133)  (134) (135) (136) (137) (138)

Lot too was one of the envoys; When we delivered him and his kin all together, Save an old woman among those who stayed behind; Then we destroyed the others, And you pass by them in the morning And in the night; will you not reflect?

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  65 (Q 26:160)  The people of Lot treated the envoys as liars, (161) When their brother Lot said to them, ‘Will you not be godfearing? (162) I am for you a faithful messenger, (163) Fear God, then, and obey me. (164) I ask of you no wage for this; my wage falls only upon the Lord of all being. (165) What, do you come to male beings, (166) Leaving your wives that your Lord created for you? Nay, but you are a people of transgressors.’ (167) They said, ‘If thou givest not over, Lot, thou shalt assuredly be one of the expelled.’ (168) He said, ‘Truly I am a detester of what you do. (169) My Lord, deliver me and my kin from what they do.’ (170) So we delivered him and his kin all together, (171) Save an old woman among those who stayed behind; (172) Then we destroyed the others, (173) And we rained on them a rain; and evil is the rain of them that are warned. (174) Surely in that is a sign, yet most of them are not believers. (175) Surely thy Lord, He is the all-mighty, the all-compassionate. The first observation that can be made is that the climactic structure characterizing the biblical version of the story, which remains fundamentally untouched in the interpreted Bible – namely the command not to turn around, Lot’s wife turning around, and her transformation into a pillar of salt – is not integral to the qurʾānic Lot story up to this point. The whole image of the petrifying woman is simply not there, but on the other hand, it is very much there through its blatant omission. With the pillar of salt motif, a highly symbolic element that already preoccupied Targumim translators is eliminated.94 In view of what has been said about perspectives in the interpreted Bible, one can assume that this is a deliberate choice, which allows us to catch a first glimpse of a literal understanding of the story – a literal understanding not so far removed from Jewish, but mostly Christian, literal interpretations after all. In Q 37:135 and Q 26:171, reference is vaguely made to an “aged/old woman” who “stayed behind/tarried” and who was not saved with Lot’s kin (illā ʿajūzan fi l-ghābirīn). The use of this particular formulation is interesting for a variety of reasons: Lot’s wife is not even identified as one of Lot’s kin. Why this particular formulation? What connotations does it impart? The rendering of ghābirūn as “those who stay(ed) behind”95 owes to a necessary concession the translator is forced to make to be able to translate the verb at all, a concession that entails the loss of important connotations of the verb. But it seems to be exactly for its connotations that the verb is employed. Ghabara means “remain,” “last” or “continue,” or respectively, “tarry,” “stay,” “wait,” even “pass away”; the noun ghubr, “remain,” “remainder,” “remnant,” “relic,” and “residue”; ghibr,

66  Nora K. Schmid “rancour,” “malevolence,” “malice” ’ and finally ghabar, “remaining,” “lasting,” or “continuance.”96 And of course, also ghubār, “dust,” comes to mind. Ghabara, then, brings with it connotations of ephemerality, of sin and malevolence, and maybe even a notion of something bodily remaining, a physical remnant. The first observation that can be made is that an echo of Ephrem’s formulation “Lot’s wife thus remained behind” in his Commentary on Genesis may resonate through the qurʾānic texts quoted. Second, and strikingly, the only other instance in the Qurʾān where the root “gh-b-r” is used is in the early Meccan verse Q 80:40 (wa-wujūhun yawmaʾidhin ʿalayhā ghabara).97 (Q 80:33)  (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) (40) (41) (42)

And when the uproar shall arrive, Upon the day when a man shall flee from his brother, His mother, his father, His consort, his sons, Every man of them that day shall have business to suffice him. Some faces on that day shall shine, Laughing, joyous; Some faces on that day shall have dust upon them, Dirt covers them – These are the unbelievers, the sinful.

The verses in Q 80 express the urgent need of proper conduct in light of an eschatological punishment from which no one will be exempted. In this eschatological scenario, family bonds and blood ties are violently disconnected; the pious and the sinner respectively are thrown back upon themselves and the extent of their personal virtue and piety.98 What this new piety, these new virtues, are supposed to look like is concretized already in early Meccan suras, notably Q 90:12–18. Among these virtues are counted freeing slaves and feeding the poor and orphans – in contrast to the excessive lavishness proudly celebrated by pre-Islamic poets.99 Obviously, then, it is already at this point in the process of the Qurʾān’s proclamation – although not directly but disguised in the rhetoric of lexical allusions – that sin as a personal choice and responsibility enters the story of Lot’s wife. Additionally, the Aramaic or Hebrew ʿāḇar ‫“ עבר‬to trespass the law” may also resonate in the Arabic ghabara.100 Sin is artfully introduced, embedded in the semantic range of the verb ghabara. Despite this deeply meaningful and potentially symbolical treatment, the qurʾānic perspective shares with a perspective like that of Josephus the focus on the actualities of divine punishment and its physical palpability – in the Qurʾān, there actually is some presence staying behind in the guise of an old woman, some physical remnants, whatever shape they might take.101 And Q 37:137–38 points to physical remains that can be seen and visited day and night by the prophet’s listeners and form part of their actual surrounding – “and you pass by them in the morning / and in the night.” (This may have to be read in continuance with the destroyed cities (al-muʾtafikāt) mentioned in the early Meccan suras 69:9 and 53:53–54.) Furthermore, the qurʾānic perspective is similar to that of Chrysostom,

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  67 containing a consciousness of how deeply meaningful it is to understand the fate of the unfortunate woman not as a moral allegory referring to an abstract idea but as some part of sacred history bespeaking the reality and inevitability of divine power and punishment, most obviously on Judgment Day. Already up to this stage, but also later on, the remains of Sodom have to be read as a “sign” (āya, Q 51:37, 26:174, 15:75–77, 29:35) left in the landscape (the verb “chosen” is taraka). This sign is supposed to trigger reflection (Q 37:138: a-fa-lā taʿqilūn and again a little later in the same stage, 29:35: li-qawmin yaʿqilūn). A middle Meccan sura – probably only slightly later than Q 37 and Q 26 – finally contains the first explicit reference to Lot’s wife: Q 15:60. (Q 15:51)  And tell them of Abraham’s guests, . . . (58) They said, ‘We have been sent unto a people of sinners, (59) Except the family of Lot; them we shall deliver all together, (60) Except his wife – we have decreed that she shall be of those who stay behind.’ (61) So, when the envoys came to the family of Lot, . . . (65) ‘So set forth, thou with thy family, in a watch of the night, and follow after the backs of them, and let not any one of you turn round; and depart unto the place you are commanded.’ (66) And this command we gave him because to the last man should these people be cut off at morning. . . . (73) And the cry seized them at the sunrise, (74) And we turned it uppermost nethermost and rained stones of baked clay upon them. (75) Surely in that are signs for those who scan heedfully; (76) Surely it lay on the high road; (77) Surely in that is a sign for believers. Strikingly, from a chronological perspective, it is also the first time that the fateful order not to turn around is issued to Lot and his family (Q 15:65–66: fa-asri biahlika bi-qiṭʿin mina l-layli wa-ttabiʿ adbārahum wa-lā yaltafit minkum aḥadun wa-mḍū ḥaythu tuʾmarūn/wa-qaḍaynā ilayhi dhālika l-amra anna dābira hāʾulāʾi maqṭūʿun muṣbiḥīn). But this command remains without consequences in the story as it is told. What happens to Lot’s wife during the family’s flight is not focused upon in Q 15; the image of the petrifying wife remains crossed out. Instead of making the command retrospectively meaningful through a retelling of the woman’s petrification and transformation, the focus remains on the unbelievers who are overtaken by a tempest, whose city is turned upside down, and upon whom a rain of stones of baked clay goes down (Q 15:73–75). The focus on remnants physically available remains – to this attests Q 15:76 “it lay on the high road” (wa-innahā la-bi-sabīlin muqīm). Very probably, this is a reference to the destroyed city also alluded to two

68  Nora K. Schmid verses earlier, which lies at an abiding way.102 However, the indeterminacy of the –hā gives room for interpretation as it could also be read as “she”103 – an artful allusion to or a trace of what has deliberately not been said about Lot’s wife? Whatever the answer may be, it is not a mere coincidence that Lot’s wife is integrated into the story of the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot’s kin right at this point – without any name, identified purely as someone’s wife – and it is not a coincidence either that her fate is clearly identified as a divine punishment, a divine “decree.” It has to be connected to the concomitant blossoming of reflections on sinful behavior among prophets’ and believers’ relatives, a problem the emerging community itself was supposedly increasingly concerned with. In later suras as well, for example, in Q 27, the explicit reference to Lot’s wife is kept up as well as the idea of a decreed punishment: (Q 27:54) And Lot, when he said to his people, ‘What, do you commit indecency with your eyes open? (55) What, do you approach men lustfully instead of women? No, you are an ignorant people.’ (56) And the only answer of his people was that they said, ‘Expel the family of Lot from your city; they are men that keep themselves clean!’ (57) So we delivered him and his kin, except his wife; we decreed her to be of those that stayed behind. (58) And we rained on them a rain; and evil is the rain of them that are warned. The same holds true for Q 11. Here, the incidental character of what happens to Lot’s wife is even more reduced. Not only Abraham is informed of the decree concerning Lot’s wife before Sodom is destroyed, as in Q 15, and not only is the decree generally mentioned in the narration of the story, as in Q 27 – remarkably, in Q 11, Lot himself is informed of the decree by the messengers who come to him104 and receives a commandment that no one of his family is supposed to turn around, except for his wife (wa-lā yaltafit minkum aḥadun ʾillā mraʾataka). Here again, the command not to turn around is pronounced, but again, without consequences – all to the contrary, the formulation “surely she shall be smitten by that which smites them” (innahū muṣībuhā mā aṣābahum) makes it very clear that she vanishes like the other inhabitants of Sodom. (Q 11:77)  And when our messengers came to Lot . . . . . . (81) They said, ‘Lot, we are messengers of thy Lord. They shall not reach thee; so set forth, thou with thy kin, in a watch of the night, and let not any one of you turn round, except thy wife; surely she shall be smitten by that which smites them. Their promised time is the morning; is the morning not nigh.’ (82) So when our command came, we turned it uppermost nethermost, and rained on it stones of baked clay, one on another, (83) Marked with thy Lord, and never far from the evildoers.

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  69 As mentioned, these versions of the story go hand in hand with intensifying reflections on sinful relatives in suras that have been identified as stemming from the same time. This already starts in Q 37:81–96, with Abraham clashing with and distancing himself from his heathen relatives – among them notably his father, whose idols he destroys in a violent act. It continues with the same story repeated in Q 19:49. It is not surprising that a mention of Noah’s outrageous son occurs in the exact same late Meccan sura as the reference to Lot’s wife, Q 11. Noah is ready to embark the ark with his family, but his son refuses to do so himself (Q 11:42–43): So it ran with them amid waves like mountains; and Noah called to his son, who was standing apart, ‘Embark with us, my son, and be thou not with the unbelievers!’/He said, ‘I will take refuge in a mountain, that shall defend me from the water.’ Said he, ‘Today there is no defender from God’s command but for him on whom He has mercy.’ And the waves came between them, and he was among the drowned. We further encounter the story of Moses’ brother producing an idol described as being worshipped in the late Meccan Sūra 7:148–153. This results in a drastic confrontation between the two brothers during which Moses “laid hold of his brother’s head, dragging him to him” (akhadha bi-raʾsi akhīhi yajurruhū ilayhi, v. 150). These are highly emotional scenes in which family bonds ultimately prove to be inferior to the new spiritual bond established between the true believer and his or her God. Unsurprisingly, again in the very same sura, we come across Lot’s wife (Q 7:80–84) as well as in Q 29:33–35. These occurrences contain roughly the same narration and diction as before. Negotiating Modes of Scriptural Interpretation and Living (Not) by Lot’s Wife (Medina) From a chronological perspective, the latest passage where Lot’s wife is mentioned is Q 66:10. Although Medinan, the sura only comprises twelve – albeit long – verses, and thus it is possible and, due to its monothematic structure, even necessary to quote it in full: (Q 66:1) O Prophet, why forbiddest thou what God has made lawful to thee, seeking the good pleasure of thy wives? And God is all-forgiving, all-compassionate. (2) God has ordained for you the absolution of your oaths. God is your protector, and He is the all-knowing, the all-wise. (3) And when the Prophet confided to one of his wives a certain matter; and then, when she told of it, and God disclosed that to him, he made known part of it, and turned aside from part; then, when he told her of it, she said, ‘Who told thee this?’ He said, ‘I was told of it by the allknowing, the all-aware.’

70  Nora K. Schmid (4) If you two repent to God, for now have your hearts gone astray . . . but if you support one another against him, God is his protector, and Gabriel, and the righteous among the believers; and, after that, the angels are his supporters. (5) It is possible that, if he divorces you, his Lord will give him in exchange wives better than you, women who have surrendered, believing, obedient, penitent, devout, given to fasting, who have been married and virgins too. (6) Believers, guard yourselves and your kin against a fire whose fuel is men and stones, and over which are harsh, terrible angels who disobey not God in what He commands them and do what they are commanded. (7) Unbelievers, do not excuse yourselves today; you are only being recompensed for what you were doing. (8) Believers, turn to God in sincere repentance; it may be that your Lord will acquit you of your evil deeds, and will admit you into gardens underneath which rivers flow. Upon the day when God will not degrade the Prophet and those who believe with him, their light running before them, and on their right hands; and they say, ‘Our Lord, perfect for us our light, and forgive us; surely Thou art powerful over everything.’ (9) O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be thou harsh with them; their refuge shall be hell – an evil homecoming! (10) God has struck a similitude for the unbelievers – the wife of Noah, and the wife of Lot; for they were under two of our righteous servants, but they betrayed them, so they availed them nothing whatsoever against God; so it shall be said, ‘Enter, you two, the fire with those who enter.’ (11) God has struck a similitude for the believers – the wife of Pharaoh, when she said, ‘My Lord, build for me a house with Thee in Paradise, and deliver me from Pharaoh and his work, and do Thou deliver me from the people of the evildoers.’ (12) And Mary, the daughter of ʿImrān, who guarded her virginity, so we breathed into her of our Spirit, and she confirmed the words of her Lord and his Scriptures, and became one of the obedient. Q 66 belongs to the Medinese oratory suras (“Rede-Suren”) and is strongly marked by formulas serving to address the community (Q 66:1, 6, 7, 8, 9).105 Like the other oratory suras, it treats an isolated topic, a politically and socially controversial problem – in Q 66, conjugal abuse of confidence and divorce from disloyal wives. The problem seems to have originated in the household of the prophet; oratory suras are marked by a strong synergy between the person of the messenger and the divine.106 The sura structure is simple: after an exposition of the problem (vv. 1–5)107 with two verse ends closing in hymnic formulas (vv. 1,2), an address with exhortatory statements starting with a warning to the believers and then delineating proper conduct follows (vv. 6–9). The sura closes with an interesting passage on exempla (vv. 10–12) that include Noah’s wife and Lot’s wife (v. 10) on the one hand as well as Pharaoh’s wife and Mary (vv. 11–12) on the other.108

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  71 Q 66:10 for the first time gives a reason for the punishment of Lot’s wife – the betrayal (fa-khānatāhumā) of her husband, her disloyalty.109 Disobedience and disregard of a command are the reasons adduced by Chrysostom and Ephrem for the fate of Lot’s wife. Here, the Qurʾān thus opts for a view of the figure in line with current literal and historical interpretations. Nevertheless, the Qurʾān is not opposed to allegory in general, as for example, the encounter of Moses and the servant of God with its allegorical turn, its juxtaposition of a manifest and a hidden world (Q 18:64–82), shows.110 Now, the passage on Lot’s wife is introduced by “God has struck a similitude for the unbelievers/setteth forth as an example to unbelievers” (ḍaraba llāhu mathalan li-lladhīna kafarū), thus bringing a new notion into focus – that of mathal. Thus, the literal reading is transformed into a typological one, whereby “typology is a legitimate extension of literal sense” in that both request a historical understanding of scripture.111 Lot’s wife becomes a typus of the disbelieving, disloyal wife.112 The notion of mathal is not easy to grasp in the Qurʾān.113 It can mean parable and have an allegorical meaning – as for example, the story of the aṣḥāb al-janna (Q 68:17–33).114 Here, however, it rather means “typus” or “exemplum.” It is interesting, that in the quartet of figures in Q 66:10 – the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot versus the wife of Pharaoh and Mary – a similar process of de-allegorization is attached to one of the positive figures, namely Mary,115 who is interestingly called “daughter of ʿImrān” (bint ʿImrān) – a trace of an allegorical understanding rejected by the Qurʾān that the figure has nevertheless guarded.116 In contrast to what Speyer thinks, Mary as another de-allegorized figure is thus introduced here purposefully.117 One needs to be cautious here, however, not to exaggerate the difference between allegory and typology insofar as the latter is not the polar opposite of the former; this view has been shown to be historically determined.118 Nevertheless, a certain shift in hermeneutical strategy can be established. The rather historical, typological interpretation of the story of Lot’s wife in Q 66:10 becomes all the more clear as the verse ends with a glimpse into an eschatological future – “it was/shall be said ‘Enter ye into the fire with those who enter’ ” (wa-qīla dkhulā n-nāra maʿa d-dākhilīn). The integration of an eschatological vantage point into the verse is interesting not only in view of the Targumim’s gloss “until the day on which the dead will live again,” added to the description of Lot’s wife’s transformation. It continues what has been merely alluded to through the use of the root “gh-b-r” in the early and middle Meccan suras. Also the idea that family bonds are of no value at the Last Judgment – the husbands are of no use to their wives (fa-lam yughniyā ʿanhumā mina llāhi shayʾan) – refers back to the same eschatological scenario that oscillated already in the root “gh-b-r.”119 Such a vantage point is also established in verse 11 with Pharaoh’s wife, who pleads God for “a house with Thee in Paradise.”120 The establishment of such an eschatological telos serves to place the prophet’s audience midway on a timeline leading from the sacred past to an eschatological future. Neuwirth, following Stroumsa, argues for a process of mutations, a process in the course of which public cultic practice that lives on the observance of pagan ritual is replaced by a “care for oneself” (epimeleia heautou), a very personal

72  Nora K. Schmid religious piety strongly marked by a spiritual sense of belonging.121 Although Lot’s wife in Q 66 is mentioned only in passing, from the context of the sura and the way the figure functions with the three other figures mentioned, a genuinely qurʾānic typological or schematic understanding of the figure emerges, reflecting on the self-imagination of the Prophet’s community in Medina. The wives of Lot and Noah function as “symbolic prefigurations of acts of betrayal”;122 Lot’s wife by this stage obviously has become a moral option from which the believer, through his or her own acts, dissociates, by which the unbeliever lives. Although in the Qurʾān explicitly not understood as an allegory for an abstract moral point, the figure of Lot’s wife acquires meaning as an exemplum from which moral conclusions can be drawn. She becomes a type prefiguring an antitype that is located in the here and now of the community around the prophet, in the very self of the listener – she is part of a typological and schematizing process expanding beyond scripture into reality.

Summary and Conclusion The Qurʾān negotiates literal and allegorical modes of interpretation, as Neuwirth explains: The Qurʾān is not tasked with allegorizing preexisting traditions. To the contrary, it is confronted with the fait accompli of allegorizations in Christian tradition. It is thus less qurʾānic allegorizing than the qurʾānic attitude towards existing allegories which sheds light on its hermeneutics of exegesis.123 Dawson generally contends that “struggles between alternative world views and sociocultural practices are manifested in contests between literal and nonliteral readings of culturally important texts.”124 He shows that these interpretative strategies are ultimately used to “promote alternative ways of being in the world”125; not only literary but cultural stakes are involved. In the Qurʾān, the figure of Lot’s wife and her story are rethought and scrutinized for their historical, schematizing potential by the emerging community around the prophet; elements pertaining to a more allegorical approach are deliberately eliminated. Can all this indeed lie at the background of a few verses scattered within the Qurʾān? Can the community of the prophet possibly have had such an in-depth knowledge about these matters involving theology, philology, and philosophy? A general awareness is very conceivable. Jerome, for example, surely wrote to Eustochium letters from Rome that may not have been known to a general public immediately, but “there was no waiting for his death for publication and circulation.”126 Furthermore, he lived for some thirty-odd years in the East, particularly in Bethlehem, where he supervised a religious community. Chrysostom, yet another example, preached for many years, “demonstrating an amazing ability to bring Scripture to life.” Many of his sermons were delivered at Antioch between 386 and 397.127 Maybe no individual positions where known. But this knowledge did not stay put. Although little is known about the processes by which it was transferred, it was certainly in motion in stories told and retold.

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  73 From a broader perspective, the “parting of the ways” between Christianity and Judaism, which has been taken for granted for a long time, has been called into question in recent scholarship.128 The same holds true for the sharp divide between Christianity and Greco-Roman culture that has been challenged even earlier.129 In the last years, numerous boundaries have been broken down. And as one can no longer legitimately talk about Christianity and Greco-Roman culture as disconnected entities, as one can no longer speak of Judaism and Christianity, without taking into consideration the numerous entanglements and dependencies, the question that naturally has to be asked is if the Qurʾān itself does not need to be freed from the hermeneutical boundaries erected around it also through the efforts of modern scholarship, itself fragmented by disciplinary boundaries. Already Sandmel in the 1960s has underlined the necessity of corporate strivings in scholarship: In scholarship full accuracy and full depth are an ideal occasionally approached but never quite realized, certainly not by any one person. The realization comes the nearest to the ideal not in an individual, but in our corporate strivings, as together we seek always to know more, and always to know better.130 The way in which the figure of Lot’s wife is shaped and reshaped during the process of qurʾānic revelation shows to what extent the Qurʾān is part of the intellectual world of Late Antiquity and to what extent it could choose from the same set of options available within a far larger culture with vast intellectual resources.

Notes 1 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 130. By permission of Oxford University Press. 2 A. S. Hollis, “A New Fragment on Niobe and the Text of Propertius 2.20.8,” The Classical Quarterly 47.2 (1997): 578–82. 3 Martha S. Malamud, “Writing Original Sin,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10.3 (2002): 329–60, esp. 329; for a general literature review on Prudentius, see pp. 329–30 n. 2. For an English translation of the poem, see Prudentius, The Origin of Sin: An English Translation of the Hamartigenia, trans. Martha Malamud (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). 4 Malamud, “Writing Original Sin,” 354. 5 Ibid., 353–56. 6 Bible translations from NRSV. 7 For a detailed analysis of the masoretic text, see Harry Sysling, Teḥiyyat ha-metim: The Resurrection of the Dead in the Palestinian Targums of the Pentateuch and Parallel Traditions in Classical Rabbinic Literature (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996), 92–4. 8 See Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the ‘People of the Book’ in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). 9 James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1997), 179–95. 10 See Barbara F. Stowasser, “The Women of Noah, Lot, and Abraham,” in Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions, and Interpretation, ed. Barbara Stowasser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 39–49. On Lot’s wife, see especially the chapter cited above, pp.  41–3. Unfortunately Stowasser, who sets out to investigate “dimensions of the female” (ibid., 39) in the Qurʾān, pays no attention to qurʾānic chronology and thus

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only sees Lot’s wife generally as an example for “rebelliousness against God and His chosen spokesman” (ibid.), mostly relying on her reading of Sūra 66. She complements this with the image of Lot’s wife in Islamic exegesis. To my knowledge, apart from Stowasser, only Zellentin has worked on Lot’s wife. See Holger Zellentin, “The Synchronic and the Diachronic Qurʾān: Sūrat Yā Sīn, Lot’s People, and the Rabbis,” forthcoming. I wish to thank him for kindly allowing me to read his article before publication. For further remarks concerning Lot’s wife in the Qurʾān, see Heinrich Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1961), 157–58. She is only mentioned in passing in B. Heller and G. Vajda, “Lūṭ,” in EI2. Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81.1 (March 1962): 1–13, here p. 1. Sandmel makes clear that he does not seek to discourage the study of parallels nor to deny that they exist. Rather, he cautions against an excessive and exaggerated quest for parallels in abstract statements, parallels that sometimes prove to be only alleged or inconsequential. His observations in the areas of rabbinic literature, the gospels, Philo, Paul, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Testament lead him to underline the necessity of detailed research and careful consideration of context. Angelika Neuwirth, “Eine ‘religiöse Mutation der Spätantike’: Von tribaler Genealogie zum Gottesbund: Koranische Refigurationen pagan-arabischer Ideale nach biblischen Modellen,” in Genealogie und Migrationsmythen im antiken Mittelmeerraum und auf der arabischen Halbinsel, ed. Almut-Barbara Renger and Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2014), 201–30. See Griffith, The Bible in Arabic. Ibid., 56. James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (New York: Free Press, 2008), 14–7. Michael Fiedrowicz, Prinzipien der Schriftauslegung in der alten Kirche (Bern: P. Lang, 1998) offers a useful collection of patristic texts – excerpted from letters, homilies, commentaries, treatises, handbooks, and so on – containing hermeneutical reflections. Further traditions in addition to the ones quoted in the following are referred to by Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 467, as well as Max Grünbaum, Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sagenkunde (Leiden: Brill, 1893), 133–34. The Babylonian Talmud, B. Berakhot 54a, quoted from The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Zera’im, ed. and trans. I. Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1961), 1:330. Also referred to by Schwartz, Tree of Souls, 467, and Grünbaum, Neue Beiträge, 134. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 1, 203, quoted from Josephus, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, vol.  4, Jewish Antiquities, Books I–IV (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 101. Also quoted by Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 191, 193, and by Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 157 n. 1. Arthur J. Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1989), 3. Also quoted by Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 156, 157 n. 1, as well as by Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 192. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 191, quotes Neophiti as an example. An exception is Onq and PsYon; see Sysling, Teḥiyyat ha-metim,  92, and passim, esp. pp.  97–101 and p. 103. For a synopsis of the targumim, ibid., 96. PsYon. See Sysling, Teḥiyyat ha-metim, 97–101. Also referred to by Schwartz, Tree of Souls, 467. For the notion of “counter-reading,” see David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 9. Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 18. See Folker Siegert, “Homerinterpretation – Tora-Unterweisung – Bibelauslegung: Vom Ursprung der patristischen Hermeneutik,” in Papers presented at the Eleventh

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33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1991: Biblica et Apocrypha, Orientalia, Ascetica, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters Press, 1993), 159–71; and Siegert, Drei hellenistisch-jüdische Predigten, vol. 2, Kommentar nebst Beobachtungen zur hellenistischen Vorgeschichte der Bibelhermeneutik (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1992),  55–91. Regarding schools in Alexandria and the city’s general educational and intellectual milieu, see Wilhelm Bousset, Jüdisch-christlicher Schulbetrieb in Alexandria und Rom: Literarischer Untersuchungen zu Philo und Clemens von Alexandria, Justin und Irenäus (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1975). Henry S. Nash, “The Exegesis of the School of Antioch: A  Criticism of the Hypothesis that Aristotelianism Was a Main Cause in its Genesis,” Journal of Biblical Literature 11.1 (1892): 22–37, 23, also emphasizes the importance of Homer and Hesiod as “sacred texts of the Greek.” Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 18. See Siegert, “Homerinterpretation,” 160. See ibid., 161–65. See both Christopher A. Hall, Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 136 (en passant), and Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 23–72, on pagan allegorical techniques (e.g., Heraclitus’ Homeric Allegories, an allegorical endeavor composed to counter the charge that Homer’s texts were morally not fitting) used to reinforce cultural values and ideals and their nonallegorical opponents. Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 18. For another definition of allegory, see Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 573. Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 1, understands typology “not only as a way of reading texts, but also a way of using that reading to reinterpret culture and society.” See Siegert, “Homerinterpretation,” 165–68. Siegert remarks, p. 166, “Wir brauchen also keine jüdischen Exegetenschulen zu postulieren, um die für uns oft so befremdlichen Extravaganzen eines Philon uns begreiflich zu machen. Es genügt die Kenntnisnahme dessen, was ein antiker Schuljunge bei seiner Homerlektüre eingeflößt bekam.” See Stephan Bitter, “Bibelauslegung, Epochen der christlichen,” in WiBiLex (Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet), http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/wibilex/. The quest for a “deeper, hidden meaning” is understood by Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 2, as “a strategy by which readers claimed authoritative originality for their interpretations.” See Jean Pépin, La Tradition de l’Allégorie: De Philon d’Alexandrie à Dante (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1987), 13, who speaks of a “valeur de l’allégorie comme instrument de filtrage.” On this shadowy tradition, see Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 74–82. On Philo’s debts to older traditions and precursors in general, see Bousset, Jüdisch-christlicher Schulbetrieb, for example, 1–2, 5, 8–14, 43–4, 82–3; and Pépin, La Tradition, 7–8. Philo in his works refers vaguely to allegorical interpreters among the Alexandrian Jews. Pépin thinks Philo in this way alludes imprecisely to “probablement une école juive de culture stoïcienne,” an opinion Bousset generally shares; Bousset, Jüdisch-christlicher Schulbetrieb, 14. Pépin (La Tradition) and Bousset (Jüdisch-christlicher Schulbetrieb, 44–5) also hint at the influence of the Essenes’ and the Thereapeutae’s symbolical explanations of scripture. Siegert, “Homerinterpretation,” 166–68, gives examples of interpretations by Philo, which allow us to catch glimpses of what he had learnt with regard to Homer. Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 101. Ibid., 7. See Pépin, La Tradition, 14–29, and Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 100ff. The complex process by which Philo opts for one or another cannot be summarized here for limitations of space. On this question, see Pépin, La Tradition, 34–40, who identifies a number of indicators of allegory. Ibid., 25–9.

76  Nora K. Schmid 41 Ibid., 16: “la preuve manifeste de la réalité de la catastrophe, de l’ancienne prospérité du pays et de l’exécution de la sentence divine.” It is interesting to note that Philo also makes an effort to accommodate the geographical knowledge of his time with Paradise, whose existence he considers a historical truth. 42 Philo, On Abraham, 27, 137–41, quoted from Philo, trans. F. H. Colson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), 6:70–73. Also quoted by Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 156, and referred to by Schwartz, Tree of Souls, 467. 43 See Pépin, La Tradition, 16 n. 59: “Philon s’inscrit donc là dans une tradition juive.” 44 Philo, On Flight and Finding, 22, 119–22, quoted from Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), 5:74–77. 45 See Pépin, La Tradition,  28. He states that this text is frequently quoted to support Philo’s privileging allegorical interpretations in contrast to On Abraham, which is cited rather for its literal interpretations. 46 Philo, Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis, 3, LXXV, 213, quoted from Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 1:447. Two of the targumim of Genesis  19:26, Neof and PsYon, express a similar thought to Philo and agree in the reason adduced for the punishment: Lot’s wife belonged to the people of Sodom and wanted to know what happened to her relatives. Her concern with her relatives can also be traced in Pirqei de R. Eliezer 25 (60a/b), where she is uncertain about the fate of her daughters. See Sysling, Teḥiyyat ha-metim, 95. 47 Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 17. 48 See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 573–74. On Paul’s notion of allegory, see Hall, Reading Scripture, 133–34. 49 Siegert states in “Homerinterpretation,” 168: “Mit einer kunstmäßigen, gelernten Bibelaus­legung ist nur bei solchen Autoren zu rechnen, die höhere Bildung genossen haben. Paulus, Lukas, der Autor des Jakobusbriefs und natürlich des Hebräerbriefs lassen Wirkungen davon erkennen, nicht jedoch vieles, was wir sonst an frühchristlichen Schriften haben und was nach antiken Maßstäben keine Literatur gewesen wäre.” 50 See in particular, Ruthild Geiger, Die Lukanischen Endzeitreden: Studien zur Eschatologie des Lukas-Evangeliums (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1973), 126–31. Geiger analyses Luke 17:20–32 and 21:5–36 in detail. She generally identifies in Luke’s redactional interventions a “parenetic interest” (see, e.g., p. 23). For an in-depth study of Luke’s parenetic discourse concerning Lot’s wife, see pages 109–31, where Geiger reviews research on the subject and carefully establishes that the passage concerning us here is in all likelihood entirely Lukan and not (or at least not without Lukan interventions) taken from the Q source. 51 Luke 17:31–33. Also quoted by Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 191. 52 See Geiger, Die Lukanischen Endzeitreden, 116; and also page 126, where he states that he recognizes particularly in this image a transition from classical parable to allegory. 53 Tertullian, On Monogamy, 16, quoted from Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, trans. Rev. S. Thelwall, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, vol. 18, The Writings of Tertullian (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1870), 53. For a collection of some of Tertullian’s hermeneutical reflections, see Fiedrowicz, Prinzipien, 26–34. 54 See R.P.C. Hanson, “Notes on Tertullian’s Interpretation of Scripture,” Journal of Theological Studies 12.2 (1961): 273–79 and Waszink, “Tertullian’s Principles and Methods of Exegesis,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition, ed. W. R. Schoedel and R. L. Wilken (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1979), 17–31. 55 Hanson, “Notes,” 277. Waszink, “Tertullian’s Principles,” 19, agrees, calling it a “continuous endeavour to exclude by all means arbitrariness from interpretation.”

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms 77 56 Hanson, “Notes,” 274. 57 On Tertullian’s exegetical methods, see Waszink, “Tertullian’s Principles,” 17 and passim. 58 Waszink, “Tertullian’s Principles,” 19. 59 For a collection of some of Origen’s hermeneutical reflections, see Fiedrowicz, Prinzipien, 40–59. 60 The expression “champion of allegorical interpretation” is Kugel’s, How to Read the Bible, 22. See also Gilberte Astruc-Morize and Alain Le Boulluec, “Le sens caché des Écritures selon Jean Chrysostome et Origène,” in Papers presented at the Eleventh International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1991: Biblica et Apocrypha, Orientalia, Ascetica, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters Press, 1993), 1–26, here p. 23. On the school of Alexandria and the hermeneutical difference between the schools of Alexandria and of Antioch, see the overview in Bitter, “Bibelauslegung, Epochen der christlichen,” http://www.bibelwissenschaft.de/wibilex/. 61 Bitter, “Bibelauslegung, Epochen der christlichen.” 62 Origen, Homily V on Genesis, quoted from Origen. Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. R. Heine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 114. 63 See Agnethe Siquans, “Midrasch und Kirchenväter: Parallelen und Differenzen in Hermeneutik und Methodologie,” in Narratology, Hermeneutics, and Midrash: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Narratives from Late Antiquity through to Modern Times, ed. C. Cordoni and G. Langer (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 39–70, here pp. 54–57. 64 Ibid., 57. 65 Jerome, Letter 22, To Eustochium, 2, quoted from The Letters of St. Jerome, trans. C. Mierow, ed. J. Quasten and W. J. Brughardt, vol. 1, Letters 1–22 (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1963), 135. For more on Jerome, see Hall, Reading Scripture, 108–16. 66 See Thomas Comerford Lawler, “Introduction,” in Mierow, The Letters of St. Jerome, 3–20. 67 Elizabeth Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations (New York: E. Mellon Press, 1979), 47. 68 Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 22. 69 On the school of Antioch and the hermeneutical difference between the schools of Alexandria and of Antioch, see the overview in Bitter, “Bibelauslegung, Epochen der christlichen” (online). 70 See Nash, “The Exegesis,” 33. 71 Such a neat line is, for example, drawn by Nash, “The Exegesis,” 32–33, who emphasizes the anti-allegorical tendencies in Antioch and traces them back to a prevailing “mercantile mind [that] has no fondness for philosophy.” 72 See Astruc-Morize and Le Boulluec, “Le sens caché,” 23, and Nash, “The Exegesis,” 36. 73 St.  Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 18, 12, quoted from The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, trans. L. P. McCauley and A. A. Stephenson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1970), 2:126. 74 St. John Chrysostom, Homily 43, 31, quoted from Saint John Chrysostom: Homilies on Genesis 18–45, trans. R. C. Hill (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 453. On John Chrysostom, see Hall, Reading Scripture, 93–101. For a collection of Chrysostom’s hermeneutical reflections, see Fiedrowicz, Prinzipien, 102–8. 75 See Astruc-Morize and Le Boulluec, “Le sens caché,”  4–7. This scrutinizing of the text demands “une mobilisation de toute notre puissance d’écoute, d’attention, de

78  Nora K. Schmid

76

77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84

85 86

vigilance, il y faut l’ascèse et la prière” (p. 7). On this immersion, see also Hall, Reading Scripture, 96. On the notion of akribeia, see Bertrand de Margerie, Introduction à l’histoire de l’exégèse, vol. 1, Les Pères grecs et orientaux (Paris: Cerf, 1980), 225–32. See Astruc-Morize and Le Boulluec, “Le sens caché,” 25, notably n.  75. For the instances when Chrysostom considers the use of allegory necessary and legitimate, see the text adduced by Fiedrowicz, Prinzipien, 102–3. Chrysostom, rather surprisingly, has been called “Origen’s best reader”; see Astruc-Morize and Le Boulluec, “Le sens caché,” 1. In fact, in his exegesis, he follows many readings of Origen while diverging from him in some respects: Chrysostom, like Origen, notably believes in the existence of a deeper sense in scripture. But whereas Origin considers it an intrinsic quality of the text itself, Chrysostom sees difficulties of interpretation as resulting from the recipient’s incapacity. On this topic, see in detail ibid., particularly 15–26. Chrysostom compares the Christian priest to a physician who is in possession of remedies to treat the sick. For this metaphor, see Hall, Reading Scripture, 95–6. Hill, Saint John Chrysostom: Homilies on Genesis 18–45, 453 n. 37. See Christopher Buck, Paradise  & Paradigm: Key Symbols in Persian Christianity and the Bahā’ī Faith (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 88. See ibid., 87. See ibid., 90. St. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis, 7, quoted from St. Ephrem the Syrian: Selected Prose Works: Commentary on Genesis, Commentary on Exodus, Homily on our Lord, Letter to Publius, trans. E. G. Mathews and J. P. Amar, ed. K. McVey (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 162. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 191. See Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾān as Process,” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 407–39. For the history of traditional Islamic attempts at establishing a chronology of the Qurʾān, see EQ, s.v. “Chronology and the Qurʾan,” by Gerhard Böwering, 1:316–35, here pp.  320b–322a, and, relying on Böwering, Gabriel Said Reynolds, “Le Problème de la chronologie du Coran,” Arabica 58.6 (2011): 477–502, here pp. 480–85. See also Neal Robinson, Discovering the Qurʾan: A  Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003),  60–75, on “traditional resources for determining the chronological order of the suras,” and ibid., 76–96, on “western attempts at dating the revelations.” For the history of the elaboration of a chronological perspective on the Qurʾān in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, see Böwering, “Chronology and the Qurʾan,”  322a–326b; Emmanuelle Stefanidis, “The Qurʾan Made Linear: A Study of the Geschichte des Qorāns’ Chronological Reordering,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 10.2 (2008): 1–22; Reynolds, “Le Problème.” Theodor Nöldeke and Friedrich Schwally, Geschichte des Qorāns, vol. 1, Über den Ursprung des Qorāns (Leipzig: T. Weicher, 1909). See notably the chronological literary commentary of the Corpus Coranicum project (Sinai, Nicolai, “Chronologisch-literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar zum Koran,” online: http://www.corpuscoranicum.de/kommentar/), of which a commentary on the first Meccan period, authored by Nicolai Sinai, has already appeared online, and a commentary on the second Meccan period is currently in preparation; see also Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. 1, Frühmekkanische Suren (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011). Probably the most important improvement of Nöldeke’s conception these commentaries have produced is the further subdivision and chronological ordering within the four periods postulated by Nöldeke, particularly with regard to the early Meccan period. This essay relies heavily on these insights into the inner chronology of the early and middle Meccan periods.

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  79 87 According to Nöldeke’s ordering, Sūra 26 would have been revealed somewhat later in the middle Meccan period; see Nöldeke and Schwally, Geschichte des Qorâns, vol. 1, Über den Ursprung des Qorāns, ix and 126–29. I am basing myself on preliminary results of research conducted in the Corpus Coranicum project. Angelika Neuwirth also considers Sūra 26 earlier (personal communication). 88 The overturned cities (al-muʾtafikāt) by whose ruins one passes, mentioned in the early Meccan suras 69:9 and 53:53–54 and again resumed in the middle Meccan Sūra 25:40, may also refer to Sodom. However, neither the Lot story nor Lot’s wife are mentioned here. 89 See Sinai, “The Qurʾān as Process”; Stefanidis, “The Qurʾan Made Linear”; Behnam Sadeghi, “The Chronology of the Qurʾān: A Stylometric Research Program,” Arabica 58.3/4 (2011): 210–99; Neuwirth, Koran als Text der Spätantike, ch. 5 (“Surenstrukturen und Chronologie”); Reynolds, “Le Problème.” 90 Sinai, “The Qurʾān as Process,” 418, speaks of “cumulation” – by which he means the “convergence of different, and to some extent mutually independent, sets of criteria, such as structure, introductory formulae, verse length, overall sura length, rhyme, profile, and content.” Sadeghi, in “The Chronology,” 217–18, and in greater detail 218–20, has the same in mind when he speaks of “joint corroboration,” inducing from it a criterion of “concurrent smoothness” to establish a chronology of the qurʾānic text. 91 See Reynolds, “Le Problème,” 486–87, for an example of the commonplace critique that Nöldeke’s concept, after all, accepts and departs from a basic historical framework in line with the biography of the Prophet (sīra). 92 All Qurʾān quotations are based on Al-Qurʾān al-karīm (Cairo: Azhar University, 1924), available online at http://www.corpuscoranicum.de/index. Qurʾān translations, here and in the following, are mainly from Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); some formulations stem from J. M. Rodwell, The Koran, ed. A. Jones (London: Phoenix Press, 2001). I have modified the translations where I considered it necessary. 93 See in detail Neuwirth, “Eine ‘religiöse Mutation der Spätantike,’ ” 204–6. 94 On salt as a symbol of destruction and barrenness, but also as a sign of hospitality, see Sysling, Teḥiyyat ha-metim, 94. 95 Speyer favors “tarry” (“zögern”) as the translation because he thinks that the idea that the remains of Sodom are the “sign” hinted at precludes Lot’s wife herself being considered the remain that has this sign character; see Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 157. 96 Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. gh-b-r. 97 For a detailed analysis of the passage, see Sinai, “Chronologisch-literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar,” commentary on Q 80:33–42 (online), and Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. 1, Frühmekkanische Suren, 382, 387–88, and 390–91. 98 See in detail Neuwirth, “Eine ‘religiöse Mutation der Spätantike,’ ” 209–10, who also adduces as a further example Sūra 70:8–14. 99 See ibid., 211–13. 100 See Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 157 n. 2, who quotes Sprenger. 101 See ibid., 157 n. 1, who refers to the Book of Wisdom and Josephus. 102 Paret suggests interpreting sabīl as an abstract notion and sees it as a reference to the divine course of action followed against outrageous peoples. See Rudi Paret, Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1980), on Q 15:76–77. 103 Hannelies Koloska, unpublished draft of a commentary on Q 15:76–77: “Im Koran wird nun durch die Parallelgestaltung von Vers 75 und 77 eine doppelte Zeichenhaftigkeit zum Ausdruck gebracht. Während sich Verse 75 und 76 auf die Zerstörung der Stadt und ihre Überreste beziehen und die Zeichen einen mahnenden Charakter

80  Nora K. Schmid besitzen, bezeichnet Vers 77 offensichtlich die gesamte Loterzählung als ein Zeichen göttlicher Wirkmächtigkeit, da nun die Gläubigen angesprochen werden, für die Gottes Wirken in seiner helfenden und bestrafenden Art in der Geschichte von Relevanz ist.” 104 For this observation, see Grünbaum, Neue Beiträge, 136. 105 On these “Rede-Suren” and their formal and thematic profiles, see Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 327–29. 106 See ibid., 329. 107 The exposition, however, remains very allusive. Mention is made of a wife betraying a secret and of two wives conspiring, and the threat of divorce is formulated. 108 Because the whole sura unfolds the problem of conjugal abuse of confidence, it is a deliberate choice that the sura does not mention Pharaoh’s daughter but his wife. See, for an explanation, Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 281–82, in contrast to Geiger, who considers it the result of a mere confusion. 109 See also Stowasser, “The Women of Noah, Lot, and Abraham,” 42. 110 See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 587–88. 111 Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960), 64. Neuwirth, in Der Koran als Text,  576–80, carefully distinguishes between typology in the narrow theological sense and a broader sense of schematization. Whereas the former is not absent in the Qurʾān (Moses/Abraham as prefigurations of the Prophet), the latter is far more frequent. She notes that “Gewiß ist schwer zu übersehen, daß wir es im Koran im allgemeinen nicht mit theologisch aufgeladener Typologie, sondern eher mit Schematisierung zu tun haben” (579). In what follows, by “typology” I refer to the broader sense of the word. 112 See Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 430, 437, who differentiates this usage from other usages of the term “mathal.” 113 On mathal, see Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 426–38, and Lohmann, Theodor, “Die Gleichnisreden Muhammeds im Koran,” in Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung 12 (1966): 75–118 and 241–87. On mathal as “typus” or “exemplum,” see in particular Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 437, and Lohman, “Die Gleichnisreden Muhammeds im Koran,” 270. 114 See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 585–86. 115 On the de-allegorization of Mary, see notably Michael Marx, “Glimpses of a Mariology in the Qurʾan: From Hagiography to Theology via Religious-Political Debate,” in The Qurʾān in Context, 533–63; and Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 477–88, 590– 95. For example, Mary is not understood as an allegory of the temple anymore but shown in the temple; the symbolically charged “eastern place” is reduced to a mere topographical indication. 116 See Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 591–93. The designation “daughter of ʿImrān” was interpreted as a typological assignment – a position revised by Suleiman Mourad, “Mary in the Qurʾān: A Reexamination of Her Presentation,” in The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context, ed. G. Reynolds (London: Routledge 2008), 163–74, who has shown the allegorical dimension of the appellation. 117 See Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 281. 118 See Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 15–6. Dawson even considers typology “a certain kind of allegorical reading promoted as nonallegorical” (16). Kugel, in How to Read the Bible, distinguishes allegory from typology in that he describes allegorical reading as “vertical,” “moving up from the concrete to the abstract,” and typological reading as “horizontal,” “moving from earlier things to later ones” (21). Nevertheless, according to him as well, both ways of reading see the details of the text as standing for something else.

Lot’s Wife: Late Antique Paradigms  81 119 Not only Sūra 80:33–42 but also Sūra 52:46 or Sūra 44:41 come to mind, with a very similar expression in eschatological contexts. 120 On the idea of a dwelling or house in Paradise, see Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen, 282. 121 Neuwirth, “Eine ‘religiöse Mutation der Spätantike,’ ” especially 206–9. See Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 122 Stowasser, “The Women of Noah, Lot, and Abraham,” 40. 123 Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text, 590: “Der Koran ist mit keiner entsprechenden Aufgabe der Allegorisierung einer Vorgängertradition konfrontiert. Dagegen steht er dem fait accompli von in der christlichen Tradition bereits vollzogenen Allegorisierungen gegenüber. Es ist also weniger koranisches Allegorisieren als der koranische Umgang mit bereits vorgefundener Allegorie, der Licht auf seine exegetische Hermeneutik werfen kann.” 124 Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 10. 125 Ibid., 19. 126 Lawler, “Introduction,” 8. 127 See Hall, Reading Scripture, 94. 128 See Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). Particularly interesting is Paula Fredriksen, “What ‘Parting of the Ways’?,” in The Ways that Never Parted, 35–63. 129 See, for example, William R. Schoedel, and Robert L. Wilken, eds., Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1979), 11. 130 Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” 13.

3 The Sign of Jonah Transformations and Interpretations of the Jonah Story in the Qurʾān Hannelies Koloska Introduction For the last 150  years, many Western scholars have studied the interrelations among the Bible, Jewish and Christian canonical and non-canonical writings, and the Qurʾān, looking for presumable sources and influences. Recent studies, however, show that the Qurʾān is not a mere repetition of written texts but that it contains retold and reframed stories, traditions, or motifs of a mainly orally transmitted Bible.1 Sidney Griffith speaks of the Qurʾān as yet another “reprise of the interpreted Bible” among its many manifestations in Late Antiquity. The awareness of such transformations of biblical stories among Jewish, Christian, and other monotheistic communities in Late Antiquity widens the understanding for the Qurʾān as a scripture with its own distinctive theology and prophetology and its own reflection of biblical and post-biblical traditions. Until now, however, rarely recognized and studied are iconographic representations as distinct and pervasive ways of approaching, understanding, and transmitting biblical and post-biblical traditions. That the visual culture of Late Antiquity was an important reference point of qurʾānic representations of certain stories or motifs has to be taken into consideration when trying to understand processes of recollections and retellings in the Qurʾān.2 An approach that searches for inter-texts or inter-images alone, though, will not detect the full background of qurʾānic texts. The genesis of the Qurʾān, as well as the emergence of a religious community, has to be taken into consideration to determine the Sitz im Leben (“situatedness”) of the texts. In this study, the Qurʾān is therefore read diachronically. 3 The text is presumed to reflect ongoing debates and dialogues among the messenger, the developing community, and other listeners, be they Christians, Jews, or others.4 This process of communication, alongside the emergence of a distinct community, can be roughly reconstructed by means of historical-critical analysis. The thereby chronologically rearranged texts reflect the sequence of development and discussions and give insights into strategies of approving, refuting, or commenting upon traditions and beliefs.5 It seems necessary to analyze the qurʾānic passages not just as texts that are reminiscent of certain biblical or post-biblical traditions but as texts that show an active dealing with them as well as the development of a distinct qurʾānic theology. 6

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  83 In this essay, the story of Jonah shall serve as an example to illustrate the process of appropriation and exclusion of Christian and Jewish interpretations in the Qurʾān and within its emerging community. Stefan Schreiner, in his article “Muhammads Rezeption der biblischen Jonaerzählung” (1978), has already argued that it would not be difficult to collect and quote various texts of Jewish or Christian provenance to show certain dependencies of the qurʾānic texts dealing with Jonah. It would be more important, however, to ask for the reasons of the different presentations of the Jonah story in the Qurʾān. Schreiner argues in favor of a historical-critical and chronological approach to the Qurʾān, and he criticizes the attempt to show mere “influences” and to marginalize the qurʾānic text.7 His study is, until now, the most profound work in Western scholarship about the Jonah story in the Qurʾān in the way the story develops and crystallizes in the text and about its probable intertextual references.8 Yet, what is missing is the recognition of the reflected communication process in the text. Schreiner’s article, instead, is indebted to a view of the Qurʾān as a book written solely by the author Muhammad. The Sitz im Leben of the texts can thereby hardly be discerned. This study will focus, on the one hand, on the qurʾānic representation of the Jonah story and its intertwinement with mainly Christian interpretations of the story. On the other hand, it will try to shed some light on the function of the story as reflecting the emergence of a new religious community and as part of a developing qurʾānic prophetology.9

Early Christian Readings of the Jonah Story Jonah in the New Testament Jonah is mentioned three times in the New Testament: Matthew 12:38–41 and 16:1–4 and Luke 11:29–32.10 All of these texts speak of the “sign of Jonah” and open up several possibilities for its understanding. According to Matthew 12, Jonah prefigures Jesus Christ. Just as Jonah spent three days and nights in the belly of the fish (see Jonah 2:1), Jesus was, likewise, in the grave – that Jesus was just two nights in the grave was not perceived as a problematic discrepancy. Hence Jonah is a symbol for rescue and resurrection.11 The “sign of Jonah,” additionally, might have originally hinted at the similarity between Jesus’ and Jonah’s missions as preachers of repentance or their missions as God-chosen messengers from afar. In Matthew 12:40–41 and Luke 11:31–32, it is mentioned that the Ninevites will accuse the contemporaries of Jesus on Judgment Day. The repentance of the Ninevites is thereby stressed and contrasted with the Jews, who are accused of impenitence and rejection of Jesus’ call. Jonah in Early Christian Writings Early Christian writers mention Jonah in different contexts, stressing different aspects of the “sign of Jonah.” In the earliest references (such as in the First Epistle of Clement, ca. 96 CE), Jonah’s role as a preacher of penitence and the necessity

84  Hannelies Koloska of repenting as the Ninevites repented is emphasized.12 But Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) also dedicates a whole homily to the preaching of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites.13 The “sign of Jonah” becomes a “sign of repentance.” However, the typological reading of the Jonah story prefiguring Christ becomes the most common reading: the events as described in the biblical book of Jonah were related to Christ. As Jonah was sent to the Gentiles, so is Christ the savior of all nations. As Jonah was in the belly of the fish and emerged after three days and nights, so too was Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead.14 The connection between Jonah and Christ is most evident in Christian liturgy. The Biblical book of Jonah was part of the readings during the Easter vigil. According to an ancient Armenian lectionary from the fifth century – preserving the so-called Jerusalem liturgy – it was read beside the Exodus story (Exodus 14), Elijah’s ascension (2 Kings 2), the rescue of the three Hebrews from the fiery furnace (Daniel 3), and other parts of the Bible. The service culminated in the reading of 1 Corinthians 15, which narrates Christ’s resurrection; the reference to “the Scriptures” might allude to the Jonah–Jesus typology.15 In a few sources, Jonah is reflected upon in passing and is considered as a model for a sincere praying person as well as an example for divine providence for the pious.16 To a large extent, the story of Jonah was used in anti-Jewish polemics.17 Jonah in Early Christian Art The artistic representations of Jonah disclose a quite different interpretation of the Jonah story. Among the depictions in early Christian art, the Jonah story was the most popular one, and it is almost always found in funerary art. From the early third century, wealthy Christians in Rome began to embellish their underground cemeteries with frescos, following the pagan custom of decorating burial chambers. Somewhat later in the second half of the third century, sarcophagi with Christian motifs were also manufactured. Pagan motifs were adopted and reinterpreted by adding illustrations of biblical episodes.18 The ceiling decoration of the chamber of the “Velatio” may serve as an example to illustrate this practice.19 Three scenes from the Hebrew Bible – Jonah emerging from a sea monster, the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace, and Abraham going to sacrifice his son – accompany a praying figure, probably depicting the buried person. In accordance with the symbolism of these three episodes, these illustrations would represent the Christian hope for rescue from death and the answer to prayers.20 Steffen draws attention to the fact that these illustrations are painted prayers: already in Jewish penitential prayers (seliḥōt), Jonah is mentioned among those whose prayers were answered.21 This prayer formed the basis of the Christian prayer for the dying (commendatio animae), and the paintings resemble this prayer for God’s grace.22 The most prominent picture of Jonah within Early Christian art, however, is Jonah lying asleep naked under a booth covered with gourd vine. The image appears mostly on sarcophagi. It might be shown as a single scene or within a cycle of episodes that can include Jonah’s being cast into the sea, his being swallowed by a sea monster, and his being spewed out.23 The image of a booth covered with gourd vine is derived from descriptions from the biblical book of Jonah 4.

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  85 That the biblical fish is shown as a dragon-like creature and the booth is covered by gourd vine corresponds to the Septuagint. It denotes the big fish (dag gadōl) as a sea monster (kētos) and translates the Hebrew qîqāyôn (castor oil plant) as kolokýnthē (gourd vine). But the image of the sleeping, naked Jonah cannot be deduced from the biblical story. Two interpretations of this depiction exist: on the one hand, the reclining Jonah might be related to the representation of the mythological figure of the eternally sleeping Endymion. Sarcophagi presenting the love story between the moon goddess Selene and the beautiful young shepherd Endymion were quite common and evidently provided an allegorical message of hope for the deceased to have a peaceful sleep of death.24 This resemblance between Jonah and Endymion is striking. The pagan symbol of death was thereby turned into a Christian picture symbolizing the blessed repose in eternity.25 On the other hand, Bezalel Narkiss, following Delbrueck, Nordström, and Stommel, traces the motif to Midrashic origin. They point to the Midrash story of Jonah, according to which Jonah’s clothes and hair were consumed in the belly of the sea monster. He thus emerged naked from it. Moreover, they explain that the sequence of motifs that depict Jonah’s resting under a gourd following the episode of Jonah being spewed out – from which Jonah’s preaching at Nineveh is obviously omitted – also has its basis in the rabbinical narrative. In their view, the Christian depiction of the Jonah story is based on the Jewish reception of the story, whereas the imagery was created with classical pagan motives in the background.26 This argumentation, however, is weak in view of the late dating of the Midrash Jonah, probably not earlier than the eighth century.27 Moreover, no artistic representation of the Jonah story in a Jewish context in Late Antiquity has been discovered so far. The argument can be turned around instead: the Midrash might refer directly or indirectly to the Qurʾān, which arranges – as will be shown – the sequence of events similarly. The Midrash would, therefore, reflect an Islamic tradition. But even if a Jewish narrative subtext is not directly underlying the representation, Jonah in Jewish tradition appears as a symbol for God’s mercy and symbolizes rescue from death and resurrection.28 Jewish and Christian traditions are intertwined, and Christian art refers to this shared tradition. The Jonah imagery in Christian art may derive mainly from the “sign of Jonah” as mentioned in Matthew 12:40, where Jonah’s stay in the belly of the fish is symbolizing Christ’s stay in the underworld.29 The swallowing and emerging of Jonah hint at the death and resurrection of Christ. The main focus in burial art, however, is different; it reflects the hope for a peaceful paradisiac rest after death.30 The iconographic program of the Jonah story outlined here was not confined to early Christian art in Rome or the Latin West. Similar depictions were found in the Egyptian necropolis of El-Bagawat. Inside the so-called chapel of the Exodus, which dates back to the fourth century, two episodes from the Hebrew Bible are illustrated referring to rescue stories like Noah in the ark, Daniel in the lion’s den, and Jonah’s casting into the sea and emergence from the fish.31 In Beth Guvrin, Israel, a Byzantine church from the sixth century was excavated in which mosaics were found presenting the Jonah story.32 Probably the most extraordinary presentation of the Jonah story was found in Turkey. The so-called Cleveland statuettes from about the second half of the third century include four

86  Hannelies Koloska Jonah statuettes, a statuette of the “good shepherd,” and six busts. The imagery differs from the Roman images in some details: Jonah is not depicted as a youth but as an elderly man with a beard. He is dressed when he is praying and lying asleep.33 Probably these representations follow Eastern models. It has been suggested that the statuettes were used in a mausoleum, symbolizing the belief in rescue through the belief in Christ or in a well system presenting an idyll of peace.34 Also, in the Rabbula Gospels, a sixth-century Syriac manuscript, Jonah is drawn as a dressed and bearded man lying under a creeping plant. On the page below this, the gate of Nineveh is drawn. It is one of the very few allusions to Nineveh in Christian art.35 To summarize, early Christian artistic depictions of the Jonah story differ considerably from the interpretations by early Christian writers. The “rest of Jonah,” the central image of the story in art, plays no role in Christian theology. The motif of Jonah as a preacher of repentance and the Ninevites’ penitence, which is crucial in Christian theology, is of no importance within the artistic representations. One can therefore speak of two different approaches to the Jonah story. On the one side, Jonah is represented as a symbol of hope for divine intervention, forgiveness, and eternal peace. This image probably has its basis in Jewish readings of the story and was popular among Christians as an expression of their individual piety. On the other hand, Jonah’s role as a prefiguration of Christ as a repentance preacher and savior of the Gentiles as well as the repentance of the Ninevites are emphasized by Christian authors.

The Story of Jonah in the Qurʾān All four qurʾānic passages referring to the story of Jonah (Q 68:48–50, 37:139– 148, 21:87–88, 10:96–98) do not contain extensive narratives but rather are allusive.36 They evidently require some acquaintance with the story on the part of the audience. Thus Jonah, in the earliest qurʾānic text, is not named explicitly but receives a byname that describes him as a man closely related to a fish (ṣāḥib al-ḥūt). It serves as a distinguishing characteristic that, in conjunction with some further hints, can easily be understood and deciphered by the audience that is familiar with the story. Hence, it is very probable that reference is made to biblical or post-biblical traditions. This observation supports Griffith’s hypothesis of an almost universally accessible “interpreted Bible,” which explains the intertextual dynamics, at least in the Meccan suras. Sūrat al-Qalam (Q 68:48–50) The first allusion to the Jonah story is found in the late early Meccan Sūrat alQalam. The sura in its first part (vv. 1–16) refers to disputes between Muhammad and his opponents about his integrity and authority. The second part contains a parabolic narrative (vv. 17–34) illustrating right and wrong behavior in the face of divine trial. The last part (vv. 35–52) links up with the first. Initially, the opponents are addressed and questioned about their beliefs. Second, the messenger is addressed, and he is admonished to turn away from the unbelieving opponents.

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  87 Words of solace comprising an exhortation to be patient are expressed.37 In the context of the last part, the Jonah narrative is introduced: (48) So be patient for your Lord’s decree, and be not like the companion of the fish, who cried out given in to anger. (49) Had it not been that favor from his Lord had reached him he would indeed have been cast ashore at a desolate place, in disgrace. (50) But his Lord chose him and placed him among the righteous.38 (48) fa-ṣbir li-ḥukmi rabbika wa lā takun ka-ṣāḥibi l-ḥūti idh nādā wa huwa makẓūm (49) law lā an tadārakahū niʿmatun min rabbihī la-nubidha bi-l-ʿarāʾi wa huwa madhmūm (50) fa-jtabāhū rabbuhū fa-jaʿalahū mina ṣ-ṣāliḥīn No name is mentioned, but the epithet (ṣāḥib al-ḥūt – “companion of the fish”) serves to identify Jonah and to connect the information with the Jonah story.39 Taking a close look at the verses, a two-part division between verses 48 and 49–50 is obvious. Verse 48 brings to mind, with very few words, Jonah’s prayer in the belly of the fish (idh nādā – “when he called”).40 The circumstantial clause (wa-huwa makẓūm – “while given in to anger”) refers to Jonah’s resentment against God’s order to preach repentance to the Ninevites, which led to his escape.41 The verse apparently functions as a warning for the prophet not to protest against God’s command and to try to dispense with his mission rather than waiting patiently for the decree of his Lord.42 But its connection to the preceding narrative is also noteworthy: the issue of forgetfulness and doubt in God is an omnipresent human problem, with which God’s chosen messengers also quarrel. Verse 48, moreover, is related to Q 52:48–49, which starts with the same phrase and encourages the prophet, and indirectly his followers, to worship God despite confrontations with their opponents.43 They shed light on each other by emphasizing, on the one hand, human reactions to affliction (Q 68:48) and, on the other hand, God’s care and comfort for the believers in hardship (Q 52:48). In Q 68, however, the point of view changes in the following two verses, and attention is also turned to God’s action, thus exemplifying God’s care and mercy. Verse 49 alludes to God’s intervention and his answer to Jonah’s prayer (Jonah 2:11): Jonah is not cast ashore as a disgraced and condemned person but is granted divine mercy and chosen by God. Particularly striking is the designation of Jonah as among the righteous (min al-ṣāliḥīn) and not explicitly as a prophet or messenger so that he may serve as a general example and not just as a parallel to the prophet in salvation history.44 That he is not named, but referred to by an epithet, might also stress his role as an afflicted person instead of as one on a prophetic mission. Thus, Jonah serves as a model for a wrongdoer whose prayer, uttered in despair, was answered. This representation of Jonah as an imperfect, but repenting and therefore saved, person is widespread also in Jewish and Christian piety. In Judaism, especially on Yom Kippur, when the book of Jonah is part of the liturgical reading, Jonah’s role as a repentant sinner is underlined. In Christian tradition, the image of the saving,

88  Hannelies Koloska forgiving God despite human misconduct – as in Jonah’s case – is highly emphasized.45 The qurʾānic verses allude to those traditions and connect them: Jonah strays off the divinely commanded course but calls for God’s help, even as God’s saving grace is described. The verses function as a well-known testimony for divine mercy despite human fallibility, and their purpose lies in consolation and encouragement for the prophet and his community. Sūrat aṣ-Ṣāffāt (Q 37:139–48) The most elaborate narrative of the Jonah story is presented in Sūrat aṣ-Ṣāffāt. This sura belongs to the first middle Meccan suras and has a remarkable literary form connecting it with the roughly contemporary suras Q 54 and Q 26. All of them consist of a tripartite structure with a narrative section in the middle containing prophet and punishment stories, and in each of these suras, refrains mark the end of passages.46 In the middle section of Q 37, refrains are found at the end of narrative sections47 as well as introductory sentences.48 The refrains underline God’s help and blessing for those who trust and believe in him and operate as a commentary on the stories. The opening sentences serve as headlines that disclose the relationship between God and his chosen messengers. Focal points of the sura include the integration of the prophet into the chain of former messengers (mursalūn) and the emphasis on the elected servants of God (ʿibādu Allāhi l-muḥlaṣūn). The narratives about the biblical figures Noah, Abraham, Moses and Aaron, Elijah, Lot, and Jonah as God’s believing servants (ʿibādinā l-muʾminūn)49 speak about their actions, divine support, and relief. These narratives generally exemplify God’s care for his messengers and servants. The Jonah story completes the narrative section and appears to be the climax because it contains the three main aspects of the narratives: the chosenness of the messengers, their rescue, and the fate of the warned people: (139) Jonah, too, was one of the messengers. (140) When he fled to the laden ship (141) and drew lots and lost. (142) Then the fish swallowed him, since he was blameworthy. (143) Had he not been one of those who praise, (144) he would have remained in its belly until the day when they will be resurrected. (145) Then We cast him ashore at a desolate place while he was sick (146) and We caused a tree of gourds to grow over him. (147) We sent him as a messenger to a hundred thousand or more. (148) And they believed; so We gave them enjoyment for a while. (139) wa inna yūnusa la-min al-mursalīn (140) idh abaqa ila l-fulki l-mashḥūn (141) fa-sāhama fa-kāna min al-mudḥaḍīn (142) fa-l-taqamahu l-ḥūtu wa huwa mulīm (143) fa-law lā annahū kāna min al-musabbiḥīn (144) la-labitha fī baṭnihī ilā yawmi yubʿathūn

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  89 (145) fa-nabadhnāhu bi-l-ʿarāʾ wa huwa saqīm (146) wa anbatnā ʿalayhi shajaratan man yaqṭīn (147) wa arsalnāhu ilā mi’ati alfin aw yazidūn (148) fa āmanū fa-mattaʿnāhum ilā ḥīn The narrative is introduced by a formulaic phrase describing Jonah as one of the messengers, as Elijah and Lot were described in preceding verses. He is introduced, like all other figures in this sura, with his name, Yūnus.50 The verses then recollect the story of Jonah in general lines. Johns has already pointed at the parallels and differences between this story and the preceding narratives, underlining the outstanding position of the Jonah pericope:51 Jonah is the only one who turns aside from his call; he is described as blameworthy,52 and, moreover, the people to whom he is sent eventually repent. It might also be noteworthy that on the linguistic level, the verses include a number of hapax legomena – this as well distinguishes the Jonah story from other narratives.53 The narration has reminded scholars of the biblical account, and it has also been recognized that the sequence of events differs from how they are told in the Bible. Whereas in the biblical story, a plant grows over Jonah after he has preached to the Ninevites, in the qurʾānic narrative, Jonah rests under it just after being cast onto the land.54 Some scholars have considered it as a mistake, whereas others have seen it as a purposeful act in retelling the story.55 A few art historians have recognized the strong resemblance of the narrative sequence to the Christian artistic representation of the story,56 although this is not the only place where the qurʾānic text refers not only to a text but also to an image. Radscheit has shown that images can affect texts and vice versa and that intermediality can be found in the Qurʾān.57 As described, Jonah’s resting under a plant was the most prominent picture in the early Christian representations, and it was presented right after an image of Jonah being spewed out; the representation in Q 37 resembles this image. It also describes the plant as a gourd, which is the plant depicted in Christian artistic images. It is also important to note that verses 143–45 refer to Q 68:49 and its representation of Jonah’s state in the belly of the fish and God’s action in structure.58 But it is changed with regard to the contents: in Q 68, God’s grace was emphasized, but now Jonah’s prayer (mina l-musabbiḥīn) and the comparison between his stay in the belly with being in the realm of the death (la-labitha fī baṭnihī ilā yawmi yubʿathūn) is underlined. Here, it alludes to the image of Jonah as a symbol of hope for the answering of prayers and for rescue from death, as known from Jewish texts and especially from Christian artistic sources. The qurʾānic text nonetheless does not stress the symbolic meaning of Jonah’s rescue as a sign of resurrection from the dead. No typological reading as known from the Christian reception can be deduced. It rather incorporates the allegorical reading of Jonah’s stay in the fish’s belly and his rescue and changes it into a literal description. The image of Jonah lying under the gourd vine does not symbolize eternal peace or the sleep of death but shows God’s providence. Schreiner, following Claus Schedl, has suggested that the phrase bi-l-ʿarāʾi could be read as “in nakedness” and not “on a desolate place.” Whereas he dismisses this reading

90  Hannelies Koloska in Q 37, he chooses it for Q 68.59 Even though this reading seems grammatically difficult, and the phrase, at first sight, can easily be read as a reference to Jonah 2:11 (“the fish vomited Jonah out upon the dry land”), it is appealing to read the description as “we cast him off in nakedness” in view of the Christian imagery where Jonah is almost always presented naked.60 But perhaps it is a pun that allows for both interpretations. The last verse of the narrative returns to the biblical story and describes Jonah’s mission and the repentance of the Ninevites.61 It appears to be an addition to complete the story and to include theologically relevant detail to the story as the focus is solely on the representation of Jonah.62 Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (Q 21:87–88) Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ, a late middle Meccan sura, stresses the eschatological urgency of the qurʾānic message and the advent of the last judgment and describes disputes about eschatological topics. It shows the rejection of the message due to missing proof for the announced punishment or other evidence for the divine source of the message. Moreover, it is characterized by the repetition of the basic confession of the uniqueness of God.63 It emphasizes God’s mercy often, by the use of the divine epithet “ar-raḥmān.”64 The narrative section gives examples for comparable situations and shows God’s help for those in trouble. The story of Jonah is referred to within a sequence of reminiscences of prophet stories, in the course of which Jonah is mentioned within a loose chain of people who call (nādā) for God’s help and whose call is answered:65 (87) The man of the fish went off angry and thought We would not have power over him. He called in the darknesses: There is no god but you. Exalted are you. I have been from among the wrongdoers. (88) We responded to him and saved him from the distress. Thus We will save the believers. (87) wa dhā n-nūni idh dhahaba mughāḍiban fa-ẓanna an lan naqdira ʿalayhi fa-nādā fī aẓ-ẓulumāti an lā illāha illā anta subḥānaka innī kuntu mina ẓ-ẓālimīn (88) fa-stajabnā lahu wa najjaynāhu mina l-ghammi wa kadhālika nunjī al-muʾminīn Jonah is referred to as dhū n-nūn (“man of the fish”), which Reynolds, and others before him, read as a reflection of a Christian Palestinian Aramaic epithet.66 But the episode seems to resemble a shared Jewish and Christian presentation of Jonah: his anger and his escape, understood as resentment of God’s order and as an attempt to flee from God’s presence and authority, recall rabbinic explanations.67 The growing reference to specific details known from Jewish and Christian traditions is a

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  91 remarkable development within middle Meccan suras.68 The Jonah story shows this development by adding details known in Jewish and Christian circles. This transformation of the Bible by approaching, understanding, and interpreting its text differently shows its continuation in the emerging Muslim community and therefore within the Qurʾān. A trifold reference thus has to be noted: the verses refer not just to those inter-texts but also have a strong relation to previous qurʾānic texts and relate to the context of the sura. The whole passage focuses on Jonah’s prayer and the divine answer. While in Q 68 God’s grace was the focal point, and in Q 37 Jonah was merely described as one of those who praise God, now Jonah’s prayer is cited and emphasized. The ambiguous expression ẓulumāt (darknesses) opens up the possibility to understand Jonah’s condition metaphorically69 and to relate it to different contexts. It is reminiscent of the Hebrew word “ḥošekh” (“darkness”), which is also used metaphorically.70 These verses do not, however, resemble the psalm in the biblical book of Jonah but include, in few words, a creed, a glorification, and a confession of sin. It thereby displays basic elements of Jewish and Christian prayer but furthermore repeats qurʾānic exclamations also occurring in the context of the sura.71 Jonah’s prayer serves as a model for a formulaic prayer but does not primarily resemble a Jewish or Christian prayer. Moreover, Jonah is an example for divine rescue for the believers (v. 88) and serves as an antetype for a penitent and saved person. Whether this saving grace – focused on in different places within the sura72will reach the believers in this world or the hereafter is not explicitly stated. The sura’s subjects of disbelief and repentance, and punishment and forgiveness, are, however, illustrated in the verses. The passage reveals a strong relation to the Jewish and Christian image of Jonah as known from liturgical traditions and from pictorial representations, but at the same time, Jonah is transformed into a more qurʾānic figure due to increased inner-textual references and the solace of the believers (v. 88). It somehow serves as a puzzle picture: Jonah is a recognizable Jewish/Christian figure, but the whole passage turns him into an example for the believers. His wrongdoing is mentioned; however, it is not judged as in Q 68 and 37. The description of Jonah’s act of regaining God’s mercy and God’s saving action shows a strong homiletic tendency. Sūrat Yūnus (Q 10:98) Although Q 10 is named after the occurrence of the Jonah story in its last part, Jonah is, in actuality, not referenced.73 In contrast to all previous texts, his situation and condition are not dwelled upon. Instead the “people of Jonah” are alluded to in the context of an admonishment and solace addressed to the prophet concerning the rejection of his message by the opponents and their refusal to believe in divinely given signs: (98) If only (or: Why did not) another city came to believe and benefited from it, other than the people of Jonah. When they believed we lifted from them a shameful punishment in the life of this world. We gave them enjoyment for a while.

92  Hannelies Koloska (98) fa-law lā kānat qaryatun āmanat fa-nafaʿahā īmānuhā illā qawma yūnusa lammā āmanū kashafnā ʿanhum ʿadhāba l-khizyi f ī l-ḥayāti d-dunyā wa mattaʿnāhum ilā ḥīn Reynolds has pointed out that the verse resembles the interpretation of the “sign of Jonah” in Matthew and Luke: “the Qurʾān refers to the Jonah story in precisely the same way: to contrast the repentance of Jonah’s people with the stubbornness of its audience.”74 He also has noted that Jonah served Christian writers as an “allegory for the stubbornness of the Jews and mercifulness of God to the nations.”75 Even though Christian interpretations obviously form a background to this passage, Reynolds fails to see – in contrast to Schreiner – the absence of a typological reading in the Qurʾān.76 The people of Jonah serve as an example; they are a “sign” (v. 97) in the sense that they confirm the truth of the message, but they do not serve as accusant on Judgment Day. The opposite is the case: they are spared punishment in this world, but they will be judged in the world to come. Thus the “sign of Jonah” is a positive sign, stressing also God’s forgiveness.77 Jonah is not presented as a prefiguration of the prophet, and any anti-Jewish polemic is also missing. Rather, the verse forms a climax within the sura because the Ninevites form an exception from the warned people who always turn their backs. They constitute an exemplar of another possible behavior than the attitude of the adherents of the prophet and his community.

Conclusion The qurʾānic passages dealing with Jonah show in a very striking way that a narrative concerning a biblical story has to be seen as an integral part of a pluralistic retelling and interpreting of the Bible and as yet another reconfiguration of the transmitted Bible. Jewish and Christian receptions in texts and pictures need to be taken into consideration to grasp the full dimension of the qurʾānic rereading of the story. The figure of Jonah resembles the image shown in Jewish and Christian representations in liturgical practice and artistic depictions. On the one hand, Jonah is an example for human repentance and divine grace. On the other, the repentance of the Ninevites is alluded to. Special emphasis is laid on Jonah as a model for a sincere worshipper and as an example for divine providence for the believers. Features of the Christian representations are omitted: when referring to elements of Christian iconography and retelling them, Jonah is not a symbol for eternal peaceful repose. Any typological reading of the Jonah story is also purposefully abandoned. The story serves special purposes in the context of each sura in which it is mentioned as well as within various inter-qurʾānic contexts. Jonah develops from a blameworthy (Q 68) to a fully repenting person (Q 21). Whereas he was saved, at first, solely because of God’s grace, he is later rescued because of his strong repentance. Thus, he evolves in the Qurʾān from a rather negative example (Q 68) into a quite positive figure (Q 21). This transformation reflects, moreover, the community’s own re-examination, through its appropriation and exclusion of other interpretations, of the Jonah story in the course of its own development.

Figure 3.1  Cubiculum of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, 2nd–4th century CE; taken from: Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, Le catacombe cristiane di Roma: Origini, sviluppo, apparati decorativi, documentazione epigrafica (Regensburg, Germany: Schnell & Steiner, 1998), ill. 29.

Figure 3.2  Sarcophagus with Jonah story, Rome, late 3rd century CE, Lateran Museum; taken from: Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, ed., Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, vol. 1, Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967), ill. 11, rep. I.35.

Figure 3.3  Endymion Sarcophagus, Rome, 3rd century CE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; taken from: Paul Zanker and Björn Christian Ewald, Mit Mythen leben. Die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage (Munich: Hirmer, 2004), p. 322, ill. 15.

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  95

Figure 3.4  Jonah Praying, Asia Minor, 280–290 CE, The Cleveland Museum of Art; taken from: James Snyder, Henry Luttikhuizen, and Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk, Snyder’s Medieval Art (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006), p. 4.

Notes 1 This essay is a revised version of a paper presented in the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin at the workshop: “Religious Narratives at the Crossroads of Scripture, Tradition and Culture: Reflections on the Jonah Story” (July 5–6, 2012). I should like to thank Nora Katharina Schmid, Angelika Neuwirth, Joseph Witztum, and Islam Dayeh for their helpful comments. See lately Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the ‘People of the Book’ in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). 2 Matthias Radscheit, “The Iconography of the Qurʾān,” in Crossings and Passages in Genre and Culture, ed. Christian Szyska and Friederike Pannewick (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003), 167–84; Michael Marx, “Glimpses of a Mariology in the Qurʾan: From Hagiography to Theology via Religious-Political Debate,” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika

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3

4

5 6

7 8

9 10

Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 542–44; Serafim Seppälä, “Reminiscences of Icons in the Qurʾān?,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 22.1 (2011): 3–21. The chronological order of the texts is based on Nöldeke and Schwally’s chronology of the suras and its specification for the Meccan suras by Nicolai Sinai; see Theodor Nöldeke and Friedrich Schwally, Geschichte des Qorāns, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Leipzig: T. Weicher, 1909); Chronologisch-literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar zum Koran, part 1: Die frühmekkanischen Suren, ed. Nicolai Sinai, assisted by Nora K. Schmid (Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), http://corpuscoranicum. de/kommentar. This approach is elaborated in different works by Angelika Neuwirth, see, for example, Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010); idem, “Structure and the Emergence of Community,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 140–58. For studies in this field see Neuwirth, Marx, and Sinai, eds., The Qurʾān in Context; especially Nicolai Sinai and Angelika Neuwirth, “Introduction,” 1–26. These premises form the basis of the chronological and literary commentary of the Corpus Coranicum project (http://corpuscoranicum.de/kommentar/index/sure/1/ vers/1); see also Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran: Handkommentar mit Übersetzung von Angelika Neuwirth, vol. I, Frühmekkanische Suren (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011); idem, “Imagining Mary – Disputing Jesus: Reading Sūrat Maryam and Related Meccan Texts within the Qurʾānic Communication Process,” in Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses: Innen- und Außenansichten unseres muslimischen Nachbarn, ed. Benjamin Jokisch, Ulrich Rebstock, and Lawrence Conrad (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2009), 383–416; Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾan as Process,” in The Qurʾān in Context, 407–39. Stefan Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption der biblischen Jonaerzählung,” Judaica 34.4 (1978): 149–72, reprinted in Die jüdische Bibel in islamischer Auslegung, eds. Friedmann Eißler and Matthias Morgenstern (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 173–95. Recent books in qurʾānic studies claiming to extract the “biblical subtext” of the Qurʾān drop far behind Schreiner’s approach because they ignore the originality of the qurʾānic text and do not recognize the complex process by which traditions were negotiated; see, for example, Gabriel Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge, 2010), 117–30. Johns instead tries to shed light on the different perspectives from which Jonah is presented in the qurʾānic context and to elaborate inner-qurʾānic relations, excluding mostly intertextual relations. See A. H. Johns, “Jonah in the Qurʾān: An Essay on Thematic Counterpoint,” JQS 5.2 (2003): 48–71. Ayaz Asfar compares the biblical narrative on Jonah and the account in Q 37 from a narratological perspective without taking the inner-biblical as well as inner-qurʾānic and intertextual references into account. See Ayaz Asfar, “A  Comparative Study of the Art of Jonah/Yūnus Narrative in the Bible and the Qurʾān,” Islamic Studies 48.3 (2009): 319–39. Although Heribert Busse’s article on Jonah deals mainly with the later Islamic reception of the story, the author stresses important theological problems in the story and refers to some important post-biblical traditions. See EQ, s.v. “Jonah,” by Heribert Busse. Griffith argues that “the Qurʾān re-presents the stories of many of the Bible’s major figures with the parameters of its own, distinctive prophetology, which is an apologetic typology in support of Muḥammad’s vision,” Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 71. Matt. 12:38–42: “Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. But he answered them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish,

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  97 so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” Matt. 16:1–4: “And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, ‘When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.” And in the morning, “It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.” You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.’ So he left them and departed.” Luke 11:29–32: “When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation. It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.’ ” (All biblical quotes are cited after the English Standard Version). 11 Jeremias and Gerhards point out that already in Jewish reception, Jonah was understood as a “figure symbolizing the way through death into a new life.” See Joachim Jeremias, “Ιωνᾶς,” in Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938), 3:410–13; Meik Gerhards, “Zum motivgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Verschlingung des Jona,” Theologische Zeitschrift 59.3 (2003): 222–47. 12 “Let us review all the generations in turn, and learn how from generation to generation the Lord has given a place for repentance unto them that desire to turn to Him. Noah preached repentance, and they that obeyed were saved. Jonah preached destruction unto the men of Nineveh; but they, repenting of their sins, obtained pardon of God by their prayers and received salvation, albeit they were aliens from God” (1 Clem. 7:5–7). 13 Uwe Steffen, Die Jona-Geschichte: Ihre Auslegung und Darstellung im Judentum, Christentum und Islam (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1994), 83–7. 14 See Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on the Jonah book. For a German translation of the text and an introduction to the commentary, see Charlotte Köckert, “Der Jona-Kommentar des Theodor von Mopsuestia: Eine christliche Jona-Auslegung an der Wende zum 5. Jahrhundert (mit einer Übersetzung des Kommentars),” in Der problematische Prophet: Die biblische Jona-Figur in Exegese, Theologie, Literatur und Bildender Kunst, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger and Wilhelm Kühlmann (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2011), 1–38. 15 “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (Cor. 15:2–9). 16 For example, Aphrahat, Demonstrations IV: “Jonah also prayed before his God from the depth of the sea, and he was heard and answered, and was delivered without suffering any harm; for his prayer pierced the depths, conquered the waves and overpowered

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17

18 19 20

21 22

23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

tempests; it pierced the cloud, flew through the air, opened the heavens, and approached the throne of majesty by means of Gabriel who brings prayers before God. As a result the depths vomited up the prophetic man, and the fish brought Jonah safely to dry land.” Translation from Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987). See also Origen, De oratione, part 1, chap. XIII. For example, the prologue in Jerome, Commentarius in Ionam prophetam: Kommentar zu dem Propheten Jona, translated and introduced by Siegfried Risse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). See also Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chapter CVII, in van Winden, J.C.M., An Early Christian Philosopher: Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, Chapters One to Nine (Leiden: Brill, 1971). Arne Effenberger, Frühchristliche Kunst und Kultur: Von den Anfängen bis zum 7. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1986), 24–7. For a visual image, see http://ssmith.people.ysu.edu/ecbyzwebpage/velatio1.jpg. The central medallion, however, contains a depiction of a young man carrying a lamb around his neck with two sheep next to him. It is surrounded by semicircular sections containing peacocks and quails. Birds can also be seen in the corner spaces. The “lamb bearer” was a common figure within pagan art. It is not possible to decide whether the image was originally adopted with the intention of having an allegoric meaning to symbolize Christ as the “good shepherd” (John 10). All illustrations allude to paradisiac peace, whereby the peacock represents resurrection and eternal life. This is obviously connected to the reading of Jonah 1:1 to 4:11 during the Minha praying at Yom Kippur. See Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 397. Steffen, Jona-Geschichte, 62. The “Apostolic Constitution,” dating back to the fourth century, also includes a prayer of petition containing a list of biblical figures whose prayers or sacrifices were answered or accepted by God. Jonah is mentioned next to Daniel in the lions’ den and the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace. For a visual image, see http://ssmith.people.ysu.edu/ecbyzwebpage/sarc_jonah.jpg. For a visual image, see http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/ search/254590. An extensive study on this subject has been published by Friedrich Gerke, Die christlichen Sarkophage der vorkonstantinischen Zeit (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1978). See also Josef Engemann, “Biblische Themen im Bereich der frühchristlichen Kunst,” in Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum, ed. Georg Schöllingen and Clemens Scholten (Münster: Aschendorff, 1996), 553–56. Bezalel Narkiss, “The Sign of Jonah,” Gesta 18.1 (1979): 63–76, here p.  66; C. O. Nordström, “Some Jewish Legends in Byzantine Art,” Byzantion 25–7 (1955–1957): 487–508, here p.  504; Eduard Stommel, “Zum Problem der frühchristlichen Jonadarstellungen,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 1 (1958): 112–15. The Midrash draws mainly on Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (eighth century) and the Babylonian Talmud. See Encyclopaedia Judaica, s.v. “Smaller Midrashim,” by Moshe David Herr, 14:187. Anna Maria Schwemer, Studien zu den frühjüdischen Prophetenlegenden Vitae prophetarum: Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1995), 73; Narkiss, “Sign of Jonah,” 64. Narkiss, “Sign of Jonah,” 64. Stommel, “Problem,” 114. Steffen, Jona-Geschichte, 72. For a visual image, see http://metmuseum.org/collection/ the-collection-online/search/479676. Ruth Ovadiah, “Jonah in a Mosaic Pavement at Beth Guvrin,” Israel Exploration Journal 24.3/4 (1974): 214–15. For a visual image of Jonah praying, see http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1965.240.

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  99 34 Wolfgang Wischmeyer, “Die vorkonstantinische christliche Kunst in neuem Lichte: die Cleveland-Statuetten,” Vigiliae Christianae, 35.3 (1981): 263–65. 35 For a visual image, see http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=2123. 36 Besides the texts that speak about the Jonah story, Jonah is mentioned in lists of prophets in Q 6:86 and 4:163. 37 For a detailed analysis of the sura and its chronological dating, see Nicolai Sinai’s commentary in Chronologisch-literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar zum Koran and Angelika Neuwirth’s commentary in Der Koran, 567–85. 38 The English translation is a modified version of that of M. Pickthall. See Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Quran (New York: A. A. Knopf 1930) and subsequent editions. 39 Schreiner assumes the reference to Jonah as a later addition to the sura and sees these verses as the chronologically latest text. He argues that the passage presupposes the other qurʾānic texts about Jonah and serves as a summary. He argues mainly that verse 48 refers to Q 21:87, which contains the determination of nādā (Jonah confesses his faith and calls for God’s help). The epithet ṣāḥib al-ḥūt according to Schreiner is, moreover, the arabicized version of dhū n-nūn (Q 21:87), and verses 49–50 refer to Q 37:143–48. See Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 164–66. A later expansion of the sura might not be excluded, but the argument has to be supported by philological arguments like unusual verse length or terminology. It should also be asked which reasons could have generated such an insertion: Does a new motive or discourse change or support the existing text, or is there a need for harmonizing the text with later qurʾānic proclamations? Philological analyses as well as the thematic structure of the sura, however, do not disclose any reason for a later insertion of the verses. In contrast to Schreiner, the passage in Q 68 seems to be the first mention of Jonah in the Qurʾān and thus serves as a reference point, as will be shown. Interestingly, however, the usage of the letter nūn at the beginning of the sura may be referring to the Aramaic word for “fish” (nūn). See Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1926), 155. 40 See Jonah 2. Nādā can be employed in the Qurʾān to describe the call for help by God’s chosen messengers or people who are in distress, such as Noah (Q 37:75), Lot (Q 27:83, 38:41), and Zecharia (Q 21:89). See Elsaid M. Badawi and Muhammad Abdel Haleem, Arabic-English Dictionary of Qurʾānic Usage (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 924. Schreiner’s remark that nādā is used intransitively with the meaning “calling to something, to summon people to belief in God” (Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 164) cannot be verified in qurʾānic usage. It is, in all instances, followed by the preposition li- or ilā. An allusion to Jonah’s preaching to the Ninevites can therefore be excluded. 41 Nicolai Sinai argues that its relation to the expression kaẓama ghayẓahū, which is testified on relatively safe grounds in various pre-Islamic poetical texts and to the quasi-active participle kāẓim (see Q 43:17, 16:58), allows for understanding makẓūm as “unjustifiedly angry” and not merely as commonly assumed “distressed or low spirited.” See Sinai’s analysis of Q 68 in Chronologisch-literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar zum Koran, http://corpuscoranicum.de/kommentar/index/sure/68/vers/1. 42 See also Johns, “Jonah in the Qurʾān,” 54. 43 Wa-ṣbir li-ḥukmi rabbika fa-innaka bi-aʿyuninā wa-sabbiḥ bi-ḥamdi rabbika ḥīna taqūmu . . . Q 52 belongs, like Q 68, according to N. Sinai, to subgroup IIIb of the early Meccan suras. See Sinai, “Qurʾān as Process,” 422–24, and Chronologischliteraturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar zum Koran. 44 Johns, to the contrary, associates each pericope with “an aspect of Muhammad’s experience.” See Johns, “Jonah in the Qurʾān,” 67. 45 See, for example, Ephrem’s hymn about Jonah. He writes that Jonah had to learn to have pity with the penitent by his own experience; Jonah himself was an example of a sinful person who was rescued. See Des heiligen Ephräm des Syrers ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 1: Rede über den Propheten Jonas und die Busse der Niniviten (Kempten: J. Kösel, 1919), in reference to Jonas 3:2–3.

100  Hannelies Koloska 46 Hannelies Koloska and N. K. Schmid, “Textual Developments and the Emergence of a Community: Observations on Qurʾānic Chronology in middle Meccan Surahs” (forthcoming). 47 Verses 78–81: wa-taraknā ʿalayhi fī l-ākhirīn / salāmun ʿalā nūḥin fī l-ʿālamīn / innā ka-dhālika najzi l-muḥsinīn / innahū min ʿibādina l-muʾminīn (“And we left for him among the later generations:/Peace be upon Noah among the worlds./Thus do we reward those who do right./He was of our believing servants.”); see also vv. 108–11, 119–22, 129–32. 48 Verse 123: wa-inna ilyāsa la-mina l-mursalīn, see also verses 133 and 139. 49 See Q 37:37. 50 Jeffery points out that the form of the name is connected to the Christian-Palestinian Aramaic form Yūnis. See Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary in the Qurʾān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938), 296. To deduce from this detection a solely Christian subtext (see, e. g., Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext, 129) for all qurʾānic pericopes means not paying attention to the differences between the qurʾānic passages. 51 Johns, “Jonah in the Qurʾān,” 56–9. 52 In Islamic tradition, the phrase is frequently read wa-huwa malūm; see ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Khaṭīb, Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt (Damascus: Dār Saʻd al-Dīn, 2002), 8:59–60. The passive participle (form I) malūm is used several times in the Qurʾān (17:29, 39; 23:6; 51:54; 70:30), whereas the active participle (form IV) mulīm can be found only in 37:142 and 51:40. Angelika Neuwirth, in a discussion, underlined that the difference of active and passive is fundamental and that both words are not interchangeable. It should therefore be understood as mulīm nafsahu (“blaming himself”). The object is omitted, perhaps because of the rhyme pattern. Al-Khaṭīb also gives this interpretation (Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt, 59–60). Following this argument, the gradual change of Jonah from a blameworthy person (Q 68) and a person blaming himself (Q 37) to an angry but fully penitent person (Q 21) would be even more explicit. But according to Ullman’s extensive lexicographical compilation, in all instances from pre-Islamic sources, mulīm is to be understood as “being/acting blameworthy.” See Manfred Ullmann, Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache (Wiesbaden: O. Harrossowitz, 1970– 2000), 1:1841–43. It anyhow remains doubtful to assume a simple synonymic reading of mulīm and malūm. Special attention should be drawn to Q 51:40 in which Pharaoh – cast into the sea – is also described as wa-huwa mulīm. His penitence represented in 10:92–94 shows similarities to Jonah’s repentance in 21:87–88. The motif of penitence relates Jonah to Pharaoh. The phrase wa-huwa mulīm in Q 51 could thus already hint at the change of Pharaoh’s behavior that is explicitly stated in the later sura, Q 10. The Jonah story in Q 37 refers to the story of Pharaoh and draws either a parallel between the two’s behavior (“they blamed themselves”) or comments on their actions (“they were blameworthy”). 53 See verse 140: abaqa; verse 141: al-mudḥaḍīn; verse 146: yaqṭīn. 54 Usually yaqṭīn denotes a plant without stipe or stem, like a gourd. See Lane’s An Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. q-ṭ-n, 8:2961. Ambros considers a derivation from the Hebrew plant name qîqāyôn, as proposed by A. Jeffery, as highly implausible. See Arne Ambros, A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004), 227. The usage refers evidently to the common translation and understanding of the biblical qîqāyôn as a gourd vine (Septuagint reads: kolokýnthē, Peshitta: shrūrā d-qarʾā) that expanded into the pictorial representations of the story. 55 For example, Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 155. 56 Narkiss, “Sign of Jonah,” 66. 57 See n. 3 for further reference. 58 Q 37:143 contains a subjunctive clause like Q 68:49 and describes Jonah and his condition, as in Q 68, in ḥāl clauses. It also repeats verbatim “bi-l-ʿarāʾi.” 59 He translates: “Verily we would have condemned him in nakedness.” See Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 165.

The Sign of Jonah: Transformations  101 60 Schreiner and Schedl do not refer to the Christian representation but to the idea of complete condemnation. 61 See Jonah 4:11 (“Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons”). 62 The technique of adding details to older suras to add new theological details or to draw connections to central topics or motifs of later suras can be observed frequently in Meccan Suras; see Neuwirth, Frühmekkanische Suren, 61–2. 63 See vv. 22, 25, 56, 66, 108. 64 Q See vv. 26, 36, 42, 75, 83, 84, 85, 107, 112. 65 See Noah (v. 76); Job (v. 83); Zechariah (vv. 89–90). 66 Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext, 129. 67 Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 158. 68 For example, the contemporary suras Q 19, 18, and 27. 69 See Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 158. 70 For example, Job 15:22; Psalm 18:29. See also Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 158–60. 71 See n. 59. 72 See n. 60. 73 Extensive remarks about the relation between the sura and its name can be found in Johns, “Jonah in the Qurʾān,” 65–7. 74 Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext, 129; Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 160–63. 75 Reynolds, The Qurʾān and Its Biblical Subtext, 129. 76 Schreiner, “Muhammads Rezeption,” 160–63. 77 The penitence of the people in Jonah is thus connected to the repentance of Pharaoh mentioned in the same sura (vv. 90–2). For more parallels between the Jonah and Pharaoh stories, see n. 48.

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Part 2

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4 End of Hope Sūras 10–15, Despair and a Way Out of Mecca Walid A. Saleh

By the time we reach Sūra 61 (aṣ-Ṣaff) of the Qurʾān, we have a full-fledged, articulated theology of war. There is certitude here, an unwavering voice, a God who wants one thing from the believers; all the novel themes related to war that have been wending their way through the Qurʾān have reached full articulation. After a hasty benediction addressed to the Lord, the sura berates the believers, “Why don’t you do what you say? It is detestable in the eyes of God that you should say that which you fail to do” (Q 61:2–3). This is a rather harsh criticism for those who are believers. This word for “detestable” (maqt) is used in the Qurʾān about the unbelievers (Q 35:39; 40:10, 35) as well as in reference to the now-taboo pagan practice of marrying the wives of one’s father (Q 4:22). The impact of this statement is all the more dramatic because the neglected act is left unspecified. We are not told what the deed is that the believers said they would do yet failed to perform. However, the immediately subsequent verse clarifies what the issue at stake was, and it does so in a most startling way, by telling us what God loves: “God loves those who fight in his path (in) one mighty line, as if they are a fortified structure.” Verse 61:4 is thus declarative and provides a mirror image of the detested act mentioned immediately before it. The disclosure of what God detests and loves is unsentimental, precisely because the objects of this detestation and love are so frightening. Fighting is the border act, the liminal test, the distinguishing feature, the one that differentiates the members of this community into true believers and hypocrites. They promised to fight, and they should fight. The sura reminds the followers of Muhammad of the iniquities of the Jews toward Moses and later toward Jesus (Q 61:5–6). They are coming close to becoming a recalcitrant community themselves. The believers are offered a bargain, a trade that will save them from chastisement (Q 61:10). If they believe in God and his messenger, and fight in the path of God by offering their souls and their wealth, then they will be forgiven their sins, be admitted to Paradise (Q 61:11–12), and achieve conquests (fatḥ) of some sort (Q 61:13). The sura ends (Q 61:14) with a call to the followers of Muhammad to be partisans of his faith just as were the early Christians, the disciples of Jesus. Having supported Jesus, this faction of the Jews was guaranteed dominion (ẓuhūr) over the recalcitrant faction. God made sure to make them the victorious faction of the Jews, implying that the victory of Christianity was preordained. This historical argument is given in support of verse

106  Walid A. Saleh 61:9, which states, “He has sent his messenger with guidance and the true religion to make it overwhelm other religions even though the idolaters are averse.” The term in this verse for “overwhelm” is the same as in verse 61:14 (ẓuhūr). War is waged for dominion.1 Should Muslims support Muhammad the way the disciples supported Jesus, the Muslims will be as dominant. This is one of the few places in the Qurʾān that shows awareness of the supercessionist theology of Christianity, which it recycles and extends to Islam. Where does this qurʾānic theology of war come from? The usual treatments of jihād and war take such themes for granted as a natural, if not inevitable, part of the Qurʾān. One is presented with an outline of what the Qurʾān has to say about these topics. But placing a theology of fighting at the heart of the new faith is not the only possible route that this early community could have taken.2 In this essay, I  am interested in examining the modes of argumentation as well as the developments that led to this new conviction. How did it happen that war came to be placed at the heart of the mission of one who had been for long a mere warner (nadhīr, one of the most extensively used epithets for prophets and for Muhammad in the Qurʾān, see, e.g., Q 17:105 and 25:1, as often paired with the term bashīr, a bearer of glad tidings), one with no power (sulṭān, Q 14:11), one who did not want a fee (ajr) for his ministering (Q 10:72; 12:104; and especially Sūra 26:109, 127, 145, 164, 180 – clearly he is no poet who is asking for a reward), one who assured his listeners that he was not a magistrate (muṣayṭir, Q 88:22, the Arabic term is clearly an Arabized version of the Latin), or one who would not take a tax (kharāj, Q 23:72). He was so powerless that he was not an overseer (ḥasīb) over them (Q 6:52), God being the one who takes stock of humanity’s deeds (this epithet is applied only to God in the Qurʾān). Muhammad is at pains to state that he not a keeper of their fate or capable of controlling any circumstances (ḥafīẓ, Q 6:104, 107; 42:48). He is not their agent, nor is he responsible for them (wakīl, Q 6:66; 10:108; 17:54; 25:43; 39:41; 42:6). He is certainly not a tyrant (jabbār, Q 50:45). These numerous terms that describe and circumscribe Muhammad’s role as a prophet are fundamental to his self-understanding in Mecca and also to the limits that he set for his preaching. This self-presentation of the function of Muhammad as a prophet is not a haphazard effort; clearly it is at pains to distance him from any accusation of harboring political ambitions through his prophetic ministering. But these limits soon came to be seen as disadvantageous for his career and as a meekness unbefitting for the prophet of Medina, who took charge of the fate of his followers – offering them Paradise in exchange for their lives. Moving to Medina in and of itself is not a sufficient explanation for the institution of fighting as a central tenet in the reformulated faith, as has often been assumed. But one would presume that Muhammad could have managed to continue preaching about his God and the coming chastisement in his new environment, now that he had a modicum of protection for himself and his band. There is no compelling reason in his relocation for this radical shift to war, of turning conflict into the backbone of the new faith. He could have become anything but a warrior in charge of armies. The issue, then, is to locate those arguments in the Qurʾān that occasioned this shift (or rather, argued for this shift) and to examine

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  107 the theological notions that bridge the old and the new, analyzing those terms and ideas used to argue for this new theology and present it as the inevitable outcome. Sūra 61 exhibits characteristic features of this radical shift, what I have come to call the cessation of concern for the conversion of the unbelievers and the realization that preaching has reached its limits. Concomitant with this new apathy is a pervasive despair that was gnawing at the heart of the mission. For a prophetic career, this is a profound moment; to admit to the futility of preaching is to call into question the whole enterprise. If it was not a complete loss of faith, then it was a moment which necessitated a radical reassessment that, I believe, was the beginning of this radical shift toward militant activism. This reassessment of his career has to have preceded Muhammad’s plans to leave Mecca and relocate to Medina; it was a prerequisite for creating a space for notions of hijra (migration) and jihād (strife, struggle, fighting). The futility of preaching and the cessation of conversion became central concerns in the late Meccan suras, and we can already see a sustained grappling with the implications of such realizations for Muhammad’s prophetic career. Nowhere are these themes wrestled with more intensely than in the group of six suras that start with alif, lām, rāʾ: chapters 10–15. The cataclysmic success of the early Islamic state has resulted in our failure to see this despair as a major topic in the Qurʾān: the giving up on humanity, the deeply felt conviction that those who were receptive to the message had already converted, whereas those who had not would never do so. These six suras are at pains to re-understand prophetic history and human history at a time when Muhammad’s mission was at an impasse. The late Meccan suras were now answering to an older layer of qurʾānic revelation, where a triumphant God was promising a quick retribution to those who refused to heed the warning of the prophet. We have in these late suras the reflection of a somber reality that lacked the hope and prospects of the early phase. Seen in this light, this constellation of six suras details the thought of Muhammad as he negotiated this new realization – the limits of his preaching or its failure vis-à-vis his own prophetic standing and his previous convictions as delineated in his early preaching.

Reading Some Groups of Suras in the Qurʾān as “Booklets” Islam Dayeh has recently argued that Sūras 40–46 exhibit features of textual but also intertextual coherence. Dayeh asserts that these suras exhibit stark affinities that result from their close compositional relationship and that they should therefore be studied together. This goes beyond the notion of compositional coherence of individual suras. His analysis is detailed, cogent, and convincing, building as it does on the insights of Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī.3 My point of departure is to take for granted the existence of such clusters in the Qurʾān. Iṣlāḥī was perhaps the first modern scholar to draw attention to this phenomenon.4 Already, Uri Rubin has studied another group together (Q 73 and 74).5 The tradition itself was keenly aware of the unity of the group studied by Dayeh and referred to these suras collectively as the ḥawāmīm. Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) not only documents a premodern Muslim awareness of this phenomenon in the Qurʾān but alludes to the group that I am

108  Walid A. Saleh now studying as constituting one other group comparable to the ḥawāmīm.6 In this essay, I point to this other group and argue that they constituted a “booklet” that reflected their original affinity on two levels: content and temporal proximity, if not serial composition. They were certainly composed in the same social and political atmosphere. These affinities can be easily documented. Moreover, the fact that they are grouped together in the canon reflects a pre-canonical understanding of these suras as constituting a unit that should not be (and was not) broken. Such groupings of suras are features in the Qurʾān. Compare the situation of Sūras 10–15 with Sūras 26, 27, and 28 (which have the same first verse as Sūras 10, 12, 13, and 15). However, Sūras 26, 27, and 28 open with a different set of mysterious letters (ṭāʾ sīn for 26 and 28; ṭāʾ sīn mīm for 27).7 The grouping of these clusters in the canonical text is thus indicative of some form of organization that has so far eluded us. I am proposing that we study these groups of suras in conjunction, as well as in relation, to the prevalent theological themes reflected in their content. Thus, Sūras 73 and 74 are clearly connected, addressing as they do a certain moment in Muhammad’s career, and their grouping together should not surprise us. The textual features of Sūras 10–15 are our first indication that we are dealing here with a grouping that goes beyond the coincidental. The first is their similar formulaic opening. The six suras all start with the mysterious letter sequence, alif lām rāʾ (with the exception of Sūra 13, which has one additional letter in the sequence, thus alif lām mīm rāʾ). Four of the suras have the same opening phrase in the first verse (Sūras 10, 12, 13, 15: tilka ayāt al-kitāb, “these are the signs of the book”), whereas the remaining two suras (11 and 14) begin the verse with the word “book” (kitāb). Moreover, all these first verses have reference to a book with some accompanying epithet, using either the root “ḥ-k-m” (“wise,” “judicious”) or “b-y-n” (“clarify,” “reveal”), and all but Sūra 14 have the word “signs” (ayāt) in the first verse. These features on their own are not sufficient to argue for approaching the content of these suras together; they do however point to an organizing principle that saw in the similarity of the mysterious letters and the wording of the first verses reason to group them together. It is the thematic, interwoven connections among the six suras that is the clearest indication that we have here a booklet composed in answer to a particular development in the career of Muhammad. In the rest of this article, I argue that the Sitz im Leben of these six suras is Muhammad’s realization that preaching has ceased to be effective and that further conversions on a significant scale are unlikely. We have here a cessation of development, a stagnation in the career of Muhammad, accompanied by deep anxiety about the promises declared in his preaching, threats that are not materializing, and a descending veil of despair that is eroding the resolve of this prophet. It is a terrifying moment. Muhammad is frantically looking about, anticipating a chastisement that seems to tarry (and indeed that is all but certainly not coming), and wishing for a break in the impasse of his mission in Mecca. The late Meccan period of the Qurʾān is thus more than a mere stylistic change in the compositional style of the suras. It is the result of a radical shift. We are here

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  109 in the midst of a Qurʾān that has to answer not only to the Meccans but to its own history. At the center of this new concern is the tarrying of punishment. Not only is there no sign of it, but the necessary condition that already had been articulated in the Qurʾān for it to come – that the Meccans declare their resolve not to convert and ask for this chastisement – had been fulfilled. Indeed, this promise of punishment (waʿd) so often assured by God is seen as vacuous by Muhammad’s enemies (cf. Q. 10:48) countered by the God of Muhammad that God does not renege on his promise (among many cf. Q. 14:47).

A New Reading of Sūras 10–15 Sūra 10 Chapter 10, the first of the group, is still holding onto the hope of conversion, yet the realization of the slim prospects of mass conversion is solidifying, and a new refrain punctuates this sura, that is, that the wicked, the damned, are not going to be believers (Q 10:33, 96).8 These verses sum up what is all too evident from human history. Q 10:13 affirms that earlier communities were destroyed because they were never going to believe.9 The phrase “they will not believe” (mā kānū li-yuʾminū) and its variants, first seen in verse 13, appears in Q 10:40 and again in Q 10:74, 88, and 101. Thus seven verses here repeat the theme that the recalcitrant will not convert. The tone of despair is evident throughout the sura, with Q 10:40–41 presenting Muhammad with his deeds and the unbelievers with their deeds as two estranged realms.10 The latter are deaf and blind (Q 10:42, 43). A corollary of this realization that humanity is not going to convert is Muhammad’s increasing despair and anguish. He is presented in these suras as being in a state of doubt, if not utter dejection. Muhammad is so filled with doubt (shakk) that the Qurʾān is urging him to ask the People of the Book (Q 10:94–95). Muhammad is fast becoming similar to those who are opposing him, one of those who are in denial (mirya, Q 10:94). This warning to Muhammad not to be “of the doubters” (min almumtarīn) will appear again in Q 11:17 (“do not be in doubt,” mirya) and 109 (same expression, “do not be in doubt”). He is also melancholic (Q 10:65). All the previous positive encouragements are unable to mask the stark assessment of the facts, a resignation unprecedented in the Qurʾān. Far more troubling is the admission that Muhammad might not live to see the result of his preaching, neither full conversion nor the chastisement he has been threatening his people with. The sura whispers this confession to Muhammad: “whether We let you see some of the punishment We have threatened them with, or cause you to die first, they will return to Us and God is witness to what they do” (Q 10:46). This sura thus reformulates one of what had hitherto been among the Qurʾān’s major themes: that worldly punishment will be meted out to the unbelievers and that the threatening prophet will be among the saved few who will also witness the chastisement visited by God on the recalcitrant. He will stand atop their ruins, so to speak. One had thought for a while that the whole point of chastisement is for the remnant few to witness God’s just retribution, vindicated with salvation (najāt). The stories of all the prophets as

110  Walid A. Saleh told in the Qurʾān reiterate this, even in this sura, where God specifically promises to save (nunajjī) the prophets and their company (Q 10:103). Thus, Noah is saved after the destruction of his people (Q 10:73; cf. Q 11:58, 66, and 94, among many others). Muhammad’s fate is starting to look different from that of the prophets he is supposed to resemble. This same verse (Q 10:46) resurfaces in Sūra 13:40. What has been a convoluted argument has become a stock phrase, a refrain. More interesting is the fact that the Qurʾān’s admission – Muhammad might not live to see what he had been warning his people of – is a tacit recognition of the arguments of the Meccans who were threatening Muhammad with fate, stating that they were more than happy to wait him out. To the Meccans, Muhammad was setting himself above the vicissitudes of fate, arrogantly implying that he would outlive his enemies, a presumptuous position to which they replied that they would wait for the master of all, fate itself (rayb al-manūn, Q 52:30).11 The arguments of the Meccans were not as outlandish as Muhammad was claiming, and the Qurʾān was forced to admit to possibilities that they themselves were throwing back at Muhammad. Wasn’t Muhammad supposed to be a replica of the prophets (mā kuntu bidʿan mina r-rusul, Q 46:9)? Yet, it is in this chapter that we also have the only qurʾānic retelling of the repentance of the city of Jonah (Q 10:98), a hope against hope that all is not impossible.12 This unexpected story, a counterargument, is told after two detailed examples of its very opposite, the story of Noah with his people and how they were destroyed (Q 10:71–73) and the story of Moses with Pharaoh (Q 10:74–93). These two punishment stories are also another sustained theological argument about the limit of God’s power – his unwillingness to force conversion on humanity – and humanity’s inability to see the light unless it is accompanied by punishment. Against these two dire cases, Jonah’s city is an example of just what is possible, if only they would act. The sura, bleak as it is, is not closing the gates. There is yet a way out. The crux of this sura is verses Q 10:99–100, with its pointed dismay at Muhammad’s desire to convert all of humanity. The purpose of Sūra 10 is to rework the qurʾānic vision of Muhammad’s prophetic career by curtailing any hope of change, delivered by a rebuke: “If God so wished he could have made believers of all of the inhabitants of the earth; are you to force (tukrih) humanity to become faithful?” (Q 10:99). Only God can do that, but he will not: “No soul can believe except by God’s will, and He brings disgrace on those who do not use their reason” (Q 10:100). The story of the city of Jonah (Q 10:98), coming just before these two verses, is thus all the more striking in its hope that salvation is possible. Here, God is willing to offer a lull (tamtīʿ), a respite before the coming destruction, an offer to enjoy life. But, humanity being what it is, the Qurʾān turns to Muhammad, ordering him to wait (Q 10:102): be among those who wait, we will show you (momentarily back to the old paradigm of outliving the damned), and then redemption (najāt), for it is a solemn promise that God has promised to the faithful (Q 10:103; repeated in Q. 11:122, among others, see the following). This refrain to wait, and wait with the Meccans for God’s retribution, appears early on in this sura (Q 10:20). The overall assessment is thus bleak; patience is

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  111 all that this sura can offer the besieged prophet (Q 10:109). Muhammad cannot be responsible for their salvation; he is not their guardian (wakīl, Q 10:108). But does he want to be?13 Sūra 11 This sura expands on the theology of Q 10:98, the parable of the city of Jonah, where repentance opens the door for tamtīʿ, placing it front and center. Verse 11:3 has all of these elements:14 repentance will allow God to deal with the Meccans in the same fashion; hope is not extinguished yet; an avoidance of chastisement is possible. Yet the Meccans are unwilling to listen and turn away from the preaching of Muhammad (Q 11:5). Sura 11 is primarily about his despair in the face of unsettling realities, for not only was his audience not converting, but (more disturbingly) the chastisement he had been warning about was apparently not forthcoming, and the Meccans were having a lot of fun asking why it had not arrived (mā yaḥbusuhu, “what is holding it back?” Q 11:8).15 Already, this delay (taʾkhīr) cannot be left unaddressed; it is not that God is breaking his promise but that he is biding his time (wa-la-in akhkharnā ʿanhum al-ʿadhāb, “and when we delay our punishment”).16 This delaying, a tarrying of divine fate, is only possible because God is determined not to be hamstrung in bringing the Day of Judgment (Q 11:104, an echo of the phrase in Q 11:8).17 Granted, the sura is playing a rhetorical trick, equating chastisement for recalcitrance in this world with the bringing of the cosmic Day of Judgement (Q 11:104 is clearly about the Apocalypse), an equivocation that is starting to look like whitewashing the immediate threat. The notion of delaying destruction is a theme that is most prominent in the constellation of Sūras 10–15. The tardiness in destruction is only matched by the mocking Meccan eagerness for its coming (istiʿjāl). Already in Sūra 10, God is bewildered at the unbelievers and their eagerness for, and their hurrying of, their destruction. Why do they seek to hurry it? (mādhā yastaʿjilū minhu l-mujrimūn, Q 10:50). They do so only to regret their folly and their hurrying after destruction (Q 10:51). Sūra 14 contains the most extensive reiterations of the notion of delay (see what follows). Sūra 11 draws a dark picture of human beings, who oscillate between despair (yaʾūs kafūr, Q 11:9) and flippant arrogance (fariḥ fakhūr, Q 11:10). One might almost suspect that the person meant here is actually Muhammad himself, for he is immediately asked whether he might want to give up on part of that which is revealed to him (tārik baʿḍ mā yūḥā ilayka), and more worryingly, the text describes him as having a “chest that is getting constrained” – a clear sign of losing faith (Q 11:12).18 He is almost in doubt (mirya) and needs the testimony of people who have earlier scriptures (Q 11:17) to restore his faith. Muhammad is reminded of his limited role, that he is only a warner (innamā anta nadhīr, Q 11:12). Should one conclude that he is restless for more action on his part beyond preaching? The repeated references to this limited role for the prophet in the Qurʾān have to be seen as counterbalancing a desire on the part of Muhammad to be more, both out of eagerness and most probably to counter his despair.

112  Walid A. Saleh Prophetic history (what the secondary literature also calls punishment stories) is then retold to highlight the verity of the promise of punishment; after recounting the stories of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, Lot, Shuʿayb, and Moses and Pharaoh, the sura offers its lessons to Muhammad: God is only postponing chastisement and only for a duration (using the same verb, “taʾkhīr,” Q 11:104); Muhammad should not be in doubt (mirya, yet again); God will give them their just due (muwaffīhim naṣībahum ghayra manqūṣ, Q 11:109); he is advised to be patient and to persevere (Q 11:115). Then comes an enigmatic verse, Q 11:116,19 which (startlingly) has the same grammatical structure as Q 10:98 of the Jonah story and plays the same role of reigniting hope in an otherwise bleak landscape. If only one would repent! This option will remain ever operative, insofar as it guarantees God’s mercy, but it is accompanied by the bitter historical realization that the faithful represent a remnant few (illā qalīlan mimman anjaynā, Q 11:116). Nonetheless, God is unwilling to destroy a community if its inhabitants are righteous (Q 11:117). Sūra 11 then reaches the same conclusion as Sūra 10. Verse 11:118 repeats and confirms verse 10:99, bringing the conclusions of the two suras into stark resonance. God, had he wished, would have converted humanity to one faith (Q 10:99) or would have made them one confessional community (Q 11:118). But he is unwilling to do so, for different reasons in each verse. In one case, he refuses faith by force and rebukes Muhammad’s presumptuous arrogance of forceful conversion (ikrāh, Q 10:99); in the other, creation is presented as a plan that will result in both reward to a few but mostly punishment to the many (Q 11:119). This parallelism in the thematic concerns of the two suras clearly points to a prolonged engagement with the same topic over a protracted period of time on the part of Muhammad. In this sura, the Qurʾān all but offers a maxim about humanity, that is, that most will not believe (Q 11:17, wa-lākin akthara n-nās lā yuʾminūn). The Noah story, which is retold here in far more detail than in Sūra 10, has a concluding summary of prophetic activities that is by now depressingly familiar. Verse 11:36 informs us that “it was revealed to Noah that none of your people will believe other than those who have already done so, so do not be in despair about what they are doing” (lan yuʾmina min qawmika illā man qad āmana). Is this what Muhammad thinks of his situation? This is the clearest iteration of an end to conversion in the Qurʾān. Prophets are not to draw despair as the emotional conclusion from their failure but should rather maintain hope and be certain of the destruction promised by God. The string of prophetic stories told to Muhammad is thus to fortify his faith (mā nuthabbitu bihi fuʾādaka, Q 11:120) – this being the purpose of the sura all along – and to make him certain that it is the truth that he has been told (wa-jāʾaka fī hādhihi l-ḥaqqu). Yet the sura will end with an even more troubling notion, that of waiting (intiẓār, Q 11:122). This is the only practical advice offered Muhammad. This is a solution that could work only if one were certain that punishment would descend. However, not only do the Meccans no longer take it seriously, but Muhammad too is having trouble understanding why it has not arrived. The Qurʾān orders Muhammad to tell the unbelievers to continue to function as they are used to doing, and

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  113 he will do the same, and to tell them to wait (wa-intaẓirū) – for we (presumably Muhammad and his Lord) are also waiting (innā muntaẓirūn). Human history is now at a stalemate, a stasis of waiting. A better translation for this verb is “watching out for,” and as such, it admits to the argument of the Meccans that punishment is not automatic. Hence neither can Muhammad call for it, nor does their adamant call for this punishment provoke his Lord into action. This invariably strengthens the Meccans’ argument that this preaching is nonsensical. Ceasing to read the Qurʾān from the triumphalist perspective that takes for granted an all but inevitably victorious outcome for Muhammad and his followers allows us to see the rawness of its arguments and to realize how uncertain he was about the outcome of his prophetic mission in Mecca (though not about his call). Indeed, what was holding back God’s chastisement, as the Meccans were wondering? I  think that the first step to make sense of a sura like 61, with its unshakable certitude in the necessity of action and belief in military agency – in stark contradistinction to this waiting (intiẓār) for God (and all the multitude of verses that speak of the coming (majīʾ) of the command of God (amr allāh), which signifies the hour or chastisement) – is to admit to a crisis in the Qurʾān. It had to come to terms with the necessity of leaving, of forsaking one’s kin (Noah’s forsaking of his son becomes paradigmatic here), a siyāḥa fī al-arḍ, and the result was a profound reshaping of agency in the Qurʾān that had previously been hardly conceivable. When the Qurʾān would eventually use the verb “come” (jāʾa) in a Medinan context, it would bring victory (naṣr) and conquest (fatḥ) (Q 110). Sūra 12 becomes pivotal in this light, and its place in the constellation of the six suras should now be clearer; it is a story of a prophet becoming victorious in a land different than his own but with a fantasy of reconciliation with his own people and of a reshaping of power relations through migration. Muhammad was trying to find a way out of his impasse in Mecca, and I think he was attempting to forge a solution within the already existing parameters of his worldview, one based on the prophetic career of previous prophets. Sūra 12 The literature on Sūra 12 is extensive and for obvious reasons.20 It is the most sustained narrative in the Qurʾān; it is self-evidently a compositional unity; its connection to biblical antecedents makes it ideal for comparative studies; and its sheer beauty begs for literary analysis. By placing it within this continuum of Sūras 10–15, I am departing from most of the current approaches to this sura.21 Here, I read it primarily as a political narrative. I understand the function of Sūra 12 within its wider qurʾānic context and its own articulation of what it is intended to communicate rather than in relation to its biblical antecedent; thus, I  would argue that it should be read primarily as a political fantasy. In this, I build on the tentative conclusions of M. S. Stern from 1985, who is one of the few to examine the political implications of this narrative in relationship to the career of Muhammad. He saw in the hijra of Muhammad to Medina an echo of the displacement of Joseph to Egypt.22 I would rather add that I see in it a path that was contemplated

114  Walid A. Saleh only to be found wanting – for there is no lack in the Qurʾān of other migratory examples, and Abraham is of course more relevant here. Sūra 12 presented Muhammad with the possibility of dominion on the cheap, of taking over a kingdom with minimum effort. It was a muddled dream, as Q 12:44 characterizes the Pharaoh’s dream, a description also reserved for the career of Muhammad, as the Meccans were not hesitant to proclaim (Q 21:5).23 Thus, I agree with Stern that Joseph was a model, but I would emphasize that he was a negative model, a resolution to Muhammad’s dilemma that was unsatisfactory. It is, however, a first instance of a prophetic career with political dominion at its center, an opening of a horizon of possibilities not seen before in the Qurʾān: it did not end up with the people of the prophet destroyed. This story was presenting a resolution (dominion) to Muhammad’s stalled career, but a similar path was rather impossible in Arabia (Muhammad could not be another Mani who sought to convert a king and thus avoid preaching to the masses). There were no kings to be had there. The victorious God of this sura, though undoubtedly capable, was not offering a realistic resolution to the impasse of Muhammad in Mecca.24 In Sūra 12, new ideas mix with the old. The notion of dominion (tamkīn), seizure of power, is central, which only highlighted the impotence of Muhammad’s situation. The term is recounted three times: in Q 12:21 and 56, where God is the one enabling Joseph, and in Q 12:54, where the Pharaoh made Joseph empowered (makīn).25 Joseph comes close to kingship, if only by default (cf. Q 12:101, “gave me dominion,” ātaytanī mina l-mulk). Another qurʾānic term that would appear in this sura in close conjunction with “dominion” is tabawwuʾ, “taking one’s place at the table” (Q 12:56). This term, “tabawwuʾ”, will play a crucial role in the transition from pacifism to activism in the Qurʾān (most prominently in Q 16:41) before the appearing of the term “jihād.” Eventually this term will be tied to battles, as in Q 3:121. However, Sūra 12 finishes on a bleak note, reaffirming the dominant theme of the sextus. This is a surprising conclusion to derive from a resoundingly optimistic story. The first lesson to be drawn from this lengthy story is, it seems, that “However eagerly you may want them to, most men will not believe” (wa-mā aktharu n-nās wa-law ḥariṣta bi-muʾminīn, Q 12:103).26 Whereas this is not what one would call a major theme of this particular story, this is the overriding concern of this sura, and once more the sura adds that “most of them will believe in God while also joining others with him” (wa-mā yuʾminu aktharuhum bi-llahi illā wa-hum mushrikūn, Q 12:106). It is the same ending as the previous two suras, where the same conclusion is drawn (Q 10:99 and 11:118). We see a consistent parallelism in the conclusions of this constellation of suras, which points to the overarching atmosphere at the time of their composition. A twist to God’s judgment and plan comes in verse Q 12:110. We are told that it is at the very moment that the prophets have reached the end of their tether, literally in despair (ḥattā idhā istayʾasa l-rusul), that God comes with his victory and saves those whom he saves.27 Indeed, prophets have by then actually come to believe that they have been given the lie (wa-ẓannū annahum qad kudhdhibū). The doubting prophet is now nearly a fixture in these suras, weak of heart, tight

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  115 of chest, full of despair, eager to compromise, and wishing for the very thing that God is not willing to grant – the conversion of humanity or at least vindication through miracles. Q 12:87 is in this sense a rebuke, for it has Jacob stating that one should not despair (tayʾasū) of God’s spirit, for only unbelievers are those who despair of God’s spirit. Q 12:110 is admitting only to the dire predicament of Muhammad: he is in the depths of despair but is told that this is precisely the norm for prophets. Utter despair is itself a sign that God will bring forth his chastisement. It is important to note how off-key this sura is in relation to the rest of the Qurʾān, with its hopeful narrative and its dark conclusion. There is a soft quality to its tone that is at odds with most of the rest of the text, a happy resolution that is unique in the qurʾānic narratives. The sura is thus impossible to understand unless one sees its connection to despair, to a Muhammad exploring options of leaving Mecca. Sūra 13 and the Stubbornness of Hope By Sūra 13, the length of the individual sura suddenly shrinks considerably. Sūra 13 is only 43 verses, barely half the length of Sūra 12. One has to go all the way to Sūra 35 to come across suras of such diminished length. This points to the status of these six suras as a “booklet” that resulted in them being kept in one unit, despite the sudden drop in the length of Sūra 13. This is true also of Sūras 14 and 15, with Sūra 15 being the shortest of the group.28 Notice that Sūra 16 goes back to the length that we would have expected in the ordering of the suras, almost double the length of Sūras 13, 14, or 15. Indeed, Sūra 16 is longer than Sūra 10 and equal in length to Sūra 11, which is another indication that exceptions were made to the overall order of the suras to keep the sextus together.29 Sūra 13 starts with a categorical statement: most of humanity will not believe (Q 13:1).30 This is the conclusion of Sūras 10, 11, and 12, here presented at the very beginning of the sura. It is not clear where one goes from here; despair has all but clouded the horizon. Humans are not only recalcitrant; they are hurrying the divine decree (istiʿjāl), a deliberately provocative demand in face of God’s tarrying of his punishment (taʾkhīr, Q 13:6).31 They are so eager for this chastisement, knowing full well that it will not come, convinced as they are that Muhammad’s threats are empty. God, however, is all engulfing, and a measure of his infinite wisdom comes from his care (Q 13:10–11). The notion that inner transformation (taghyīr) is the prerequisite for conversion is introduced in this sura. This is a startling surprise, for it is presented as an internal process that God has little to do with – “God does not change a people unless they change that which is in their inner selves” (Q 13:11). God is unwilling to give a sign (āya), for again, Muhammad is nothing but a nadhīr (Q 13:7). Humanity is divided into those who answer (istajābū) God’s call and those who do not (Q 13:14, 18). Sūra 13 is a ministering to the band of faithful followers around Muhammad, reassuring them of their eventual reward and curtailing their hopes that others would convert. It begins where the previous three suras ended: most of humanity

116  Walid A. Saleh will not convert (Q 13:1: wa-lākin akthara n-nās lā yuʾminūn). We have here a reverse strategy of argument, which takes for granted what so far has been argued and then turns the sura’s gaze to the small and beleaguered band of believers. None but the minority will believe; they answered God, and they will be nicely rewarded (Q 13:18). It is soon clear that the beleaguered believers (the few there are) are the concern of this sura – those who are able to see (baṣīr), unlike the blind (aʿmā) (Q 13:16, 19). With Muhammad’s despair already having been addressed in the previous suras, this sura turns its attention to the core group around him. They are described as people who connect or uphold that which God ordered be connected (yaṣilūna mā amara allāhu bihi an yūṣala, Q 13:21), which is the very opposite of what the unbelievers do (Q 13:25, the negative phrase of Q 13:20–21). The meaning of “connect that which God ordered be connected” is unclear, and it is only repeated elsewhere in Q 2:27, where it is as opaque as it is here. The interpretation usually provided by exegetes, that it refers to kindness to one’s kin (ṣilat al-raḥm), is unconvincing. It is, however, a pivotal statement, and short of investigating this expression more fully, we are not able to venture anything beyond highlighting the significance of this term. I would suggest that it is an expression that denotes God’s demand for the believers to fully commit themselves and to be consistent in their faith, with such unfaltering commitment likened to a continuous rope that binds their lives to their new faith. The sura gives a detailed description of the character of the believers. They steadfastly seek the face of God (ibtighāʾ wajh Allāh), an expression similar to the one that will soon appear in expressions of jihād (fī sabīl Allāh); they pray and give of their wealth; they repay evil with good (Q 13:22); but patience is the most prominent of their virtues (Q 13:24). Their hearts are calmed and reassured (taṭmaʾinnu) by remembering God (bi-dhikri llāhi, Q 13:28). This is so far fairly unremarkable. But an unexpected shift in tone appears as we near the end of this sura. Q 13:31 clearly answers a demand in two preceding verses (Q 13:7, 27). We are told that the unbelievers had requested a sign to come down on Muhammad, only for their request to be rebuffed. Suddenly, Q 13:31 takes on a mocking, jarring tone: “If only a qurʾān that would make mountains walk, or by which earth is overwhelmed, or used to talk to the dead.” But who is the Qurʾān talking about? Who would make such ludicrous demands? Is this what the unbelievers want? The verse, however, is talking to the believers; it is giving voice to their innermost desires, forcing them to face the most outlandish of possibilities – only to make the point that even if such things occurred, these miracles would not change reality. Then the verse states: “Have not the believers despaired of God ever converting the unbelievers?” Give up that lingering hope of miracles and conversion. God will not send a miracle, he will not convert humanity, and believers should give up on these unrealistic dreams. The crux of this sura is thus verse Q 13:31. It begins with a wish: “if only a qurʾān that can move mountains, cleave the earth, or give one the power to converse with the dead!” The exegetical tradition universally presumes that those voicing these wishes were the unbelievers. So do all the modern translators, given the resemblance of this demand to other demands clearly uttered by the

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  117 unbelievers. The problem with such a reading is that this verse continues with a berating of the believers to stop hoping for (literally, to despair of) God’s conversion of all humanity. Surely, it is the believers who wish for such a Qurʾān as it would then be a cause of the conversion of the recalcitrant. Otherwise, the verse makes no sense, and it would have to be divided into two different sentences. It is this wishful thinking on the part of the believers, which is a mirror image of and a capitulation to the demands as well as the modes of argumentation of the unbelievers, which the Qurʾān is taking umbrage at. Have you not given up on this notion of universal conversion, it asks. The use of the verb “despair” in this verse was a problematic issue for the later Islamic exegetical tradition because a believer never despairs. The sura, however, is clear about what is at stake, which is the temptation of the notion of universal conversion – a notion that seems to have been cherished by Muhammad and his followers in Mecca. Exegetes through the centuries have had difficulty dealing with Q 13:31. Indeed, it was claimed that the scribe who was copying the ‘Uthmanic recension had dozed off while writing the troubling word, “despair” (yayʾas) and that he should have written “to realize” (yatabayyan).32 This “explanation” is very unlikely, given that the consonantal forms of the two words are quite distinct. The exegetical tradition also neutralizes the verse by claiming that the first part was spoken by the Meccans. The tone of this verse is thus unbearable. By the reading advanced here, in contrast, believers are the ones who are in despair, as is their prophet. It seems that they are still like everyone else, expecting God to act through miracles and to prove his existence by acts as outlandish as moving mountains (likely an echo of the Gospels), overwhelming the earth (the expression is not clear), or talking to the dead (a breaking of a biblical taboo). A radical shift is needed. Almost as if snapping at him, the sura addresses Muhammad, telling him that God might or might not show him some of what it has been threatening the unbelievers with, but it is for God to decide: “you just deliver the message, we are the ones that exact punishment” (Q 13:40). Here, he is cut down to size. The Qurʾān is apparently losing patience. Sūra 14 Sūra 14 contains the most extensive reiterations of the notion of delay, as developed in Sūra 11 (see the previous section). The unbelievers are dramatically portrayed as begging for the opportunity to use this leeway, the delaying of the coming of chastisement, to escape God’s wrath (Q 14:44).33 They are asking for the very delay (akhkhirnā ilā ajalin musammā) that God so generously had granted them before. Sūra 14 begins with a general invitation to repentance that would spare humanity immediate punishment, an invitation that seems to have been uttered by all the prophets of God in their preaching to humanity (Q 14:10).34 Once more, repentance and a supplication for forgiveness would trigger a delay. This taʾkhir (usually expressed in the phrase “till another appointed time,” ilā ajalin musammā; cf. Q 16:61, 35:45, and 71:4) should not be confused with istiʾkhār (the tarrying of fate, as in verses Q 7:34, 10:49, 15:5, 23:43, and 34:30, in which

118  Walid A. Saleh God promises not to delay his punishment when it comes). It is clear that the Qurʾān is walking a thin line between the possibility of tarrying and the impossibility of postponement. The point is clear that God is willing to be patient, but he will punish when he decides. However, these distinctions do not ameliorate the Meccan view that divine punishment is yet to come. It is as if the Qurʾān is talking to itself and ceases to address its foes. The distinction between taʾkhir and istiʾkhar is inconsequential to the opposing camp as it is meaningless to them. If this coming to terms with the failure of his mission in Mecca was the necessary precondition for Muhammad to be able to think beyond the paradigm of preaching, of conversion with its heavenly reward, and of recalcitrance and its punishment to something uncharted and much more risky (a career built around dominion and power), one still has to locate the theological concept that allowed for this transition from pacifism to activism. How was it possible to make such a significant shift without seeming to renounce what he had been preaching for so long? Sūra 14 might provide a clue as to where to start. Verses 14:10–11 record an interesting exchange between the prophets (rusul) and unbelievers, in which the latter are willing to entertain conversion if the former bring forth a “mighty clarification” (sulṭān mubīn). One would have expected here a sign (āya) instead of this unusual demand. The answer of the messengers is that with God’s permission they could bring such a clarification (sulṭān), and they will have trust (tawakkul) in this Lord. This is a remarkable exchange: power is as good as a sign (or miracle) after all. What comes next is even more telling. “The disbelievers said to their messengers, ‘we shall expel you from our land unless you return to our religion.’ But their Lord inspired the messengers: ‘We shall destroy the evildoers and leave you to dwell in the land after them. This reward is for those who are in awe of meeting Me and who heed My warnings’ ” (Q 14:13–14). Then comes a most enigmatic statement: “and they asked for conquest but the mighty stubborn were undermined” (wa-staftaḥū wa-khāba kullu jabbārin ʿanīd, Q 14:15).35 Who is here asking for conquest, an opening, a rupture in history? Already the verb used (“fatḥ”) is so abstracted that it is hinting at something deeply contemplated, an abundance of power that is indicative of God’s break into history. Here we have it all: a coming with power (sulṭān), worldly power, a replacing of the unbelievers in their dwellings, and the word “fatḥ” – a judgment, a rupture in historical reality that can only come about with power. Muhammad did not need to look hard; conquest and firmness (tamkīn) is what he needed to articulate, and he has stumbled upon it. But this sura is typical of this constellation, affirming to Muhammad that God will not break his promise, and in fact will fulfill it vengefully (Q 14:47), while also muddying the waters by making us believe that this retribution is nothing but that of the Day of Judgment and thus not a specific punishment to a specific people (Q 14:48–52). Sūra 15 The despair at conversion reaches a profound moment at the beginning of Sūra 15,36 in verse 2: “the unbelievers might want to become Muslims” (rubbamā yawuddu lladhīna kafarū law kānū muslimīn).37 This is the most that Muhammad should hope for by his preaching, a fleeting moment in which his audience considers the

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  119 notion of conversion, nothing more. He is ordered to leave them to “eat, and enjoy (tamattuʿ) and be distracted by vain hopes” (Q 15:3). This enjoyment (tamattuʿ) is already familiar from the previous suras. The Islamic tradition was later at pains to undo verse 2, as the commentary tradition patently shows. The unbelievers’ irreverence was too unsavory for a triumphant Islam. Here, we have an unbeliever reflectively weighing his options and only fleetingly tempted – an arrogant exercise in power, in which he momentarily places himself in the camp of the preacher, only to find his call wanting. The exegetical tradition would assure us that indeed unbelievers would hope they had converted but that this would take place in the eschatological world to come, when everything is already clear and they have been raised from the dead. This is thus a sincere wish on their part, not a moment of benevolent arrogance. But there is nothing in this verse to support such an interpretation. The verse is a commentary, a bitter one, on Muhammad’s reality, and he is ordered to leave them to their folly. There is nothing much else that he can do. Sūra 15 is a reflection on and affirmation of the promised collective punishment that is at the center of Muhammad’s preaching. God destroys a city when its time has come (Q 15:4). This sura wants to reaffirm punishment as a central theme in the conception of Muhammad’s vision and preaching, even when punishment is tarrying. The crux of the sura is in verse 9, “We have sent down the warning, and we will keep it.” Both the Islamic tradition as well as modern scholars and translators typically understand this verse as referring to some notion of textual purity and the Muslim scripture’s pristine preservation. But the verse has nothing intrinsic to do with this: it is simply a declarative statement on the part of God that he will keep his word. He will keep his promise; he will bring the chastisement that he so much prides himself on. The verse is about the promise of destruction and an affirmation that it will be kept (cf. Q 15:64). The warning and message delivered by Muhammad (dhikr) is threatening to turn into empty words. But God will see that it be fulfilled. Sūra 15, like the five suras before it, provides yet another version of the theology of the cessation of conversion. The refusal to convert is (we are told) a law (sunna); humanity is incapable of believing en masse in the message of prophets (Q 15:13). But the promised chastisement will come, and when it comes, it will be at the appointed time, neither too early nor too late (Q 15:4–5). Recalcitrant humanity is then compared to the devil himself, a rebel who is also given a period of respite before he is punished (Q 15:36–37). The sura retells traditional punishment stories. “The Hour is coming; it will come” (Q 15:85). It thus reaffirms Muhammad’s faith in the coming of punishment but with a subdued vindication as he is not promised that he will see it. He is to loudly proclaim his message, unconcerned about the scale of its impact (Q 15:94). The sura is all too aware that his chest is constricted (Q 15:97). Muhammad is ordered to keep his faith till his death (Q 15:99).38 He is not promised najāt here, salvation after destruction.

Conclusion The arguments made here are simple. Certain groupings of suras in the qurʾānic text as we now have it were clustered together because they were composed in

120  Walid A. Saleh answer to a certain theological problem, which in turn reflects a period in the career of Muhammad. These clusters were kept together in the pre-canonical phase of the Qurʾān and were seen as inseparable; they remained clustered together in the canonical order of the Qurʾān, although they upset the overall pattern of arrangement from longest to shortest. This notion is reiterated in the tradition. It is also forcefully argued for by Iṣlāḥī,39 whose proposed grouping is, however, rather general and unfocused; he groups suras 10–24 together, subdividing the group into 10–22 and 23–24. This is an untenable position, but it reminds us that radical insights cannot be rejected simply because they are overstated. Recently, a much more focused case has been advanced by Islam Dayeh. Far more interesting than pointing out what should have been obvious is the fundamental dilemma in the Qurʾān, which I have discussed: its sense of failure in converting the Meccans and the implication of this for the preaching of Muhammad. David Marshall has spoken of the absence of the jilted lover metaphor in the Qurʾān; God is not presented as grieving or pining away because humanity rejects him, a feature also previously noted by several scholars, including Izutsu, Rodinson, Jomier, and Cragg.40 In his God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, Marshall attempts to determine how God’s punishment in the Qurʾān, first conceived as direct divine intervention in history that brings sudden and genocidal consequences in its wake, is transformed in the Medinan period into a punishment meted out by the believers themselves.41 What is lacking in his analysis is a realization that the tarrying of punishment is part of a central problem in the Qurʾān, which was already preoccupying Muhammad in the late Meccan period. I  am arguing here that this narrative discontinuity observed by Marshall,42 in which the punishment narratives of Mecca come to be transformed in the Medinan parts of the Qurʾān, was the result of this crisis in the Qurʾān and the career of Muhammad. Marshall speaks of an inner change in Muhammad that can be documented as he moved to Medina, which is another way of stating that he was transformed due to the crisis of his failure in Mecca.43 The six suras studied here point to this crisis. Textually, there is no doubt that they belong together. Already, Nöldeke has classified this group as late Meccan suras (with the exception of Sūra 15). My argument is that they are the result of a major crisis (if not the major crisis) of Muhammad’s career and, as such, reflect a transitional period in his worldview. The Islamic tradition is not wont to speak of a failure in the early part of the career of Muhammad, and modern scholarship has overlooked the fundamental consequences of this failure for Muhammad’s career. What are the implications of such an understanding of the career of Muhammad, especially for our understanding of concepts that apparently arose in Medina? I would like to suggest that the need to fulfil God’s promise became as important as believing in this new God. Jihād is thus more than a stratagem, a method to an end; rather, it is a necessarily theological solution to the question of how God’s plan for humanity is to be actualized. Jihād fulfils God’s promise of chastisement and is therefore a necessary reflection of his will. One does jihād in God’s path, or for the path of God (fī sabīl Allāh), fully active in God’s will. This is a partaking in history to transform it and a transformation of the faithful into agents of God’s

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  121 will. As such, jihād becomes a defining essence of the faith in Medina. Jihād in this sense is a theological outcome of the crisis of divine tarrying with divine sanction.*

Notes * Translations of the Qurʾān are based on Abdel Haleem’s and Dawood’s translations, with modifications, unless otherwise stated. 1 This is not the place for a study of the theology of war in the Qurʾān. It is clear, however, that the scholarly approach thus far to war in the Qurʾān is consumed by legal or historical questions. A more fruitful approach is to see how fighting was made into a constituent element of the new faith (hence my term “theology of war”). Fighting was made central to the economy of salvation. See the conclusions of this essay for further remarks on jihād. 2 Here, I am not in agreement with Reuven Firestone’s Jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), which sees multiple voices on and attitudes to jihād in the Qurʾān. In the Medinan period, fighting was part of the faith, constitutive of its new identity. 3 Islam Dayeh, “Al-Ḥawāmīm: Intertextuality and Coherence in Meccan Surahs,” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 461–98. 4 Mustansir Mir, Coherence in the Qurʾān: A Study of Iṣlāḥī’s Concept of Naẓm in Tadabbur-i Qurʾān (Indianapolis, IN: American Trust Publications, 1986). 5 Uri Rubin, “The Shrouded Messenger: On the Interpretation of al-Muzammil and alMuddaththir,” Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam 16 (1993): 96–107. 6 Dayeh, “Al-Ḥawāmīm,” 490–93. 7 The only other sura that possesses the same opening as the cluster of Sūras 10–15 is Sūra 31, which I have left out of consideration for the time being. 8 Q 10:33: “In this way, your Lord’s word about those who defy [the Truth] has been proved – they do not believe.” Q 10:96: “Those against whom your Lord’s sentence is passed will not believe.” 9 Q 10:13: “Before you people, We destroyed whole generations when they did wrong – their messengers brought them clear signs but they refused to believe. This is how we repay the guilty.” 10 This same verse is echoed in Q 11:121. 11 See all the references to outwaiting Muhammad (using the verb “r-b-ṣ,” waiting for fate to overcome him): Q 20:135; 52:30; 57:14 and especially 23:25. 12 There is a reference to Jonah in another sura (Q 68:48), but the story here is about the despair of Jonah in the belly of the whale and not about the city and its fate. We have no other reference to the Jonah story in the Qurʾān. 13 He arguably becomes a wakīl in Medina. 14 Q 11:3: “Ask your Lord for forgiveness, then turn back to Him. He will grant you wholesome enjoyment until an appointed time, and give His grace to everyone who has merit. But if you turn away, I fear for you that you will suffer on a terrible Day.” 15 The opposite of taʾkhīr (delaying) is hurrying (istiʿjāl), which humans (especially the Meccans) are characterized with. Already in Sūra 10:11, God is warning humanity of their hurried nature. Al-Māturīdī understood this verse to be a reference to the Meccans’ provocation of God’s patience and connects it to Q 8:32 and 16:1. 16 Q 11:8: “If We defer their punishment for a determined time, they are sure to say, ‘What is holding it back?’ But on the Day it comes upon them, nothing will divert it from them; what they mocked will be all around them.” 17 Q 11:104: “We are delaying it only for a specified period.”

122  Walid A. Saleh 18 There is thus strong evidence to suspect that verse Q 11:11 was inserted to mitigate the connection between verses 9–10 and 12. Removing it, we have a better flowing argument. We have many of these clauses that attempt to exclude the believers as a group from such harsh judgements of the nature of human beings. 19 Q 11:116: “If only there had been, among the generations before your time, people with a remnant of good sense, to forbid corruption on the earth! We saved only a few of them, while the unjust pursued the enjoyment of plenty, and persisted in sin.” The wording of the verse is actually not as easily deciphered. 20 See the extensive bibliography in Todd Lawson, “Typological Figuration and the Meaning of ‘Spiritual’: The Qurʾanic Story of Joseph,” Journal of American Oriental Society 132.2 (2012): 239–44. 21 Abdel Haleem writes, “In the Qurʾān the story is not part of a continuous relation of history. It does not follow from Sūra 11, it ends before the end of Sūra 12 and does not continue in Sūra 13.” M.A. S. Abdel Haleem, “The Story of Joseph in the Qurʾan and the Old Testament,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 1.2 (1990): 171–91, here p. 172. 22 See especially his concluding remarks: “In conclusion, then, this paper has asserted that the model of Joseph was critical for Muhammad,” and “Whether it represents the inspiration for or the confirmation of Muhammad’s judgement that he must leave Mecca, it was instructive of a course which led to the hijra and all that followed therefrom.” M. S. Stern, “Muhammad and Joseph: A Study of Koranic Narrative,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44.3 (1985): 193–204, here p. 204. 23 Already Stern recognized the connection between these two verses and translated aḍghāth aḥlām as “hotch-potch of nightmares.” Ibid., 202. 24 Notice that Mir saw the notion of God as victorious (ghālib) as one of the central themes of this sura, confirming my reading of it as a primarily political sura. Mustansir Mir, “The Qurʾānic Story of Joseph: Plot, Themes, and Characters,” Muslim World 76.1 (1986): 1–15. 25 Cf. Stern, “Muhammad and Joseph,” 203. 26 There is thus no discontinuity in the sura, as Abdel Haleem postulated. The sura does draw a conclusion from the narrative; though it is a rather odd conclusion that is not what one might expect, this is hardly a sign that is unconnected to the story of Joseph. 27 Q 12:110: “When the messengers lost all hope and realized that they had been dismissed as liars, Our help came to them: We saved whoever We pleased, but our punishment will not be turned away from guilty people.” The translation of Abdel Haleem reflects the traditional understanding. The prophets were not dismissed as liars; they came to believe that they had been lied to – much to the dismay of the exegetes, for in their view prophets should not despair, and here they are presented as being in despair and second-guessing themselves. See any of the Qurʾān commentaries on this verse and how convoluted arguments were cited to mitigate its impact. 28 Already Nöldeke had noted the aberration in the positioning of these three suras (13, 14, and 15). His wording shows that he thought this to be odd. Theodor Nöldeke, Tārīkh al-Qurʾān, trans. Jorj Tāmir (Beirut, 2004), 297. Bauer reached the same conclusion as I am suggesting: “Die Tatsache, dass man bestrebt war, die Suren mit gleichen Siglen entgegen dem leitenden Prinzip der Anordnung nach dem Umfang möglichst ungetrennt zu lassen, ist ein evidenter Beweis für die Richtigkeit der Anschauung, dass die Siglen sehr alt sind. Wahrscheinlich bildeten die betreffenden Suren schon bei der Vornahme der ersten Sammlung durch Zaid b. Thābit besondere Einheiten, die man respektieren zu müssen glaubte.” 29 See the table in Hans Bauer where Sūras 10, 11, and 12 are more or less where they should be in the descending order, but Sūras 14 and 13 should have been in the thirtythird and thirty-fourth ranks, were they placed according to their length, whereas Sura 15 would be in the forty-first rank. These three suras show the most radical deviation in the table (only Sura 32 matches them in its displacement). Hans Bauer, “Über die

End of Hope: Sūras 10–15  123

30 31 32 33

34

35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Anordnung der Suren und über die geheimnisvollen Buchstaben im Qoran,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 75 (1921): 314. Q 13:1 “These are the signs of the Scripture. What your Lord has sent down to you is the truth, yet most people will not believe.” This hurrying of fate was already discussed in Sūra 10:50, 51. See al-Ṭabarī’s Qurʾān commentary, sub Q 13:31. Q 14:44: “So warn people of the Day when punishment will come to them, and when disbelievers will say, ‘Our Lord, give us a little more time: we shall answer Your call and follow the messengers.’ Did you [disbelievers] not swear in the past that your power would have no end?” Abdel Haleem’s translation. Q 14:10: “Their messengers answered, ‘Can there be any doubt about God, the creator of the heavens and earth? He calls you to Him in order to forgive you your sins and let you enjoy your life until the appointed hour.’ But they said, ‘You are only men like us. You want to turn us away from what our forefathers used to worship. Bring us clear proof, then.’ ” Abdel Haleem translates this phrase as follows: “They asked God to decide, and every obstinate tyrant failed.” Angelika Neuwirth has already offered a detailed study of this sura. Angelika Neuwirth, “Referentiality and Textuality in Sūrat al-Ḥijr: Some Observations on the Qurʾānic ‘Canonical Process’ and the Emergence of a Community,” in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾān, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 143–72. Abdel Haleem’s translation is also influenced by the tafsīr tradition: “The disbelievers may well come to wish they had submitted to God.” Verse 15:99 would also become a hotly debated verse in the tradition: was it death that Muhammad was waiting for or victory? Mir, Coherence in the Qurʾān, 85–98. David Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers: A Qurʾanic Study (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999), 86–9. Ibid., 117–97. Ibid., 157–58: “In the Medinan period, especially after Badr, the punishment-narratives in fact almost completely disappear.” “In response to Rahman one cannot deny the significance of external circumstances, but what has emerged again and again in this study is that there was an underlying inner change in Muhammad” (ibid., 158, italics in original).

5 The Casting A Close Hearing of Sūra 20:1–79 Michael A. Sells

Early Qurʾānic Mūsā The prophet Mūsā takes a principle role in the sacred history presented within the Qurʾān. The frequency of Mūsā’s appearances, the sustained nature of many of them, the multiple overlaps of particular episodes of his life and prophetic career, each with its distinctive perspective and mode of representation, and the intensity with which the life of Mūsā and the unfolding life of the prophet of the Qurʾān reflect one another – all of these features present to qurʾānic literary criticism both a challenge and an opportunity.1 Mūsā’s staff and the uses to which he puts it form a motif that bridges diverse qurʾānic accounts. Mūsā casts the staff to the ground, whereupon it takes on the state of a writhing snake; he contends with the forces of Firʿawn in a duel of staff casting; he wields his staff to strike a dry path through the sea; and then, when his people are thirsting in the desert, he uses it to strike open twelve springs from out of a rock. The act of casting – of the staff and other objects – dominates the Mūsā account in Q 20 (ṬāHā). This sura contains the longest Mūsā narrative in the Qurʾān, in both word count and verse count, and is also the sura most completely given over to the story of Mūsā (90 of 135 verses). In ṬāHā, a revelation of divine identity and a struggle over the nature of lordship unfold through embedded chains of vision, speech acts, and acts of casting that carry a transformative, even miraculous impact or, in their failure to do so, are exposed as pretense. Verbs for casting or throwing (ilqāʾ, qadhf, nabdh) dominate the action. The objects cast, in addition to the staff/snake and Firʿawn’s would-be rope-and-staff snakes, include: the infant Mūsā, who is cast into the ark by his mother; the ark itself, now holding the infant, which is to be cast onto the waters and then cast by the waters onto the shore; the love that the divine addresser tells Mūsā “we cast over you”; the magicians, who are cast prostrate to the ground into the position of prayer; the fistful of something “from the trace of the messenger” cast by as-Sāmirī upon the idol of the calf; the ornaments that Mūsā’s people cast down during the construction of the idol; and the tablets cast down by Mūsā in reaction to their idolatry. The prophetic career of Mūsā within the Qurʾān can be divided into two clearly delineated parts: one, that of “the young Mūsā,” in which Firʿawn is his chief

The Casting: A Close Hearing  125 antagonist, and the other, following the parting of the sea, in which the waywardness of the Banī Isrāʾīl constitute his principle challenge – with the escape of Mūsā and the Banī Isrāʾīl through the waters (al-yamm) and the perishing of Firʿawn and his followers marking the division between the two parts. In this essay, I will limit the discussion to the early Mūsā accounts, with a focus on ṬāHā: 9–79. Figure  5.1 indicates the major episodes of the early Mūsā passages as they appear in ṬāHā and the five other suras most germane to the discussion that follows.2 Before proceeding, I note some essential features of the method employed here. Two qurʾānic Mūsā passages begin with the question, “has the story of Mūsā reached you?” (hal atāka ḥadīthu mūsā, Q 79:15 and Q 20:9).3 That question establishes core structures of address, locution, quotations, verse style, and rhyme for what follows. The masculine, singular you is recognized as the primary, implied addressee of the Qurʾān, but that addressee, unlike other prophets (e.g., as in the expression yā mūsā) is never named within locutions of direct address. I will refer

Figure 5.1  Some Major Early Mūsā Passages in the Qurʾān

126  Michael A. Sells to this primary addressee simply as “the prophet.” By the prophet, I intend the figure who is both the primary addressee (as in “has the story of Mūsā reached you?”) as well as the implied proclaimer (as indicated, e.g., by the frequent occurrence within the Qurʾān of the second-person singular imperative “qul” (say!).4 For reasons elaborated below, I will also not use upper-case for the prophet; all references to “the prophet” are references to the prophet figure who receives and proclaims the qurʾānic revelations. By refraining from naming the prophet in the act of addressing him, the Qurʾān shapes him as its central persona, allowing him to reflect and indeed partake of the life and prophecies of earlier figures in a particularly intimate manner – none more so in this regard than Mūsā in ṬāHā. The accounts of earlier prophets are told not only as sacred history but also, insofar as aspects of their stories and of the revelations given to them are also applicable to the qurʾānic prophet, as sacred present. The drama of the prophet’s life in process is frequently marked within the Qurʾān, as in the admonition at the end of the full Mūsā account in ṬāHā (Q 20:114), “Do not rush the qurʾān before the revelation has been determined for you” (lā taʿjil bi-l-qurʾāni min qabli an yuqḍā ilayka waḥyuhu). Here the admonition may refer not simply to the need of the prophet to avoid haste in telling the story he already has been told but also to avoid haste in telling the story that he has not yet been fully told because it has not yet been fully determined within his own life. The non-naming of the prophet within locutions of direct address intensifies the partial fusion among the lives, struggles, and consciousness of the early prophets and the ongoing drama of the prophet as well as the character development of the prophet, the primary protagonist within the text. That non-naming is also a vital element in establishing the sense of intimacy between the prophet as the first addressee and the audience of the qurʾānic addresses, to whom the prophet was to proclaim them, as well as all those who later hear or read them. The audience encounters the revelation through the persona of the prophet, as if they were standing alongside or somehow located within him as the divine voice is presenting its various prophetic utterances. In addition, although the singular “you” at times applies exclusively to the prophet, in other cases (e.g., “has the story of Mūsā reached you?”), the “you” may evoke both the first addressee as well as each member of the implied and actual audience as the qurʾānic everyman who will hear the narrations of the story of Mūsā that follows.5 Along with the non-naming of the prophet in direct address, the feature known as “turning” (iltifāt) in the Qurʾān is of particular importance in this regard. As defined by Arabic rhetoricians, iltifāt includes, among other features, a sudden change in the grammatical person or number in reference to the same existent. Of the varieties of this feature of iltifāt, the shifts of most concern in this essay will be those in reference to the deity: among first-person plural “we”; first-person singular “I”; thirdperson pronominal “he”; third-person by relational substantive, as with “your lord” or “his lord”; and third-person through names such as al-Raḥmān and Allāh or epithets such as al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥakīm – to mention a few of the more common examples. Such shifts can be found in other genres of Arabic literature and in other literature, but few texts are as fundamentally and radically marked by them as the Qurʾān. 6 Qurʾānic iltifāt works against an objectifying God language. That there is one and only one deity affirmed within the Qurʾān is not of course in question. But

The Casting: A Close Hearing  127 qurʾānic iltifāt disrupts the development of any extended second-order denomination of a generic deity that might be objectified and thus put at a semantic removal through a stable set of grammatical persons, names, or pronouns. The epithets and circumlocutions used by classical qurʾānic exegetes and rhetoricians, such as “may he be exalted,” “may he be held as mighty and transcendent,” “may the mention of him preserve his transcendence,” and “majestic be the one who said” (taʿālā, ʿazza wa jalla, taʿālā dhikruhu,ʿazza min qāʾil), and as used by rhetoricians to indicate a word referring to the deity as “a locution of transcendence” (lafẓ al-jalāla), can serve not only as gestures of respect but also as reminders of the non-objectified and thereby transcendent nature of the qurʾānic addresser.7 In most cases, the identity of the actors will be inferred without difficulty by hearers or readers of the Qurʾān. Nevertheless, the need for continual acts of inference draws the reader or hearer of the Qurʾān into an intensive engagement with the discourse. In order to respect and reflect these characteristics, I make every effort to avoid naming the unnamed, filling in ellipses, or otherwise superimposing over the qurʾānic language any form of paraphrase that would override such core literary features. In the translations presented here, therefore, I refrain from employing the large-case, small-case convention commonly used to inflect pronouns as divine or non-divine. I also refrain from employing parenthesis to fill in the names of actors who are not named and whose identification requires more or less intensive engagement even by those who know the passages well. Such an approach to the Qurʾān needs also to confront the issue of the reader – be it the implied reader, model reader, minimally competent reader, or actual reader. Modern poetics and narratology, which are heavily invested in prose fiction, assume that the consumers of literature are readers and that the work of literature is written. And writing, as Walter Ong points out, is a solitary activity, as is, of course, reading in the modern sense. The Qurʾān, by contrast, is characterized (and characterizes itself) as both oral and aural.8 It is permeated with the characteristics of oral-performative discourse. Its thick texture of rhyme, rhythm, assonance, consonance, cadence, and loose syntactical structures produces aurality and continually calls attention to that aurality.9 In addition, as mentioned earlier, the Qurʾān presents itself as made up, in large part, of a set of divinely authored discourses addressed to the prophet that, however we might explain the communications theologically, are in the form of direct speech, and thus not only the prophet but also the secondary audience (both implied and, I suggest, actual) are both listening to and hearing those addresses. They are hearers. But they are also listeners – the more active and attentive side of the hearing/listening doublet. Finally, the actual audience of the Qurʾān today and, according to all indications in the historical record, in the past as well, consists of those who learn the Qurʾān by learning to recite it, who hear it recited throughout their lives, and who recite it themselves – including the literate percentage of the audience who also read the Qurʾān as well as a remarkable number of non-Arabic speakers who learn to recite the Qurʾān with advanced sensitivity to syntax, register, and cadence, yet are unable to parse the Arabic grammar. Rather than employing an awkward combination expression such as hearer/listener/reader or substituting the hearer/

128  Michael A. Sells listener for the reader, I will refer instead to the qurʾānic “audient,” where one might otherwise refer to the “reader.”10 The Qurʾān continually refers to its own discursive performance.11 It does not simply present different accounts of particular events but also performs the events in differing modes of narration, address, and dialogue and with differing mixtures of poetic, dramatic, and expository functions. These performances involve extra-qurʾānic exegesis (exegesis of versions of events in biblical, post-biblical, or other traditions), intra-qurʾānic exegesis (in which one qurʾānic passage fills in, explains, builds upon, or in some cases complicates further a qurʾānic performance that would appear to have come earlier), as well as an intra-qurʾānic performativity manifested in a variety of ways, including the way in which the Qurʾān presents different performances of what is in some way the same story, but each in a different key, with differing thematic, homiletic, polemical, and narratological features. We may not be able to determine definitely which performance preceded or followed upon the other, but with the exception of those passages that display a sense of imminent or actual closure of the revelation process, the Qurʾān presents itself, emphatically, as discourse in progress. In regard to the prevalence of the poetic mode within qurʾānic discourse – with greater or lesser degrees of intensity – and the malleability of its verse, rhythm, and rhyme, we confront an unknown. There may have been one or more preIslamic Arabic traditions of non-shiʿr poetic-prophetic discourse in various genres as well as discourses with malleable rhythm, rhyme, and verse length amid which the Qurʾān developed and against which it was measured by its early audients. Beyond a few examples of sajʿ (sometimes translated as “rhymed prose”), the post-qurʾānic tradition did not see fit to remember or record it.12

The Narrative Mode in ṬāHā 9–79 Among the early Mūsā accounts, ṬāHā stands out as distinctive in several areas. Most immediately evident is composition. It features various verse styles: mid-length verses, extra-long verses jammed with action verbs, and even the irruption of a prayer in the hymnic or incantatory style most often associated with the prophet’s earliest pronouncements. It presents sets of dialogues with short statements and responses but also some open-ended dialogues in which a response turns gradually into a prophetic address. And it makes intensive use of embedding, with addresses couched within addresses, narratives within narratives, and quotations within quotations, along with some dramatic moments in which the nested frames collapse into one another. ṬāHā also stands within a field of transtextual or, as I would prefer, transdiscursive resonance with two qurʾānic passages in which it is the qurʾānic prophet rather than Mūsā who is being addressed: Q 58:1–18 and Q 94:1–8.13 Through the multiple and compounded echoes between a section of ṬāHā and the addresses in Q 53 and Q 94, the story of Mūsā (and Mūsā’s mother) and that of the prophet – past prophecy and prophecy as it is unfolding in the qurʾānic present – are enfolded into one another.

The Casting: A Close Hearing  129 With the exception of verse 40, ṬāHā 9–79 makes sparing use of the perfect tense associated with straightforward narrative. The first part of the early Mūsā story in ṬāHā (vv. 9–49), which relates the life of Mūsā from birth to the midpoint of his confrontation with Firʿawn, is narrated to Mūsā (and simultaneously to the prophet, and of course to us as implied and actual audients) with Mūsā standing near the fire in the valley of Ṭuwā. The stories of the infant Mūsā and the ark, Mūsā’s homicide, and Mūsā’s stay in Madyan are recalled to Mūsā retrospectively as if or as he is still standing near the fire. The journey to Firʿawn’s court and the first part of the confrontation and dialogue with Firʿawn are told in prophetically prospective time, as commands to Mūsā (and Mūsā-Hārūn). Although the qurʾānic audient may surmise that these commands will have been fulfilled, the narrative tension created by the fact that the address is still situated at the temporal and spatial moment of the revelation in Ṭuwā remains. The spell is not broken until a voice irrupts into the prospective time with present-tense direct speech (v. 49): “And who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā?” (wa man rabbukumā yā mūsā). Those words fit perfectly into the prospective dialogue given to Mūsā, but now they are coming from another party, unnamed but identifiable through inference as Firʿawn. Once that question is sounded, what were commands to Mūsā are resituated as narratives of what in fact did happen. The narrative complexity of ṬāHā 9–49 emerges most clearly if we compare it to the performance of the same events in Sūra 28 (al-Qaṣaṣ). That sura begins with the narrator speaking in the first-person plural, stating that “these are verses of the book that makes clear (al-kitāb al-mubīn), wherein we measure out (natlū) to you a portion of the authentic story of Mūsā and Firʿawn.” In contrast to ṬāHā, al-Qaṣaṣ presents events in a strictly chronological sequence and with minimal use of embedding. The relevant incidents could be given the following subtitles: Umm Mūsā and the Tābūt (Ark), Mūsā’s Act of Homicide, Mūsā in Madyan, and Mūsā at the Fire. The section on Mūsā at the fire is made up of chronologically ordered subunits involving the revelation and then the mission bestowed upon Mūsā, the signs of the staff/snake and white hand, Mūsā’s petition to have Hārūn help him, Mūsā’s (and Hārūn’s) confrontation with Firʿawn, and Mūsā’s splitting of the sea. In addition, al-Qaṣaṣ relies strongly on third-person perfect verbs: X did (or said) this, then Y did (or said) that, then Z did (or said). Al-Qaṣaṣ even fills in the prehistory of the story by recounting Firʿawn’s order that Israelite male newborns be killed, thus providing an explanatory context for Umm Mūsā’s divinely commanded act of placing her infant in an ark and setting the ark adrift on the waters. To be sure, in this case, as in other cases of narrative gaps or suspension, the audients who came after the compilation of the full qurʾānic text would be aware of the details of the Mūsā story that are left out of any single qurʾānic narration of it. And the pre-compilation audients would likely have been aware of Mūsā lore circulating with and around the nascent qurʾānic community. However, the gap between ṬāHā and al-Qaṣaṣ in terms of discursive strategies is striking. The measured nature of al-Qaṣaṣ in this regard is further enhanced by its regular cadence, based on verses that are balanced in length and that form themselves consistently around the rhyme in ūn and īn.

130  Michael A. Sells To return now to ṬāHā: the second part of the Mūsā story in ṬāHā (46– 79) proceeds in chronological sequence but continues to thwart direct narrative expectations. In the discussion that follows later in this essay, this section of ṬāHā will be contrasted with the narration in Q 26 and Q 7 of the same events. In ṬāHā, the speeches by Mūsā and by the converted magicians serve as instances of prophetic ambiguity. The speakers begin their orations by speaking in a manner that emphasizes their own human frailty, then move into a confident, powerful proclamation of the core truths of the Qurʾān, and at some point (not easily identified by exegetes), are eclipsed by the divine voice breaking into what appears to be their discourse. The tafsīr tradition and the history of qurʾānic translations demonstrate the difficulty of determining where the human speaker ceases to speak and where the divine speaker takes over and, by taking over, irrupts into the story through several temporal and narrative frames: addressing the Firʿawn/magicians, Mūsā, the prophet, and “us” – the implied secondary audients (or overhearers) of the Qurʾān. The ṬāHā account also intensifies the ambiguity or ambivalence of number and identity at key narrative moments. Nearly identical commands are given, one to Mūsā and then one to Mūsā and Hārūn, and the tension between singular and dual agency is heightened throughout the confrontation with Firʿawn and then compounded further when the divine narrator enters into the story it is telling as a protagonist on the side of Mūsā/Hārūn. Similar tensions mark the side of the antagonist(s). Firʿawn speaks as if he is surrounded by allies or agents, but they are not identified. He “marshals,” but there is no object indicating the forces that he marshals. Then an unspecified “they” confer in secret and then come forth. No magicians are mentioned as being present at the court or being summoned to the court; indeed, the magicians are explicitly mentioned only in the wake of the performance of magic: they take on a distinct identity as magicians only in their act of renouncing magic as they are transformed from agents of the antagonist to agents of the protagonist. Finally, the event at the very culmination of the duel of staff casting, toward which the entire sura had been building, is never in fact narrated; instead, the force of the verb “cast” is displaced onto the magicians who are cast to the ground in positions of worship. Each of these points will be examined through a closer look at the relevant ṬāHā passages in comparison with other qurʾānic narratives of the same events. In that regard, an invaluable window into the early Mūsā narrative in ṬāHā is provided by an eleven-verse passage in Sūra 79 (an-Nāziʿāt, vv. 15–26), which stands as a condensed doublet for a major part of ṬāHā.14

A Window into ṬāHā (Q 79:15–26) Has the story of Mūsā reached you? How his lord called him in the holy valley Ṭuwā: Go to Firʿawn – he’s transgressed – Ask him: would you wish to be made pure and that I guide you and that you know awe? He showed him the greatest sign

(15)

(20)

The Casting: A Close Hearing  131 but he called lie, then disobeyed, and then turned his back, quickening, then marshaled, then called out and said: I am your lord most high Then Allāh seized him as a warning for the here-after   and the here-before In that there is a lesson for those who know awe. hal atāka ḥadīthu Mūsā idh nādāhu rabbuhu bi-l-wādi l-muqaddasi ṭuwā idhhab ilā firʿawna innahu ṭaghā fa-qul hal la-ka ilā an tazakkā wa-ahdiyaka ilā rabbika fa-takhshā fa arā-hu l-āyata l-kubrā fa-kadhdhaba wa-ʿaṣā thumma adbara yasʿā fa-ḥashara fa-nādā fa-qāla ana rabbukumu l-aʿlā fa-akhadhahu llāhu nakāla l-ākhirati wa-l-ūlā inna fī dhālika la-ʿibtratan li-man yakhshā

(25)

(15)

(20)

(25)

An-Nāziʿāt is a forty-six-verse sura composed in the hymnic and incantatory style, with short verses, tight rhymes, and dense employment of assonance, nasalization, and consonance – features associated with the first period of the Qurʾān, although its multiple rhyme schemes and one or more apparently misplaced verses have led to disagreement over its place in the chronology of the Qurʾān and over whether it in fact constitutes a single prophetic unit, that is, a passage composed or proclaimed as a unit at one particular point in the prophet’s career.15 The transdiscursive relationship between the early Mūsā sections in an-Nāziʿāt and ṬāHā will be demonstrated here, even as the interdiscursive relationship between them (i.e., which one is quoting, partially imitating, recasting, alluding to, or evoking the other) will remain open. The an-Nāziʿāt Mūsā section can be outlined as follows: 1 2 3 4

The call by Mūsā’s lord to Mūsā The commission enjoined upon Mūsā, which includes a The command to go to Firʿawn b The message Mūsā is to bear The display of the greatest sign, which is commonly interpreted as referring to Mūsā’s display of the sign to Firʿawn, although the nature of the sign remains unspecified Firʿawn’s reaction, which includes a A series of frenetic but vaguely defined actions (called lie, disobeyed, turned away, quickened or bestirred, marshaled) b His call or claim to be your [pl] lord

132  Michael A. Sells 5 6

The divine reaction A metanarrative declaration that the story contains an ʿibra or admonition for those who know awe

The passage is a narrative addressed to the prophet. Within that narrative is an embedded address to Mūsā, within which an address to Firʿawn is embedded. Mūsā’s lord calls him and gives him a mission (to go to Firʿawn) and a reason for it (Firʿawn has transgressed). The transformative action is indicated by the sentence “He showed him the greatest sign” (al-āyat al-kubrā). The reaction by Firʿawn is narrated through a rapid-fire set of third-person, perfect-tense verbs: he called lie, turned away, quickened or sprang into action, marshaled or assembled (a transitive verb lacking a direct object that would indicate who is being assembled), and called out, thereby countering Mūsā’s invitation to be guided to his (Firʿawn’s own) lord with the claim that “I [Firʿawn] am your [pl] lord most high.” Firʿawn rushes around engaging in various actions: retreating, coming forward, marshaling no one in particular, and calling out – to no one in particular or at least to no one this narration deems worth mentioning – that he is their lord. The deity, by contrast, reacts simply and effortlessly, not by smiting Firʿawn but by seizing him as an example for this life and the afterlife, as if the divine power simply reached in and plucked him out of his own history in progress to transform him into a historical and eschatological paradigm. Many of the words ending in long ā in this passage form sound-meaning units, that is, combinations of sound and sense that take on a meaning beyond what is denoted or connoted by a word outside of that pattern or at least outside of the formative instance of that pattern. Thus ṭaghā, [ta]tazakkā, takhshā, ʿaṣā, aʿlā, and yasʿā clarify one another through their contrastive relationships within the phonological, rhetorical, semantic, and symbolic field they establish. What was it that Firʿawn did to transgress (ṭaghā)? It is never stated here, and even in the more extended narration in ṬāHā, it is never made explicit, although the text invites us to infer that Firʿawn’s subsequent reaction to the message delivered by Mūsā, which includes his claim to be some group’s lord, may offer a clue concerning the original transgression. Two words pose special difficulties for translation: takhshā and yas’ā. As will be seen from analogous passages in ṬāHā, the reverential fear denoted by khashiya contrasts, within the early Mūsā accounts, to the more ordinary fear denoted by khawf. Modern English lacks a verbal equivalent to khashiya as it is used here to denote a state of coming into reverential fear, or being in a state of reverential fear, but without any stated object of that fear. “To dread,” which can be used in such an intransitive fashion, might be one possibility, but in modern English, dread and awe, which may have largely overlapped connotatively, have diverged, with dread used for the fear of a monstrous or demonic force. (No need here to tarry over the devaluation of the adjective “awesome” in contemporary slang.) At any rate, the experience of awe is evoked by the invitation to Firʿawn to know, experience, or stand in awe (takhshā) and by an address to the prophet that occurs at the penultimate verse of an-Nāziʿāt that does include an object (Q

The Casting: A Close Hearing  133 79:45): “You are only a warner for those who know awe before it [the hour of reckoning]” (innamā anta mundhiru man yakhshāhā). Such reverential fear as an immersive attentiveness of life-or-death intensity appears as both a result of and a precondition for the acceptance of guidance (hudā). Ṭaghā is given both an acoustic and a semantic location, on the other hand, through its relationship to ʿasā and through the semantically contrastive rhyme words tazakkā and takhshā. What is Mūsā suggesting to Firʿawn to do in asking him if he would self-purify (tazakkā)? Once again we are neither told here nor is the answer made explicitly clear in ṬāHā. And what is the greatest sign (al-āyat al-kubrā), and who displayed it to whom? The answer may seem clear in retrospect, but as we will see, it is in fact given different answers in the Qurʾān, with the displayer identified as either the deity or Mūsā and the one who receives the display as either Mūsā or Firʿawn. In the passage under consideration here, exegetes have taken the subject as Mūsā and the indirect object as Firʿawn. However, in ṬāHā, Mūsā is given the most glorious signs (in the plural), and it is the divine narrator/addresser/protagonist who shows them to Firʿawn (araynāhu). As for rabbukum al-aʿlā (“your lord most high”), a variant of it in ṬāHā echoes provocatively against it when the deity declares to Mūsā, who is anxious upon confronting the power of Firʿawn: innaka anta l-aʿlā (“Lo you, you are the highest”). Here we find a combination of two emphatics, the repeated pronoun (lo you, you) and an elative (the highest) rarely used in regard to creatures in the Qurʾān, except transgressively. The most difficult challenge in the case of these key rhyme words is that posed by yasʿā. Like khashiya, saʿy is used in several cases without a complement. It can mean “to hasten, strive, stir oneself, become busy about,” or “to move into intense or concerted activity.” In ṬāHā, the word will be used repeatedly, and in several of those cases, it means something like “to come alive” or “to move as if alive.” To translate any single word in a long literary text with one word in the target language is difficult to do without a sense of artificiality, but in the limited case of the early Mūsā narrations, I have determined that “quicken,” which can encompass all of the meanings mentioned, may serve in this instance to reflect what is common to the various instances of saʿy.16 Of course any set of end rhymes will be poetically marked. Incantatory suras such as Q 79 differ in this regard from both classical Arabic poetry, with its regularity of meter, rhyme, and verse length, and suras with the more discursive versestyle endings in ūn/īn/īm. The intense use of interior assonance in such suras, their malleability in terms of both metrics and rhyme patterns, and the shortness of their verse length gives end rhymes and other sound clusters a particular intensity; that intensity is heightened here by the use and placements of transitive verbs lacking in an objective complement. In calling these expressions soundmeaning units, I do not mean to suggest that without the acoustical elements, they could not ever be used intransitively within a mutually defining lexical field but to emphasize that there is a residue or surplus of signification within them and that their acoustical and formal relationship with one another within an-Nāziʿāt and within ṬāHā, respectively, intensifies the importance of that surplus.17 Figure 5.2

134  Michael A. Sells indicates how the eleven verses from the Mūsā section in an-Nāziʿāt, as well as other verses from the same sura, serve as a poetic, narrative, and proclamatory major chord for the much longer and more complex performance of the early Mūsā story in ṬāHā. Note that the sound-meaning units in an-Nāziʿāt that reverberate within ṬāHā include elements outside of the Mūsā section. Among them, I would point to the following particularly important examples. Two verses in an-Nāziʿāt (27, 33) echo the themes, form, arguments, and rhetoric in ṬāHā 53–54. Verse 34 of an-Nāziʿāt has humans remembering, at the hour of reckoning, what they have quickened to (yasʿā) during their lives, a point that is stressed in ṬāHā during the account of

Figure 5.2  Transdiscursity in Sūra 79 and Sūra 20

The Casting: A Close Hearing  135 the revelation to Mūsā at the fire. The penultimate verse of an-Nāziʿāt (Q 79:45), “You are only a warner for those who know awe before it” (man yakhshāhā), reverberates with the opening two verses of ṬāHā, “We did not send down the Qurʾān to you that you be troubled, but only as a reminder for whoever knows awe before it” (man yakhshāhā). It also recalls the divine command to Mūsā to invite Firʿawn to follow Mūsā’s guidance that “you might know awe” (fa takhshā) (Q 79:19) along with its parallel verse in ṬāHā (Q 20:44), “Speak to him courteously that he might be reminded and know awe” (fa yakhshā).

A Close Hearing of Early Mūsā in ṬāHā (Q 20:1–79) No judgment is made here upon redaction questions or upon chronological issues in cases of dense transdiscursivity. It is hoped that the close hearing, by temporarily bracketing such issues, may allow a closer attention to the text as it is, that such attention may in turn inform discussions of chronology and redaction, and finally but perhaps more importantly, may contribute to an understanding of the rhetorical, literary, and prophetic qualities of this section of ṬāHā as the text has come down to us. In the translations, I refrain from employing end stops and make sparing use of punctuation. The aim is to follow the qurʾānic syntax and discursive flow without filling in with punctuations the poetic or non-discursive spaces that are left open in the Arabic text. As mentioned earlier, I  also refrain from employing uppercase to mark pronouns with antecedents or implied antecedents that reflect divine agents. Nor do I employ quotation marks to indicated direct speech. In the latter case, the issue of embedded direct speech is precisely at issue in the analysis, and each section of the translation will be preceded or followed by discussion of the issue of when and how the embedded direct speech opens or closes within the passage in question. Qurʾānic discourse can challenge efforts a simple division. Thus, a division by theme may be in tension with a division by address. In the first case of such tension encountered in what follows, the opening address (from the divine addresser to the prophet) takes up verses 1–11. From the last part of verse 11 through much of the early Mūsa section, the address shifts from to divine address and narration to Mūsā (which of course is embedded in the address to the prophet). Thematically, however, verses 1–8 form a clear unit as a prologue to what will follow, with the Mūsā story proper beginning at verse 9. Because such overlaps are precisely what is at issue in the following analysis, the divisions are meant as to be working divisions rather than claims of inherent structure. One consequence of such a working division will be the need to represent overlaps in both the translation and analysis. At the end of this essay, I append the full translation of Q 20:1–79 that will have been discussed and analyzed section by section. By placing it at the end, I aim to have explained the various features of the translation during the earlier close hearing and also to allow for a synoptic view of the full passage after the section-by-section discussion.

136  Michael A. Sells ṬāHā consists of 135 verses, which can be given a working division as follows: 1–8 9–79 80–98 99 100–112  113–14 115–23 124–28 129–30

Prelude: Address to the Prophet Early Mūsā Later Mūsā Admonition for Mūsā Story Day of Reckoning and Resurrection Argument Second Admonition Adam and the Angels Third Admonition Demands for a Sign and Divine Response18

The discussion that follows takes up the following passages, with each passage given in translation and, in the case of those passages discusses most intensively, in transliteration as well. In regard to transliteration, I endeavor to represent the basic vowel elisions of the Arabic and also to employ hyphens to clarify where needed the relationship of pronouns and particles to the expressions in which they occur. At the end of the essay, the full text is presented in translation, with the aim of offering a synoptic overview of the issues (including translation issues) discussed earlier. Q 1–8, 99 Q 20:9–16 Q 20:17–41; Q 53:1–18; Q 96  Q 20:42–56 Q 20:56–64 Q 20:65–70 Q 20:71–76 Q 20:77–79, 124–128

Prelude and Admonition The Call Sign, Commission, Prayer, and Revelation Word The Gathering The Casting The Testimony The Enveloping

Prelude (Q 20:1–8) ṬāHā We have not sent down the Qurʾān to you that you be troubled Only a reminder for one who knows awe Sent down from the one who created the earth and high heavens The compassionate has taken his place upon the throne To him belong what is in the heavens and what is on the earth, what is between them and what is beneath the soil If you pronounce openly still he knows what is hidden, and has concealed Allāh no god is but he To him belong the most beautiful names

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The Casting: A Close Hearing  137 Three notes from the prelude will be elaborated throughout ṬāHā’s distinctive performance of the early Mūsā story. The first, in verse 3, is the statement that the Qurʾān is sent down as a reminder for whoever knows, experiences, or stands in awe (yakhshā); and awe, as it was in an-Nāziʿāt, will become a core theme in ṬāHā. The second is the rather enigmatic statement to the prophet in verse 7, wa in tajhar bi-l-qawli fa innahu yaʿlamu s-sirra wa akhfā (“and if you pronounce openly, still he knows what is hidden and akhfā”). The expression wa akhfā has provoked considerable commentary; and given that the verb is transitive, has no stated object, can mean “has concealed” or “has revealed,” and may also be an elative, it is not surprising that many suggestions have been offered. Because the use of transitive verbs without their direct objects is a core feature of both an-Nāziʿāt and, even more so, ṬāHā, and because the theme of concealment is a guiding theme within the early Mūsā account in ṬāHā, I translate the verse as, “If you pronounce openly, still he knows what is hidden and has concealed.” The third key note in the prelude is the tahlīl. Verse 8 begins “Allāh no god but he” (allāhu lā ilāhā illā hu[wa]). Verse 98 of ṬāHā, which serves in part as a comment on the Mūsā narrative, begins, “Your only god is Allāh – there is no other god than he” (innamā ilāhakumu llāhu lladhī lā ilāha illā hu[wa]). The tahlīl thus frames the Mūsā story, and the Mūsā story proper begins with a revelation that emerges as a rare qurʾānic first-person divine proclamation of the tahlīl in a form, innanī ana llāhu lā ilāha illā ana (“I am, I am Allāh no god but I”), which is unique within the Qurʾān. The Call (Q 20:9–16) Has the story of Mūsā reached you? How he saw a fire and told his people: Stay, I sense a fire. Perhaps I’ll find an ember or encounter guidance at the fire Then as he drew near, he was called: Mūsā! I am, I am your lord Remove your shoes You are in the holy valley Ṭuwā I have chosen you So listen to that being revealed I am, I am Allāh no god but I Worship me and perform the prayer, remembering me The hour is coming. I hide it nearly that each may be rewarded with that to which he quickens Do not let them turn you from it – they who deny it, following their inclination – you to perish wa hal atāka ḥadīthu mūsā idh raʾā nāran fa-qāla li-ahlihi mkuthū innī ānastu nāran laʿallī ātīkum minhā bi-qabasin aw ajidu ʿala n-nāri hudā

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138  Michael A. Sells fa-lammā atāhā nūdiya yā mūsā innī ana rabbuka fa-khlaʿ naʿlayka innaka bi-l-wādi l-muqaddasi ṭuwā wa ana khtartuka fa-stamiʿ li-mā yūḥā innanī ana llāhu lā ilāha illā ana fa-ʿbudnī wa aqim-i ṣ-ṣalāta li-dhikrī inna s-sāʿata ātiyatun akādu ukhfīhā li-tujzā kullu nafsin bi-mā tasʿā fa-lā yaṣuddannaka ʿanhā man lā yuʿminu bi-hā wa-ttabaʿa hawāhu fa-tardā

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After Mūsā senses, intuits, or discerns (ānasa) a fire, he goes to investigate. The verb “ānasa” bears connotations of intimacy and sociability (uns) and offers a contrast to the narrative objectivity of ra’ā.19 As he approaches the fire, he is called (nūdiya) – but he is not told, and the audient is not told, by what or by whom, in contrast to an-Nāziʿāt 16 (idh nādāhu rabbuhu), where the relational identity of the speaker is made apparent to the prophet and audients (though not necessarily to Mūsā) before the direct speech. In ṬāHā, then, the various embedded hearers (Mūsā, the prophet, the implied audients, and the actual audients), are all placed in a position of uncertainty. The caller then announces his identity, in relational terms, within the call itself: innī ana rabbuka, an expression that includes an emphatic repetition of the pronoun and that might be rendered as “Lo I am – I am your lord”; “Lo I, I am your lord”; “It is I, I your lord”; or even, given that Arabic does not employ a verb for the present-tense of “to be,” “I am I your lord,” although few exegetes have taken it in the latter sense.20 After directing Mūsā to remove his sandals, the speaker goes on directly to announce, again in first-person address and in an intimate qurʾānic register, “I have chosen you,” and then to issue another command, which can be translated “so listen to that being revealed” or “so listen to that to be revealed.” In translating forms of w/ḥ/y as “reveal,” I intend no theological position regarding the verbal or nonverbal nature of waḥy or the possibility that it may have been mediated by an angelic being. I employ the English terms “reveal” and “revelation” to single out a particular kind of communication by the deity to the creature (as indicated by words based on the w/ḥ/y root), a distinction that will be pursued in detail in what follows. To sum up the language of address and reception in verses 10–12: Mūsā is called, and we can infer that he hears; the caller then identifies himself relationally, gives a command, proclaims a further relationship, and then commands Mūsā to listen to what is about to be revealed. At this point, there is a rhetorical break in the continuity of the speaking persona. The “I” that had performed five speech acts in one continual utterance disappears grammatically after the command to Mūsā to listen to what is to be revealed. The command to listen, the passive voice of “to be revealed,” and the break in continuity of address serve to mark out what will follow. There then emerges a new declaration, the speaker of which identifies itself in absolute rather than relational terms and in a formula in which the pronoun “I” is repeated three times

The Casting: A Close Hearing  139 (-nī, ana, ana): innanī ana llāhu lā ilāha illā ana. We can chart this movement as follows: Frame 1: The divine “we” opens an address to the prophet that ends with a proclaiming of the tahlīl and then asks the prophet if he has heard the story of Mūsā. Frame 2: Beginning with the common “idh” clause, the divine “we” narrates Mūsā’s discerning of a fire, speculation and hope for what he will find there, and crucially, his separation from his companions – a separation that renders the following experience private. It becomes a preeminently public declaration, however, through its revelation to the prophet and through the prophet’s pronouncement of it. The divine narrator and addresser reveals to the prophet, in direct speech, its originary address to Mūsā, and through the prophet reveals it to his original community and to all subsequent qurʾānic audients who hear (or overhear it) as if present at the originary address. Frame 3: The call to Mūsā, with the agent hidden within the passive voice, is followed by the sacralization of Ṭuwā and the proclamations of relational identity and personal favor. The dramatization first of a personal relationship and then a special relationship is enhanced by the emergence of an “I–thou” voice out of the passively constructed “was called.” Frame 4: The command to Mūsā to listen (a rhetorically marked command, given that we can assume he had been listening before), the marking out of what will follow by the use of the charged term “w/ḥ/y” and the passive voice in which the verb “yūḥā” is pitched – it is here that the tahlīl that had been announced just prior to the Mūsā narration is reperformed but this time in the first person.21 Although the Qurʾān contains nearly forty instances of third-person nominal tahlīl formulas (lā ilāha illa llāh, lā ilāha illā huwa, mā min ilāhin illa llāh), it has only two first-person versions of the tahlīl beyond the one we are considering here. The first is found in Q 16:2: He sends down the angels through (or with) the spirit as part of his command to whichever of his servants he wills to warn: that no god is but I, so revere me. yunazzilu l-malāʾikata bi-r-rūḥi min amrihī ʿalā man yashāʾu min ʿibādihī an andhirū annahū lā ilāha illā ana fa-ttaqūn-(i) Here, the first-person tahlīl is embedded within a third-person narrative about angels, the spirit being sent down, and a warning that is to be communicated. The passage proclaims that the announcement is made to whomever the divine narrator wills. The third-person narrative frame sets the ground for a third-person

140  Michael A. Sells construction that might be reflected in a literal translation as “to warn that it is the case that no god is but I.” Then, once the iltifāt to the direct speech occurs with the words “but I,” the address continues in the first person: “so revere me.” The second example (Q 21:25) also opens with annahu: We have not sent any messenger before you but that we revealed to him: that no god is but I, so worship me. wa mā arsalnā min qablika min rasūlin illā nūḥī ilayhi annahū lā ilāha illā ana fa-ʿbudūn-(i) These two verses make clear that the divine addresser has revealed its identity to all rasūls prior to the prophet. Like their parallel verse in ṬāHā, each verse employs iltifāt to bring together registers of majesty and intimacy, but neither sets up the embedded frames of emphatic first-person self-enunciation that we find in ṬāHā, and neither includes the extra “I.” The Qurʾān also contains one example of a second-person tahlīl, in Q 21:87, which states that Dhū n-Nūn [Yūnus, Jonah] “called out in the darkness that there is no God but you, may you be praised” (fa-nādā fī ẓ-ẓulumāti an lā ilāha illā anta subḥānaka). ṬāHā 10–14 is one of three qurʾānic presentations of Mūsā’s vision and audition at the fire. In Q 27:8, when Mūsā nears the fire, the voice calls out “būrika man fi n-nāri wa man ḥawlahā” (blessed be whoever is in the fire and whoever is around it), a call that has led to a range of possible interpretations regarding the one or those who were around the fire, many with the interposition of angels into the scene. One option classical exegetes offer that eschews an interposition of angels into the passage reads the man (“whoever,” indicating either a singular or a plural referent) as referring to the deity or to the presence of the deity within the fire. It reads the second man as referring to Mūsā and also perhaps, by extension, to all those who place themselves there through their faith. After this powerfully ambiguous evocation of unnamed beings receiving the performative locution of blessing (būrika, a form that can be either perfect or optative: “have been blessed” or “blessed be”), the speaker continues, “praise be to Allāh, lord of the worlds. O Mūsā, I am Allāh, the mighty, the wise.” The third passage, in Q 28:29 (al-Qaṣaṣ), introduces a reference to “the tree” within an elusive topography. Mūsā discerned the fire which is “in the direction of the mount” (aṭ-ṭūr), and then, “when he drew near it, there was called out from the right bank of the wādī at the blessed spot from the tree.” How do the mount, the wādī, the wādī’s right bank, the blessed spot, and the tree relate to one another spatially? The blessedness, which had been pronounced for those within or near the fire in Q 27, is here affirmed of the place, just as holiness was affirmed of the wādī of Ṭuwā in Q 20. In Q 28, after a set of spatial specifications that combine an apparent language of precision with a syntax that offers numerous possibilities for locating the spot from which the call was given, the words of the call are presented

The Casting: A Close Hearing  141 in direct speech: “O Mūsā, I am, I am Allāh, lord of the worlds,” which combines the emphatic doubled pronoun and self-identification of Allāh in Q 20 but adds the self-identification of “lord” as an apposition to Allāh and employs the expression “lord of both worlds” instead of the more personal “your lord.” (See Figure 5.3.) The Qurʾān is marking out direct speech in each case but, after a consistent reference to Mūsā approaching the fire, is unconcerned with harmonizing directly the language of the call in the three passages: another indication of qurʾānic

Figure 5.3  Mūsā, the Fire, and Waḥy in Sūras 20, 27, and 28

142  Michael A. Sells performativity, particularly noteworthy given that what is being related is the divine self-identity as expressed in direct speech to the same embedded addressee. In Q 27 and Q 28, the identity proclamations (“I am, I am Allāh, lord of the worlds”; “I am Allāh, the mighty, the wise”) are followed straightaway by the command to Mūsā to “cast your staff.” In ṬāHā, however, the proclamations are followed directly by a reminder to Mūsā regarding the imminence of the hour of reckoning and the danger of being distracted from it and by an enigmatic reference to the near-hiddenness of that day or, to be precise, hour (al-sāʿa), the apocalyptic moment. Conversely, as noted, Q 79 (an-Nāziʿāt) is an incantatory, apocalyptic sura with a condensed Mūsā narrative in its midst. Here we find that ṬāHā, which is constructed on the formal and phonological model of an-Nāziʿāt, preserves the apocalyptic moment (al-sāʿa) within a long Mūsā narrative.22 The Exodus account of Mūsā’s vision and audition at the fire offers some instructive contrasts and similarities to that within ṬāHā. The Qurʾān, as would be expected, leaves out the clauses defining the speaker as the God of Mūsā’s father, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham; Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ will go on to give a full place to both Isaac and Ismāʿīl as prophets who hear, perform, and pass on the dhikr or remembrance and whom the addressee is told to remember in turn. Thus the most relevant verses for our comparison here are two passages, Exodus 3:1–7 and 11–14, which will be quoted from the JPS Tanakh translation. The first account opens with an angel of YHWH appearing to Moses in a burning bush. Moses, seeing that the bush isn’t consumed, says that he must turn aside to see the wonder, and when YHWH sees him turn aside, Elohim calls to him out of the bush with the words “Moses, Moses!” to which Moses responds, “Here I am.” (3:1b) [Moses] came to Horeb, the mountain of God. (3:2) An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed (way-yarʾ) and there was a bush all aflame, and yet the bush was not consumed. (3:3) Moses said, “I must turn aside to look at this marvelous site; why doesn’t the bush burn up?” (3:4) When the Lord (YHWH) saw that he turned aside to look, God (Elohim) called to him out of the bush: “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” (3:5) And He said, “Do not come closer; remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.” (3:6) “I am,” He said, “the God (elohey) of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Exodus presents Moses as asking, after hearing the initial address, who is speaking, in contrast to the qurʾānic accounts, which present the speaker as preempting such a question by emphatically announcing his identity. YHWH and Elohim, two rhetorically distinct personas of the deity, are identified within the account before the speaker identifies himself to Mūsā. Thus there is, for the reader, no semantic void out of which the first address to Mūsā emerges. The master planner of the encounter has been identified as YHWH and the speaker identified as Elohim.

The Casting: A Close Hearing  143 After an account of Moses veiling his face and of the divine grant to the Israelites of a land of milk and honey, followed by an enumeration of the peoples dwelling upon that land at the time (elements not reflected in the ṬāHā passage), Exodus continues: (3:11) But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?” (3:12) And He said, “I will be with you; that shall be your sign that it was I who sent you. And when you have freed the people from Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.” (3:13) Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” (3:14) And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-asher-ehyeh.” He continued, “Thus you speak to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’ ” (3:15) And God further said to Moses, “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: ‘YHWH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’; This shall be my name forever, This is my appellation for all eternity.” In this Exodus passage, Moses offers two objections to the mission he is given and hears the responses to each. In the first, he asks who he (Moses) is to confront Pharaoh with the demand to free the Israelites. Elohim responds, “ehyeh ʿimmaka” (“I am with you” or “I will be with you”), and continues, “and that shall be your sign (ha-ʾōt) that it was I who sent you.” Moses then asks what he should reply when the people inquire regarding the God of their fathers who has sent Moses to them, “what is his name?” The reply is ehyeh asher ehyeh (“I am that I am,” “I am what I am,” “I will be what I will be,” or “I would be what I would be”). The speaker then tells Moses to tell the Israelites that Ehyeh (“I am”) sent him and finally offers an emphatic closure by stating that Moses should tell the Israelites that “YHWH, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” sent him. ṬāHā will, in the narrative that continues, make the expression “I am with you” a core element (or even, a key actor) in a manner that offers similarities and contrasts to Exodus.23 In any case, after the two-verse disquisition on the coming of the “hour,” the ṬāHā account (17–24) moves back into harmony with that Exodus (see Exod. 4:2–7, 11–16), beginning with a similarly sudden shift from the register of majesty to one of everyday familiarity.24 (Q 20:17–41): Sign, Commission, Prayer, Revelation What is that in your right hand, Mūsā? My staff. I lean on it, batten the grass to feed my sheep and find other uses for it Cast it, Mūsā! he said

144  Michael A. Sells He cast it and behold: a snake quickening Seize it, he said, and do not fear We shall turn it back to what it was before

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Put your hand to your ribs to emerge white, but unharmed, another sign So may we show you some of our more glorious signs – Go to Firʿawn. He’s transgressed He said: Open my breast, lord And ease me my task And loosen the knot from my tongue That they may understand my speech And assign me one of my family Hārūn, my brother Stiffen through him my spine And give him a share in my burden That we may recite your praises often And remember you often Of us you are ever aware Your request is granted, Mūsā, he said As we graced you before, another time When we revealed to your mother that being revealed Throw him in the ark! then throw him in the deep – the deep to cast him to the shore, an enemy – to me and him – to take him So have I cast over you my love that you be fashioned under my eye And your sister, going forth saying: Shall I show you one who will nurse him? Then we brought you back to your mother that her parched eyes be cooled and she sorrow no more and you killed a man and we saved you in your base condition and we tested you and tested you again and you stayed with the people of Madyan, many years And now, here, you are come – as determined So have I formed you for myself, Mūsā Take my signs, you and your brother, and weaken not   in remembering me Go, both of you, to Firʿawn. He’s transgressed

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The Casting: A Close Hearing  145 The ṬāHā section that emerges from the address to Mūsā in the valley of Ṭuwā transverses several discursive and structural fissures. From the opening of the prologue through the first iteration of the mission to Mūsā, the verses proceed in a relatively homogenous style, with strong assonance, a single end rhyme, and relatively stable verse length. However, after Mūsā is presented with the signs of the staff/snake and white hand and then given his mission (“Go to Firʿawn. He’s transgressed,” v. 24), the anticipated forward movement of events is interrupted first by Mūsā’s prayer and then, after his request to have Hārūn serve as his aide, by a narrative retrospective, recounted to Mūsā, of Mūsā’s early life. The stable verse style gives way to an oscillation between the ultrashort verses of Mūsā’s prayer, in a new rhyme in ī, during which narrative time is suspended, and the ultra-long verses 39 and 40, with the retrospective narration accelerating to a crescendo in verse 40. That verse completes the story of Mūsā’s salvation at the hands of his mother, sister, and the retinue of Firʿawn and his return to the arms of his mother and then, in a rapid-fire series of second-person perfect verbs, traces Mūsā’s life through his act of homicide, his journey to Madyan, and his stay in Madyan, to his return “here,” a return that is qualified with a semantically, syntactically, rhetorically, and rhythmically emphatic “as determined” – a locution that with qurʾānically self-referential aplomb completes a literary tour de force in which extra-long verse and fast-forward narration are brought back to the present encounter between Mūsā and his divine interlocutor and to the short-verse pattern that had marked that encounter. “Here,” of course, is where the narrative digression had begun and is – given the lack of any textual indication of a change in locale – back at the time and place of the originary address, in Ṭuwā.25 At this point, the charge to Mūsā is repeated in verses 42–43 but this time with Hārun included in a syntactically post-facto manner as if the brother had appeared after the pronouncement of the words “your request is granted, Mūsā,” as if the divine author of the eternal story had then revised the narrative to take into account the response to the prophet’s prayer. ṬāHā thereby offers a discursive performance of the mystery of enigma (or hidden key) to the tension between the granting of a prayerful petition and divine predetermination. 26 Q 20:24 idhhab ilā firʿawna innahu ṭaghā Q 20:42–43: idhhab anta wa-akhūka bi-āyātī wa-lā taniyā fī dhikrī idhhabā ilā firʿawna innahu ṭaghā The two sequences of retrospective narration draw out the discursive tension but are ultimately held together formally and thematically, bookended as it were, by divine interjections: “so have I cast over you my love, that you be fashioned under my eye” and “so have I formed you for myself, Mūsā,” along with a set of locutions involving the term and concept of “waḥy.” The discourse that revolves around waḥy in the sura is balanced between sets of vectors. One vector pulls the sura forward along its phonological, poetic, and narrative path. A second pulls it away from that path, disrupting, even reversing the narrative flow, sending the verse structure oscillating between short, incantatory

146  Michael A. Sells and long, narratological extremes, even as the sura shifts through what might liken to normal, rewind, pause, fast-forward, and replay modes. The second set of vectors, generated through and reflecting the first, are those between the prophetic experience of Mūsā and that of the prophet. Mūsā’s originary prophetic encounter at the fire and receptions of waḥy is transdiscursively intermeshed with the account of the prophet’s two visions or one vision in two parts, as declaimed in Q 53:1–18 and Q 20:10–17. Many of these transdiscursivities have been pointed out before.27 I  would add Q 20:36–38 to that same trans-discourse, for the reasons that follow. In addition, embedded within that transdiscourse is yet another trans-discourse linking the experience of Mūsā and that of the prophet. In ṬāHā 25–35, Mūsā prays to have his breast opened, his situation eased, and his back strengthened with the appointment of his brother Hārūn as his lieutenant. The linking locutions are ishraḥ-li ṣadrī, yassir-lī amrī, and ushdud bi-hī azrī. In an address to the prophet in Q 94, the addresser (divine “we”) reminds the prophet that “we opened your breast” and “relieved you of the burden that was crushing your back,” and assures him that “after every hardship there is an easing.” The most relevant locutions are: (a lam) nashraḥ laka ṣadrak (wa) wadaʿna ʿanka wizrak alladhī anqaḍa ẓahrak and (fa inna) maʿa l-ʿusri yusrā. In addition to these crossechoes, a similar diction and syntax ties the two passages together: note, for example, the use of the preposition li (“for”) with the personal pronoun following the verb in both passages. Both passages change rhymes to a long ā rhyme for their conclusions. Thus Mūsā’s prayer (“open my breast, lord”) echoes – albeit with the added element of a third party (Hārūn) in the picture and in a reversal of time and tense – a passage in which the divine “we” tells the prophet that it has already opened his breast and eased his burden.28 (See Figure 5.4.) As soon as his lord grants Mūsā his request, the passage turns back to the discourse of waḥy (vv. 36–38): Your request is granted, Mūsā, he said As we graced you before, another time When we revealed to your mother that being revealed qāla qad ūtīta suʿlaka yā mūsā la-qad manannā ʿalayka marratan ukhrā idh awḥaynā ilā ummika mā yūḥā These three verses return the discourse to the verse-style, diction, syntax, rhyme, and theme of the waḥy passages of Q 20:10–17 regarding Mūsā and Q 53:1–18 regarding the prophet. As a result, the declarations of waḥy to Mūsā, to the infant Mūsā’s mother, and to the prophet are imbricated within one another. That imbrication is enhanced by the use of the same term for both the verb (the act of revelation) and the substantive (the content of revelation). Of the nearly eighty instances of waḥy in the Qurʾān, only three are composed in such an emphatic manner – two in regard to the prophet: in huwa illā waḥyun yūḥā, “it was nothing other than a revelation being revealed” (Q 53:4); fa-awḥā ilā ʿabdihī mā awḥā, “he revealed

The Casting: A Close Hearing  147

Figure 5.4  Opening the Breast: Mūsā (Sūra 20) and the Prophet (Sūra 94)

to his servant what he revealed” (Q 53:10); and one in regard to Umm Mūsā: awḥaynā ilā ummika mā yūḥā, “we revealed to your mother that being revealed” (Q 20:38). The resonances among these locutions are reinforced by the soundmeaning cluster marratan ukhrā, which resonates with nazlatan ukhrā in Q 53:13. Umm Mūsā is the only woman to be explicitly affirmed to have received waḥy in the Qurʾān. In contrast to Exodus (2:1–3), which presents the mother placing her infant son, who would later be named Moses, within an ark on her own initiative, ṬāHā stresses that she put her son in the ark in obedience to a divine command communicated through waḥy, as does the only other qurʾānic passage to recount the episode, Q 28:7: And we revealed (wa-awḥaynā) to Umm Mūsā to suckle him but when you fear for him cast him into the waters (fa-alqīhi fi l-yammi) and do not fear and do not sorrow, we will return him to you and make him one of our messengers. The depiction of Umm Mūsā as a recipient of waḥy in Sūras 20 and 28 provoked lively discussion among exegetes.29 In this regard, the commentaries of

148  Michael A. Sells al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) provide helpful summations of the positions taken on the nature of the waḥy granted to Umm Mūsā as well as the lengths to which earlier exegetes would go to insist that she was not a prophet – neither a rasūl nor a nabī – and that the waḥy granted to her was given indirectly and was of a different and less exalted nature than that bestowed upon male prophets.30 Notwithstanding, both al-Zamakhsharī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī go on to treat the communication of waḥy to her as a momentous act and as imparting a momentous message. Al-Zamakhsharī reviewed a number of positions regarding the waḥy granted to Umm Mūsā: (1) that it was revealed to her indirectly through a prophet of her own lifetime who would have made public the revelation, as was the case with the waḥy given to the disciples of Jesus (Q 5:111: idh awḥaytu ila-l-ḥawariyyīn); (2) that an angel was sent to Umm Mūsā, and as was said in regard to the case of Maryam (Q 19:17), the angel was not sent in a situation of prophecy (lā ʿalā wajh al-nubuwwa); (3) that Umm Mūsā received a dream through which she became aware of the imperative to throw Mūsā into the Tabūt and the Tabūt onto the waters; and (4) that she received a waḥy in the manner of the bees (Q 16:68: “your lord has revealed to the bees” awḥā rabbuka ila-n-naḥli). Yet after citing these interpretations, al-Zamakhsharī goes on to offer an analysis of the waḥī granted to Umm Mūsā, in which he insists upon the momentous nature of this particular deity-to-creature communication. “That is to say,” he writes (as if he were summarizing the gist of the interpretations he has just outlined!), “that Allāh taʿālā communicated to Umm Mūsā a matter that she could not have gained knowledge of in any other way; that it was a matter of religious well-being (maṣlaḥa dīniyya); and that it was communicated to her in a special manner, without which she could not have arrived at or gained knowledge of the imperative.” As if his reader might not yet have gotten his point, he restates it in more emphatic terms: “It had to be given through waḥy (yūḥā lā yukhallu bihi). He reemphasizes the point then further, ay huwa min mā yūḥā lā mahāla (“that is, it was the kind of thing that could not not have been revealed”) and “concerned a matter of momentous import (amr ʿaẓīm) that merited being communicated through waḥy” (my emphasis).31 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī rehearses many of the positions reported by al-Zamakhsharī, then adds an argument based on the social and legal impropriety of a woman being a nabi, asserting the impossibility that the Qurʾān would have attributed prophecy (nubuwwa) to a woman. To that effect, he refers to a claim attributed to al-Shāfiʿī that a woman cannot marry on her own accord; how then, al-Rāzī or the exegete whose opinion he is reporting asks, could a woman be suited for nubuwwa? Al-Rāzī also rehearses the explanations used to exclude Umm Mūsā from the realm of nubuwwa that were reported earlier by al-Zamakhsharī but with more detail – adding, for example, that some suggest Shuʿayb was the male contemporary of Umm Mūsā who passed on to her the divine command to throw her infant into the water. He also records another option: that earlier prophets, like Ibrāhīm, might have been given the waḥi and then passed it down until it reached Umm Mūsā.32

The Casting: A Close Hearing  149 Yet, like al-Zamakhsharī, al-Rāzī is not content with surveying the positions of other exegetes according to which the waḥy received by Umm Mūsā was not at the same level of import or of certitude as that given to male prophets. Instead, he proceeds by paying close attention to the language of the qurʾānic text in question, in particular, to the semantic doubling back of the object “mā yūḥā” onto the verb “awḥayna.” And in a manner that echoes the position of al-Zamakhsharī (although al-Razī does not mention him by name at this point), he states: “As for his (the deity’s) saying (mā yūḥā), its meaning is: and we revealed to your mother what it was necessary to reveal; and waḥy was necessary because the situation was grave and of great import, and there was no way to gain understanding of the right thing to do (al-maṣlaḥa) in regard to it except through waḥy; and thus waḥy was required.” Thus both masters of tafsīr bi-r-raʾy – which can be translated as exegesis by “opinion” (and opinionated they were on some issues) but which might be more accurately rendered as exegesis by “observation,” that is, close reading – report the various arguments minimizing the waḥy given to Umm Mūsā relative to that given to male prophets but then go on to analyze the distinctive wording of the awḥaynā ilā ummika mā yūḥā expression in a manner that emphasizes the distinction and importance of the waḥy granted to Umm Mūsā. Arguments minimizing the waḥy given to Umm Mūsā and removing it from the category of nubuwwa drove the Andalusi jurist and historian of religions, Ibn Hazm (d. 456/1064), to the edge of distraction. In response, he compares the actions of Umm Mūsā to Ibrāhīm’s determination to sacrifice his son. Were anyone to decide to throw her infant into the waters or, like Ibrāhīm, to sacrifice his son, that person would be considered either depraved or mad – unless the decision had been the result of genuine waḥy and nubuwwa. In the absence of nubuwwa, such a person, he adds, would be sent to an asylum for neurological treatment (muʿallaja al-dimāgh) – with the not-too-subtle implication that those interpreters who exclude Umm Mūsā from nubuwwa might benefit from a similar treatment.33 While Ibn Hazm centered his argument on the parallel between the situations of Ibrāhīm and Umm Mūsā, another Andalusi scholar, Ibn Barrajān (d. 536/1141), like al-Zamakhsharī and al-Rāzī, focused upon the wording of the waḥy verse but suggested that in terms of its literary and rhetorical characteristics, the most likely analogue to the waḥy given to Umm Mūsā was that bestowed on the prophet in Q 12:3: “We relate to you the most beautiful of stories in revealing to you this Qurʾān” (naḥnu naquṣṣu ʿalayka aḥsana al-qaṣaṣi bi-mā awḥaynā ilayka hādha l-qurʾān).34 Word (Q 20:42–56) Take my signs, you and your brother, and weaken not in remembering me Go, both of you, to Firʿawn. He’s transgressed Speak to him courteously that he may perhaps accept a reminder and know awe Lord, we fear he’ll abuse us and transgress, they said (45) Don’t fear, he said. I am with you, hearing and seeing

150  Michael A. Sells Go, both of you. Tell him: We are a messenger from your lord Release us the Banī Isrāʾīl and afflict them no more From your lord we come bearing a sign Peace on those who heed the guidance To us, so, it has been revealed: a hard pain will fall upon those who call lie and turn away And who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā? he said Our lord is he who has granted each being its nature and rightly guides, he said What about the earlier generations? he said

(50)

Knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book, he said My lord does not stray and he does not forget He who has made the earth your cradle and has threaded you pathways upon it and has sent down rain from the heavens and through it we have brought forth plants in pairs of every kind Eat! and feed your flocks! In that, surely, are signs for the wise From it we created you, and to it return you (55) and from it will take you another time And all our signs we showed him but he called lie and showed disdain The major scene change in ṬāHā’s early Mūsā account occurs as the divine addresser is telling Mūsā and Hārūn what they should say to Firʿawn (vv. 47–49). The divine addresser has been telling Mūsā what to tell Firʿawn, a message that in the text ends with the words “a hard pain will fall on those who call lie and turn away.” The next words in the sura come from a different place entirely (v. 49): “And who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā? he said.” If we were to imagine this moment in cinematic terms, there would be a visual and perhaps auditory fade as the last words of the message (or that part of it being relayed in ṬāHā) is spoken, with the desert dissolving. Up to this point, there has been no explicit temporal or spatial separation from the originary scene at the valley of Ṭuwā. As the sound of the message to Mūsā (to Firʿawn) and the desert scene fade, the architecture of the interior of a royal court fades in along with a new voice questioning Mūsā on the lord of him and his brother, as the scene of a royal court fades in with the words of (v. 49): “And who is this lord of the two of you, Musā?” At this moment, the audient realizes that the words that Mūsā (and Hārūn) were commanded to speak to Firʿawn have indeed been spoken, and we can infer, although we are not yet told, that the one questioning Mūsā is Firʿawn. Once the question from Firʿawn breaks the narrative spell woven by the text around the Ṭuwā audition, the complexity of dialogue escalates, with public exchanges between Mūsā (and Hārūn) and Firʿawn, offstage exchanges among members of Firʿawn’s court, offstage addresses to Mūsā from the divine “we,”

The Casting: A Close Hearing  151 and yet another public exchange, between Firʿawn and the converted magicians. In the first set of exchanges, the utterances by Mūsā and Firʿawn are introduced by the word “qāla” (“he said”), with the subject of the noun unspecified, although the identity of the speaker is clear from the context. The qāla, without specified subject, functions unobtrusively in such a case, much as a quotation mark would function in modern texts – unobtrusively, in that it does not disrupt the narration of the events as if they were occurring in the present or as if we, the audience, were being transported by the narrative in time and place to the court of Firʿawn. Although the narrator who inserts the qāla is unmarked, there is no confusion over that narrator’s divine identity. At the same time, the unobtrusiveness of the qālas leaves the identity of the narrator unmarked at this point. Nor is the addressee explicitly marked. The default primary addressee, of course, is the prophet and then, by extension, all qurʾānic audients. A sense that the addressee is also Mūsā, who was being told his own story only a few verses earlier, may also linger even as the frame narrative moves away from narrating Mūsā’s story to Mūsā (although, as will be seen in verses 68–70, the divine “we” will appear in the story as a character who addresses Mūsā directly).35 When quoted utterances are clear and self-contained, the qāla can work to close the previous quotation and open the next. However, after Mūsā begins to respond to Firʿawn’s question about the previous generation, it becomes increasingly unclear when Mūsā has ceased to speak. In this case, no qāla or any other grammatical clue is given to signal an end to Mūsā’s speech. Instead, as the speech proceeds, it gathers a charged ambiguity or ambivalence regarding the identities of the speaker and the one being spoken to. Mūsā begins his plea in a manner that emphasizes his humanity and the human limits of his knowledge: “Knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book, he said. My lord does not stray and he does not forget.” The speech then turns, in a syntactically seamless manner, from Mūsā’s very humanly self-conscious statement that his lord “does not forget” to a discourse of supreme majesty and high lyricism associated with divine declamation, and the question of the identity of the speaker intensifies from that point on. Knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book, he said My lord does not stray and he does not forget He who has made the earth your cradle and threaded you pathways upon it and sent down rain from the heavens and through it we have brought forth plants in pairs of every kind Eat! and feed your flocks! In that, surely, are signs for the wise From it we created you, and to it return you, and from it will take you another time And all our signs we showed him but he called lie and showed disdain qāla ʿilmuhā ʿinda rabb-i fī kitābin lā yaḍillu rabb-i wa-lā yansā

(52) (53a) (53b) (54) (55) (56) (52)

152  Michael A. Sells alladhī jaʿala la-kumu l-arḍa mahdan wa-salaka la-kum fīhā subulan wa-anzala min as-samāʾi māʾan fa-akhrajnā bihī azwājan min nabātin shattā kulū wa-rʿaw anʿāmakum inna fī dhālika la-āyātin li-uli n-nuhā min-hā khalaqnākum wa-fī-hā nuʿīdukum wa-min-hā nukhrijukum tāratan ukhrā wa-la-qad araynāhu āyātinā kullahā fa-kadhdhaba wa-abā

(53a) (53b) (54) (55) (56)

Verse 52, in which Mūsā’s direct speech reflects a human emissary who emphasizes his subservience to the lord that sent him, is followed in 53a – without any indication of a syntactical break or a change in speaker – by a three-clause statement that unfolds, in high proclamatory language, a vision evoking both the power of the creator and the intimate connection between the acts of the creator and the well-being of the creature. In 53b, the discourse shifts, suddenly, to the first-person plural, furthering the impression that it is Mūsā’s divine lord that is speaking either through Mūsā or instead of Mūsā: “and through it we have brought forth (akhrajnā) plants in pairs of every kind.” The Qurʾān includes a number of addresses (e.g., 6:99, 7:56, and 37:27) that begin with references to the third-person master of creative activity as embodied in the sending of winds, clouds, or rains, followed by the first-person plural reference to the bringing forth of the fruits of the earth made possible by such acts of sending (arsala, anzala); these locutions include a shift in person and number, centered on the action of bringing forth (akhrajnā).36 The evolving divinization of the addresser develops further in verse 54: “Eat! and feed your flocks! In that surely are signs for the wise.” Kulū, often accompanied by another imperative of licit consumption, such as ishrabū, or an imperative of gratitude, sharing, or recognition, is a mark of divine argument and divine direct address within the Qurʾān. Verse 55 completes the development: “From it we created you, and to it return you, and from it will take you another time.” Not at issue in ṬāHā 52–56 is authorship – neither the authorship of the cosmos nor the authorship of the human inhabitants who are brought forth from it, returned to it, and brought forth another time nor the authorship of the words that celebrate this creative power. The question is one of transmission and quotation. The Qurʾān declares itself continually as having been revealed to the prophet and declaimed by the prophet. However that declaration might be interpreted theologically, it is repeatedly presented in the Qurʾān as direct speech from a divine addresser. Here, then, we have an embedded narration of divine addresses to Mūsā and, through Mūsā, perhaps to Firʿawn. Qurʾānic rhetoricians, commentators, and translators have noted the difficulty of determining where the speech of Mūsā leaves off in this passage – where, in modern protocols of quotation, we would place an end quote. Of thirteen modern translations, three (Shakir, Pickthall, and Daryabadi) have refrained from the use of quotation marks at any point in the English rendition of the Qurʾān. Of those

The Casting: A Close Hearing  153 who employ quotation marks, most (Bewley, Qaraʾi, Asad, Walk, Khalifa, Ahmed Ali, and Abdel Haleem) close the quotation at the end of verse 52. Abdullah Yusuf Ali ends the quote in the middle of verse 53, just before the voice shifts to the first-person plural. Arberry extends the quote all the way to the end of verse 55, and at least one classical exegete, Ibn Barrajān, reads the passage in the same way, explaining that verses 53–55 were proclaimed by Mūsā as part of the tablīgh given him to proclaim before Firʿawn. Many of those mentioned who close the quote at the end of verse 52, and others, such as Abul Aʿla Maudoodi, adjust the grammar at the transition from verse 52 to 53 by rendering alladhī at the beginning of verse 53 as “He it is who,” in effect reading it as (huwa lladhī), an expression employed in many similar divine pronouncements in the Qurʾān. In a note to his translation rendering the first part of verse 53 as “He it is who has spread the earth for you” (as rendered into English from Urdu), Maudoodi writes, “It is quite obvious that vv. 53–55 are an addition by Allah to the foregoing answer by Prophet Moses. There are other instances of this in the Qurʾān that Allah added a few sentences to the speech of someone by way of admonition. Moreover, it is connected not only with the preceding verse but also with the whole reply of Prophet Moses (vv. 50–52).”37 Yet neither Maudoodi nor the other translators or exegetes mentioned here who read the passage in this fashion explain why the qurʾānic author who employed the “he it is who” locution throughout the Qurʾān when making such insertions would have dropped the huwa here in such a critical syntactical and rhetorical position. Clearly, however, the reading of alladhī as huwa lladhī allows a reading that makes a shift from the speech of Mūsā within an embedded narrative to an unframed divine admonition less obtrusively than when the admonition irrupts into the midst of a sentence begun by Mūsā. And if the statements followed by [huwa] alladhī are, as Maudoodi stated, an admonition, then to whom is the admonition directed? – a question raised by the unspecified plural “you” given as the addressee. Is this divine address directed by prophetic ventriloquism? Or is it the irruption of the divine speaker into the scene, whose speech is directed to Firʿawn and whoever else is present in his court but also, through the prophet’s recounting of the story, to an implied audience of the Qurʾān that would include all of humankind? Such questions are illuminated in a commentary on al-Zamakhsharī’s Kashshāf. The author of the commentary on al-Kashshāf was Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Munayyir al-Iskandarī (d. 683/1284). Ibn al-Munayyir first summarizes what he takes al-Zamakhsharī’s position on the transition from narrative (of Mūsā’s dialogue with Firʿawn) to a divine address: There is either a shift from narrative to divine address with the words “and we have brought forth” or else the speech of Mūsā ends earlier, after the words wa lā yansā (“nor does he forget”). In the latter case, “the reader should pause at that point [in the Qurʾān] in order to establish the end point of the quotation.” In the same passage, Ibn al-Munayyir then proceeds to explain the difficulty with either of these two options as articulated by al-Zamakhsharī and goes on to offer a third possibility: But there is a third option: that Mūsā described Allāh taʿālā with these attributes [of being the granter of bounties to creatures] in the third-person (ʿalā al-lafẓ al-ghayba), saying, “who has made the earth your cradle and threaded

154  Michael A. Sells you pathways upon it and sent down rain from the heavens, so that he has brought forth plants in pairs of every kind.” But when Allāh taʿālā narrated this about himself, he used a pronoun referring to himself, because the narrator (al-ḥākkī) was the same as the one being narrated about (al-maḥkkī) in the speech of Mūsā (my emphasis).38 Let us now step back and look at the issue here from a wider perspective. The divine “we” is narrating to the prophet the story of Mūsā, and embedded within that frame narration is the narration of the divine “we” of the story of Mūsā to Mūsā himself, first through analepsis and then through prophetic prolepsis. Firʿawn then enters into the proleptic narration with the words “and who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā.” The narrative, now re-centered in the court of Firʿawn, turns to dialogue. The dialogue, which in Q 26 continues in a series of balanced and contained back and forths between Mūsā and Firʿawn, is in ṬāHā instead disrupted as the speech of Mūsā merges into a divine address. But the point of transition is not evident. Perhaps the divine addresser has come into Mūsā’s address in a manner similar to the way Firʿawn has come into the divine address to Mūsā but mid-sentence. Or it may have come into Mūsā’s speech even more suddenly, not only in mid-sentence but in the middle of a string of parallel verbs: “who has made the earth your cradle and has threaded you pathways upon it and has sent down rain from the heavens, and through it we have brought forth plants in pairs of every kind.” But who are the “you” (pl) to whom these words are addressed? To the extent that these words are spoken by Mūsā in the court of Firʿawn, they are either addressed to Firʿawn as a royal plural or to Firʿawn and whoever might be with him. They also could be addressed to the polemical plural “you” – those who appear throughout the Qurʾān as questioning, skeptical, or dismissive of the prophetic messages, especially those messages that warn of the impending “hour” or the “day” of reckoning and resurrection. Mūsā begins to speak haltingly and in a markedly human voice (“knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book”). In the course of the sentence, the divine addresser enters into and takes over his speech, proclaiming to the skeptical “you” (pl) the truths of creation and its own creative power. The “you” addressed expands beyond those at the scene in Firʿawn’s court and becomes the “you” of skeptics of any time and place. The shift to divine address in the Qurʾān is common and generally does not appear problematic. In this case, however, the nested levels of narration and address as well as the lack of explicit indication of a change in the speaker imbue the passage with a charged ambiguity. Such ambiguity can be viewed as a more implicit feature of qurʾānic direct address more generally. Take, for example, the opening of Sūra 97: “We sent it down on the night of destiny.” The audient of the post-canonical Qurʾān has no problem in recognizing that speaker is the divine “we.” And, as constant internal indications in the Qurʾān demonstrate, those unframed addresses are given to the prophet and then are heard, by us, the audients, through the prophet. At this point – bracketing the sīra-tafsīr traditions about occasions of revelation – let us imagine the prophet proclaiming Sūra 97 and ourselves there among the

The Casting: A Close Hearing  155 original audients. A man we recognize is speaking: “we sent it down.” The “we” remains unidentified within the sura but clearly comprises an agency of power and authority. Although post-compilation audients encounter such discourses with a completed and canonized book framed by distinctions between sender and transmitter, they also encounter them in their charged situatedness as enunciations to and through the prophet. When asked by Firʿawn about the previous generations, Mūsā declares (v. 52) ʿilmuhā ʿinda rabbī fī kitābin (“knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book”). A  similar declaration is found in Q 79 (an-Nāziʿāt) when the divine addresser leaves off the polemic with the plural-you skeptics and turns directly to the prophet, the singular “you”: “They ask you about the hour, when is it coming/ that you are invoking/To your lord is its dénouement (ilā rabbika muntahāhā).” Q 79, as noted, is intimately tied to Q 20. Q 79 begins with adjurations and polemic directed toward those who are skeptical of the day of resurrection. Then, immediately after the Mūsā narrative, it turns to a divine rejoinder to unspecified skeptics – “are you harder to create than the firmament he constructed” – and then follows with a litany of the various moments of creation. The litany ends with the interjection of another plural “you,” one that is made emphatic through its position within an unusual out-of-rhyme verse ending, matāʿan la-kum wa-li-anʿāmikum (“as provisions for you and for your cattle,” Q 79:33). There follows a classic qurʾānic evocation of the hour of reckoning, which includes the verse (Q 79:35), “a day the human being will recall that to which he quickened” (yawma yatadhakkaru l-insānu mā saʿā), which echoes strongly with ṬāHā 15, “I hide it nearly that each may be rewarded with that to which he quickens (mā tasʿā).” An-Nāziʿāt approaches its conclusion with the following verses (Q 79:42–45): They ask you about the hour: when is it coming? That you are invoking To your lord is its dénouement You are only a warner for those know awe before it Here the address turns to the prophet with the adjuration to tell those who ask about the hour (sāʿa) that its outcome is to “your lord.” As with the prayer of Mūsā, so with Mūsā’s statement that the “knowledge of that (in this case, the previous generations) is with my lord” (Q 20:52); the words of Mūsā resonate with those addressed to the prophet, albeit with the change in the personal pronoun – in this case “my” to “your”: “if they ask you about the hour (as-sāʿa), tell them knowledge of its outcome is with my lord” (Q 79:42–44). The words “you are only a warner for whoever knows awe before it (man yakhshāhā)” provide a key for both an-Nāziʿāt and ṬāHā: the antecedent for “it” in Q 79:45 is “the hour.” Earlier in Q 79, the short Mūsā narrative concluded (v. 26) with the words “in that there is a lesson for those who know awe (li-man yakhshā).” As was noted, in an-Nāziʿāt and in ṬāHā, the verbs yakhshā and takhshā appear without a direct object – with one exception. At the culmination of an-Nāziʿāt, a direct object is offered, one that helps fill out the meaning of “awe” (khashiya) as opposed to “fear” (khawf): what one will feel at the day/hour of the reckoning/resurrection.

156  Michael A. Sells The sāʿa, of course, was mentioned as part of the originary address to Mūsā in ṬāHā: “The hour is coming. I hide it nearly, that each may be rewarded with that to which he quickens/Do not let them turn you from it – they who deny it, following their inclination – you to perish” (Q 20:15–16). From the perspective of the address to Mūsā at the fire, which is both the origin and the center of the narrative in Q 20:9–79, we might address some thoughts regarding the nature of divine address. Was the voice Mūsā heard coming from within or outside of the fire or the right side of the valley, exegetes have asked, and from where in relation to Mūsā? The classical exegetical literature contains some intricate considerations on the directionality within the three passages on Mūsā, regarding the fire, the valley, the tree, and the voice (beyond the debate between the Muʿtazila and their opponents over the created or eternal nature of the divine speech, which is a theological issue that does not bear fruitfully on the questions pursued in this essay). Classical exegetes also offer various possibilities for the antecedents or implied antecedents for the pronouns in these verses.39 A comment attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and related by al-Sulamī states that as soon as Mūsā heard innī ana, he knew he was being addressed by the deity. No other being would employ such an expression, continues Jaʿfar. In regard to the directionality of the voice, he adds that it came to Mūsā from all directions and was heard by all his various sensory organs.40 In a treatise by Ibn al-ʿArabī that is imbued with allusions to and unmarked quotations from Q 20:14–79, the authorial persona recounts a mystical encounter. At the moment of despair, he heard a voice address him as Qurrat al-ʿAyn (“cooling of the eye” or “balm for the eye”), a characterization given to Mūsā by the wife of Firʿawn and reinforced by the divine narrator, who relates that Mūsā was returned to his mother to be the balm of her eye (Q 28:9, 13; Q 20:40). Ibn al-ʿArabī’s authorial persona states that he heard the voice addressing him from both within himself and without and berating him for the directionality of his quest – based as it was on a “from” and a “to” – in seeking the divine presence.41 The modern Qurʾān scholar Fazlur Rahman maintains that the voice that Mūsā heard did not come from the outside and resists strongly the notion that the revelation, which was brought through the spirit (rūḥ) and which is associated by tradition with Jibrīl, came to either Mūsā or to the prophet from the outside.42 In each of these cases, whatever the theological, historical, and hermeneutical stances they reflect, the issue of the within and the without is viewed as a core concern for the story of Mūsā and, by extension, a core concern regarding qurʾānic discourse as a whole. In literary terms, qurʾānic discourse consists largely of open address (in which neither the addresser nor the addressee are indicated) and addresses to the prophet, the later ones referencing earlier ones, by an addresser that proclaims its own divinity by depicting its acts of sending down and generating life from the watered earth, returning life to it, and regenerating life again – as well as its parallel acts of sending down (through tanazzul) and communicating (as waḥy) revelations to the prophet. Those revelations are presented as direct speech in which is embedded other direct speech addressed to Mūsā. And in some cases, the direct speech addressed to Mūsā is to be (and

The Casting: A Close Hearing  157 is) spoken again by Mūsā to Firʿawn. The tension within the various nested frames of eternal, yet temporally placed, divine addresses at times daringly breaks through various frames of discourse, as within ṬāHā. The statement “minhā khalaqnākum” may have been declared by Mūsā as a quotation from his lord to Firʿawn or else declared by the divine addresser outside of the Mūsā story to the story’s audience, i.e., through the prophet to all who come long after Mūsā and Firʿawn and who hear or read the Qurʾān – or both, given the manner in which qurʾānic discourse is marked by the unfolding of embedded narratives and embedded frames of address as well as the collapse of the nested frames into one another. The most encompassing discursive frame is difficult to pinpoint as the various grammatical and rhetorical personas of the implied addresser appear, announce, and narrate within and across nested frames. Qurʾānic iltifāt intensifies the difficulty of delimiting the within from the without in many cases. We learned earlier (Q 20:47–48), for example, that Mūsā and Hārūn had been told how to speak to Firʿawn and what to say to him. The last part of the what to say was in the majestic cadence and thematic sweep of divine address (emphasis mine): Go, both of you. Tell him: We are a messenger from your lord Release us the Banī Isrāʾīl and afflict them no more From your lord we come bearing a sign Peace on those who heed the guidance To us, so, it has been revealed: a hard pain will fall upon those who call lie and turn away In these verses, the divine addresser has embedded within the message it gives to Mūsā to give to Firʿawn a statement in direct speech, “a hard pain will fall upon those who call lie and turn away,” in the majesty register of divine address. Qurʾānic audients will surmise that Mūsā (with Hārūn) would have indeed spoken these words to Firʿawn but will also overhear them (i.e., hear them as if they had been present at the event) and, through the partial fusion established in the Qurʾān between hearing and overhearing, may also hear them as addressed to themselves. And now to return to the response to Firʿawn that was begun by Mūsā in verse 52. It is not until verse 56 that a clear shift in narrative framing occurs: “All our signs we showed him but he called lie and showed disdain” (la-qad araynāhu āyātinā kullahā fa-kadhdhaba wa-abā), a clear and univocal perfect-tense intervention that is so surprising within such a deep set of embedded discourses that Abdullah Yusuf Ali suggests that it appears as a general introduction to the following section on the confrontation between Mūsā and Firʿawn.43 The Gathering (Q 20:56–64) After the narrator’s interjection (“And all our signs we showed him, but he called lie and disdained”), there occurs the penultimate scene: the setting of the stage for the finale. Firʿawn asks Mūsā if he is bringing magic “to take us from our land”

158  Michael A. Sells and promises to meet Mūsā’s magic with a magic like it. He then asks Mūsā to choose a time and place for what is emerging as a classically framed duel (vv. 56–59).44 And all our signs we showed him but he called lie and showed disdain Have you brought your magic to take us from our land, Mūsā? he said We’ll bring you a magic like it. Choose a date for us and for you, one we will not surely not fail to meet, and a level field Your date is the Day of Adornment, he said Let the people be marshaled when the sun is high Mūsā chooses a very public venue, “the day of adornment” when the people are to be gathered or – to reflect the underlying Arabic term – marshaled (yuḥshara) together. Once he does, the preparations begin (Q 20:60–65): Firʿawn withdrew, then gathered his craft, then came forth Woe to you all! said Mūsā. Do not fabricate lies about Allāh lest he drag his pain down on you and wipe you away Bitter the disappointment of those who call lie They disputed with one another but kept their consultations hidden They are magicians, both! they cried, and with magic they’ve come to take you from your land and ancient ways Assemble your craft and then come forth rank on rank The higher will triumph today Mūsā, they said, shall you cast first, or we? We encountered the trans-text for this passage in Q 79:20–24: He showed him the greatest sign but he called lie, then disobeyed and then turned his back, quickening, then marshaled forth, then called out and said: I am your lord most high In ṬāHā, Firʿawn withdraws, then gathers or assembles (in this case with a direct object, “his craft,” kaydahu), and then advances. ṬāHā not only reflects the incomplete individuation of Firʿawn from those with him in an-Nāziʿāt but amplifies it. After Mūsā calls out woe upon an unspecified, plural “you,” an unspecified “they” engage in strenuous debate over what to do next, a debate they carry on offstage, keeping it hidden. When they reemerge, they perform as Firʿawn’s collective double, repeating the accusation that Mūsā is bringing magic to expel them, calling on an unspecified plural “you” to gather their craft (as Firʿawn had gathered his) and calling on the unspecified plural “you” to advance. Such pluralization mirrors in some sense the doubling of Mūsā into Mūsā and Hārun and the repetition, in

The Casting: A Close Hearing  159 nearly identical words, to the two of them of the command earlier given to Mūsā alone. Then, following the diplomatic protocol of Firʿawn in offering Mūsā a choice of venue, they offer Mūsā the choice of whether to take the first throw or leave them to throw first. One might interpret these commands to the unspecified “you” as meaning no more than “let us marshal our craft” and “let us advance,” but to do so would be to displace the actual wording. The Qurʾān, which is replete with first-person plural jussives, refrains from employing them here. Instead, it amplifies the strange nature of Firʿawn’s marshaling without an object and calling out without an audience being mentioned (Q 79:21–24). It thereby exposes a scene of chaos, with the leaders undifferentiated from those being led, a confusion of shouts and commands, and the collapse of the carefully differentiated set of persons, levels, and roles that are at the heart of a one-person absolute rule as well as the ranks and order necessary for any procession in military formation that is evoked by those calling for an advance “rank on rank” (ṣaffan). The Casting (Q 20:65–70): Mūsā, they said, shall you cast first, or we? Cast! he said, and behold their staffs and cords conjured before his vision, quickening Foreboding came into Mūsā and fear Don’t fear, we said: You are, you are the highest That which is in your right hand, cast! that it devour what they’ve fashioned mere magic is what they’ve fashioned and wherever the magician goes he fails Cast to the ground were the magicians down to the ground in positions of prayer We believe in the lord of Hārūn and Mūsā, they cried

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When Mūsā responds to the offer to cast either first or second with the imperative bal alqū (literally, “no, you cast!”), the staffs and ropes of his antagonists are made to appear to Mūsā as if they were quickening, but the act of casting is not narrated. The unmarked narrator then states that Mūsā felt fear and foreboding inside (fī nafsihi), at which point the narrative “we” enters directly into the scene (as least to us, the overhearers and audients) as an actor, telling Mūsā not to fear, assuring him that he is the highest (al-aʿlā) in contrast to Firʿawn’s claim to be “your lord most high” (Q 79:24). Note also the magicians’ assertion that “the higher (man istaʿlā) will triumph today” (Q 20:64). The divine voice then proclaims that “they” are the ones practicing magic – thus reversing the accusation, first made by Firʿawn as an individual and then as an undifferentiated collective or swarm, that Mūsā was bringing magic. However, just as the arguing antagonists hid their consultation, so apparently, these words spoken to Mūsā are not audible to Firʿawn and the others assembled.

160  Michael A. Sells Earlier (v. 46), when Mūsā and Hārūn had expressed fear at the prospect of confronting Firʿawn, their divine interlocutor told them, “Don’t fear, I am with you, hearing and seeing.” Now, the divine “we,” having perceived Mūsā’s inner dread, enters into the story not only to assure him but also to respond directly to the accusations of magic. In Exodus, the divine assurance to Moses (ehyeh ʿimmakha, “I  am with you” or “I  shall be with you”) is followed later by the deity entering the scene as a character acting on the side of Moses, appearing as a pillar of cloud above the sea of reeds. In ṬāHā, it is not clear whether Firʿawn understands that the deity has entered into his duel of words and staffs on the side of Mūsā, although the text, by not mentioning that Firʿawn heard the deity speaking to Mūsā, implies he is not aware that he is confronting three, rather than two, actors. Rather than addressing the question explicitly, ṬāHā leaves it within the shadow between the manifest and the concealed that has intruded several times into the sura: “If you pronounce openly, still he knows what is hidden, and has concealed (or “and more hidden”) (v. 7); “The hour is coming. I hide it nearly, that each may be rewarded with that to which he quickens” (v. 15); “They disputed with one another but kept their consultation hidden” (v. 62). In ṬāHā, the Mūsā–Firʿawn contest is immersed in kayd, “craft,” as in “craftiness” or “guile.” What is real and what is illusion, what is manifest and what is concealed, and even the identity and number of the protagonists and antagonists – all is in a state of flux and narrative suspense as partially differentiated actors come forth, fall back into an undifferentiated state or withdraw back offstage, and then reemerge in new guises.45 Mūsā’s response to Firʿawn’s group when asked who should take the first cast, bal alqū, was followed not by the narration of the act of casting but rather by the subsequent impression of Mūsā concerning what he was seeing: we are not told in ṬaHā whether in fact anything was cast at this point, only what made itself appear or was made to appear to or be imagined by (takhayyala) Mūsā. Furthermore, the divine command to Mūsā to “cast that which is in [his] right hand” is followed not by a narration of Mūsā casting his staff/snake but rather by what happens to the antagonists, who are cast down in positions of prayer. The audient would surmise that Mūsā made the throw and that what was thrown did devour what the antagonists had fabricated, but we are not told what happened, and we are not shown what the antagonists saw or experienced. Instead, the narrated action is displaced. The only objects narrated as being cast are the antagonists, who are identified as magicians only in their act of being cast to the ground in positions of prayer. The identification of an actor from within an action is another distinctive feature of ṬāHā, as already shown by the text’s holding back from indicating the one who called Mūsā, until it revealed itself from within the call as Mūsā’s lord, and the holding back of a subject indicating the revealer of the waḥy that Mūsā was to listen to, until that revealer revealed itself within its own address as “Allāh no god but I.” ṬāHā’s narration of the Mūsā–Firʿawn confrontation contrasts vividly with its nearest analogues, Q 26:18–51 and Q 7:103–126. In those accounts, Firʿawn is clearly differentiated from his retinue, and those speaking and being addressed are clearly identified. Instead of the laconic “all our signs we showed him but

The Casting: A Close Hearing  161 he called lie and showed disdain” of ṬāHā, these narrations recount the display of signs, with Mūsā casting his staff/snake and holding forth his white hand to Firʿawn as proof of the validity of the messages he is bearing. They also continue to delineate and distinguish the various actors. Firʿawn consults with his chiefs (malaʾ), who advise him to stall Mūsā, while marshalers (ḥāshirīn) are sent to gather up magicians (sāḥirīn) from across the land. No longer is the ḥashr an act with a dubiously individuated subject and without a clearly defined group as object or without an object at all. The magicians duly arrive and then negotiate a payment for their service. When the contest occurs, the actions in ṬāHā that had been left unnarrated are explicitly delineated, at least in Q 26 (Q 7 reflects some of the hiddenness so pervasive in ṬāHā at this point). The magicians “cast their ropes and staffs.” Mūsā then “casts his staff” and “behold, it devours what they fabricated” (Q 26:43–44). The Testimony (Q 20:71–76) All three suras come together with the presentation of the magicians being cast down in positions of prayer, but they then diverge once again. In Q 26 and Q 7, the converted magicians respond to Firʿawn’s threat in a contained manner that emphasizes their humanity throughout, just as in those same narrations, Mūsā’s responses to Firʿawn were short and contained, with Mūsā speaking with clear indications of his humanity. In ṬāHā, by contrast, just as Mūsā’s response to Firʿawn broke out from the contained dialogue as the syntactically seamless sentence turned from Mūsā speaking as Mūsā to a high-majesty pronouncement on the nature of creation and divine power, so the response of the magicians to Firʿawn’s threat, which began as human acknowledgements of servanthood and all-too-human vulnerability, steadily moves out of the contained dialogue into a discourse of majestic omniscience – leaving once again the end of the direct speech unclear (Q 20:71–76): You believe in him, he said, without my leave? (71) He’s your leader then and master in magic I shall cut off your hands and your legs one each from the other I shall have you crucified on the trunks of palm trees Then you will know which of us inflicts the harder, more lasting pain We will never choose you over the decisive proof we   have received, they said and what we have been given, innately, to know Decree what you will: your decree is for the near life only In our lord we’ve placed our faith that he pardon our wrongs and the magic we performed for you in duress Allāh is better, abiding ever Those who come to their lord in wrongdoing, theirs is Jahannam not dying there, they, nor living

162  Michael A. Sells Those who come to him in faith having done the right theirs are the most exalted stations Gardens of Eden, rivers flowing under eternal there living Compensation for those become pure

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Conclusion At the culmination of the Mūsā–Firʿawn verbal duel in ṬāHā, Mūsā is told to cast “that which is in your right hand.” Q 26:45, by contrast, narrates the event and names the object cast: “Then Mūsā cast his staff” (fa-alqā Mūsā ʿaṣāhu). In ṬāHā, the words “cast that which is in your right hand” recall the earlier scene at Ṭuwā. There, the divine addresser tells Mūsā that the hour is coming and warns him not to be dissuaded from holding it in constant remembrance. Directly after this warning occurs the following exchange (Q 20:17–21): And what is that in your right hand, Mūsā? My staff, he said. I lean on it, batten the grass to feed my sheep and find other uses for it Cast it, Mūsā! he said He cast it and behold: a snake quickening Seize it, he said, and do not fear We shall turn it back to what it was before Exegetes commonly note Mūsā’s rustic understanding of his staff, his statement that he finds “other uses for it,” and the irony of the use to which he will be putting it. Less commonly noted is the fact that the addresser never in fact calls it a staff and, after its transformation into snake, assures Mūsā with words that may offer a clue to the connection between the warning regarding the coming of the hour and the story that follows: sa-nuʿīduhā sīratahā l-ulā, “we shall turn it back to what it was before.” In Q 79:10–11, prior to the Mūsā section, the “you” (pl) are quoted as saying, “Are we to be returned to the former situation? What, we are to be bones and decay?” They then go on to add, “that then is a ruinous return.” Immediately following the Mūsā section, the unspecified plural “you” is addressed again in an incantatory proclamation of the stages of creation: “Are you more difficult to create than the heavens he constructed” (vv. 27–34). The praise of the creator’s creative power is followed by verses 34–35: “When there comes the great ṭāmma, on a day the human being will remember that to which he quickened” (mā saʿā). Note here the transdiscursivity with ṬāHā 15: “The hour is coming. I nearly hid it that each may be rewarded for that to which he quickens (bi-mā tasʿā).” It is not necessary to stretch for an allegorical or strained reading of the relationship of the two contexts of such striving, moving, or quickening – that at stake in the afterlife and that at stake in the casting duel between Mūsā and Firʿawn – to note that the transdiscursive and intra-discursive resonance of the terms, in stressed positions

The Casting: A Close Hearing  163 such as rhyming verse ends, is raised by the qurʾānic text itself. Of particular importance is the relationship between the this-world actions involving Mūsā’s casting “that which is in his right hand” and the transformations that occur at the hour of reckoning. The imbrication of this-worldly and post-worldly reckonings was evoked in Q 79:25: “Allāh seized him as an example for the here-after and the here-before” (fa-akhadhahu llāhu nakāla l-ākhirati wa-l-ūlā) as well as in Q 20:21: “We’ll return it to what it was before” (sīrata-ha l-ūla). The third ʿibra in ṬāHā (vv. 124–128), however it may relate to ṬāHā’s later Mūsā and Adam narratives, thus resonates against the early Mūsā narrative. The subject of that third ʿibra is the ultimate ḥashr. In reference to the one who had “turned away,” it is stated that “His is a narrowed life and we will marshal or muster him (naḥshuruhu) blind on the day of resurrection” (v. 124). It then continues as follows: He will say: my lord, why have you marshaled me blind when   I once could see? He will say: Just as we gave you our signs but you forgot them just so today you are forgotten And thus we reward whoever threw it all away and did not believe the signs of his lord and the pain of the after is harder and more lasting Did we not offer guidance to them How many peoples before you have we destroyed from the early generations haunting still their habitations? In that surely is a sign for the wise qāla rabbi li-ma ḥashartanī aʿmā wa-qad kuntu baṣirā qāla kadhālika atatka āyātunā fa-nasītahā wa-kadhālika l-yawma tunsā wa-kadhālika najzī man asrafa wa-lam yuʾmin bi-āyāti rabbihi w-la-ʿadhābu l-ākhirati ashaddu wa-abqā a-fa-lam yahdi la-hum kam ahlaknā qablahum min al-qurūni yamshūna fī masākinihim inna fī dhālika la-āyātin li-uli n-nuhā Premonitions of this final ʿibra echo through the early Mūsā narrative. We recall that the second question of Firʿawn, “what about the earlier generations?” (fa-mā bālu l-qurūni l-ūlā), lacked any antecedent discussion that would explain why Firʿawn was asking such a question. Ibn Barrajān responded to that puzzlement by suggesting that he was asking about something Mūsā had proclaimed to him that was not reproduced in the ṬāHā narrative.46 Mūsā’s response was elusive: “Knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book. . . . My lord does not misguide and he does not forget” (lā yaḍillu rabbī wa-lā yansā, v. 52). The context for Firʿawn’s question and the reply by Mūsā is, like so much in ṬāHā, only revealed post facto. And when it is revealed, in the response to the man who once could see but now is blind, it takes on a compound irony. Mūsā’s lord, who “does not forget,” has, at the hour of reckoning, not forgotten that the man who once could

164  Michael A. Sells see has forgotten, despite that man’s once having received “our signs” (āyātanā). And the lord who does not forget does not forget to let the one who had forgotten be forgotten. In his harangue to the converted magicians, Firʿawn had boasted that those magicians who have accepted the lord of Hārūn and Mūsā would soon learn “which of us wields the harder, more lasting pain” (ashaddu ʿadhāban wa abqā, v. 71), to which the much-deferred response is given at the day of resurrection: “and the pain of the after is harder and more lasting” (wa-la-ʿadhābu l-ākhirati ashaddu wa-abqā, v. 127). The end of Firʿawn, who is enveloped as he and his army pursued Mūsā through the dry path that Mūsā struck through the sea, is followed by an epitaph (v. 79): “Firʿawn led his nation to ruin. He did not truly guide” (aḍalla firʿawnu qawmahu wa-mā hadā). The summary verse of the third ʿibra begins (with a strong example of iltifāt), “Did we not offer guidance to them/How many peoples before you have we destroyed/from the early generations haunting still their habitations?” (v. 128). The same verse concludes with the words “inna fī dhālika la-āyātin l-uli n-nuhā” (“in that surely are signs for the wise” or, more literally perhaps, “for those who know to decode”). Identical words had been pronounced in verse 54 of the Mūsā account earlier in the sura. The story is one that the narrator can and does reset and revise in process, as with Mūsā first and then Mūsā and Hārūn. The narrator, now having also become an actor in the narration, orders the first “casting” that changes what Mūsā considers a staff into a writhing snake and then returns it to what it was before. By contrast, the narrator, from outside the narration, proclaims the divine ability to create once and then re-create by returning the dead back to their former conditions. Throughout the narrative, the doublet passages, ṬāHā 1–79 and an-Nāziʿāt 15–26, echo, amplify, and in some cases ironize one another. At the same time, ṬāHā 10–14 and 37–38 – on the audition and vision of Mūsā and the audition of Umm Mūsā – form a doublet with the presentation of the vision and implied audition of the prophet in Q 53:1–18. And within the interstices of the doublet, ṬāHā embeds another doublet, between Mūsā’s prayer (ṬāHā 25–35) and the divine response in Q 94:1–6 to the prophet. Finally, let us recall what had been “cast” in ṬāHā 9–79: Mūsā into the ark, the ark into the waters, the waters to the shore, the divine love over Mūsā, that which Mūsā holds in his right hand, the ropes and staffs of the antagonists (presumably, although the casting is never narrated), that which Mūsā holds in his right hand (a second time), and the magicians. Like the words that Mūsā and the converted magicians proclaim in front of Firʿawn and that are being proclaimed through them, that which Mūsā holds in his right hand and which he is then instructed to cast takes on multiple, nested levels of meaning and agency, the outermost level of which may be, as the addresser in ṬāHā suggests, “nearly hidden.” The last we hear of Firʿawn is narrated in verses 78–79: Then we revealed to Mūsā, to take our servants on a journey by night strike them a dry path through the sea

The Casting: A Close Hearing  165 and to have no fear, no awe of being overtaken Firʿawn and his army pursued them and were enveloped by the sea as it came down over Firʿawn led his nation to ruin He did not truly guide These verses end on a note of closure: Firʿawn failed to bring his nation right guidance. In another sense, however, they mark a point where the story recedes into the ghayb or “unrevealed.” The translation “[they] were enveloped by the sea as it came down over” attempts to bring across the distinct reversion of the object onto the verbal action without sacrificing the poetic quality of the verse. Word for word, fa-ghashiyahum min al-yammi mā ghashiyahum would read “then there enveloped them of the sea what enveloped them.” Here again, the language of ṬāHā resonates with that concerning the vision of the prophet in Q 53:1–18, specifically in connection with sidrat al-muntahā (the tree of the furthest limit): idh yaghshā s-sidrata mā yaghshā (“when there envelopes the lote tree what envelopes,” v. 16). It resonates as well with Q 53:54, which declares in regard to the cities destroyed in the past for rejecting their prophets, fa-ghashshāhā mā ghashshā (“there enveloped them what enveloped”). Each of these locutions is employed in a manner that is rhetorically emphatic but semantically multivalent; and the transdiscursivity among them enhances both effects. Yet the relationship among objects that are enveloped, for example, is not easily specified. The objects enveloped include not only the tree at the furthest boundary, Firʿawn and his army, and the destroyed cities, but also, in Q 88, which begins with “Has there reached you the story of the enveloping?” (hal atāka ḥadīthu l-ghāshiya), perhaps the cosmos itself at the hour of reckoning. The Qurʾān draws the attention of its audients to such connections continually, but in the cases just mentioned here, the interrelationship is left echoing and re-echoing with notes of identity, difference, and inversion. The information given in an address or narrative, however vivid, leaves off as the actors, questions, and issues recede behind the boundary of what is revealed and what remains hidden. The aurality of resonances at the heart of this and countless other qurʾānic transdiscursive matrices is not an incidental effect. That aurality is present throughout much if not all of the Qurʾān. It may well be generative of the creativity within the production of qurʾānic discourse – however that creativity is conceptualized in historical or theological terms.

Sūrat ṬāHā 1-79 Ṭā Hā We have not sent down the Qurʾān to you that you be troubled Only a reminder for one who knows awe Sent down from the one who created the earth and high heavens

166  Michael A. Sells The compassionate has taken his place upon the throne To him belong what is in the heavens and what is on the earth, what is between them and what is beneath the soil If you pronounce openly still he knows what is hidden, and has concealed Allāh no god is but he To him belong the most beautiful names Has the story of Mūsā reached you? How he saw a fire and told his people: Stay, I sense a fire. Perhaps I’ll find an ember or encounter guidance at the fire Then as he drew near, he was called: Mūsā! I am, I am your lord Remove your shoes You are in the holy valley Ṭuwā I have chosen you So listen to that being revealed I am, I am Allāh no god but I Worship me and perform the prayer, remembering me The hour is coming. I hide it nearly that each may be rewarded with that to which he quickens Do not let them turn you from it – they who deny it, following their inclination – you to perish What is that in your right hand, Mūsā? My staff. I lean on it, batten the grass to feed my sheep and find other uses for it Cast it, Mūsā! he said He cast it and behold: a snake quickening Seize it, he said, and do not fear We shall turn it back to what it was before Put your hand to your ribs to emerge white, but unharmed, another sign So may we show you some of our more glorious signs – Go to Firʿawn. He’s transgressed He said: Open my breast, lord And ease me my task And loosen the knot from my tongue That they may understand my speech And assign me one of my family

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The Casting: A Close Hearing  167

Hārūn, my brother Stiffen through him my spine And give him a share in my burden That we may recite your praises often And remember you often Of us you are ever aware

Your request is granted, Mūsā, he said As we graced you before, another time When we revealed to your mother that being revealed Throw him in the ark! then throw him in the deep – the deep to cast him to the shore, an enemy – to me and him – to take him So have I cast over you my love that you be fashioned under my eye And your sister, going forth saying: Shall I show you one who will nurse him? Then we brought you back to your mother that her parched eyes be cooled and she sorrow no more and you killed a man and we saved you in your base condition and we tested you and tested you again and you stayed with the people of Madyan, many years And now, here, you are come – as determined So have I formed you for myself, Mūsā Take my signs, you and your brother, and weaken not in remembering me Go, both of you, to Firʿawn. He’s transgressed Speak to him courteously that he may perhaps accept a reminder and know awe Lord, we fear he’ll abuse us and transgress, they said Don’t fear, he said. I am with you, hearing and seeing Go, both of you. Tell him: We are a messenger from your lord Release us the Banī Isrāʾīl and afflict them no more From your lord we come bearing a sign Peace on those who heed the guidance To us, so, it has been revealed: a hard pain will fall upon those who call lie and turn away And who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā? he said Our lord is he who has granted each being its nature and rightly guides, he said What about the earlier generations? he said Knowledge of that is with my lord, in a book, he said

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168  Michael A. Sells My lord does not stray and he does not forget He who has made the earth your cradle and has threaded you pathways upon it and has sent down rain from the heavens and through it we have brought forth plants in pairs of every kind Eat! and feed your flocks! In that, surely, are signs for the wise From it we created you, and to it return you (55) and from it will take you another time And all our signs we showed him but he called lie and showed disdain Have you brought your magic to take us from our land, Mūsā? he said We’ll bring you a magic like it. Choose a date for us and for you, one we will surely not fail to meet, and a level field Your date is the Day of Adornment, he said Let the people be marshaled when the sun is high Firʿawn withdrew, then gathered his craft, then came forth (60) Woe to you all! said Mūsā. Do not fabricate lies about Allāh lest he drag his pain down on you and wipe you away Bitter the disappointment of those who call lie They disputed with one another but kept their consultations hidden They are magicians, both! they cried, and with magic they’ve come to take you from your land and ancient ways Assemble your craft and then come forth rank on rank The higher will triumph today Mūsā, they said, shall you cast first, or we? (65) Cast! he said, and behold their staffs and cords conjured before his vision, quickening Foreboding came into Mūsā and fear Don’t fear, we said: You are, you are the highest That which is in your right hand, cast! that it devour what they’ve fashioned mere magic is what they’ve fashioned and wherever the magician goes he fails Cast to the ground were the magicians (70) down to the ground in positions of prayer We believe in the lord of Hārūn and Mūsā, they cried You believe in him, he said, without my leave? He’s your leader then and master in magic I shall cut off your hands and your legs one from one side one from the other I shall have you crucified on the trunks of palm trees Then you will know which of us inflicts the harder, more lasting pain

The Casting: A Close Hearing  169 We will never choose you over the decisive proof we have received, they said and what we have been given, innately, to know Decree what you will. Your decree is for the near life only In our lord we’ve placed our faith that he pardon our wrongs and the magic we performed for you in duress Allāh is better, abiding ever Those who come to their lord in wrongdoing, theirs is Jahannam not dying there, they, nor living Those who come to him in faith having done the right theirs are the most exalted stations Gardens of Eden, rivers flowing under eternal there living Compensation for those become pure Then we revealed to Mūsā to take our servants on a journey by night strike them a dry path through the sea and to have no fear, no awe of being overtaken Firʿawn and his army pursued them and were enveloped by the sea as it came down over Firʿawn led his nation to ruin He did not truly guide*

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Notes * This essay grew out of the seminar “Readings in the Arabic Text of the Qurʾān” that I  have offered since 2006 at the University of Chicago. It has benefited from the insights, observations, and comments of the participants in the seminar throughout that time as well as from the participants in “Teaching the Qurʾān, Workshop for High School Teachers (focus on Sūrat ṬāHā and Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ),” Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education, Chicago, Illinois, 24–5 June  2013. I  have delivered parts at the workshop sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, 10 May 2013, and another part as an address titled, “Ark, Fire, Word, and Staff: A  Literary Analysis of the Qurʾānic Accounts of the Early Life of Moses,” Inaugural Lecture, the Hajja Razi Sharif Sheikh Lecture Series, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 28 October 2013. Thanks to Jeffrey Stackert, Simeon Chavel, Issam Eido, Jim Robinson, and Ahmad Arafat for their discussions with me regarding aspects of my translation and essay, and to Elizabeth Sartell, Francesca Chubb-Confer, Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, Izzet Coban, Amir Toft, Austin Luebke, Thomas Whittaker, and Kevin Blankinship, for their editorial assistance. 1 Considerations of the qurʾānic Mūsā include Youakim Moubarac, “Moïse dans le Coran,” in Moïse, l’homme de l’alliance (Paris: Desclée, 1955), 373–91; M. Causse, “The Theology of Separation and the Theology of Community: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Moses According to the Qurʾān,” in The Qurʾan: Style and Contents, ed. Andrew Rippin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 37–60; Mustansir Mir’s study of ṬāHā 9–36 titled “God Makes Moses a Prophet,” in Mustansir Mir, Understanding the Islamic Scripture: A Study of Selected Passages from the Qurʾān (New York: Pearson Longwood, 2008), 157–63; Anthony Johns, “Moses in the Qurʾan,” Charles Strong

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Lectures, 1972–1984, ed. Robert B. Crotty (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 123–38; and Brannon Wheeler, “Moses,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 248–65. Characters and episodes that do not appear in ṬāHā’s account of Moses in Egypt, such as the figure of Hāmān and the plague afflictions, whether in the previously mentioned suras (7:126–35; 20:38) or in other suras (40:23–54; 43:46–56; 44:17–31), are beyond the scope of this essay. For other instances of the expression “hal atāka ḥadīthu,” used with other terms in construct, see Q 85:17 (“has the story of the troops and of Firʿawn and of Thamūd come to you”) and Q 88:1 (“has the story of the enveloping [al-ghāshiya] come to you).” The word muḥammad appears four times in the Qurʾān (3:144; 33:40; 47:2; 48:29). In addition, in Q 61:6, Jesus predicts the coming of “Aḥmad.” For the same reasons that I refrain from reifying the references to the life in process of the prophet by naming the “you” of the addressee, I also refrain from interpolating into the qurʾānic passages under discussion the name or figure of “Jibrīl,” who is mentioned three times in the Qurʾān, but who is commonly considered in Muslim thought to be the transmitter of the Qurʾān to Muhammad and as a key persona in a number of passages in the Qurʾān. In both the cases of Muhammad and Jibrīl, my aim is to give close attention to qurʾānic text and to examine the literary effects of both what is and what is not stated. The masculine gender of the “you” (ka) would not necessarily exclude women as overhearers or secondary audients through the everywoman hearing herself addressed directly even as she recognizes the male prophet as the prophetic addressee in locutions such as “has the story of Mūsā reached you?” Note, for example, that humankind is addressed in whole or in part in the Qurʾān as al-insān (gender nonspecific, grammatically masculine), as in “O human being what has deluded you about your generous lord” (Q 82:5), or as nafs (gender nonspecific, grammatically feminine), as in “O nafs (person, self, human being) who has been given assurance, return to your (ki, feminine second-person singular) lord pleased and pleasing” (Q 89:27–28). The prophet serves as a model of behavior for both women and men except in those areas when the address is clearly directed toward males or to the prophet to the exclusion of all others, or has been so interpreted within exegetical and legal traditions. On iltifāt in the Qurʾān, see M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, “Grammatical Shift for Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifāt and Related Features in the Qurʾān,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 15.3 (1992): 404–32; idem, Understanding the Qurʾan: Themes and Style (London: Taurus, 1999), 184–210; Neil Robinson, Discovering the Qurʾan: A  Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text (London: S.C.M. Press, 1996), 224–55; Thomas Hoffman, The Poetic Qurʾān: Studies on Qurʾānic Poeticity (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), 141–53. Each of these expressions is distinctive. Taʿālā, for example, can be used after a name, as in allāhu taʿālā; an independent pronoun, as in huwa taʿālā; or as the subject of a verb, as in qāla taʿālā. In the latter case, taʿālā might be considered a circumlocution as well, displacing rather than conditioning the subject of qāla, and could be rendered as “the one who is and should be held beyond linguistic objectification.” For overviews, see EQ, s.v. “Orality,” by William A. Graham and “Orality and Writing” by Alan Jones. In regard to the relationship among sender or addresser, message, and messenger, and auditor as a linguistic phenomenon, see Konrad Ehlich, “Text und sprachliches Handeln,” in Schrift und Gedächtnis: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation, ed. Aleida and Jan Assmann and Christof Hardmeier (Munich: W. Fink, 1983), 24–44. On the question of oral textuality and the Qurʾān, see Andreas Kellermann, “Die ‘Mündlichkeit’ des Koran: Ein forschungsgeschichtliches Problem der Arabistik,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 5 (1994): 1–34. For a

The Casting: A Close Hearing  171 sustained study of issues of translation, poetics, and aurality in regard to the Qurʾān, see Navid Kermani, Gott ist schön: Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran (München: C. H. Beck, 2003). See also the groundbreaking work of Kristina Nelson, The Art of Reciting the Qurʾan (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2001), esp. 101–35. For a focused discussion of key issues in the area of qurʾānic address and orality, see Angelika Neuwirth, “Two Faces of the Qurʾān: Qurʾān and Muṣḥaf,” Oral Tradition 25.1 (2010): 141–56. Lüling, who assumes that what I have called “incantatory discourse” in the Qurʾān must have been regularly stanzaic as part of his argument that the relevant qurʾānic passages originally reflected the liturgy of a Christian community, nevertheless probes the aurality of such passages intensively. Despite his theological and historical assumptions and his insistence on uncovering stanzaic regularity, his close textual analysis may still be valuable. See Günter Lüling, Über den Ur-Qurʾān: Ansätze z. Rekonstruktion vorislam. christl. Strophenlieder Qurʾān (Erlangen: n.p., 1974). For a discussion of the relation of the address to the prophet to that of other addressees such as al-insān (Q 82: 5), see Muḥammad Karīm Kawwāz, Kalām allāh: al-Jānib al-shafahī min al-ẓāhira al-qurʾāniyya (Beirut: Dār al-Sāqī, 2002), 37–9. On orality in early Islam, see Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). I should note that Schoeler applies the word “aural” to the process of transmission, in contrast to my usage, which refers to the characteristics of a certain form of discourse. On orality and formulaic expressions in the Qurʾān, see Alford T. Welch, “Formulaic Features of the Punishment-Stories,” in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾān, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), 77–116. For a recent work from on the oral-formulaic character of the Qurʾān from the perspective of folklore studies, see Andrew G. Bannister, An Oral-Formulaic Study of the Qurʾan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). Bannister’s study includes assertions that the predominance of formulas in the suras attributed to the Medinan period over those attributed to the early Meccan period entail a reversal of classical qurʾānic chronology. Such assertions presume that the Qurʾān resulted from a single and uniform oral-performative genre development that was not impinged upon by other discursive currents or genres, disturbed by a period of crisis, or subjected to strong intervention. 10 “Audience” can refer to those who attend a play, listen to a radio drama, or read a novel, and thus in contemporary usage the phonic implications of the word’s etymology (from audire – “to hear”) are no longer privileged. The singular “audient” has undergone no such extension beyond its etymological sense. By replacing the “reader” with the “audient,” I intend the singular form “audient” to emphasize the hearing and listening nature of the implied and actual reception of the Qurʾān while not negating the reality that the Qurʾān also exists as written and read. The poet and literary critic Adūnīs has chosen to view the Qurʾān as a quintessential written work and the receptor of the Qurʾān as “the reader.” At the same time, he affirms the oral and poetic nature of the qurʾānic discourse and considers it to have more musicality than poetry. Adūnīs frames the issue in terms of classical Arabic literary-critical claims for the superiority of the oral tradition represented by early Arabic poetry and the Abbasid-period classicists over the “new style,” which Adūnīs associates with the written tradition, represented by Abbasid-period “new style” poets such Abū Tammām. For Adūnīs, the terms and result of that debate have unduly constrained the creativity of Arab poets to the present day, and the more fluid poetics of the Qurʾān offer modern Arab poetry a liberation from the assumed superiority and unique authenticity of the oral high-poetic tradition that is bound by unbending conventions of meter, verse length, and monorhyme. See Adūnīs, Muqaddima li al-shiʻr al-ʻarabī (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1986), 33–54; for a more sustained analysis of the nature of qurʾānic discourse and its relationship to thought, poetry, and writing, see idem., al-Naṣṣ al-qurʾānī wa āfāq al-kitāba (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1993), 19–55. Of particular note in the latter work is Adūnīs’s discussion

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of the similarities and contrasts between the musicality within the Qurʾān and within poetry, the problem of defining the Qurʾān as either poetry or prose, and the dynamic nature of qurʾānic referentiality (see 24–43). See in this regard Navid Kermani, “Revelation in its Aesthetic Dimension,” in The Qurʾān as Text, ed. Stefan Wild (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 213–24; idem, Gott ist schön, 97. See especially the oration attributed to Quss ibn Sāʿida al-Iyādi of Najrān (d. ca. 600 CE), which Islamic tradition records as an example of sajʿ that was viewed positively by Muhammad and contains many of the features found in the short-verse, apocalyptic suras ascribed to the first period of qurʾānic prophecy: intense use of rhyme along with striking shifts in rhyme; highly rhythmic but not strictly metric verses; and the feature notable in passages such as Sūra 82:1–6 of several very short, staccato verses of adjuration followed by a longer versed and assonance-rich proclamation. The orations that have been attributed to Muhammad himself, on the other hand, contrast strongly with that of Quss and with early qurʾānic rhetorical and poetic style. For texts and translations of the oration of Quss ibn Sāʿida and of oration passages of Muhammad, see Tahera Qutbuddin, “Khutba: The Evolution of Early Arabic Oration,” in Classical Arabic Humanities in their Own Terms, ed. Beatrice Gruendler and Michael Cooperson (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 176–273, here pp. 223–25, 227–30. I am indebted to Hilmi Okur for drawing my attention to the oration of Quss ibn Sāʿida. While bracketing historical questions about the time and place of the emergence of the Qurʾān, a close reading of the kind employed here would adhere to a method not unlike that prescribed for a literary reading of the Hebrew Bible, expressed by Robert Alter in his preface to the 2011 revised edition of The Art of Biblical Narrative: “The best way to get a handle on the Bible’s literary vehicle is to avoid imposing on it a grid external to it, but instead to patiently attend to its minute workings and through such attention inferentially build a picture of its distinctive conventions and techniques.” Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 2011), preface to the revised edition, 10–1. In one area, Alter’s method of biblical reading necessarily differs from that appropriate to the Qurʾān. Alter views the Hebrew Bible for the most part as a text composed in writing by authors with a mastery of the written medium. The writerly character of at least a large part of the Hebrew Bible stands in contrast to the orality-infused character of the Qurʾān, and that contrast must necessarily affect a close reading or hearing of the one or the other of the two scriptures. I have discussed the issue of textuality versus discursivity (inter-, intra-, and trans-) in “Aurality and Interdiscursivity” in the introduction of this volume. Genette’s discussions in Narrative Discourse illuminate some of the issues regarding qurʾānic narrative raised here, despite the marked contrast between the text on which Genette bases his work, Marcel Proust’s preeminently writerly novel, Remembrance of Things Past, and that most self-referentially spoken and preeminently aural of texts, the Qurʾān. See Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane Lewin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 33–112, especially pp. 84–95 on “level”; Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, trans. Jane Lewin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 79–154. The word “incantation” is most often defined as a discourse made up of sounds that have no specific semantic meaning but which are viewed as effective in magic. By contrast, I use the term “incantatory” to refer to discourse characterized by particularly strong use of consonance and assonance, and rhyme and rhythm, but also with semantic content, however elusive it may be. For detailed analyses of qurʾānic passages I  would consider incantatory, see Angelika Neuwirth: Der Koran, vol.  1, Frühmekkanische Suren (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011), 394–414. On suras opening with oaths and specifically those opening with oaths involving entities in the fāʾilāt

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16 17

18 19 20

21

form (fāʾilāt Schwurserien), see Lamya Kandil, “Schwüre in den mekkanischen Sure,” in The Qurʾān as Text, 46; Angelika Neuwirth, Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaʿili Studies, 2014), 104–12. The oath passages in question come at the beginning of Sūras 100, 79, 77, 51, and 37. In regard to chronology, al-Zarkashī’s version of the traditional chronology places Q 79 as the eighty-first and one of the last Meccan suras, temporally posterior to ṬāHā. See Muḥammad ibn Bahādur al-Zarkashī, Al-Burhān fī ʻulūm al-Qurʾān, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, 1957– 58), 1:193–94. The basic chronology (with some minor differences among traditional scholars) of the classical tradition was adopted by the compilers of the influential modern Egyptian printing. Nöldeke, by contrast, places Q 79 in the early Meccan period and thus prior to ṬāHā. For an overview of the question of the chronology of suras, see Carl W. Ernst, How to Read the Qurʾan: A New Guide, with Select Translations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 39–41. For the view that the Mūsā section of Q 79 is “clearly out of connection” as a result of editorial splices, see Richard Bell, The Qurʾān, Translated, with a Critical Rearrangement of the Suras (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1937), 2:632–34. In regard to the aural or sonic features within Q 79, see also Robinson, Discovering the Qurʾan, 188. In previous work, I have focused on sound symbols in the most intensive incantatory suras; see Michael A. Sells, “Sound, Spirit, and Gender in Sūrat al-Qadr,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 111.2 (1991): 239–59; “Sound and Meaning in Sūrat al-Qāriʿa,” Arabica 40.3 (1993): 403–30. In “A  Literary Approach to the Hymnic Suras of the Qurʾan: Spirit, Gender, and Aural Intertextuality,” in Literary Structures, 3–25, I discuss both the interior sound-symbol producing resonance in a specific sura, al-Zalzala, as well as the transdiscursive resonances of key sound units. See also the fine study by Soraya M. Hajjaji-Jarrah, “The Enchantment of Reading: Sound, Meaning, and Expression in Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt,” in Literary Structures, 228–51. In regard to Surāt ṬāHā, the sound unit question takes on further complexity due to the combining of incantatory apocalyptic discourse with narration and to the more variable verse length. For resonance and echo in the English poetic tradition, see John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). Among the many passages in Hollander taking up effects that I find relevant to qurʾānic aurality are page 51 on Milton’s Paradise Lost in regard to self-echo or echoes that “do not come from afar, or from absent places, so much as from a memory of the poem’s own utterance”; pages 65–6 on the intertextual resonance between Genesis 1:12 and the Gettysburg Address; and pages 95–8 on broken, muted, and scattered echoes. The account of Mūsā after the parting of the sea, as well as the Adam story that follows it, raise issues that cannot be addressed in this essay. On the connotations of ānisa, see Bint al-Shatiʾ, al-Iʻjāz al-bayānī li al-Qurʾān wa masā’il Ibn al-Azraq (Cairo: Dār al-Maʻārif, 1971), 200–1. “Lo”, “verily,” “forsooth,” and other common renditions of Arabic emphatic particles are no longer idiomatic. I have refrained from resorting to them in the translation, and have sought other, more idiomatic means of bringing across, without word-for-word equivalents, the emphases, clarifications, rhetoric, and transdisursivity they embody. Ibn Barrajān wrote that Q 20:14 expressed a dhikr ladunnī in the same category as that of Q 20:99: kadhālika naquṣṣu ʿalayka min anbāʾi mā qad sabaqa wa-qad ātaynāka min ladunnā dhikra(n). ʻAbd al-Salām ibn ʻAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Barrajān, Tafsīr ibn Barrajān: Tanbīh al-afhām ilā tadabbur al-Kitāb al-Ḥakīm wa taʻarruf al-āyāt wa al-nabaʾ al-ʿaẓīm (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīya, 2013), 3:518– 19, 528–31.

174  Michael A. Sells 22 It may be of interest to note the jinās or paranomasia here between yasʿā and sāʿa. 23 In regard to the expressions “innī ana rabbuka” and “innanī ana llāhu lā ilāha illā ana,” the reduplication of the first-person pronoun coming after the emphatic particle “inna” is open to a variety of grammatical and rhetorical explanations. Arabic lacks the present indicative copula. Thus a redundant pronoun, following either a noun or pronoun, can be used as a mark of separation to clarify copulative sentences. At the same time, such repetition can serve as a form of emphasis. This analysis suggests, however, that given both the rarity of the construction in question within qurʾānic expressions of divine identity and the manner in which the two expressions are rhetorically marked within Q 20, the emphasis is particularly strong. The two expressions could be interpreted in a manner reminiscent of the “I am what I am” of Exodus – as “I am I, your lord” and “I am I, no god but I,” emphasizing the deity as more than can be indicated by any one or even all of its names. However, I have encountered few exegetes who consider such a possibility. The reading attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in al-Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAzīz (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiya, 2001), 1:436, may come close, depending on how one reads the relationship of fanāʾ to the identity between addresser and addressee, speaker and spoken-to, that Jaʿfar stresses. For an intricate treatment of the issues posed by fanāʾ, the early Mūsā section of Ṭahā, and the innī ana expression, see Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, The Universal Tree and the Four Birds: Treatise on Unification (al-Ittiḥād al-kawnī), trans. Angela Jaffray, Arabic text ed. Denis Gril (Oxford: Anqa, 2006), 21–51 (English translation), 1–20 from the back forward (Arabic text). 24 Although further contrasts and comparisons with the presentations of Moses in the Hebrew Bible are beyond the bounds of this essay, I note one recent work of relevance to the issues explored here: Jeffrey Stackert, A Prophet Like Moses: Prophecy, Law, and Israelite Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). See in particular chapter 2 (pp. 36–60) of Stackert’s study, “A Literary Portrayal of Mosaic Prophecy in the Torah Sources,” which explores conundrums in biblical portrayals of Mosaic prophecy that are discussed in this essay on early qurʾānic Mūsā, including the tension between visual and oral modes of revelation, the range or circles of audibility of oral revelation, the signs that serve to validate the prophecy or the prophet, and the difficulty of distinguishing divine from human prophetic agency at key moments in the portrayals. (I should note here that Stackert’s reading of Exodus 3:12 [p. 56] differs from that found in JPS.) 25 A recent study has indicated that Sūra 20 has more disagreements (more than twenty) in verse separation among the five major ʿUthmanic readings, more than any other sura. Many concern verses 40–1 and, I would note in this regard, demonstrate the importance given to the rhyme and cadence of verses in the sura by early qurʾānic reciters and scribes, an issue that will be of importance for the resonance among the revelation experiences of the prophet (Q 53:1–18), Mūsā, and Umm Mūsā. See Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergmann, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qurʾān of the Prophet,” Arabica 57.4 (2010): 343–436, here pp. 380–83. 26 A similar seemingly instantaneous appearance of Hārūn at the moment Mūsā requested him occurs also in Q 26:13–15. 27 For an analysis of the relationship between Q 20:9–14 and Q 53:1–18, see Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 653–57, and Nicolai Sinai, “An Interpretation of Sūrat al-Najm (Q. 53),” JQS 13.2 (2011): 15–6, where the focus is upon the correspondences between Q 53:14–16 and Exodus 3 and between Q 53:18 and Q 79:20. I  am not yet ready to suggest as Neuwirth and Sinai have done, in somewhat different ways, a correspondence between sidrat al-muntahā and the burning bush of Exodus 3 or the fire viewed by Mūsā in the accounts in ṬāHā, Q 26, and Q 28. No fire is mentioned in ṬāHā, only one of the three accounts mentions a tree, and there is no explicit indication that a fire is what

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28 29 30 31

32 33

was enveloping the sidra of the muntahā. On the other hand, I  view the discussion in this essay as supportive of the resonances they argue exist between the account of the prophet’s vision in Q 53 and that of Mūsā’s vision in what I am calling the ṬāHā/ an-Nāziʿāt doublet. See also Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. 1, Frühmekkanische Suren, 90 and Der Koran als Text der Spätantike, 654–55, as well as her essay in this volume. I will leave a fuller discussion of the Mūsā infancy narratives for another occasion. Here I  note only those aspects of the infancy narratives that bear on Umm Mūsā’s reception of waḥy in ṬāHā. For a recent study of al-Zamakhsharī’s tafsīr, see Andrew J. Lane, A Traditional Muʻtazilite Qurʾān Commentary: The Kashshāf of Jār Allāh al-Zamakhsharī (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Al-Zamakhshārī, al-Kashshāf ʻan ḥaqā’iq al-tanzīl wa ʻuyūn al-aqāwil fī wujūh al-taʼwīl (Cairo: Maṭbaʿa Mustafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1966), 2:536 (commentary on Q 20:38). See also Ibn al-Munayyir’s comments from al-Intiṣāf, which are included under the text of al-Kashshāf in the same edition. Al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʼ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1980), 22:50–52, s.v. Q 20:38–39. ʻAlī ibn Aḥmad Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal fī al-milal wa al-ahwāʼ wa al-niḥal (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1996), 3:186–88. Ibn Hazm maintained that four women – Umm Isḥāq, Maryam, the wife of Firʿawn, and Umm Mūsā – should be considered nabīs. The relevant passage on Umm Mūsā I translate as follows: “And we find of Umm Mūsā, blessings and peace upon both of them; that Allāh revealed to her that she throw her child into the river and let her know that he would return him to her and make him a prophet and a messenger. That was prophecy (nubuwwa) without doubt and logically and necessarily so. Anyone of sound judgment can see that if she hadn’t been held sound through the prophecy of Allāh, may he be held high and dear, if she had thrown her child into the river because of a vision she saw or because of some thought that happened to come into her mind or at the end of her wits – and if any of us did such a thing, it would be the result of either utter depravity or madness meriting no doubt neurological treatment in the Paymanistān asylum. No one doubts that. So it is absolutely clear that the waḥy that came to her to cast her child into the river was like the waḥy that came to Ibrāhīm in a vision to sacrifice his son. If Ibrāhīm, peace and blessings upon him, had not been a prophet held sound in the validity of the waḥy and the prophethood that came to him instructing him to sacrifice his son, and if rather his sacrifice of his son was based only on a vision he happened to see or a notion that came to him, he would doubtless have committed that action not in the manner of the prophets, but as a depraved wrongdoer at the extreme of depravity or a madman at the extreme of insanity. No one would have any doubt about that.” Cf. The [Oxford] Encyclopedia of Islam and Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), s.v. “Prophethood,” by David A. Kerr and Halim Calis. One might respond to Ibn Hazm that if “nubuwwa” is defined as entailing a divine communication that the receiver of the communication then proclaims to others, neither Umm Mūsā nor Maryam were nabīs, by definition. Yet even if that understanding of nubuwwa were accepted, Ibn Hazm’s analysis of the exceptional nature of Umm Mūsā’s waḥy experience and the religiously critical nature of the message communicated to her (in divine direct address) within the two qurʾānic passages remains cogent. On a more philosophical note, one could say that in saving the infant Mūsā and in giving birth to ʿIsā, Umm Mūsā did indeed deliver (if not necessarily proclaim orally) the divine communication to others. For an important study of such issues in the case of Maryam, see Hosn Abboud, Mary in the Qurʾan: A Literary Reading (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014).

176  Michael A. Sells 34 Ibn Barrajān, Tafsīr ibn Barrajān, 518–21. He also writes (p. 518) that the words “fa yulqihi ilā al-barri” constitute an existentializing command (amr kawni), meaning that after Umm Mūsā throws the ark into the waters, “we will command the waters to cast him to the shore where he will be taken up by the family of Firʿawn.” At the time this essay was completed, a newly edited and translated work of Ibn Barrajān was scheduled to appear: Gerhard Bowering and Yousef Casewit, A Qurʾan Commentary by Ibn Barrajan of Seville d. 536/1141: Īḍāḥ al-ḥikma bi-aḥkām al-ʿibra (Wisdom Deciphered, the Unseen Discovered) (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 35 Indeed, in the Ṭāhā early Mūsā narrative, the narrator can be seen in various ways to enter into and even change the story in progress in several ways, including acting as a confident to Mūsā in the confrontation with Firʿawn and revising in mid-process the commission to Mūsā by changing it, at Mūsā’s request, to be a commission to Mūsā and Hārūn. In regard to such narrative collapses of levels, see Genette’s discussion of metalepsis and nested diegetic levels in Narrative Discourse Revisited, 84–95. 36 Q 6:99 begins with a shift from a third-person depiction of the sending down of rains to the first-person plural akhrajnā: “And he it is who sent down rains from the sky by means of which we have thus brought forth plants of every kind” (wa-huwa lladhī anzala min as-samāʾi māʾan fa-akhrajnā bihi nabāta kulli shayʾin). 37 Syed Abul ʻAla Maudoodi, The Meaning of the Qurʾān, ed. A. A. Kamal Zafar, trans. Ch. Muhammad Akbar (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1967), 7:101 n. 26. 38 Ibn al-Munayyir, Al-Intiṣāf, 2:540. Ibn al-Munayyir focuses here on what he takes as al-Zamakhsharī’s attempt to resolve the difficulties in 52–4 by an appeal to iltifāt. “This must be considered either as the speech of Mūsā – in which case it would take on the character of a discourse of royal officials (we command and it is done), in which case they mean only a king and that is not iltifāt, or else the speech of Mūsā has ended with the words ‘and he does not forget,’ after which Allāh taʿālā describes himself according to the attributes of his granting of bounty to his creatures – and that would not be iltifāt either, but rather a shift from narrative to address. According to that interpretation, the reader has to pause after the words wa lā yansā in order to establish the end point of the narration.” After presenting his option, Ibn al-Munayyir states, “And that [Ibn al-Munayyir’s] option is a fitting and precise exegesis and the one most amenable to being considered iltifāt, but it was not what was meant by al-Zamakhsharī. God is most knowing.” 39 These observations on the problems of spatially placing Mūsā in relation to the voice and the fire at Ṭuwā have benefited from Michael Payne, “Spatializing the Sacred in the Theophanic Moment: Moses and the Burning Bush,” 2013 seminar paper, unpublished. 40 Al-Sulamī, Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, 2:436. 41 Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī, The Universal Tree and the Four Birds, 27–30 (translation), 6–9 (Arabic). 42 Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qurʾan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 80–105. 43 Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Qurʾān (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2003), 774. Concerning Q 20:55 (775 n. 2579), Ali writes, “This verse ought really to go into the last section.” Concerning verse 56, he writes (775 n. 2580), “This is a sort of general introduction to the confrontation between Mūsā and Firʿawn.” 44 In ṬāHā, Firʿawn is presented at first as receiving Mūsā politely and asking germane questions without threat, boast, or polemic: “And who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā?”; “And what about the earlier generations?” Even as he prepares for confrontation, he preserves a certain diplomatic courtesy, giving Mūsā the choice of venue. By contrast, although Mūsā had been commanded to address Firʿawn diplomatically (layyinan), he had also been commanded to let him know, in blunt terms, that a hard pain was in store for him if he rejected the message Mūsā came to convey. For a vivid

The Casting: A Close Hearing  177 contrast to Firʿawn’s show of courtesy to Mūsā in Ṭuwā, see the parallel passage in Sūra 26 (ash-Shuʿarāʾ), in which Firʿawn moves to open mockery and continued interruption of Mūsā. 45 The role(s) of Mūsā and Hārūn or Mūsā–Hārūn or Mūsā (Hārūn) remain only partially and only occasionally differentiated in grammatical terms. Unlike Exodus, where Mūsā is to communicate to Hārūn what to say in a form of ventriloquism and where Hārūn is presented as an actor casting down the staff, in ṬāHā and throughout the qurʾānic Mūsā narratives, the role of Hārūn remains undefined beyond serving as a bolster to Mūsā and releasing in some way the knot on his tongue. Firʿawn is clearly having trouble understanding this double persona, sometimes using the dual but slipping back to the singular (“And who is this lord of the two of you, Mūsā”), but more generally, at least in ṬāHā, acting as if Hārūn were not there. For a vigorous qurʾānic employment of the dual in regard to Mūsā and Hārūn, see the divine addresser’s commission to the two brothers in Q 28:35 – yet another example of a qurʾānic tour de force as it weaves together verse cadence, grammar, narrative, and rhetoric and in the process performs its own verbal mastery. 46 Ibn Barrajān, Tafsīr, 518. I owe this observation to Ahmad Arafat.

6 Qurʾānic Studies and Philology Qurʾānic Textual Politics of Staging, Penetrating, and Finally Eclipsing Biblical Tradition Angelika Neuwirth Introduction Philology, the “Host Discipline” of Qurʾānic Studies The Qurʾān until now has not been acknowledged as part of the Western canon of theologically relevant knowledge – although it is obviously a text that, no less than the Jewish and Christian founding documents, firmly stands in the biblical tradition. Indeed, it seems to be the very fact of this close relationship that has kindled the present controversy over the status of the Qurʾān: either as a religiously genuine attestation of biblical faith, a Fortschreibung or “continuation” of the Bible, adding to it new dimensions of meaning, or as a mere imitation, a theologically diffuse recycling of biblical tradition. Although new readings advocating a genuine relationship between the Bible and the Qurʾān have lately been proposed,1 scholars are still far from recognizing the status of the Qurʾān as a new manifestation of biblical scripture. What would this status imply? Scripture in the European tradition is a notion highly charged with meaning. Scriptural authority, which was paramount until modernity, has never been entirely eclipsed. Negatively, it lives on as a criterion of exclusion as can be seen from the prevailing scholarly understanding of the Qurʾān, which posits the text as a writing subsidiary to the Bible rather than as an original scripture in its own right. This is in keeping with an almost axiomatic view, often encountered among the Western public in general, that the Bible holds the status of a charter of truth – reserved, however, for its privileged addressees, previously the Christians exclusively and more recently, Jews and Christians. This status, in turn, confers a certain cachet upon the “people of the Bible,” providing them with a cultural and even civilizational pedigree that is denied to the “nonbiblical” Muslims. It is hardly an exaggeration, then, to claim that the Qurʾān and the Bible have not yet been considered on equal footing. While Jewish readings of the Bible by now have received a place – though marginal – in theology, the Qurʾān has remained the domain of philology, excluded from Western theological discourses.2 Western critical scholarship on the Qurʾān started in the nineteenth century. Although the

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  179 Qurʾān had been appreciated by the Romanticists and made accessible to European readers in various congenial translations, there was no comprehensive knowledge about the epistemic achievement induced by the Qurʾān in its Arabian milieu, let alone about its theological relationship to the other religious traditions; pertinent disciplines such as the history of religions or the study of Oriental cultures were still undeveloped. What was to be the “host discipline” for the new inquiry was philology. Indeed, the birth of Western qurʾānic studies occurred synchronously with the emergence of philology as an academic discipline. More precisely, it originated from an epistemic revolution in biblical studies: the introduction of historical critical scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an approach that turned the Bible from a religious foundational text into a historical text detached from its liturgical and doctrinal embeddings in the service of the church or the synagogue. Historical critical scholarship was widely welcomed as a momentous renewal in academic theology which – synchronously with the emergence of the discipline of archaeology – relocated the Bible into the historical spaces of the Ancient Orient and Mediterranean Late Antiquity, respectively. It was in this academic context that qurʾānic scholarship emerged. What constituted a renewal in biblical studies, though, was for the Qurʾān only the very start of its academic investigation. Thus an important methodological step was overleapt: whereas in the case of the Bible the dissection of the text into small units for analysis was a step that complemented rather than superseded the earlier holistic reading of the text, with the Qurʾān, which had not yet been made familiar to the Western reader in its entirety, this was the initial procedure. The result was a momentous gap between the perception of the Bible and the Qurʾān: what Northrup Frye has made visible to us concerning the omnipresence of the Bible in Western tradition and its function as a virtual subtext of innumerable literary and art works of Western pre-modernity, mutatis mutandis, applies no less to the Qurʾān for Islamic culture. To realize this epistemically overarching dimension demands, however, that one look at the Qurʾān as a unity. Frye, who titled the Bible “The Great Code,”3 highlights the holistic aspect of its reception: “what matters is that ‘the Bible’ has traditionally been read as a unity, and has influenced Western imagination as a unity.”4 It is this holistic perception that in Western scholarship on the Qurʾān has been widely missing until now. What mattered in early qurʾānic scholarship was the inclusion of the Qurʾān within the realm of scriptural texts severed from their traditional contexts and meant to be reread according to the new historical critical approach. Considered as an intellectual venture, the work of Abraham Geiger5 – who in 1833 published his famous “Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?”6 – looks impressive. It offered a pivotal revalorization of the Qurʾān, positioning it not – as had been usual – in the limited sphere of the Arabian peninsula but in a pluricultural milieu of Late Antique debates. Due to a few grave preconceptions, the result of his study, however, was highly ambivalent. Qurʾānic studies started with a surgical operation upon the text, which was looked upon as a collection of historical and doctrinal statements rather than a comprehensive message. Historical critical scholarship was not least a quest for the urtexts of scripture – a quest that

180  Angelika Neuwirth for the Bible had resulted in the unearthing of a large number of Ancient Oriental and Late Antique traditions. These texts were apt to throw light on the historical setting of the Bible but could rarely ever compete seriously with their far more sophisticated counterparts shaped by the biblical authors. In the qurʾānic case, however, the opposite seemed to be true. What was discovered as the lower layer of the text was not seen as an inferior earlier tradition but the most prestigious ancient text imaginable: the Hebrew Bible itself. And as deviation from such an authoritative urtext was tantamount to a distortion, the Qurʾān emerged in this scholarship as a rather unsuccessful attempt to rival the Bible and was to remain stigmatized as an epigonic text until this very day. Yet there is no doubt that the scholarship of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, with its awareness of the transcultural dimension of the Qurʾān, marks a momentous beginning and perhaps even a climax of Western qurʾānic studies. After its violent disruption with the expulsion of Jewish scholars from German universities in the 1930s through Nazi terror – no more than 100 years after Geiger’s work – qurʾānic studies took a new and far less ambitious course, following a trend in the vein of the then-en vogue Leben-Jesu-Forschung, focusing upon the person of the prophet as a figure within Arabian culture.7 By repositioning the qurʾānic event into a local Arabian pre-Islamic milieu, the new scholarship forfeited a major achievement of its predecessor: the contextualization of the Qurʾān with the late antique knowledge of its milieu. Nor did the proponents of the Muhammad scholarship succeed in coming up to their New Testament studies model, the Leben Jesu-Forschung. They have been blamed for failure to critically interrogate their traditional Islamic sources, whose status as documents of a later epoch they did not sufficiently look through. The qurʾānic text, which was read primarily to provide information about the psychological development of the prophet, disappeared from the fore as an object of philology for several decades. To appreciate the epistemic dimension of this shift in interest, it is worth remembering a model lately proposed by Sheldon Pollock,8 who regards philology as a tripartite venture: a quest for “textual meaning”; an investigation into the text’s traditional understanding, its “contextual meaning”; and finally, a rethinking of one’s own scholarly preconceptions and responsibilities – the “philologist’s meaning.” The differentiation between textual and contextual meaning is not in this case a new discovery; it had been established by the Renaissance thinker Giambattista Vico,9 who abbreviated the two approaches with the concepts of “verum,” the “truth” to be gleaned from the text as such, and “certum,” what the recipients were upholding as the “certain” meaning. In the earliest phase of qurʾānic studies, we are still dealing primarily with the verum, the focus on the text as such, including its historical layers. It is true that the earliest scholars did accept the traditionally established context of the Qurʾān as a given: Muhammad’s ministry in Mecca and Medina during the period of 610–32. Yet, this milieu was not dealt with as a challenge to which the Qurʾān was responding. Rather, their gaze was turned backward: the Qurʾān was regarded as part of a vernacular biblical tradition, the vast realm of Aggadah,10 orally transmitted post-biblical lore comprising most diverse exegetical readings of the Bible. Although the early

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  181 scholars were aware of a dynamic tradition, a kind of vernacularization, this did not involve the text of the Qurʾān itself, whose reflections of the older religious lore were not accepted as serious reinterpretations but often dismissed as mistaken or distorted readings of it. What was contextualized then was not the Qurʾān itself but its lower subtextual layers, which were reconnected to the earlier scriptures. The subsequent “Muhammad scholarship,” on the contrary, was purely context oriented. The new sīra-based readings of the Qurʾān positively contributed to the increase and promulgation of knowledge about the until-then marginalized event of the Qurʾān. Its representation, however – limited by the perspective of the traditional reports that tended to downplay the theological challenges exerted by the syncretist, Jewish, and Christian opponents on the prophet and his community – obscured the relevance of the qurʾānic intervention into the Late Antique debates and thus blurred the innovations of the qurʾānic worldview. It also did not comply with the standards of the time, which had seen important archaeological and epigraphic discoveries. The attempt to rely on one single method borrowed from biblical studies, the Leben-Jesu-Forschung, while neglecting the progress that was taking place in the various sub-disciplines of the field, proved insufficient. To fill that gap and to update qurʾānic studies by introducing another methodologically momentous new approach, John Wansbrough in 1977 presented a comprehensive study on the Qurʾān as text: Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation.11 Underlying his work is Rudolf Bultmann’s approach to the demythologization of scripture.12 Bultmann, a New Testament scholar, held that the narratives of the life of Jesus were offering theology in narrative form, where lessons were taught in the then-familiar language of myth. It was myth – a myth typologically closely related to that laid out by Bultmann for the Gospels – that Wansbrough claimed to discover in the narrative of Muhammad’s life and ministry. Superimposing the model on the Qurʾān, Wansbrough carried historical criticism to extremes, explaining the text as a later, anonymous compilation. A  priori rejecting the traditional historical setting of the Qurʾān, Wansbrough imagined the text not as the self-expression of the emerging community at Mecca and Medina but as the manifesto of an already extant Jewish-Christian community, a Jewish-Christian apocryph so to speak, written to provide that community with an Arabian myth of origin. The qurʾānic text thus appeared as virtually inaccessible to historical investigation. With Wansbrough, a complete detachment of the text from its transmitters and its recipients took place for the first time. Not only are verum and certum rigorously disconnected; there has also occurred a supersession of the certum, of the recipients’ reading. Its place has been appropriated by the researcher, who presents a counter-model of his own imagination to the traditionally transmitted milieu of the Qurʾān. In this way, a solipsistic hypothesis has replaced a widely accepted image of history. While earlier historical critical scholarship never isolated the text from Muhammad – imagining him as a kind of author who premeditated the project of the foundation of Islam – it grossly overstated his personal function in the genesis of the Qurʾān. Wansbrough and his school, who have become known as the “revisionist scholars,” have moved in the opposite direction. They regard

182  Angelika Neuwirth the prophet as a nonhistorical figure invented by the compilers of the Qurʾān to endow the later emerging Islamic community with a mythical Arabian land of origin. This thesis, which denies Muhammad and his community any role in the emergence of the new religion, with a single stroke cancels the entire rationale of the genesis of Arabic Islamic culture. It is unsurprising that Wansbrough’s work not only caused a schism in the Western scholarly community but at the same time precipitated the estrangement of the Muslim scholarly community – a situation that still prevails until this day. It is not least this malaise – the until-now still widely missing consciousness of the implications of daring textual experiments carried out on the Qurʾān, experiments not only incompatible with established historical facts but also liable to be falsified by epigraphic and manuscript data – that calls for new reflection. What should qurʾānic studies be about, and what role should philology, the guardian discipline of the Qurʾān in Western academia, play to re-array the stage? It is “the philologist’s meaning,” his or her intellectual vision, and capability to discern the highly complex preconditions of sound qurʾānic scholarship that have to be involved in the work on the Qurʾān. The Shibboleth of Qurʾānic Studies: Diachronic versus Synchronic Approaches A new attempt to trace the qurʾānic development is overdue. Existing introductions to the Qurʾān clearly bespeak the still highly aporetic situation of qurʾānic scholarship, which is aware of the multiple traditions that are reflected in the qurʾānic text13 but reluctant to make sense of them for a new understanding of the Qurʾān as a whole – reluctant, that is, to venture a synopsis of these data that would allow for at least a preliminary image of the process of the Qurʾān’s genesis. The still-powerful shibboleth that lurks behind this deficiency is chronology – but not in the simple sense of accepting or rejecting a particular sequence of suras such as that established by Theodor Nöldeke in the beginning of critical scholarship. What is at stake is a deeper understanding of chronology – that Nöldeke only vaguely conceived of – that is, the perusal of traces of an epistemic development that leads up to the ultimate achievement of a new communal religious identity. What is at stake is the principle preparedness to conceive of a “natural genesis” to the Qurʾān, its emergence from a real historical event: the process of Muhammad’s addressing his audience. Is the Qurʾān to be read as the mirror of a process,14 a sequence of messages addressed to real listeners that successively increase in complexity and theological sophistication and ultimately attest the achievement of a communal identity? Or is it to be read as a literary fait accompli, a book where the proclaimer and his community are literary protagonists of a story told by an author or a compiler? In other words, is the Qurʾān a source text like many others of Church history that only needs to be screened for its theological layers, whose social and political embedding, whose Sitz im Leben within the development of a community plays no part in the scholarly project? It is true that there are still a number of historically unwarranted premises involved,15 which

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  183 may convey a speculative character on the diachronic approach. But is the opposite option – proceeding from the fixed text – really devoid of methodological pitfalls? Can the Qurʾān in its canonical form really be considered as the integer manifestation of what we seek to rely on as the documentation of the process of the emergence of the community? This frequently adopted position is – measured against methodological insights developed elsewhere – at least elusive. As biblical scholars have stressed, it is not the production of commentaries but the very closure, the “sealing” of a text, that reconfigures it.16 Moshe Halbertal, among others, has demonstrated that once the text has attained its final written shape, it is once and for all severed from its erstwhile context: “When prophecy as legislation ended and the text was sealed as a consequence, the text became self-referential in a circular way.”17 The divide between text and commentary, therefore, is not that between the muṣḥaf and the Qurʾān read through the lens of later exegetical works but precedes tafsīr: the muṣḥaf itself is already part and parcel of an exegetical reception of the Qurʾān. The redactors themselves are thus to be considered as the first exegetes. Their exegetical contribution expresses itself in a decontextualization of the individual text units. The sura, erstwhile the chief medium of the proclamation, turns from a literarily stylized message into a primarily technical device of arranging the written text into “chapters.” This perception is clearly reflected in the main genre of Qurʾān commentary, which is considered representative in Western scholarship, the “traditional commentary.” ’ By relying on the muṣḥaf, Western scholars practice a similarly reductive approach: suras, in much of recent scholarship, no longer demand analysis as compositions encoding an individual message, as speech acts that once marked steps forward on the road of the kerygmatic ministry of the proclaimer. In the muṣḥaf all the qurʾānic utterances are virtually severed from their particular oral compositional sura context, where style, rhetoric, and diverse forms of intertextuality were instrumental in conveying a particular message that built on preceding messages. Verses are thus easily reduced to their individual semantic contents, and context-based utterances are turned into decontextualized sentences. Although there is vast literature of qurʾānic poetics in Arabic learned tradition that reinstate the significance of these devices in the context of the qurʾānic textual politics, they are washed out by those Western researchers who proceed not from the Qurʾān as a process but from the muṣḥaf. This approach not only ignores the significance of stylistic devices but also the interior dynamic of the text as an interaction between diverse figures: the prophet, his adherents, and his opponents. It effaces the dimensions of the text as a message to real addressees, leaving the issue of the historicity and the reality of the prophet’s ministry in Mecca and Medina undecided. The generic character of the Qurʾān as an ongoing argument, whose dynamics decisively condition the status of individual qurʾānic statements, is glossed over. The venue pursued by the diverse figures involved in the qurʾānic communication process to attain their new religious identity is blurred. An attempt at demonstrating the surplus value of an approach that considers not only the final form of the Qurʾān, including its historical inter-texts – the verum – but

184  Angelika Neuwirth pays equal attention to the Qurʾān’s intrinsic history as a chain of gradually conveyed and received messages will be made in the following discussion. In the qurʾānic case, the communication and response process represents an early manifestation of the certum, a reflection of the first listeners’ understanding of the text. This discussion will make use of two pathbreaking studies that have substantially widened our perspective on the diversity of biblical discourses that were current in the Qurʾān’s milieu: Sidney Griffith’s The Bible in Arabic and Holger Zellentin’s The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture.18 Griffith’s study not only highlights the Qurʾān’s central concern – the mediation of the divine word through the agency of prophecy – but additionally opens up a new understanding of the gamut of biblical traditions that were current in Late Antiquity and that he summarizes under the label of “the interpreted Bible.” Holger Zellentin’s work dwells on hitherto little-considered halakhic traditions in the Qurʾān, which underlay the Medinan message with a legal discourse. Although both studies are based on a synchronic reading of the Qurʾān, their full significance for the development of the qurʾānic community’s identity transpires only once they are read in context and reinserted into a chronological frame. Taken together, they are apt to throw light on a significant development: the (middle Meccan) construction and the (Medinan) partial deconstruction of an early developed qurʾānic conviction, namely, the paramount authority of the biblical prophet Moses. This essay, which is committed to the diachronic approach, will attempt to put these achievements into relief. More generally, it will pursue the different manifestations of the Bible engaged in the Qurʾān, manifestations that impacted the liturgical life of the community and that changed substantially during the ministry of the prophet. This parallel development of both the text and the community is what will be focused on here. In the early suras – one might hold – a poetical manifestation of the Bible is “staged” in the shape of psalmodic recitation that involved the community, whereas in the heyday of the community’s emerging self-awareness, when biblical tradition (the “interpreted Bible”) is discovered as a counter-world to the one inhabited in reality, this textual world needs to be “penetrated” to accommodate the new covenantal group of the qurʾānic community in the Israelites’ salvation history, again a move sustained by the community. Still later, in Medina, in the course of conversation with the Hebrew Bible, the exclusive authority of biblical prophecy, represented by Moses, is questioned and finally “eclipsed” by that of Muhammad, who conceives of himself as having been prefigured by Abraham. Here, word to the Jews of Medina fuses with that to the community; the continuation of biblical directives through qurʾānic instructions in the text reflects the consciousness of possessing a new manifestation of the Bible and thus the attainment of a new identity vis-à-vis the earlier People of the Book.

Staging Biblical Tradition: The Emergence of Early Suras from Spiritual Exercise The beginnings of the qurʾānic relationship to biblical tradition have been studied exhaustively.19 The Qurʾān itself attests liturgical practices that involved texts that

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  185 should have borne a close resemblance to Psalms. Indeed, these texts, or more precisely, their recitation, performed in the particular framework of a vigil, is even credited with a kind of reproductive force as the staging of given liturgical texts is claimed to bring about the reception of new texts. One of the earliest uses of the word “qurʾān”20 (Q 73:1–10) points to an already existing practice of nightly recitals21 of liturgical texts: (73:1)  O thou enwrapped in thy robes, (2) Keep vigil the night, except a little (3) A half of it, or diminish a little, (4) Or add a little, and chant the Koran very distinctly. (5) Behold, We shall cast upon thee a weighty word; (6) Surely the first part of the night is heavier in tread, more upright in speech, (7) Surely in the day thou hast long business. (8) And remember the Name of thy Lord, and devote thyself unto him very devoutly (9) Lord of the East and West – there is not god but He, so take him for a Guardian.22 The scenario of the sura is that of a vigil, the liturgical frame that elsewhere would involve a Psalm reading.23 What is being read in verse 4 of this sura – al-qurʾān – is not explicitly determined. Yet, the designation does refer to texts, not to the act of recitation: qurʾān, which etymologically matches the equally homonymous designations in the earlier traditions, the Hebrew miqra (“scripture,” literally: “reading”), or Syriac qeryana (“lectionary,” literally: “reading”). Yet, what the sura incites the proclaimer to stage in his nightly recitals – obviously in the Arabic language – cannot be directly related to an existing Syriac lectionary24 but should be newly generated texts. Qurʾān, then, in early Mecca, would denote the genre of liturgical texts apt for recitation in the Arabic language rather than any specific textual corpus. Because the recitation of existing texts is announced to be generative for new divine words – as in verse 5, innā sa-nulqī ʿalayka qawlan thaqīlā, most probably again usable as qurʾān – we have to look at the shape of the early suras themselves for information about what this liturgically generated qurʾān in the earliest period looked like. Their close relationship to the biblical Psalms has been demonstrated in various studies.25 To understand the relation between the Qurʾān and the Bible – or biblical tradition – the observation that early Meccan suras are structurally similar to the Psalms, which equally constitute poetical polythematic compositions,26 is most relevant. The purpose of the qurʾānic texts to be used as liturgical texts and thus – like the Psalms – to be “performed,” that is, to be chanted with the support of a cantilena, appears obvious from their composition.27 That these qurʾān psalms are perceived as manifestations of the – transcendent – Bible, that they are understood as Arabic counterparts of the Psalms, is obvious from their peculiar intertextuality, which clearly refers to particular Psalms. The final verse (added later), Q 73:20, attests that the practice of nocturnal wakes and recitations

186  Angelika Neuwirth was not only incumbent on the early community but was continued into Medinan times. The Qurʾān from the beginning has been not only text but equally context, the possession of a community which through its recitation constructs its own identity. Comparisons between the Psalms and particular suras, however, show that important reinterpretations have taken place. It is the field of eschatological tension created by the new qurʾānic context that has reconfigured the often narrative accounts of creation in the Psalms: creation in the Qurʾān becomes part of a metadiscourse, the controversy about the end of time. Qurʾānic creation accounts serve to dissolve doubts about divine omnipotence, thus encouraging the listeners to opt for the right decision. The “qurʾānic psalms” are not hymns like many of the biblical Psalms; they are not the expression of spontaneous emotion but serve as a reminder, an argument toward a definite conclusion – a new characteristic that is of course due to the no longer Antique, but Late Antique, milieu of genesis, an epistemically informed space where rhetoric and debate occupy paramount positions.

Penetrating Biblical Tradition The Middle Meccan Shift of Paradigm The awareness of participating not only in a shared liturgical practice with earlier communities or pious individuals but also of sharing their historically rooted covenantal status does not emerge immediately. It comes about with the necessity of self-legitimation of the new Muslim community that arose in its situation of siege at the time when the opponents started to prevail and when doubts about the genuineness of the proclaimer’s status as the bearer of a supernatural message were being raised. The suras of the middle Meccan period in particular attest the community’s attempt to dissociate itself from the Meccan cult center and to relocate itself in an imagined space, the Holy Land, the landscape of biblical salvation history, which is dominated by the towering figure of Moses. This is achieved through diverse textual strategies. Most strikingly, there is a ubiquitous re-narrating of biblical stories in the later suras. The central part in the middle Meccan suras is occupied by narrative recountings of episodes of biblical history. This particular position of biblical narration in the sura is reminiscent of the position of the lectio or the qeriʾat Torah in Christian and Jewish services, respectively. In addition, scripture as such, al-kitāb, as the ultimate reference to attest the truth of the proclaimer’s message, is called upon in the beginnings and the ends of the suras. Instead of the emphatic references to the time and place of certain prayer rites that had prevailed at the beginning of the early suras and at their distinctively formulaic conclusion, we find at the start of the longer middle Meccan suras the explicit naming of the scripture (kitāb) only rarely and with reference to the recitation (qurʾān). As a whole, oaths in these suras start to be replaced with a solemn deictic expression – soon to become the norm – that begins with a demonstrative “That is the scripture” (dhālika l-kitāb) . . . or a nominal phrase made up of one

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  187 single word: “(It is) a Scripture” (kitābun) . . .; these would remain the usual introductions until the end of the Qurʾān’s proclamation. The Emergence of Liturgies and Scriptural Pericopes28 Because, at this time, there was no corpus of written qurʾānic texts yet for the later Meccan suras to draw upon, the frequent use of the term “scripture” in those suras most likely refers to an entity beyond a concrete book. This entity may be taken to be the heavenly scripture that was made available for recitation (qurʾān) and remembrance (dhikr) (see Q 19:2, Q 19:51) and from which texts were now being proclaimed intermittently. According to the Qurʾān, the reception of scripture was a distinction that had already been bestowed on earlier messengers from the Jewish and Christian traditions; however, the proclaimer does not have knowledge of these texts from books but from communications conveyed in oral transmission. Therefore, the link between the various participants in scriptural heritage was not the identity of the diverse scriptural corpora but the awareness that there exists in the transcendental realm a finite canonical corpus, a text henceforth unalterable, which only requires that it be proclaimed, arranged into a suitable form for divine service, and subsequently subjected to exegesis to make it accessible to humankind. The fact that the text in its entirety was not at the disposal of the proclaimer but was only conveyed to him as fragmentary recollections does not contradict this. As the scriptural text was anyhow conveyed in Arabic for the first time, its segmentation into pericopes could appear as a legitimate process supported by the fact that the presentation of scripture in the form of pericopes was common in the Jewish and Christian communities. The resulting pericope from the heavenly scripture, the dhikr – made up predominantly of recollections of history – is framed by affirmations of the revelation as well as by hymnic and polemic passages. This particular structure, created for liturgical performance, is therefore strongly reminiscent of the Jewish or Christian liturgy, at the heart of which is the recollection of salvation history. It is remarkable that the later Meccan suras explicitly state that the prophetic histories and individual biblical parables stem from “a Manifest Scripture” (kitāb mubīn, e.g., Q 11:6 and elsewhere), which echoes the introductory formulas employed in Christian and Jewish services to announce the scriptural reading. There are still further indications that the scriptural mnemotope of the middle Meccan suras was not solely a literary device; we are always confronted with social processes concomitant with scriptural developments. The idea of scriptural remembrance induced, or expressed, an expansion of collective consciousness in the later Meccan period that can hardly be overestimated. First, the topography of scriptural history has been extended beyond Mecca to include the homeland of earlier messengers; thus, the Holy Land emerges as a particularly blessed region. At some point during this period, the reorientation toward the “furthest sanctuary” in Jerusalem29 was implemented on the ritual level as well, with the community adopting the Jerusalem qibla, thus sealing the expansion of the symbolic horizon into the world of the Banū Isrāʾīl, the people of Moses.30

188  Angelika Neuwirth Second, the temporal setting of the message has been extended into faraway times of the past. The community’s counting themselves among the receivers of a scripture telling about the forebears of these receivers and continuously conveyed in batches was a momentous step, for it ultimately meant the community’s adoption of the cultural memory of a different group; they embraced aspects of a different tradition and relinquished the identity they had garnered from the Meccan rites. The shift of the religious center away from the Kaaba implies, moreover, a change of orientation in the divine service and indicates the evolution of a new form. The considerably longer suras of this period are no longer apt to serve as mere verbal complements to the prescribed gestures of ritual (as were the early Meccan suras). They have outgrown their previous framework, both on a liturgical and stylistic level; their new structure suggests that they were used in longer liturgical services – reflecting that of the older monotheistic verbal services of the Jewish and Christian religions – as their diction clearly draws on Jewish and Christian models. At the same time, the inclusion of narrative, historical passages results in the extension of individual verses with ever more complex syntactic structures. The result is a qurʾānic verse that is no longer easy to memorize, particularly because its clausula provides little mnemonic aid. There are multiple indications – such as the introduction of the basmala,31 for example – that from this time onward new compositions were codified straightaway. In fact, the more complex structure of the verses, whose endings can no longer be sufficiently marked by rhyme, seems to demand this step. This does not reflect the actual invention of writing – the technique of writing itself having been long familiar in the area – but the transition of the community from one based on ritual continuity to textual continuity. This is primarily manifested in the intense preoccupation with the heavenly scripture, which is assigned a status of the highest authority.32 Such a process seems to indicate a pragmatic development as well, that is, the conscious transition to a more worldly technique of encapsulating memory: writing. It is writing that has now become a kind of external storage system to support memorization. Most importantly, however, the new attachment to the Bible as the document of a covenantal relation between God and man manifests a penetration of the biblical salvation history, which is experienced as the past of one’s spiritual forebears, the Banū Isrāʾīl. More than One Bible? Various Manifestations of the Bible in Late Antiquity Do we know anything about the particular confessional imprint of the worldly manifestations of the transcendent Bible? It is true that the Bible in middle Meccan times figures more often than not as a transcendental scripture, al-kitāb. Yet, the numerous references to that scripture in the proclamation are equally bound to traditions that circulated in the historically real human realm. The reflections of these traditions raise the question of their particular confessional orientation. The observation that the Qurʾān does not exist in more than one version, that there are no apocryphs or pseudepigraphs attached to it, that it has not been submitted to

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  189 diverging authoritative translations or to starkly contrasting readings that would have crystallized into different religions easily blinds us to the fact that the Bible, the scripture that precedes the Qurʾān, in this respect is essentially different. It would of course be an undue simplification to claim that the Qurʾān has been read in the same way over the fourteen centuries of its existence. It has, however, attained its final written shape – no longer open for extensions or eliminations – within an unparalleled short period, being codified in its entirety no more than twenty to thirty years after its emergence33 from an oral communication, and it has ensured the preservation of its integral phonetic and grammatical form through very early applied procedures of masoretic textual treatment. The situation of the Bible is far more complex. European philology has developed out of biblical exegesis. The Bible seems to have been from early times onward in need of translation; the earliest Greek version, the Septuagint, dates back to the third century BCE. The Hebrew text of the Pentateuch, which was read in liturgy in the Hellenistic era, needed to be flanked by an Aramaic translation, the so-called Targum, which often entailed interpretative extensions. Translation presupposes philologically informed exegesis, and in the case of the Bible, it was to lay the foundation for and later consolidate the two rival identity groups of the Jews and the Christians. In Christian hands, biblical exegesis became the vehicle of a strongly sectarian reading of the text. It subordinated the Hebrew Bible to the hermeneutic authority of the New Testament, which was considered to be the key to the “true” understanding of the Bible as a whole. Although these are well-known developments, it is only more recently, through the work of Maurice Olender, that we have learned the full extent of the impact that the option for an exclusively Christian interpretation of the Bible has exerted on the construction of the modern European worldview well into the twentieth century.34 The sustained supersession – or even suppression – of any Jewish interpretation of the Bible by Christian readings in the cultural realm that was to become the West is clearly visible, for example, in premodern Christian art, where Judaism and Christianity, “Synagoga” and “Ecclesia,” are represented by the statues of two young women located at the entrance of Gothic cathedrals, the first holding the balances of justice firmly in her hands, the second blindfolded and from whose weak grip the tablets of laws slip to the ground.35 A pronounced Christian reading of the Bible is equally evident from the entire corpus of premodern Western literature, as Northrup Frye has brilliantly demonstrated.36 Although such a hermetic closure cannot be upheld for the Eastern Mediterranean, where Aramaic-speaking Jews and Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic)-speaking Christians entertained a lively exchange in theological issues, the way of making true sense of the Bible was similarly mutually exclusive. The term “Bible,” then, is – on closer examination – from the very beginning no unambiguous designation, or more precisely, underneath the allegedly unambiguous designation a hidden dimension of suppressed meaning is lurking. Speaking of the Bible, therefore, demands that one keep the essential heterogeneity of its two modes of existence, the Christian and the Jewish, in mind. Did the development that culminated in the widespread hegemony of the “Christian Bible” affect the Arabian milieu of the Qurʾān’s emergence as well?

190  Angelika Neuwirth Scholars of Late Antiquity have recently devoted particular attention to the manifestation and status of the Bible in the period after its codification, highlighting its diversity. The Jewish biblical scholar James Kugel (1980) states: Examined through the lens of wisdom writings, the original meaning and even the original genres of Israel’s ancient texts were subtly modified, reconfigured by a whole new way of reading. It was this way of reading that Jews and Christians canonized as their Bible. Along with it came the great flood of interpretive motifs created by the ancient interpreters. . . . One would not be wrong to think of this transformation as, in effect, a kind of massive act of rewriting. The raw material that made up the Bible was written anew not by changing its words but by changing the way in which those words were approached and understood.  .  .  . (what can be observed) are two different sets of documents, the biblical texts and their original settings and meanings and what those texts were later made out to mean by Jewish and Christian authorities. The words of the two sets of documents are basically the same, but they nonetheless make up, side by side, two completely different books.37 There is, then, not one ancient Bible but two Late Antique Bibles. Kugel could have added that “this way of reading” of biblical tradition was also what the nascent Islamic community adopted and developed. But the Qurʾān did not yet figure within his scholarly scope. It was only through the work of the doyen of the study of the Christian Arabic Bible, Sidney Griffith, that Kugel’s observations were updated. Griffith widens the horizons of the impact of the “transformed Bible” to include the Qurʾān – which in his work figures among the manifestations of the “interpreted Bible”: The selective presence of an “interpreted Bible” in Islamic Scripture is undeniable. . . . Recollections of biblical patriarchs and prophets, and references to the earlier scriptures . . . appear as integral components of the Qurʾān’s advancement of its own prophetic message. And what is more, the Qurʾān is corrective of, even polemical toward the earlier readings of the Scripture People.  .  .  . This dimension of the Qurʾān’s reprise of the Bible bespeaks the opening of a new book altogether in the growing library of books on the “interpreted Bible.”38 This valorization of the Qurʾān as a critical reprise of the “interpreted Bible” not only goes far beyond the scholarly scope drawn by Kugel, who, though carefully documenting the basic Christian readings of “Israel’s Bible,”39 does not take notice of the Qurʾān at all but also transcends the scope of those Church-historyoriented scholars who would classify the Qurʾān as a new set of homilies matching not the Bible but the literary genre of Christian memres, “homilies,” that were current in Late Antiquity. Is it, however, the same “interpreted Bible” as the one that the qurʾānic community is concerned with throughout their development? Griffith, who reads the

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  191 Qurʾān synchronically and therefore sidelines the varying social embeddings of the qurʾānic communication process, does not raise this question. It is rewarding to look closely at the changing qurʾānic attitudes vis-à-vis biblical models that we can observe under the changing circumstances of the proclaimer’s ministry in Mecca and Medina. Mecca and Medina are not only two different sites of the proclamation of the Qurʾān but also sites of different hermeneutic approaches to the Bible. How is this difference, sometimes amounting to a contradiction, made acceptable? To begin to answer this question, we must observe that there is in the qurʾānic case a phenomenon closely related to the Jewish practice of using Targumim, which makes updating the texts to accommodate new understandings possible: the later additions. Later additions should not be regarded as redactional insertions but as exegetical additions that were attached to extant sura texts in the course of their repeated recitation. They are therefore indicative of a new interpretation of the already communicated text. Individual texts in view of their status as tanzīl cannot be altered or eliminated; they can, however, be reinterpreted. The practice seems to have been applied early in qurʾānic development – a number of early Meccan suras appears to have been brought à jour already in middle Meccan times.40 The theologically most significant additions, however, are due to the shift in paradigm that occurred in Medinan times: a sample will be discussed further. To contrast the Meccan and the Medinan conversations with the Bible, the figure of Moses offers itself as a particularly rewarding vantage point. Moses will be highlighted as the central figure in the process of the community’s change from a pious religious reform movement – striving to establish a pure monotheism – to a self-relying religious community with a strong political identity of its own. The particular textual politics involved in bringing about this shift in the hermeneutical paradigm are typologies, that – although current in Judaism as well – in Late Antiquity enjoyed a particularly high status in the Christian reading of the Bible. The Conversation with the Christian Bible: Christian Typology and Allegory and Their Devaluation in the Qurʾān One of the most characteristic phenomena of Christian biblical hermeneutic – at least since St. Paul’s establishment of a Christian theology41 – is the construction of an intrinsic connection between the Old and the New Testaments, which are relocated as subtext and text, demanding that their events and protagonists should be understood as typoi and antitypoi. Biblical events and figures become prefigurations of their Christian counterparts. Reflections of such a typically Christian reading of the Bible are ubiquitous in the qurʾānic text. Although Heribert Busse already in 1971 had alerted us to particular manifestations of typology still extant, although not theologically exploited, in the qurʾānic text, it is the merit of Joseph Witztum to have highlighted this phenomenon to the fullest extent.42 Instances of typology established already in pre-canonic tradition have also been noted by Adam Silberstein.43 One should, however, differentiate between cases of typology that enrich the qurʾānic narrative (though perhaps no longer theologically

192  Angelika Neuwirth significant) and others that resound with earlier typologically informed texts whose theological function is intentionally devaluated. These traces of a typology still point to the existence of a Christian interpretation of the text in question that in the Qurʾān has been eliminated. An example is found in Sūrat Yūsuf, in the episode contained in verses 11–18. Joseph’s brothers report to their father Jacob that what he had been fearing would happen (Q 12:13) has really occurred (Q 12:17): akalahu l-dhiʾb; a wolf has devoured Joseph. Why a wolf and not – as in Genesis 37:33 – just a wild animal, hayyah raʿah, or, as in rabbinic tradition, a bear?44 The only plausible explanation seems to be the reference to typology: if Joseph is a typus of Christ, the lamb of God, the wolf fits most properly into the role of “the lamb’s enemy.” But as the qurʾānic text clearly shows, the trace of typology is not pursued any further. The introduction of the wolf is only a marginal narrative detail – there is no interest whatsoever in corroborating Christology. This anti-allegorical stance becomes even more evident from the qurʾānic retelling of the story of Mary. Mary, in Christian theology, has been identified as an allegory of the temple, which is restored in the shape of the church. The topography of the temple with its closed eastern gate, which according to Ezekiel would only be opened with God’s return to the Holy City, is projected onto the body of Mary: her virginal womb will only be opened for the birth of the Messiah. In the Qurʾān (Q 19:16), it merely says: “she withdrew from her people to an Eastern place.” The eastern gate of the temple – a symbol of the Christian Mary’s virginity – has been demoted to the status of a geographical point in the vicinity of the temple and has become completely de-allegorized and de-mythified. Numerous other examples of a de-mythification of previous Christian allegories have been discovered.45 These cases still attest the presence of a Christian Bible, whose allegories the Qurʾān systematically “corrects.”46 Adopting the Textual Strategy of a Modified Typology: Moses and Muhammad in Tandem This does not mean, however, that the principle of typology as such is not creatively applied in the Qurʾān as well. We need, however, to notice that typology in the Qurʾān is not identical with that in Christian exegesis, where Old Testament figures and narratives are read as foreshadowings of the salvific events recorded in the New Testament, where figures are typoi tou mellontos, mythical imprints of what will happen in the future. In the Qurʾān the relationship between biblical and qurʾānic figures and events is a mirrored relation: what happens in the real world of the community mirrors what already happened in the biblical world. One might speak here of a tandem relation between two figures or a reprise of a biblical event in the community’s real world, a modified typology so to say. It is through the textual politics of that modified typology that the prophet gradually slips into the role of earlier prophets, Moses in particular. The proclaimer historically “relives” Moses’ experiences. Examples can be found in Q 20, Sūrat ṬāHā.47 The reading of the Moses story in Sūrat ṬāHā is in many respects characteristic of the qurʾānic revision of biblical narrative. The divine speaker in the story of

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  193 Moses’ call, which is the foundational narrative of the Israelites’ emergent identity as the elect people, is stripped of this particular covenantal dimension. In the sura he does not identify himself as the God of an elect group or as the future savior who will lead his people out of Egypt – although the biblical narratives in which these divine self-identifications are embedded are reported in the Qurʾān. Thus the story of Moses’ call from the burning bush reads like this: (20:11)  When he came to it (the fire) a voice cried; “Moses, (12) I am thy Lord, put off thy shoes;

thou art in the holy valley Tuwa.

(13) (14)

I myself have chosen thee; therefore give your ear to this revelation! Verily I am God. There is no god but I!



Therefore serve me and perform the prayer of my remembrance!”

(15) The Hour is coming. I would conceal it that every soul may be recompensed for its labors. . . . (24) Go to Pharaoh! He has waxed insolent. . . . There is no mention of the “God of your fathers, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). Instead God identifies himself as “your Lord,” rabbuka – ho kyrios – being the usual rendering of the tetragrammaton known from the Septuagint, which is used throughout the Meccan suras. God further testifies to his own oneness with a version of the newly introduced shahāda formula, here phrased as lā ilāha illā anā. He justifies his dispatch of Moses with the imminence of the Last Judgment, which should inspire faith and liturgical piety. Obviously, biblical concepts have been translated into Late Antique perceptions: God is perceived not as the God of a particular people but as one and universal, and the world is approaching its eschatological end. Although the story goes on with the divine voice preparing Moses for his mission at Pharaoh’s court, this mission is not the persuasion to let Moses’ people go but the conversion of Pharaoh. In this way, the proclaimer’s situation is projected onto that of Moses in a “tandem-typological” reading. The call for tawḥīd, the attestation of God’s unity, and prayer, ṣalāh, are two injunctions that are also being imposed on the contemporary Meccan community, their connection with Moses serving to substantially increase their authority. The long sura about Moses, who is presented as a closely related predecessor of the proclaimer Muhammad, clearly produces a new theological insight: it is the installment of prophethood as the decisive and authoritative medium of divine-human communication that is ideal to replace the plural venues pursued in paganism and syncretism, a new paradigm of relating to the supernatural sphere that eclipses the old one upheld by the opponents that involved lesser deities and demons. Moses experiences his call in a place characterized by natural phenomena that appear to have been mysteriously changed – a plant turning into a burning thorn

194  Angelika Neuwirth bush (Exod. 3.2) or into a bush or tree that is “covered” (Q 20:9–15) – reminiscent of the proclaimer’s vision communicated in Q 53.48 In both cases, the encounter with the divine is imagined as being surrounded by an inexplicable natural phenomenon – by the fire of the bush, which is not consumed in the case of Moses, and the enigmatic covering of the bush or tree in the case of the qurʾānic proclaimer: (20:9)  (10)

Hast thou received the story of Moses? When he saw a fire and said to his family, “Tarry you here. I observe a fire; perhaps I will bring you a brand from it or I shall find at the fire guidance.”

(11) (12)

When he came to it a voice cried; “Moses, I am thy Lord, put off thy shoes; thou art in the holy valley Tuwa.

(13) (14)

I myself have chosen thee; therefore give your ear to this revelation! Verily I am God. There is no god but I! Therefore serve me and perform the prayer of my remembrance!”

Compare with Q 53:13–18: (53:13)  (14) (15) (16) (17) (18)

Indeed, he saw Him another time by the lote-tree of the boundary, nigh which is the garden of the refuge, when there covered the lote-tree that which covered; his eye swerved not, nor swept astray. Indeed, he saw one of the greatest signs of his lord.

The vision experiences of Moses appear as a significant prefiguration of those of Muhammad. In this way, Muhammad becomes a second Moses.49 These empirical and psychological analogies, in my view, go beyond mere semantic similarities between the plots of prophetic stories; rather, they attest the emergence of a new prophetic identity. (This aspect, which has a bearing on the question of the historicity of the “event of the Qurʾān,” necessarily escapes any scholar’s attention who confines him- or herself to the transmitted text as a sealed text without admitting a Sitz im Leben for the individual narrative details as indications of a particular social and psychological condition.) Sūrat ṬāHā entails further examples of such typology: for instance, Moses’ reaction to his call is related in Q 20:25–32: (20:24)  (25) (26) (27)

. . . Go to Pharaoh! He has waxed insolent.” “Lord, expand my breast,” said Moses, “and do thou ease for me thy task, unloose the knot upon my tongue,

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  195 (28) (29) (30) (31) (32)

that they may understand my words! Appoint for me from my folk a familiar, Aaron, my brother! By him confirm my strength and associate him with me in my talks.”

It is true that this report of Moses’ call reflects Exodus 3:10 (“I  will send thee to Par’o”) and his reaction reflects Exodus 4:10–17 (“Oh my Lord, I am not an eloquent man”). But the entire argument between God and Moses, including the disclosure of the goal of Moses’ dispatch, has been skipped. Instead, the tandem relationship between Moses and the prophet has been placed in the foreground: both are confronted with a stubborn unbeliever who is to be converted, and both need to be strengthened by God for this task. Muhammad’s preparation for his mission is reflected in Q 94:50 (94:1)  (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Did We not expand thy breast for thee and lift from thee thy burden, the burden that weighed down thy back? Did we not exalt thy fame? So truly with hardship comes ease, truly with hardship comes ease. So when thou art empty, labor, and let thy Lord be thy quest.

In both instances, the freedom to proclaim the message is clad in the image of an “expanding of the breast” (Q 20:25; Q 53:1), which brings about relief and ease (Q 20:26 and Q 53:5). The story of Moses thus turns out to be the prefiguration of the preparation of the proclaimer, and a “typologically” informed prophetology emerges.51

Eclipsing Biblical Tradition: The Conversation with the Jewish Bible: A New Prophetology Once we turn to the community’s encounter with the Bible in Medina, however, this perception of prophetology changes. With the community’s establishment of close contact with the ahl al-kitāb, or “Scripture people” (primarily educated Jews), another manifestation of the Bible, different from the universally accessible “interpreted Bible,” enters the scene. It is in the dispute with the legitimate heirs of the Bible as scripture that prophetology becomes controversial. Moses – who had been the prophet par excellence during the Meccan period – will be overshadowed by the figure of the proclaimer, whose rank as a mediator of divine speech and thus divine norms gains new, political momentum. The Jews of Medina – far from being opponents52 of the prophet at the outset – need to be imagined as significant interlocutors of the community who introduced not only a more precise biblical knowledge but equally new hermeneutical

196  Angelika Neuwirth approaches to biblical texts.53 The impact of their exegetical skills on the debates that took place between them and the new community – of which we only can trace remnants54 – must have been paramount.55 There is a sudden and unexpected keen interest attested in Sūrat Ᾱl ʿImrān,56 Q 3:7–8, in the issue of the “openness” of scriptural texts that needs to be contextualized with the Jewish exegetical principle of the multiple faces of the Torah. This sura deserves to be considered as a key text as it not only attests intercommunal debates but also reflects on them, as in Q 3:33–34: inna llāha ṣṭafā Ādama wa-Nūḥan wa-Āla Ibrāhīma wa-Āla ʿImrāna ʿala l-ʿālamīn/dhurriyyatan baʿḍụ hā min baʿḍin wa-llāhu samīʿun ʿalīm God chose Adam and Noah and the House of Abraham and the House of Amram above all beings/the seed of one another; God hears, and knows. The text deserves to be recognized as a manifesto, an expression of the urgency to find ways to counterbalance the authority of the Jewish religious community. It intervenes in the sectarian strife by raising the rivals of the Jews, the Christians, to a level status with them, ascribing to them the same status of electedness and covenantal dignity. This is achieved through particular textual politics – the establishment of a dichotomic genealogy that is expounded in detail in the same Sūrat Ᾱl ʿImrān. It is interesting to note that this new interest in the Christian myth of origin discharges into a presentation of Jesus as a non-patriarchal prophet, a meek apostle whose role in the controversy over the ultimate halakhic authority of Moses is that of an alleviator: he comes (Q 3:50) muṣaddiqan li-mā bayna yadayya mina l-tawrāti wa-li-uḥilla lakum baʿḍa lladhī ḥurrima ʿalaykum, “likewise confirming the truth of the Torah that is before me and to make lawful to you certain things that were forbidden unto you” – a point that will be discussed further. Facing the Hebrew Bible in the Hands of Its Original Heirs In the absence of exact biblical quotations in the Qurʾān, and of contemporary attestations of the existence of written scrolls at Medina, we are forced to draw on indirect evidence. There are qurʾānic references to significant biblical texts that point to a cache in Jewish liturgy. These Bible references figure in qurʾānic discussions of theological issues that rank prominently in Judaism and have thus been assigned a place in Jewish liturgical texts.57 Bible references accepted into Jewish liturgy no longer form part of the trans-confessional, oral, “interpreted Bible” but seem to presuppose the written, canonical texts that could be reclaimed by the Jewish community as the basis of their identity. Although the qurʾānic references to such texts do not quote the Bible verbally, we have to assume that their knowledge relates to the presence of a biblical text or texts present in the liturgical context. The Yom Kippur liturgy offers itself as a case in point. The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Arabic ʿĀshūrāʾ, is a biblically founded feast; Moses’ return with the new tablets on the tenth of Tishri (Deut. 10:1–10) signaled God’s forgiving the people’s grave sin of the idolatry of the golden calf. Indeed, this act of idolatry

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  197 provides the very etiology for the cultic practices carried out during the period of repentance that precedes the Day of Atonement.58 One has to keep in mind that the act of idolatry in Jewish tradition is deemed the most fateful event in all of biblical history and held responsible for “any later catastrophe that was to befall the Jews.”59 However, looking at the event of the golden calf as related in the Qurʾān, in the final part of the Meccan sura quoted previously (Q 20:83–99), we read an amazingly different story: an edifying narrative where no blame – let alone lasting guilt – is heaped on the Israelites as not the people but a stranger (al-Sāmirī) is charged with initiating the act of idolatry, thus making an immediate and complete reconciliation between God and his people possible.60 Upon closer examination, however, we discover a later addition to the sura that adds theological points to the story that do not smoothly blend with the tone and tenet of the story itself. The addition – Q 20:80–82 – is easily identifiable as such through its address, yā banī Isrāʾīl, which is never used in reference to the biblical Israelites but serves exclusively to address the Jews,61 be they the contemporaries of Jesus or – more often – those of Muhammad. The narrative in the original format of the sura ends with the exodus and Pharaoh’s punishment: (20:79)  So Pharaoh had led his people astray, and was not a guide to them. (80) “Children of Israel! We delivered you from your enemy and we made a covenant with you upon the right sight of the Mount and sent down on you manna and quails. (81a) Eat of the good things wherewith we have provided you but exceed not therein, (81b) or my anger will alight on you (81c) and on whomsoever my anger alights that man is hurled to ruin. (82) Yet I am all-forgiving to him who repents and believes and does righteousness and at last is guided.” (83) (follows the story of the golden calf) (emphasis added) The additional verses62 supplement some facts that had been left out in the Meccan story: the miraculous salvation through the passage of the Red Sea and conclusion of the covenant with God – both regarded as climactic events in the history of the elect people within Jewish tradition. The additional verses then mention the miraculous nourishment of the people with manna and quails in the desert. It is this mentioning of food that leads to the direct address of the contemporary Jews who are admonished to eat from “the good things,” that is, from the pure food given to them by God – but not to “exceed therein.” This qurʾānic warning should not be taken as targeting the biblical Hebrews, whose practices of food consumption are not central in the Qurʾān,63 but rather as addressing a contemporary controversial point: the Jewish dietary laws that should not be kept overanxiously. Ṭayyibāt, though occasionally also applied in reference to manna and quails,64 is equally a legally relevant term, denoting “ritually pure” food.65 The identification of the verses as a later addition is further corroborated by their new interest in God’s emotional self-manifestation: indeed, the verses primarily

198  Angelika Neuwirth talk about divine anger – ghaḍab, “my anger will alight on you,” mentioned twice – a topic that had not been raised in a Meccan text before. Although the idea of divine anger is directly connected to a reprehensibly overstated observance of the dietary laws, another reference is equally important: the mention of divine anger leads to the immediately subsequent story of the golden calf. Through the topic of “divine anger,” the contemporary legal issue of the dietary laws, and the momentous biblical story about the Israelites’ disobedience become tied to one another, laying the foundation for a new qurʾānic theologoumenon. But before turning to the implications of this iunctim, it is necessary to investigate the peculiar reception of the Bible that is reflected here. The contextualization of the iunctim of Israelite guilt, acquired through the event of the golden calf, and divine anger toward the later Jews that we encountered in the extended Meccan Sūra 20, can be understood as a Late Antique rereading of the biblical account, Exodus 33. It is no qurʾānic innovation but matches an already established association. It also figures prominently in a Late Antique Jewish tradition, the liturgy of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, where it is embedded in a number of further scriptural texts. Among these, one particular passage – Exodus 34:6–7 – stands out. When Moses, after witnessing the act of idolatry and destroying the first set of the tablets, returns into God’s presence to receive the new tablets; the so-called thirteen attributes of mercy, shelosh ʿesre middot ha-rahamim, are revealed to him: (Exod. 34:6–7) And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.66 This verse, which is recited more than ten times in the liturgy, is in tune with the prophetical reading, the haftarah, for Yom Kippur morning (Isa. 57:14–58), whose main concern is “to inculcate a transformation of religious consciousness and action.”67 Here divine wrath is declared to be abrogated for the people once they return to righteousness. These ideas, and perhaps even these scriptural references, seem to be reflected in the qurʾānic address to the Banū Isrāʾīl, Q 20:81–82, which highlights the gravity of the guilt that would arise from further transgressions of the contemporary Jews. Thus the story that had been told in Q 20:77–99 without a particular theological point, through the liturgy-inspired connection of lasting divine anger, retrospectively regains the theological momentum it had been holding in Judaism – an observation that can hardly be explained without assuming the presence of Jewish interlocutors in Muhammad’s audience.68 A Transfer of Halakhic Authority from Moses to Muhammad The story of the golden calf – once revised in Medina – not only attained a deeper meaning as a record of a fatal transgression causing the persistent danger of new

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  199 bursts of divine anger on the Israelites. It also laid the basis for a new understanding of the Mosaic law as such, which can be found ubiquitously documented in the form of brief allusions in various Medinan suras. According to this view, it was the Israelites’ idolatry that ultimately brought about the severe legislation imposed on them in particular. Indeed, the punitive dimension associated with the story of the golden calf through the Medinan addition to Q 20 is not only a theological but – as Holger Zellentin in The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture has shown – a halakhic issue of equal relevance. The halakhic relevance of the Medinan addition has not been given due attention in scholarship,69 yet the verses 20:80–82 need to be related to a particular legal problem. Joseph Witztum has newly highlighted the relevance of the controversy over the Jewish laws as such, whose qurʾānic references display particularly striking parallels with the attitude toward Jewish law in Christian tradition, which – based on Matthew 11:28–3070 – presents Jesus as having alleviated the erstwhile highly demanding law. The qurʾānic polemic against the Jewish laws, however, does not make use of the ecclesiastic argument of their “late” appearance – their imposition only after the age of the patriarchs71 – but insists on their origin as a retribution of particular transgressions (Q 4:160, Q 6:146, and Q 16:118). Here the observation presented by Zellentin is helpful, which shows that early Christian and Jewish legal texts agree with the qurʾānic evidence on the distinction between laws that were imposed on the people of Moses already before the transgressions were committed, and others that were given as a punishment for them. It is in view of this distinction that Jesus could alleviate Jewish law, exempting the believers in his message from the additional, punitive laws. The gravest transgression is, of course, the idolatry of the golden calf, which is the focus of Zellentin’s Christian tradition, the Didascalia Apostolorum. Although an explicit identification of the grave sins ascribed to the Jews (baghī, Q 6:146, and ẓulm, Q 4:160) with the idolatry of the golden calf is not found in the Qurʾān, it appears convincing to relate the qurʾānic perception of the Israelites’ guilt to that particular sin (Q 4:153), which forms the climax – presented right in the beginning of the catalogue of transgressions ascribed to the Jews, labeled ahl al-kitāb – in Q 4:153–60. According to the Medinan suras, Christians and those Jews who accept the message of Jesus (Q 3:49–50: innī qad jiʾtukum . . . li-uḥilla lakum baʿḍa lladhī ḥurrima ʿalaykum, “I have come to you . . . to make lawful to you certain things than before were forbidden unto you”), as well as the nascent community (Q 7:157 and Q 2:286), are exempt from the laws imposed by Moses after the incident of the golden calf. Seen from this perspective, the “eating of the ṭayyibāt,” recommended in Q 20:81, would mean respecting the pre-idolatry laws, whereas the “exceeding” warned of in the text would point to the non-legitimate observance of the punitive laws as well.72

Conclusion: “The Philologist’s Meaning” What does all this mean for our query about the particular manifestations of the Bible with which the qurʾānic community entered a conversation and moreover for its development of a manifestation of the Bible of its own? Our diachronic

200  Angelika Neuwirth reading of various episodes of the Moses story in Q 20 allow us to distinguish between different layers of the qurʾānic narrative; what is important, however, is the change in the community’s relation to the main character of the Pentateuch, al-tawrāh: Moses. He was first – in early Meccan suras – established as a closely related forerunner of the proclaimer, later emulated as his role model, and finally, in Medina, was rivaled in his role as the ultimate authoritative legislator. These observations are apt to throw light on the development of the proclaimer’s prophetical role as well. The Meccan image of the earlier prophets who, as “types” of the proclaimer, wielded absolute theological authority, in Medina has given way to a new form of relating to earlier prophets, Moses in particular. In the Medinan addition to Q 20, it is the proclaimer who steps into his role by addressing the people of Moses, the contemporary Jews, and admonishing them to modify their attitude toward the Mosaic law, which in part has become obsolete. Moses’ absolute authority is thus eclipsed.73 The proclaimer’s mission, then, substantially gains in significance: in addition to his being an apostle, a rasūl, he has become a legislator, a leader empowered to endow his community with a new identity. Prophecy, which in Mecca had advanced to the sole authoritative form of mediation between the divine and the human realm, has become a contested authority in Medina. What brings about this change in both the narrative and the theological perspective is, in my view, the community’s encounter with Jewish interlocutors in Medina. An exchange with Jewish readers of the Bible is clearly echoed in the Qurʾān. It is noteworthy that it should have been the Bible reading manifest in Jewish liturgy that was involved in this exchange process as Sūrat ṬāHā’s (Q 20) extended version of the story of the golden calf relies on a contextualization of the same biblical texts that are found juxtaposed in the Yom Kippur liturgy: Exodus 32 and 34:6–7. Here, we are confronted no longer with the theologically rather unfocused “interpreted Bible” but with a theologically determined identity text of one particular religious group, the Medinan Jews.74 It would have been in the course of dialogue with the Medinan Jews that the issue of Moses’ laws rose to a controversial topic. Christians and Jewish Christians had preceded the proclaimer in relativizing their authority. In the Qurʾān, it is achieved through the Medinan revision of Meccan narratives, in which the proclaimer walks into the footsteps of Moses as a legislator and as the leader of a new religious community with a strong identity of its own. To explain this development, we cannot but assume the impact of a disputed Bible, a Bible apt to push readers to permanently rethink their religious identity: the Hebrew Bible in the hands of its original heirs, the Medinan Jews. It is this model after which the Muslim community’s perception of their own scripture is modeled: a scripture of heavenly origin but conveyed by the prophet, whose towering figure overshadows the previous divine interventions in human history and who has translated the Antique revelation into a Late Antique communication of divine teaching, elevating the human being to the rank of an epistemically equipped reader of divine signs. This kind of reading of the Qurʾān is based on the conviction that the narrative of the qurʾānic origins transmitted in Islamic tradition is – at least in its basic data – historically correct. To dismiss it outright would demand falsifying proofs.

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  201 To leave the basic question about the historicity of the prophet and his addressing of a community, the qurʾānic event that took place during a fixed time period, undecided is methodologically unacceptable because qurʾānic study has to base itself on a determined literary genre: either a report distributed over 114 chapters or a drama. Revisionist scholars have opted for the report approach, at the same time replacing the traditional context with their own construction of a narrative of origins – a procedure that strongly reminds one of the ancient view that persisted into the last century, namely, that scripture is properly understandable only in the light of Christian interpretation. What happened to the Hebrew Bible that, until modernity, was kept completely detached from its Jewish recipients and their interpretations, should not be repeated mutatis mutandis with the Qurʾān. Text and context are not permitted to be severed completely if the individual scholar’s sense of proportion, his or her due awareness of the cultural dimension of the text under scrutiny, is not to be muted.*

Notes * An abridged version of this essay was presented as the keynote address at the International Qurʾanic Studies Association annual conference in San Diego, California, on 21 November 2014, https://iqsaweb.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/sandiego_keynote_ an.pdf. 1 See the seminal new work of Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of the Book” in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). Not surprisingly, Griffith concentrates on narrative texts, a genre that most easily bridges the gap between Bible and Qurʾān. The focus needs however to be widened to encompass other literary genres, argument in particular, to keep present the Qurʾānic social setting as a live proclamation and debate and to remain alert to the diversity of Qurʾānic intertextuality, which does not refer to the biblical tradition alone but equally resumes pagan Arabic poetry and Hellenistic philosophy. The Qurʾān is not only a post-biblical but also a multifaceted and thoroughly rhetorical text. 2 Recently however, there have been made attempts to include the Qurʾān into current theological debates; see the innovative study by Karl-Josef Kuschel, Juden, Christen, Muslime: Herkunft und Zukunft (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 2007). 3 Northrup Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983). He explains: “here is a book that has had a continuous fertilizing influence on English literature from Anglo-Saxon writers to poets younger than I, and yet no one would say that the Bible is a work of Literature. Even Blake who went much farther than anyone else in his day in identifying religion and human creativity, did not call it that: he said ‘The Old and New Testament are the Great Code of Art,’ a phrase I have used for my title after pondering its implications for many years” (xvi). 4 Ibid., xiii. 5 For Geiger and the Wissenschaft des Judentums, see Dirk Hartwig, Walter Homolka, Michael Marx, and Angelika Neuwirth, eds. “Im vollen Licht der Geschichte”: Die Wissenschaft des Judentums und die Anfänge der Koranforschung (Würzburg: Ergon, 2008). 6 Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (Bonn: F. Baaden, 1833; reprint, Berlin: Parerga, 2005). 7 Johann Fück, “Die Originalität des arabischen Propheten,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 90.15 (1936): 509–25. 8 Sheldon Pollock, “Future Philology? The Fate of a Soft Science in a Hard World,” Critical Inquiry 33.4 (2009): 931–61.

202  Angelika Neuwirth 9 Giambattista Vico, Scienzia nuova (Naples, 1725). 10 The Aggadah, the undefined corpus of orally transmitted post-biblical lore has been classified by Bernhard Heller in “Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews: The Relation of the Aggadah to Islamic Legends,” Jewish Quarterly Review 24 (1934): 418–48; 25 (1934): 29–52. 11 John E. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 12 Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921). 13 Hartmut Bobzin, Der Koran: Eine Einführung (München: Beck, 1999); Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2005); Francois Déroche, Le Coran (Paris: PUF, 2008); Carl W. Ernst, How to Read the Qurʾan: A  New Guide, with Select Translations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). The questions still unanswered in scholarship are focused on in Nicolai Sinai, Die heilige Schrift des Islams: Die wichtigsten Fakten zum Koran (Freiburg: Herder, 2012). 14 Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾān as Process,” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 407–40. 15 The entire scenario of the proclaimer’s ministry has been questioned in revisionist scholarship. See Angelika Neuwirth, Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community: Reading the Qurʾan as a Literary Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3–52. 16 Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 15–25: “With the passage of time the literal meaning of expressions gradually deteriorated. . . . With the sealing of the Scriptures the authority is redistributed . . . not only does the bearer of authority change, the very source of authority changes as well. . . . The movement from prophet to scholar and from prophecy to interpretation accompanies a new conception of the text, allowing for a variety of interpretations initiated by scholars.” 17 Ibid., 15. In the Qurʾān’s case, this final written shape would have resulted from its final codification, its redaction as the muṣḥaf. 18 Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic; Holger Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). 19 See Neuwirth, Der Koran: Handkommentar mit Übersetzung, vol. I, Frühmekkanische Suren (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011); see also the commentary presented in the Corpus Coranicum project: http://www.bbaw.de/en/research/Coran; and see further Neuwirth, “From Recitation through Liturgy to Canon,” in Scripture, Poetry and the Making of a Community. 20 The term “qurʾān” is introduced in a still earlier sura in the sense of a reading performed by the proclaimer from a transcendent template; qurʾān thus materially points to texts to be presented by the proclaimer. For an attempt to establish a chronology for the references to qurʾān, see Neuwirth, “The Discovery of Writing in the Qurʾān: Tracing an Epistemic Revolution in Late Antiquity,” in Qurʾān and Adab, ed. Nuha al-Shaar (Oxford: forthcoming). 21 As the last – Medinan – verse of the sura, Q 73:19, demonstrates, this liturgical practice was still continued in Medina. 22 Qurʾānic translations are those of A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), with some changes in punctuation and English line breaks. 23 See, for example, Hieros Synekdemos kai ta hagia pathe (Greek Orthodox Prayer Book) (Athens: n.d.), 51–62; see also Neuwirth, “Spätantike Bilddiskurse in arabischem Gewand: Das Koranische Bild der Welt zwischen Gottesthron und Schöpfungsschrift,” in Religion als Bild – Bild als Religion, ed. Christoph Dohmen and Christoph Wagner (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2012), 31–44.

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  203 24 This is a frequently occurring identification; see S. Seppälä, “Reminiscences of Icons in the Qurʾān,” in The Qurʾān and Christian-Muslim Relations 22.1 (2011): 3–21, here pp. 6–7, quoted by Joseph Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Qurʾān: The Recasting of Biblical Narratives (unpublished dissertation, Princeton University, 2011), 263: “My own estimation is that, if the author of the Qurʾān had direct contact with Christian texts, the most likely possibility is that he heard recitations of Syriac hymns related to liturgical feasts, in addition to Gospel readings from Syriac Qeryana. . . . Indeed, the name of the Qurʾān itself seems to be an outcome of such encounters, ‘lectionary’ being qeryana in Syriac.” 25 Neuwirth, “Reading the Psalms in Arabic,” in The Qurʾān in Context, 733–78; see also EQ, s.v. “Psalms,” by Arie Schippers. 26 Neuwirth, “Einige Bemerkungen zum besonderen sprachlichen und literarischen Charakter des Koran,” in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 19, supplement 3.1 (1977): 736–39. 27 For a study of Qurʾānic chant and recitation, see Kristina Nelson, The Art of Reciting the Qurʾān (Cairo: American University Press in Cairo, 2001). 28 See for more details, see Neuwirth, Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 9. 29 Neuwirth, “From the Sacred Mosque to the Remote Temple,” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 216–52. 30 It is in this period that the Mosaic Decalogue is adapted to the exigencies of the Qurʾānic community and its syncretist neighbors. See Neuwirth, “A Discovery of Evil in the Qurʾān?” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 253–76. 31 See Neuwirth, “From Recitation through Liturgy to Canon,” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 141–63. 32 See Neuwirth, “The Discovery of Writing in the Qurʾān.” 33 See Francois Déroche, Qurʾāns of the Umayyads: A  First Overview (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 34 Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). Originally published as Les Langues du Paradis: Aryans et Sémites, un couple providential (Paris: Gallimard and Le Seuil, 1989). 35 See Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 36 Frye, The Great Code. 37 Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 670–71. 38 Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 95ff. He also argues that the biblical traditions current in the time of the Qurʾān’s emergence were orally transmitted, claiming that “the collection and production of the Qurʾān as a written Arabic text from the mid to late seventh century . . . was one of the factors that provided the impetus for the translation of the Jewish and Christian scriptures into Arabic in early Islamic times” (89). 39 Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 670. 40 See the index of later additions attached to early Meccan suras in Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. 1, Frühmekkanische Suren, 742–45. 41 See Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul, the Corinthians, and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 42 Heribert Busse, “Herrschertypen im Koran,” in Die Islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. Ulrich Haarmann and Peter Bachmann (Beirut: Wiesbaden, 1979), 56–80; Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Qurʾān. 43 Adam Silverstein, “The Qurʾānic Pharaoh,” in New Perspectives on the Qurʾān: The Qurʾān in its Historical Context 2, ed. Gabriel Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2011), 467–77. 44 See J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, eds., Midrash Bereshit Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah), vol. III (Berlin: Bi-defus Ts. H. Itsḳovsḳi, 1903–1929), 87: 4. The bear might be a substitute for the “Christian” wolf. Shari Lowin, Arabic and Hebrew Love Poems in al-Andalus

204  Angelika Neuwirth

45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55

(Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013),  244 n. 28, however, remarks that the Hebrew word used, “dov,” could go back to a pun, an allusion to dibbah rabbah, “bad report,” a formulation hinting at Genesis 37:2, where Joseph conveys the “bad report” about his brothers to his father (Kind communication by D. Hartwig, St Andrews.)  See Neuwirth, “Mary and Jesus Counterbalancing the Biblical Patriarchs,” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community, 359–84. It is interesting to note that the story of Mary and her early motherhood, which in the Qurʾān is only submitted to a de-allegorization, in Jewish tradition has generated a subversive counter-history where Mary – renamed Hephzibah – rejects her child on the grounds that portents indicate that he will become the Messiah of the enemies of Israel; see Peter Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). The Qurʾān expresses against that its rejection of Christian theologumena through mere de-mythification. This sura is submitted to a close reading by Michael Sells in this volume. See the commentary of Sūra 53 in Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. I, Frühmekkanische Suren, 642–85. For more, see Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 653–71. See the commentary on Sūra 94, in Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. I, Frühmekkanische Suren, 642–85. For Moses in the Qurʾān in general, see Neuwirth, “Narrative as a Canonical Process: The Story of Moses,” in Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community. Most of the reference works adduced in EQ, s.v. “Jews and Judaism,” by Uri Rubin, deal with the political clashes between Muhammad and the Jews in Medina. Although the article itself does focus doctrinal controversies, it does not really result in designing a counter image. Its argumentation is strictly synchronous, thus leaving no space for explaining the Jewish and the proto-Muslim positions in terms of an ongoing debate. The same applies to Rubin’s monograph Between Bible and Qurʾān: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1999), which is based on exegesis. Both A. J. Wensinck, Mohammed en de Juden te Medina (Leiden: Brill, 1908), and Jan Bouman, Der Koran und die Juden: Die Geschichte einer Tragödie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), rely widely on Islamic tradition, where the doctrinal exchanges do not play a role. No deeper insights into the exchanges between the community and their Jewish neighbors can be gleaned from the hitherto presented studies on Medinan suras presented by Neal Robinson, “Surat Al ʿImran and Those with the Greatest Claim to Abraham,” in JQS 6.2 (2004): 1–21; A. H. Mathias Zahniser, “The Word of God and the Apostleship of ʿIsa: A Narrative Analysis of Al ʿImran (3):33–62,” Journal of Semitic Studies 36.1 (1991): 77–112; Michel Cuypers, The Banquet: A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Qurʾān (Miami: Convivium, 2009). See the various discussions of the muḥkam and mutashābih-antinomy, for example, Neuwirth, “The House of Abraham and the House of Amram: Genealogy, Patriarchal Authority, and Exegetical Professionalism,” in The Qurʾān in Context, 499–531. These have not yet been systematically investigated. For an example, see Dirk Hartwig, “Der ‘Urvertrag’ (Q 7:172): Ein rabbinischer Diskurs im Koran,” in Im Vollen Licht der Geschichte, 191–202. A systematic screening of the Medinan suras as to the exegetical principles established by rabbinic authorities like the Seven Rules of Rabbi Hillel, the Thirteen Middot of Rabbi Yishmael, and the Thirty-Three Middot; see Günter Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011), 28–42. It is noteworthy that a number of rhetorical devices and even rules of logical argument known from the Hellenistic tradition have been discovered in the Qurʾān; see Rosalind Ward Gwynne, Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal reasoning in the Qurʾān: God’s Arguments (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004).

Qurʾānic Studies and Philology  205 56 It is difficult to date the sura. An analytical examination of the corpus of the Medinan suras is still lacking. Yet, the first part, Q 3:1–68, which deals with the Christian founding story, does not display any harsh polemical attitude towards the Jews such as becomes frequent in later Medinan texts. 57 The staging of these liturgies – arguably rich in Bible quotations – that we have to assume for Medina, in our view, presupposes the existence of the Hebrew Bible in written form, not least because Bible reading was mandatory for the synagogue service. 58 The “period of repentance,” yamim noraʾim, the first to the tenth of Tishri in the Jewish calendar, which culminates in the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is closely related to the biblical story of the golden calf. Indeed the idolatry of the Israelites in the desert is the very etiology for the cultic practices carried out during that period. Mishnaic stipulations require that the entire month of Elul – preceding Tishri – until the tenth of Tishri – forty days – should be kept as a month of repentance. See Mishna, Seder Olam, chapter 6; Moritz Zobel, Das Jahr des Juden in Brauch und Liturgie (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1936), 55–93; and for the texts involved in the liturgy, Adin Steinsaltz, A Guide to Jewish Prayer (New York: Schocken Books, 2000), 195–203. 59 BT Sanhedrin 102a. 60 This alleviated reading of the story reminds of the rabbinic versions recorded by Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (Gräfenhainichen: 1931; reprint, Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1988), 327–32. It can be attributed to the “interpreted Bible” then. 61 Q 2:40, 44, 122; Q 61:6. 62 A parallel case, though more complicated to analyze, is the equally secondarily extended version of the story in Q 7:143–55; see Neuwirth, “Meccan Texts – Medinan Additions? Politics and the Re-reading of Liturgical Communications,” in Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea: Studies on the Sources, Contents and Influences of Islamic Civilization and Arabic Philosophy and Science, ed. R. Arnzen and J. Thielmann (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 71–93. 63 Although the biblical text, Numbers 11:31–35, as well criticizes the Israelites’ inappropriate dealing with the miraculous food, which provokes a divine punishment, the Qurʾānic warning – in view of its particular address formula – seems to be an allusion not to that biblical quarrel, which even in the Bible is a marginal detail. 64 Meccan: Q 10:93, Q 17:70; Medinan: Q 2:57, Q 16:2, Q 7:60 (Medinan addition), Q 45:16. 65 Q 7:32, 157; Q 5:4, 5, 87; Q 4:160. 66 Translation from the King James Bible. 67 Michael Fishbane, Haftarot: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 393–97. 68 There are further indications for such an exchange of ideas through “live interactions.” A real historical interaction between the community and the Medinan Jews seems to lie at the basis of a juridical practice established for the Medinan community, see Leicht, “Das Schriftlichkeitsgebot bei Darlehensverträgen im Koran (Sure 2:282): Perspektiven eines Vergleichs mit dem rabbinischen Recht,” in Im Vollen Licht der Geschichte, 202–21. 69 EQ, s.v. “Jews and Judaism,” by Uri Rubin, mentions dietary laws without positioning them in a particular controversy, similarly EQ, s.v. “Law and the Qurʾān,” by Wael Hallaq; Yohanan Friedman’s important study Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), which also discusses the sectarian conditions in Medina, does not treat halakhic issues. This also applies to Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 70 “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and put it on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light.” Translation from the New International Version.

206  Angelika Neuwirth 71 Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Qurʾān, 275–76: “Following the Christian tradition, the Quran describes it as a load and as fetters which will be removed by Muhammad (Q 7:157, cf. Q 2:286), and it is understood to have been imposed as a consequence of sin (Q 4:160, 6:146, and Q 16:118). A major Christian argument against Jewish dietary laws is based on the conduct of the patriarchs who did not observe these restrictions.” 72 The addition thus charges the Meccan text with additional theological – divine wrath – and halakhic implications. It at the same time relates the story to a central Jewish feast, which seems to have offered the epistemic context for rethinking the story. It should be noted that it was this particular feast that was to serve as a model for the shaping of the month of Islamic fasting. 73 Jesus’ legal directives seem to come closer to those of Muhammad who, like Jesus, is entitled to devaluate some of Moses’ instructions. The halakhic implications of the concept of tayyibat have been discussed in more detail by Witztum, The Syriac Milieu of the Qurʾān, 274–79. 74 It is well known that the same group prompted the new community to rethink their hermeneutic notions – to remind again of the “plural faces of scripture,” the panim shel ha-torah, which are clearly reflected in the Qurʾān’s concepts of muḥkamāt versus mutashābihāt (Q 3:7–8) and which later became the nucleus of an entire exegetic literature of wujūh al-Qurʾān. See Neuwirth, “The House of Abraham and the House of Amram,” 499–532.

7 The “Sunna of Our Messengers” The Qurʾān’s Paradigm for Messengers and Prophets; a Reading of Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (26) Sidney H. Griffith I In numerous books and articles, scholars have studied the role of the prophet in the Qurʾān and in Islamic tradition and have also explored the concept of prophetism in the works of the major Muslim religious thinkers and philosophers. Within this framework, the discussions of the Qurʾān’s own prophetology have, for the most part, been conducted in dialogue with the larger scholarly literature on biblical notions of prophecy, by which the Qurʾān’s views are assumed to have been inspired. But not much scholarly attention has been paid specifically to the Qurʾān’s own presentation of the distinctive sunna of the messengers and prophets whose stories it so often recalls as the paradigm within which Muhammad is encouraged to consider his own vocation. In a recent study of the Bible in the Qurʾān, the opportunity presented itself for calling attention to the Islamic scripture’s distinctive paradigm for understanding the mission and message of God’s messengers and prophets.1 God himself speaks to Muhammad in the Qurʾān of this distinctive paradigm when he says: “As for the sunna of those of Our Messengers whom We have sent before you [2ms], you [2ms] will not find any turning away from it” (Q 27:77). What is more, the present essay argues that this distinctive paradigm or sunna determines not only the guiding principle of the Qurʾān’s reminiscences of the accounts of the earlier messengers and biblical prophets but that it also must be taken into account when one assesses the Qurʾān’s critiques of the scriptural interpretations of the pre-qurʾānic “Scripture People” as well as its reproof of what the Qurʾān represents as the doctrinal excesses of Jews and Christians and particularly those of the latter community. Accordingly, it is useful to examine more closely this distinctive paradigm or “sunna of our messengers” in some detail. And it seems that the Qurʾān itself sets it out most clearly in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26), the close reading of which reveals the very pattern or sunna from which God assured Muhammad that there is no turning away.

II It is not to the present purpose comprehensively to review the presentation of God’s prophets and messengers in the Qurʾān and Islamic tradition, a topic that

208  Sidney H. Griffith has already been widely discussed by others.2 Rather, the interest here is to study how the Qurʾān’s view of their role among the peoples to whom they were sent, and its evocation of the memory of individual messengers and prophets prior to Muhammad, and particularly prophetic figures from the Bible, provides the interpretive framework not only for the Qurʾān’s recall of biblical stories but also for its critique of contemporary Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices. But first a word must be said about the seldom-discussed difference between the Qurʾān’s view of the history of God’s messengers and prophets and the biblical view of the function of the prophets in the Bible’s unfolding history of salvation. For the difference of accent in the two overlapping narratives is a crucial one, marking the distinctive hermeneutical point of view of the Qurʾān vis-à-vis the perspective of the Jewish or Christian communities regarding prophetic history.3 Simply put, the Qurʾān evokes the memory of the biblical patriarchs and prophets within the parameters of its own distinctive paradigm for messengers and prophets. For the Qurʾān, the historical series of God’s prophets (al-anbiyāʾ) and messengers (al-rusul) from Adam to Muhammad – “God’s messenger, and the seal of the prophets” (Q 33:40)4 – is the history of God’s renewed summons, in God’s own words, to people to return to their neglected, but original state of awareness of the one God, the creator of all that is, and to the God-given rule of life. For the Qurʾān, the sequence of prophets envisions the end time, the resurrection of the dead, and the consequent reward of the garden for the just and the fire for the sinner. Whereas, for the Jews, Jewish Christians, Manichees, and the other Christians within the Qurʾān’s purview, the divinely inspired, several accounts of the succession of almost the same list of prophets and messengers (without the Islamic distinction between prophets and messengers) present a succession of God’s chosen spokespersons whose role was to speak God’s word to particular historical situations and to summon God’s chosen people to fidelity to their divine vocation and covenant obligations in service of a distinctive eschatology, in which the coming of the Messiah or the Prophet-Messiah would be the culmination of salvation history. Not only is there a different accent in the two conceptions of basically the same prophetic history, but the prophetic role is significantly different. In the Qurʾān’s view, the prophets and messengers, who are the major figures in the scriptural salvation history, are all transmitting God’s word in God’s own words. In the biblical view, especially of the Christians, the prophets are specially chosen individuals who speak God’s word in the human words God has inspired them to speak, usually addressed to specific persons and occasions. In the biblical view, not all of the major figures of salvation history from Adam to John the Baptist and Jesus are prophets or messengers in the Qurʾān’s sense.5 In the Qurʾān’s view, the earlier prophets and messengers were reiterating an unchanging message, which in the subsequent histories of the communities to whom it was addressed, inevitably became distorted. In the biblical view, the prophets are bearing an often judgmental witness to current events in salvation history, often voiced along with a Messianic anticipation.6 In the qurʾānic view, God always ultimately vindicates his prophets and messengers in their struggles with their adversaries. The different qurʾānic perspective, the distinctive “sunna of our messengers” that

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  209 it presents, exercises a determinative role in the choice of the elements of biblical history the Qurʾān’s own author chooses to recall, and it provides a template for the critique of what the Qurʾān presents as the aberrant beliefs and practices of Jews and Christians.

III The distinctive qurʾānic sunna of God’s messengers and prophets, which is articulated in a number of places in the Qurʾān, is well schematized in a recurring, probably liturgical, pattern of recall, most clearly displayed in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ.7 In the text, God apparently addresses Muhammad’s concerns about the reception of the message from God he had been called to deliver to his contemporaries, probably in the later Meccan phase of his public career. The sura provides the reader with a concentrated insight into the conceptual framework within which the Qurʾān recalls more particular moments of pre-Islamic and biblical prophetic history.8 It provides a view of the typological horizon within which particular stories are told, and it exemplifies the features of prophetic experience that, according to the Qurʾān’s “sunna of our messengers,” determine which specific aspects of a given biblical story are selected for approving recollection throughout the Qurʾān. Several repeated phrases, as we shall see, intone the basic features of the apostolic, prophetic vocation, articulated in such a way as to assure Muhammad of his own heritage as God’s messenger and prophet.9 God’s Opening Address to Muhammad (Q 26:2–6) The sura begins with God’s address to Muhammad regarding the “signs (āyāt) of the clarifying scripture,” that is, the Qurʾān, and the prophet’s fretting over his hearers’ disbelief in them (Q 26:3). God explains in regard to the hearers’ reluctance to credit the “signs” that “no new recollection (dhikr) [of signs] from the Merciful One would ever come to them but they would turn their backs on them” (Q 26:5). The fact that Muhammad’s hearers have “discredited” (fa-qad kadhdhabū, Q 26:6) the signs is presented as yet one more instance of a recurring feature in the Qurʾān’s sunna of messengers and prophets, namely peoples’ perverse tendency to discredit God’s signs, as the sura goes on to document in a series of recollections from the history of the messengers and prophets, beginning with an allusion to the prophetic potential of the very earth itself. The Sequence of the Messengers and Prophets Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ provides a sequence of nine instances of apostolic, prophetic witness, including Muhammad’s, which was discredited in the past by those to whom it was addressed. Certain rhetorical features recur in the narrative that articulate the lessons the Qurʾān means to commend in its evocation of “the sunna of our messengers” in general, each instance in the present sura being characterized as an occasion when “a sign” (āya) was discredited by the adversaries of a given

210  Sidney H. Griffith messenger or prophet. In this connection, the “sign” involves not only the notion of “miracle,” but it also becomes an instance of argument and evidentiary proof of the messenger’s or the prophet’s veracity and even a revelation in its own right, sometimes in an evidently polemical moment, as when God speaks to Muhammad of the Qurʾān’s own verses recalling the story of the messenger/prophet Jesus: “This is what we are reciting to you of the signs and the wise remembrance” (Q 3:58).10 And the Qurʾān expresses the hope that its audience will reflect (tafakkur) on the “signs” that God makes manifest and get the point of the message, as articulated in the repeated phrase, “Perhaps you/they will engage in reflection” (e.g., in Q 2:219 and Q 7:176). Those who do so are often said to be people “possessed of understanding” (ulu l-albāb), as in the phrase, “Only those possessed of understanding engage in reflection” (Q 13:19; Q 39:9). God is said to have given the scripture to the children of Israel “as guidance and a reminder (dhikrā) for those possessed of understanding” (Q 40:54). The Earth (Q 26:7–9) The sequence in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ begins with the rhetorical question, “Have they not considered the earth, how much We have caused every kind of noble pair to grow on it?” (Q 26:7), and the text goes on immediately to intone the refrain that will appear seven more times in the sura, after the recollection of each messenger’s or prophet’s mission, his adversaries’ discrediting of it, and God’s consequent vindication of the messenger or prophet and his message: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:8–9). This brief passage evokes the Qurʾān’s much wider suggestion of the virtually prophetic witness of nature at large as being almost a “scripture” in its own right,11 a notion the Arabic Qurʾān shares with Syriac-speaking Christian scholars of an earlier generation, who often spoke of how both nature and scripture together, as the biblically warranted two witnesses (Deut. 19:15; Jn. 8:17) bear witness to the creator, who is Lord of nature and Lord of scripture.12 Moses (Q 26:10–68) The Moses pericope, the longest in the sura’s recall of biblical history, begins with the invitatory phrase, “[Remember] when (idh) your Lord called on Moses”;13 and it proceeds to recount in some detail Moses’ and Aaron’s dealings with Pharaoh and the subsequent exodus from Egypt. As in the other parts of the Qurʾān where Moses is recalled, so here too there is a recollection of Bible history but no actual quotations from the Bible, albeit that scholars have been able to discover some features of the qurʾānic story also recorded in non-biblical Jewish and Christian texts.14 At the end of the section, the text says: “We saved Moses and those with him altogether, and then We drowned the others” (Q 26:65–66). And the refrain follows immediately: “In this there is certainly a sign, and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one the merciful one” (Q 26:67–68).

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  211 Abraham (Q 26:69–104) The pericope begins with the instruction to Muhammad: “Recite to them the account of Abraham” (Q 26:69), and it continues immediately with the phrase, “[Remember] when (idh) he said to his father and his people, ‘What are you worshipping?’ ” (Q 26:70). There follows the account of Abraham’s rejection of the gods of his father and his ancestors, some of which is familiar from Jewish and Christian traditions, and other passages in the Qurʾān, but nowhere are there actual quotations from the Bible.15 Abraham’s prayer (vv. 83–102) is in itself a verbal icon of the qurʾānic prophet. But in the end, Abraham’s people are recorded as saying, “If only we could have another chance; then we will be among the believers” (Q 26:102), and there follows immediately the refrain: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:103–4). Noah (Q 26:105–22) The recollection of Noah’s story begins abruptly with the announcement: “Noah’s people discredited the messengers” (Q 26:105) and carries on with the phrase, “[Remember] when (idh) their brother Noah said, ‘Do you not fear?’ ” (Q 26:106). It is interesting that he straightaway identifies himself as “a trustworthy Messenger (rasūl) to you” (Q 26:107). In the brief sequel, Noah bids his people to “Fear God and obey me” (Q 26:108, 110), and he assures them, “I will not ask you for any wage; my wage is only on the Lord of the worlds” (Q 26:109). The people refused and, presuming that one knows the story of the flood and the ark, the text presents God as saying of Noah, “We saved him and those with him in the fully loaded ship. Then afterwards We drowned the rest” (Q 26:119–20).16 The antiphonal refrain follows immediately: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:121–22). Hūd (Q 26:123–40) The story of the non-biblical messenger Hūd, like Noah’s story, begins abruptly with the announcement that his people, ʿĀd, “discredited the messengers” (Q 26:123), and the reminiscence carries on with the conventional phrase, “[Remember] when (idh) their brother Hūd said, ‘Do you not fear?’ ” (Q 26:124). And again, just as in the case of the reminiscence of Noah, Hūd said, “I am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me” (Q 26:125–26), and Hūd assures ʿĀd, “I will not ask you for any wage; my wage is only on the Lord of the worlds” (Q 26:127). In the end, his people discredited Hūd, and God says, “We destroyed them” (Q 26:129).17 The refrain follows immediately: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:129–30).

212  Sidney H. Griffith Ṣāliḥ (Q 26:141–59) Ṣāliḥ’s story also begins with the abrupt announcement, “Thamūd discredited the messengers” (Q 26:141), and continues with the phrase, “[Remember] when (idh) their brother Ṣāliḥ said, ‘Do you not fear?’ ” And again, like Noah and Hūd, Ṣāliḥ said, “I  am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me” (Q 26:144), and he offers the same assurance: “I  will not ask you for any wage; my wage is only on the Lord of the worlds” (Q 26:145). The text goes on to evoke the memory of the vicissitudes of the non-biblical messenger in his efforts to bring God’s message to his people. In the end they disobeyed God’s messenger, and the text says, “Punishment overtook them” (Q 26:158).18 The refrain follows: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:158–59). Lot (Q 26:160–75) The same formula introduces the biblical messenger Lot’s story as it appears in the accounts of Noah, Hūd, and Ṣāliḥ: “Lot’s people discredited the messengers” (Q 26:160), and again there is the phrase, “[Remember] when (idh) their brother Lot said to them, ‘Do you not fear? I am a trustworthy messenger to you, so fear God and obey me’ ” (Q 26:161–63), and he offers the assurance: “I will not ask you for any wage; my wage is only on the Lord of the worlds” (Q 26:164). Very briefly, with a succinct dialogue, the Qurʾān recalls the biblical story of Lot; there are no biblical quotations, and one would already have to have known the story for its full impact to occur. It concludes with God’s remark, “We sent a rain down upon them; wretched is the rain of those who have been warned” (Q 26:173).19 The refrain follows straightaway: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:174–75). Shuʿayb (Q 26:176–91) Like the three previous recollections of the careers of the messengers and prophets, the same formula brings up the story of the non-biblical Shuʿayb: “The companions of the forest discredited the messengers,” introducing the recollection of “When (idh) Shuʿayb said to them, ‘Do you not fear?’ ” (Q 26:177). It continues, “I am a trustworthy messenger to you, so fear God and obey me” (Q 26:178–79). Here too is the repeated assurance: “I will not ask you for any wage; my wage is only on the Lord of the worlds” (Q 26:180). Shuʿayb’s admonition to upright behavior on the part of his people earns him only their ire, and they discredit him, for which rebuff God’s punishment overtakes them.20 There follows the refrain: “In this there is certainly a sign and most of them did not become believers; your Lord is the mighty one, the merciful one” (Q 26:190–91).

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  213 God’s Closing Address to Muhammad (Q 26:192–227) God’s reassuring words to Muhammad about his vocation as messenger and prophet at the end of the sura offer insight not only into the mode of qurʾānic revelation in general but also refer to the social and inter-religious situation in which the prophet found himself. Referring to the verses that have gone before, the Qurʾān says here: This is surely a ‘sending-down’ (tanzīl) on the part of the Lord of the worlds; the trustworthy Spirit has brought it down upon your heart so that you might be one of the warners, with a clarifying Arabic tongue. It was already in the texts (zubur) of the ancients. Was it not a ‘sign’ (āyatan) for them that the learned men of the Sons of Israel would know it? Had we sent it down to a non-Arabic speaker, and he recited it to them, they would not have become believers in it. (Q 26:192–99) On the face of it, this passage assures Muhammad that with his experience of the disbelief of his own audience, his situation is in line with that of the earlier messengers and prophets, recorded already in ancient texts, and suggests the knowledge of the contents of such texts in his environs. Moreover, the fact that specifically the learned men of Israel would recognize Muhammad’s experience serves both as a sign of authenticity for him and presupposes the presence of these same “People of the Book,” “Scripture People,” in Muhammad’s milieu. Finally, the reference to a nonnative Arabic speaker both implies the actual presence of such persons in the Qurʾān’s ambience and at the same time bespeaks the practical necessity for their message to be translated into Arabic if it is to be accepted in the Arabic-speaking community. The purpose of highlighting the painful fate of those who discredited the message of the prophets in the past is expressed in the verse that says that the people of those days, as in Muhammad’s own day, “would not believe in it until they would see the dire punishment” (Q 26:201). The final verses explain how the prophetic message could never come from demons, nor could it come from wandering poets who do not practice what they preach.21 In the end, the situation in the past and the present is that the believers are “only those who do good works, remember God often, and overcome after having been wronged. The ones who have done wrong will know what sort of turmoil they will encounter” (Q 26:227).

IV Many other suras offer insights into the Qurʾān’s “sunna of our messengers” and even provide fuller lists of the pre-Islamic messengers and prophets, including the biblical ones. In this connection, consider the following long passage from Sūrat al-Anʿām (Q 6:83–90), which like Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ, is addressed by God

214  Sidney H. Griffith to Muhammad in view of the opposition to his admonitions that Muhammad was receiving from his contemporaries: This is our argument that we brought to Abraham against his people. We raise in rank whomever we wish. Indeed, your [2ms] Lord is all-wise, all-knowing. And we gave him Isaac and Jacob and guided each of them. And Noah we guided before, and from his offspring, David and Solomon, Job, Joseph, Moses and Aaron – thus do we reward the virtuous – and Zechariah, John, Jesus and Ilyās – each of them among the righteous – and Ishmael, Elisha, Jonah and Lot – each we graced over all the nations – and from among their fathers, their descendants and brethren – we chose them and guided them to a straight path. That is God’s guidance: with it he guides whomever he wishes of his servants. But were they to ascribe any partners [to God], what they used to do would not avail them. They are the ones whom we gave the scripture, the judgment and prophethood (al-nubuwwah). So if these disbelieve in them, we have certainly entrusted them to a people who will never disbelieve in them. They are the ones whom God has guided, so follow (sing.) their guidance. Say (sing.), “I do not ask of you [2mp] any wage for that.” It is but a recollection (dhikrā) for the worlds. (Q 6:83–90)22 But when all is said and done, Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ, with its highly structured format and ritualistically repeated refrains, puts the basic features of prophetic recall in the Qurʾān into high relief. And the presence of three non-biblical messengers, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Shuʿayb, in this short list of messengers and prophets immediately calls attention to the fact that for the Qurʾān, God’s sunna of messengers and prophets is more than a biblical phenomenon, albeit that the high profile of the recollections of biblical prophets in the Qurʾān can seem to dominate the others. The fact remains that in the Qurʾān, the recollection of biblical prophets does not determine the full parameters of “the sunna of our messengers.” Rather, it is the sunna that structures the biblical reminiscences; memories of biblical prophets are folded into a sequence that extends beyond the Bible’s reach. Some figures who do appear in the Bible, but who are not normally considered prophets in the biblical tradition, are included among the messengers in the Qurʾān, for example, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes, Joseph, Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, Solomon, and David, among others. Consider the following passage addressed to Muhammad: We have indeed revealed to you [2ms] as we revealed to Noah and the prophets (an-nabiyyīn) after him, and [as] we revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, Jesus and Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon – and we brought David the Psalms – and messengers (rusulan) we have recounted to you [2ms] earlier and messengers (rusulan) we have not recounted to you [2ms] – and to Moses God spoke directly – messengers (rusulan), as bearers

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  215 of good news and warners so that men may not have any argument against God, after the [sending of] messengers (ar-rusul); and God is mighty and wise. (Q 4:163–65)23 From the Qurʾān’s point of view, these figures are among those sent (mursalīn) by God to be, like Muhammad, among the “warners” (mundhirīn) of their own people; and the long, recurrent sequence stops with Muhammad. In the recurring sequence, as Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ makes clear, the pattern is always the same: the prophet or messenger arises within his own people (“their brother,” akhūhum, Q 26:106, 124, 142, 161); he delivers his message; he is discredited by his audience but is vindicated by the divine punishment visited upon his adversaries, the retelling of which events becomes a “sign” (āya) for those who will believe. This pattern can be seen to determine the shape of the recall of even the most familiar of biblical figures and their stories in the Qurʾān. For this reason, the Qurʾān does not simply quote or copy earlier biblical or other narratives; it presumes its audience’s familiarity with the patriarchs, prophets, and their stories as well as with those of the non-biblical messengers. And it recalls them within the pattern of its own distinctive “sunna of our messengers” so as to weave the recollections, echoes, and allusions to them into the patterns of discourse the close reading of Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ has highlighted.

V On the basis of the passages thus far considered, the Qurʾān’s distinctive “prophetology,” its sunna as the Qurʾān itself speaks of it,24 has a certain paradigmatic profile; it features a paradigm shift from earlier descriptions of prophecy among the “Scripture People.” The Qurʾān’s “prophetology” is characterized by the following attributes: *catholic (God’s messengers have come to both biblical and non-biblical people; “There is a rasūl speaking their own language for every people,” Q 10:47). * recurrent (the pattern [sunna] of the experience of messengership and prophecy recurs in the sequence of messengers and prophets). *dialogical (the messengers and prophets interact in admonitory dialogue with the people to whom they are sent). *singular in its message (the one God, who rewards good and punishes evil on “the Day of Judgment”; no divinizing of creatures; no talk of God having offspring). *vindicated (God vindicates His messengers and prophets in their struggles, i.e., the so called punishment stories).25 In this connection one must take cognizance of the fact that the several passages in the Qurʾān that charge the Jews with being killers of the prophets (e.g., Q 2:61; Q 3:21) do not

216  Sidney H. Griffith contradict this feature of “the sunna of our messengers,” whereby the messenger or prophet is vindicated over his adversaries in the end. Rather, the polemical charge against the Jews of having killed the prophets echoes a theme in earlier Jewish and Christian polemical lore, finding a place already in the New Testament in the Christian instance (e.g., Mt. 23:37; Lk. 13:34). It is noteworthy in this connection that none of the prophets whose names are mentioned in these Jewish and Christian traditions as having been killed by their adversaries are ever named in the Qurʾān.26 In the case of John the Baptist, who is named in the Qurʾān (e.g., Q 2:39–41; Q 19:7, 12–15), his execution at the hands of Herod Antipas as reported in the Gospel (Mt. 14:1–12; Mk. 6:14–29; Lk. 9:7–9) is also never mentioned in the Islamic scripture. In addition to these just-mentioned five qualities of the Qurʾān’s paradigm for messengers and prophets, there is also a notable corrective, even polemical dimension to this scripture’s recollection of the biblical and other narratives of the Jews and Christians in its milieu. The Qurʾān means not to retell the biblical stories but to recall them and to recollect them within the corrective framework of its own discourse. For this reason, with the exception of the quotation of a portion of Psalms 37:29 in Q 21:105, the Qurʾān does not quote the Bible. Rather, the Qurʾān re-presents the stories of many of the Bible’s major figures within the parameters of its own, distinctive “prophetology,” “the sunna of our messengers,” which in effect functions rhetorically as an apologetic typology in support of the veracity of Muhammad’s mission. A quick recall of the presentations of biblical patriarchs and prophets in the Qurʾān would make three things fairly clear: the biblical personalities and their stories are recalled according to the paradigm of the Qurʾān’s own distinctive “prophetology” or sunna and not according to Jewish or Christian narrative patterns; the narratives are sometimes hauntingly close to the biblical narratives but frequently incorporate non-biblical, Jewish or Christian, apocryphal and traditional lore; and there are almost never any actual quotations from a known biblical or other text in the Qurʾān’s biblical reminiscences. These observations in turn give rise to three preliminary conclusions: the sources of the Qurʾān’s biblical and traditional reminiscences were oral; the Qurʾān’s recollections of the biblical patriarchs and prophets according to the paradigm of its own “prophetology” or the sunna of messengers bespeaks the Arabic scripture’s corrective, even polemical stance toward Jewish and Christian scriptures and traditional lore; and given the lack of actual quotations from the Bible, the presence of the Bible in the Qurʾān is not textual, in its own words, but by way of allusion, recollection, and re-presentation. In short, the Qurʾān mirrors first in oral proclamation and then in writing the unwritten modes of transmission of the biblical and traditional Jewish and Christian lore circulating among the Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians in Arabia prior to the rise of Islam.27 Within the context of Late Antiquity in the first half of the seventh century, the Arabic Qurʾān’s “prophetology,” which is expressed in an idiom indebted largely

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  217 to traditions previously circulating in its milieu in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and most immediately Syriac, presents monotheistic belief over against polytheism within a new and original confessional horizon that sets it off from its Jewish and Christian predecessors, with whom and with whose scriptures it nevertheless remains in conversation. In due course the Islamic shahāda came to provide a confessional formula fit to express the Qurʾān’s original construal of previously existing language and lore. But within the Qurʾān’s own Late Antique ambience, the elements of the new vision were already at hand. By the time of the Qurʾān, the central creedal profession of al-tawḥīd, with its emphasis on right and wrong, reward and punishment, had already been spreading in the Arabic-speaking milieu.28 But from the point of view of the Qurʾān’s “prophetology,” the previous proponents of monotheism were mostly Jews and Christians, who according to the Qurʾān, had already distorted it by means of a creeping tendency to associate creatures on a par with the creator (cf. Q 9:28–35). The sequence of messengers and prophets was meant to warn against this development, a mission that the Qurʾān presents as the preeminent, paradigmatic role of God’s messengers and prophets. By the time of the Qurʾān, Jews, Christians, and others had also long spoken of a sequential series of spokesmen who under divine inspiration summoned people to the worship of the one God and to right religion. The distinctiveness of the Qurʾān’s “prophetology” was not so much in the idea of prophecy or messengership as such, or even in the idea of a sequence of messengers and prophets, but in the structure of the sequence and in the comprehension of the message, identical in each instance, along with the paradigmatic pattern according to which the messengers and prophets delivered warnings and summonses to fear the one God, and did so in the face of opposition, resulting in their eventual vindication by God. This paradigm pares down the prophetic profile familiar to Jews and Christians and focuses it more intensely on the Qurʾān’s own message and its phenomenological template for the behavior of God’s messengers and prophets. It has analogues with other Late Antique prophetic profiles, such as that to be found in the sequence of the prophets featured in certain Judeo-Christian texts, like the Pseudo-Clementine literature, or in the sequence of messengers culminating in Mani that appears in Manichean thought. Judeo-Christian prophetology, not unlike that of the Qurʾān, envisions a sequence of prophets, usually seven, which would culminate in the coming of the True Prophet, the Messianic Prophet, who is said to have come in the person of Jesus, to lead the Gentiles to the reformed Covenant of Sinai (in this view, Moses and Jesus are related as type to antitype). According to the Pseudo-Clementines, the sequence included: Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus the Messiah, in whom the spirit of revelation became incarnate.29 Hans Joachim Schoeps and others have seen Judeo-Christian prophetology as an ancestor to the Qurʾān’s prophetology,30 but it should be already clear from the present exposition that the idea of a succession of prophets bearing the same idea of a primordial religion (Urreligion) is the limit of the comparability; the qurʾānic paradigm shares only the names of some of the prophet messengers with Judeo-Christian

218  Sidney H. Griffith prophetology. For the Qurʾān, the messenger is not more important than the message. Manicheism, which was inaugurated by Mani (c. 216–76) in the third century, who was raised in the Judeo-Christian community of the Elkasaites in lower Mesopotamia, also features a succession of messengers and prophets with a universal message. And it is clear that Manichean ideas were widespread in the Greek- and Aramaic-speaking worlds of the first half of the seventh century and later, and they had long been familiar to the Arabs on the Arabian periphery.31 In all likelihood, Manichean lore circulated along with Jewish and Christian religious thought and practice throughout Late Antiquity and particularly within the Aramaic- and Syriac-speaking communities that were channels of so much religious culture into the Arabic-speaking milieu. It is entirely possible, even likely, that Manicheism was known in the immediate surroundings of Muhammad and the Qurʾān. But once again, the Qurʾān’s distinctive “prophetology” has a different profile than that of the Manichees, albeit that one can find common features in the two scenarios. As one recent scholar has put it: Mani located himself and his teachings at the final point in a line of divinelycommissioned apostles (apostoloi, shlîḥê); a tradition that formed part of the theology of the community in which Mani was raised, the so-called Elchasaites, who looked to a cast of biblical forefathers as the divine revealers of teachings to their ancestors. . . . Mani, possibly as a reaction against his Elchasaite upbringing, extended the range of his succession to include figures who were unlikely to have been acknowledged by his former JewishChristian coreligionists as apostles or prophets. “Wisdom and deeds have always from time to time been brought to mankind by the messengers of God. So in one age they have been brought by the messenger, called Buddha, to India, in another by [Zoroaster] to Persia, in another by Jesus to the West. Thereupon this revelation has come down, this prophecy in this last age through me, Mani, the messenger of the God of truth to Babylonia.”32 Mani’s sequence of apostles and messengers according to most sources included: Adam, Seth, (Enoch), Noah, (Abraham), Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, (Paul), and finally Mani, the Paraclete, and the “the seal of the prophets.”33 Notably absent from the lists are Moses and the Hebrew prophets. The sequence clearly indicates “a genealogy of divinely-sanctioned prophets and apostles.”34 And it is clear that “the role of prophetic personalities was essential to the overall meaning of the religion’s teachings.”35 Mani may well have been inspired by the Judeo-Christian idea of the “True Prophet” coming at the end of a sequence of seven predecessors, a concern that was probably on the minds of his native community of Elchasaites in Babylonia. It has also been noted that the biblical messengers on the list, that is, Adam, Seth, Enosh, Shem, and Enoch, are figures who are “all drawn from apocalyptic texts which had been presented as if composed by these primeval, legendary figures.”36

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  219 One readily recognizes the parallels between the Manichean prophetic genealogy and the Qurʾān’s “prophetology.” And as Arthur Jeffery remarked years ago, there are “striking coincidences” to be seen in “how Mani, who had had no human teacher or Master, was called to his mission by an angelic visitant who brought him Divine wisdom, and of how Elchasai was called to his preaching of the One God and an imminent Day of Judgment by an enormous angelic visitant who filled the horizon and brought him sheets of a heavenly book.”37 These matters will sound very familiar to readers of the biographic traditions of Muhammad. But these biographical narratives all come from well after the time of the Qurʾān. As for the features of the story that actually appear in the Qurʾān, one might best think that they supply evidence that the author of the Arabic scripture was consciously addressing an audience known to be familiar with the concept of prophetic genealogy. It was presumably this realization that prompted Arthur Jeffery further to say that Muhammad was convinced that “he was called to bring to the Arabs, who had had no prophet sent them, the same religion which the prophets had brought to those other religious communities whom he referred to as the People of the Book.”38 But the matter is not so simple. The Qurʾān’s “prophetology,” “the sunna of our messengers,” suggests that the composer of this Arabic scripture has employed the readily available vocabulary and syntax of messengership and prophethood both to critique and to correct current ideas about the messages of the earlier messengers and prophets and clearly to present its own teaching about the one God, with whom other contemporary communities persisted in associating creatures as divine equals, principally those who said that God has a son. When one considers the lists of messengers and prophets that circulated among the so-called Judeo-Christian groups, principally the Ebionites and Elchasaites, and the Manichees, it is clear that the Qurʾān rejects any hint of a Judeo-Christian or Marcionite view of earlier scriptures and the prophets whose message they transmit. The Qurʾān says, “God chose Adam, and Noah, and the family of Abraham and the family of ‘Imrān over the peoples (‘alā l-‘ālamīn)” (Q 3:33). So Moses and the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets down to John the Baptist and Jesus are included in the Qurʾān’s sequence, right along with earlier biblical messengers as well as a selection of non-biblical messengers who were sent to those whom the Qurʾān calls mushrikūn, those known within its own presumably Arabic-speaking milieu who associated other beings with God. Notably absent from the Qurʾān’s list of messengers are Zoroaster, Buddha, Paul, and Mani himself. And Muhammad is notably present as the culminant prophetic figure, indeed as “the messenger of God and the seal of the prophets” (Q 33:40). It is clear in the Qurʾān that the dominant personal profile for those sent by God to warn the peoples is that of the “messenger” (rasūl, pl. rusul), the “apostle,” a designation that altogether occurs some 331 times in the Arabic scripture, whereas with the exception of Muhammad himself, only those who are mentioned in the Jewish and Christian biblical traditions are called “prophet,” a designation occurring some seventy-five times all told, sometimes as a title accorded to those who are also called “messenger.” Muhammad, who is said to be the “seal of the prophets,” seems, again like Mani,39 to have preferred the title “messenger.” But

220  Sidney H. Griffith his mission also has prophetic overtones, and Muhammad is a number of times called simply “prophet” (nabī) in the Qurʾān.40 The Arabic scripture seems to enroll him as one among the “messengers” who had also taken on the role of a biblical prophet. In the Qurʾān, God says of the Jews and Christians: “As for those who follow the Messenger, the ummī Prophet,41 whom they find inscribed among them in the Torah and the Gospel, he bids them to do good and to forbid evil” (Q 7:157). Muhammad is thus the “messenger” whose status the Qurʾān is affirming by enrolling him in its sequence of messengers and prophets, recognized by this scripture’s distinctive “prophetology.”42 What is more, the Qurʾān presents Muhammad and his mission within the horizon of the larger history of the prophets and messengers who came before him to the “Scripture People” as the paradigmatic “messenger” of God, whose message critiques and corrects the distorted beliefs and practices of those communities, Jews, Christians, and mushrikūn, among other Arabic speakers, who had lapsed from the right guidance they had previously received.

VI God is presented in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ as voicing the paradigmatic profile of the Qurʾān’s distinctive “sunna of our messengers” in a highly structured sequence of verbal icons of qurʾānic messengership and prophethood to reassure and encourage Muhammad about his own place in the sequence of messengers and prophets. The full profile is enhanced by reference to many other suras and verses in the Qurʾān, and in referring to them, one notices the many ways in which the Qurʾān’s language and message reflect the vocabulary, thought patterns, and theological constructions of earlier Jewish, Christian, Jewish-Christian, and Manichean discourses. Their religious idiom came naturally into the Arabic-speaking milieu from the largely Greek, Aramaic/Syriac, and Ethiopic-speaking communities on the Arabian periphery in the seventh century and by the natural processes of inter-communal intercourse. This religious lexicon was absorbed into Arabic and became the vocabulary in which the Arabic Qurʾān announced its own distinctive message to the monotheist communities of the “Scripture People” and others within its frame of reference. It was a reforming, corrective, admonitory message that in the very biblical and religious terms of the target audience critiqued from a strictly monotheistic perspective particular beliefs and practices of Jews, Christians, and mushrikūn that seemed to compromise al-tawḥīd. Otherwise the Qurʾān was largely in agreement with the religion of the “Scripture People.” The major difference, the one that makes the Qurʾān’s message distinctive and that puts previous discourse into a new horizon of meaning, is precisely the Arabic scripture’s novel “prophetology,” articulated as it is in Arabized terms and concepts and characterized by an original construal of the familiar style of the mission of messengers and prophets and its recurrent patterns, all focused on absolute monotheism and the mission to warn those who, in the Qurʾān’s judgment, have fallen short of it. The two most prominent verbal icons of qurʾānic “messengership” and “prophethood” presented in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ are those featuring Moses, “a

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  221 Messenger and a Prophet” (Q 19:51), and Abraham, the prophet, the two most often mentioned by name in the whole Qurʾān; Moses 137 times and Abraham sixty-nine times. Their prophetic profiles are recalled at greater length in other suras. Here, in Sūra 26, the stories of these two iconic, biblical figures are recalled in a style reminiscent of the recollections of them and other biblical patriarchal and prophetic figures elsewhere in the Qurʾān. It is a narrative style that presumes the audience is familiar with the stories, both biblical and traditional, and with the customary teachings and practices of other communities. The Qurʾān recalls the exploits of the scriptural personae, highlighting their roles as monotheistic “warners” against idolatry and polytheism, often in the dramatic form of a dialogue between the messengers or prophets and the representatives of their peoples. We find such a style of biblical recollection, coupled with admonitions to an audience regarding right belief and right practice, elsewhere in near contemporary Syriac mêmrê written by Christian authors. In both the Qurʾān and the Syriac mêmrê, the audience is bidden by the speaker in cadenced language to heed the “signs” disclosed in the scriptural narratives, and to discern in the encrypted symbols and images the revelation of God’s messages embedded in the familiar stories of the patriarchs and prophets as well as in the wide world of created nature.

VII The recognition of the Qurʾān’s distinctive paradigm for God’s messengers and prophets highlights the underlying unity and integrity of the Qurʾān’s message as a whole. It clarifies the paradigm within which the Qurʾān evokes the recollection of the accounts of earlier messengers and prophets. The recognition of this profile of messengership and prophecy that controls the Islamic scripture’s recollection of earlier biblical patriarchs and prophets helps prevent the hermeneutical mistake of measuring the authenticity of the Qurʾān’s presentation of the exploits of these biblical figures against the accounts of them found in the Bible on the grounds that the scriptures of the Jews and Christians are the master narratives, the original accounts from which the Qurʾān is thought mistakenly to deviate. In most contexts within the Qurʾān, where the recollection of the sunna of the earlier messengers and prophets appears, the purpose is to assure Muhammad himself and his audience of the authenticity of his prophetic messengership. The style and the wording of the Qurʾān’s recollections of the lore of the earlier messengers and prophets bespeak the oral circulation of these accounts in the Arabic-speaking milieu in which Muhammad proclaimed the texts that came to him. Even when the Qurʾān refers to an earlier scripture by name, for example, the Torah, the Gospel, or the Psalms, the recollection of the accounts said to be contained within them is not recited from a written text. The earlier scriptures are named as witnesses to the veracity of the Qurʾān’s own revelations, often without any reference to a particular passage in the earlier scriptures. Given the Qurʾān’s distinctive paradigm for recalling the messengers and prophets of the Bible, it would be a hermeneutical and exegetical mistake

222  Sidney H. Griffith simply to claim that in its own wording, the Qurʾān has distorted or misunderstood the Bible. Rather, the Qurʾān depends on the familiarity of the stories of the biblical messengers and prophets, circulating orally in Arabic, to commend its own message. But it features its own interpretive framework, i.e., that is, distinctive “sunna of our messengers.” When the Qurʾān insists that it brings nothing new, that it confirms what was sent down before it in the earlier scriptures (e.g., Q 3:3–4), and bids Muhammad, “if you [2ms] are in doubt about what We have sent down to you, ask those who were reading the scripture before you” (Q 10:94), the recognition of the Qurʾān’s own paradigm for messengers and prophets enables one more readily to understand that in fact the Islamic scripture effectively commends a distinctive hermeneutical lens through which to understand the earlier scriptures. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to think that in passages in which the Qurʾān speaks of itself as providing a confirmation (taṣdīq) of the revelations that were before it and an explanation (tafṣīl) of scripture (Q 10:37), or an explanation of everything, a guidance and a mercy for people who believe (Q 12:111), the explanation (tafṣīl) envisions following the interpretive framework that unfolds precisely within the horizon of “the sunna of our messengers.” In other words, the Qurʾān proposes its own distinctive, exegetical model for reading the scriptures that came before it, one that sees them as providing a kind of praeparatio coranica for anyone who would understand them aright, from the Qurʾān’s point of view. Correlatively, if one ignores or fails to follow the Qurʾān’s model for understanding the mission of the pre-Islamic messengers and prophets, then one is open to the charge of distorting God’s speech, of concealing its meanings, of following one’s own conjectures about it, and of being someone who in effect writes a scripture of his own (cf. Q 2:75–79). Such are those of the “Scripture People” who “twist their tongues with the scripture so you would think it to be of the scripture, but it is not of the scripture” (Q 3:78). In the end, one recognizes that the Qurʾān’s paradigm for understanding the mission of the messengers and prophets, although presented in the religious idiom of the earlier “Scripture People” in its milieu, actually makes a statement all its own. It is not reducible to the interpretive parameters of any of the earlier communities. “We know they say a man teaches him; the language of the one to whom they point is foreign. This is a clarifying, Arabic language” (Q 16:103).

Appendix Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) A Paradigm for Messengers and Prophets I:

Proemium, vv. 1–6 “These are the signs of the manifest scripture.” (v. 2) “No new remembrance comes to them from the Compassionate One that they do not spurn.” (v. 5)

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  223 II:

The Earth, vv. 7–9 “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 8–9)

III:

Moses, vv. 10–68 “[Remember] when (idh) your [2ms] Lord called out to Moses” (v. 10) Moses’ dialogue with Pharaoh (vv. 16–62) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 67–68)

IV:

Abraham, vv. 69–104 “Recite to them the account of Abraham, when (idh) he said to his father.” (vv. 69–70) Abraham’s testimony (vv. 77–102) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 103–4)

V:

Noah, vv. 105–22 “Noah’s people called the messengers liars when (idh) their brother Noah said to them” (vv. 105–6) “Indeed I am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me.” (vv. 107–8) “I ask of you no wage for it; my wage is only on the Lord of the Worlds.” (v. 109) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 121–22)

VI:

Hūd > ʽĀd, vv. 123–40 “ʽĀd called the messengers liars when (idh) their brother Hūd said to them . . .” (vv. 123–24) “Indeed I am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me.” (vv. 125–26) “I ask of you no wage for it; my wage is only on the Lord of the Worlds.” (v. 127) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 139–40)

VII:

Ṣāliḥ > Thamūd, vv. 141–59 “Thamūd called the messengers liars when (idh) their brother Ṣāliḥ said to them . . .” (vv. 141–42) “Indeed I am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me.” (vv. 143–44) “I ask of you no wage for it; my wage is only on the Lord of the Worlds.” (v. 145) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 158–59)

224  Sidney H. Griffith VIII:  Lot, vv. 160–75 “Lot’s People called the messengers liars when (idh) their brother Lot said to them” (v. 161) “Indeed I am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me.” (vv. 162–63) “I ask of you no wage for it; my wage is only on the Lord of the Worlds.” (v. 164) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 174–75) IX:

Shuʿayb > Aṣḥābu l-Ayka, vv. 176–91 “The companions of the forest called the messengers liars when (idh) Shuʽayb said to them . . .” (vv. 176–77) “Indeed I am a trustworthy messenger (rasūl) to you, so fear God and obey me.” (vv. 178–79) “I ask of you no wage for it; my wage is only on the Lord of the Worlds.” (v. 180) “In that there is a sign; but most of them are not believers. Your [2ms] Lord is indeed mighty and merciful.” (vv. 190–91)

X:

Muhammad and the Qurʾān, vv. 192–217 “The trustworthy spirit has brought down (nazala) the revelation (tanzīl) of the Lord of the Worlds upon your [2ms] heart so that you might become one of those who warn with a clarifying Arabic tongue; it (i.e., the revelation) is indeed in the books (zubur) of the ancients.” (vv. 192–96) “Put your confidence in the Mighty One, the Merciful One, Who sees you [2ms] when you stand [for prayer] and your circulation among the worshippers (as-sājidīn); He is the All-Seeing, the All-Knowing One.” (vv. 217–20)

XI:

The Satans’ Minions and the Poets, vv. 221–27 Of the Satans’ minions: “Most of them are liars.” (v. 223) Of the poets: “They say what they do not do; except for those who believe and do good deeds and remember God much, and who are vindicated after having been wronged.” (vv. 266–67)

Notes 1 See Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the People of the Book in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); idem, “When Did the Bible Become an Arabic Scripture?” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 1.1/2 (2013): 7–23. 2 See, for example, Brannon M. Wheeler, Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to the Quran and Muslim Exegesis (New York: Continuum, 2002); Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qurʾān and Muslim Literature (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002). 3 See Jacques Jomier, “Prophétisme biblique et prophétisme coranique: Ressemblances et différences,” Revue Thomiste 77 (1977): 600–9.

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  225 4 In reference to a passage in Q 22:52, which distinguishes between the messenger (rasūl) and the prophet (nabī), Uri Rubin remarks, “Muslim commentators say that in this verse rasūl stands for a prophet having a message, a book, which must be delivered, whereas a nabī has no such message or book. More specifically, al-Bayḍāwī . . . says that a rasūl is a prophet who establishes a new sharīʿa, whereas a nabī is one who continues and old one”; EQ, s.v. “Prophets and Prophethood,” by Uri Rubin. 5 For more on the expanding view of prophecy in the Second Temple period and thereafter, along with numerous further bibliography, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Pseudepigraphy and/as Prophecy: Continuity and Transformation in the Formation and Reception of Early Enochic Writings,” in Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity, ed. Philippa Townsend and Moulie Vidas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 25–42. 6 For another view of this matter, see the very perceptive study by Felix Körner, “Das Prophetische am Islam,” in Mission und Prophetie in Zeiten der Interkulturalität, ed. Mariano Delgado and Michael Sievemich (St.  Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 2011), 230–44; Michael E. Pregill, “Ahab, Bar Kokhba, Muḥammad, and the Lying Spirit,” in Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity, ed. P. Townsend and M. Vidas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 271–313. 7 See the schematic outline of the sura in Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren, 276–77. 8 In this connection, see especially the very important, seldom-cited article by Michael Zwettler, “A  Mantic Manifesto: The Sūra of ‘The Poets’ and the Qurʾānic Foundations of Prophetic Authority,” in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition, ed. James L. Kugel (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 75–119, 205–31. 9 See the diagram of the sura that highlights the repeated phrases appended at the end of this essay. 10 For this wording, see EQ, s.v. “Signs,” by Binyamin Abrahamov. 11 See EQ, s.v. “Nature as Signs,” by Ian Richard Netton. 12 For example, Saint Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise, trans. Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: St  Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 102. See also Sidney H. Griffith, ‘Faith Adoring the Mystery’: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1997). 13 Throughout the Qurʾān, the recollection of the experiences of earlier messengers and prophets is regularly signaled by the summons to “remember when,” expressed by a verbal form of the root dh-k-r followed by idh, idhā, or sometimes lammā; very often the verb is omitted, leaving only the idh or idhā to serve as the marker of tadhakkur. See the discussion in Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, ch. 2. 14 See Roberto Tottoli, Vita di Mosè secondo le tradizioni islamiche (Palermo: Sellerio, 1992); Brannon Wheeler, Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002). 15 See Reuven Firestone, Journeys in Holy Lands: The Evolution of the AbrahamIshmael Legends in Islamic Exegesis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); EQ, s.v. “Abraham,” by idem. 16 See Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qurʾān, 5–9, 21–3; EQ, s.v. “Noah,” by William M. Brinner. 17 See R. B. Serjeant, “Hūd and Other Pre-Islamic Prophets of Ḥadramawt,” Le Muséon 46 (1954): 121–79; EQ, s.v. “Hūd,” by Paul M. Cobb. 18 B. M. Wheeler, Prophets in the Quran, 74–82; EQ, s.v. “Ṣāliḥ,” by R. Tottoli. 19 D. Künstlinger, “Christliche Herkunft der kurānischen Lōt-Legende,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny 7 (1929–1930): 281–95; EQ, s.v. “Lot,” by Heribert Busse. 20 C. E. Bosworth, “The Qurʾānic Prophet Shuʿaib and Ibn Taimiyya’s Epistle Concerning Him,” Le Muséon 87 (1974): 425–40; idem, “Madyan Shuʿayb in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Lore,” Journal of Semitic Studies 29 (1984): 53–64; EQ, s.v. “Shuʿayb,” by R. Tottoli.

226  Sidney H. Griffith 21 For more on the Qurʾān’s view of the poets, see Irfan Shahid, “A  Contribution to Koranic Exegesis,” in Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ed. G. Makdisi (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 563–80; idem, “Another Contribution to Koranic Exegesis: The Sūra of the Poets (XXVI),” Journal of Arabic Literature 14.1 (1983): 1–21. 22 Translation adapted from Sayyid ʿAli Quli Qara’i, The Qurʾān: With a Phrase-byPhrase English Translation, 2nd U.S. ed. (Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike Tarsile Qurʾān, 2011), 186–87 (emphasis added). 23 Translation adapted from ‘Ali Quli Qara’i, The Qurʾān, 140–41. 24 In reference to the messengers prior to Muhammad, God speaks of “the sunna of our messengers whom We have sent before you; you will not find that our sunna has any turning away” (Q 17, al-Isrā’, v. 77). In other places the Qurʾān refers to this sunna of the prophets and the “sunna of the ancients” (sunnat al-awwalīn), as in Q 15, al-Hijr, v. 13; Q 35, Fāṭir, v. 43. See Zwettler, “A Mantic Manifesto,” 106–9. 25 See EQ, s.v. “Punishment Stories,” by David Marshall; idem, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers: A Qurʾānic Study (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999). 26 One recent scholar has remarked in this connection with regard to God’s messengers, whom he calls “apostles” that “prophets have been killed but the Apostle must triumph in order to manifest on the earth the triumph of God.” Willem A. Bijlefeld, “ ‘A Prophet and More than a Prophet’? Some Observations on the Qurʾānic Use of the Terms ‘Prophet’ and ‘Apostle,’ ” The Muslim World 59 (1969): 22 n. 97. For more on the Qurʾān’s polemical charge against the Jews as killers of the prophets, and its background in Jewish and Christian traditions, see Gabriel Said Reynolds, “On the Qurʾān and the Theme of Jews as Killers of the Prophets,” Al-Bayān: Journal of Qurʾan and Hadith Studies 10 (2012): 9–32. 27 In support of these conclusions, see Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, ch. 2; idem, “When Did the Bible Become an Arabic Scripture?” 28 See in this connection the fascinating study by Patricia Crone, “The Religion of the Qurʾānic Pagans: God and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57.2/3 (2010): 151–200. 29 Hans Joachim Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1949), 87–116; idem, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church, trans. Douglas R. A. Hare (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 61–73. 30 Schoeps, Theologie und Geschichte, 334–42; idem, Jewish Christianity, 136–40; Tor Andrae, Mohammed: The Man and His Faith, trans. T. Menzel (New York: Scribner, 1936), esp. 99–113. See also Samuel Zinner, The Abrahamic Archetype: Conceptual and Historical Relationships between Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Bartlow, Cambridge: Archetype, 2011). 31 Moshe Gil, “The Creed of Abū ‘Amīr,” Israel Oriental Studies 12 (1992): 9–57; Robert Simon, “Mānī and Muḥammad,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 21 (1997): 118–41; François de Blois, “Elchasai – Manes – Muḥammad: Manichäismus und Islam in religionshistorischen Vergleich,” Der Islam 81 (2004): 31–48. 32 Nicholas Baker-Brian, Manichaeism: An Ancient Faith Rediscovered (London: T & T Clark, 2011), 27, including a quotation from The Chronology of Ancient Nations, trans. C. E. Sachau (1879), 207, (Frankfurt: Minerva-Verl., 1969), 190. 33 See the lists in the several sources discussed by Michel Tardieu, Manichaeism, trans. M. B. De Bevoise (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 13–9. On the epithet, “seal of the prophets,” see Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, “ ‘Seal of the Prophets’: The Nature of a Manichaean Metaphor,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986): 61–74; Yohanan Friedmann, “Finality of Prophethood in Sunnī Islam,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 7 (1986): 177–215. 34 Baker-Brian, Manichaeism, 42. 35 Ibid., 34. 36 Ibid., 50. 37 Arthur Jeffery, The Qurʾān as Scripture (New York: Russell F. Moore Company, 1952), 8.

The “Sunna of Our Messengers”  227 38 Ibid., 9. 39 See the remark of G. Stroumsa, “Mani does not seem to have considered himself only, or mainly, a prophet. In his own eyes, he was, more than a prophet, an apostle.” Stroumsa, “Seal of the Prophets,” 74. 40 For example, the dozen times the title “prophet” is accorded to Muhammad in Q 33 (al-Aḥzāb) including the famous verse, “Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of God and the ‘seal of the prophets’ ” (v. 40). See also the interesting sequence in Q 76: 1–9 (at-Taḥrīm). 41 See the important study by Sebastian Günther, “Muḥammad, the Illiterate Prophet: An Islamic Creed in the Qurʾān and Qurʾānic Exegesis,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 4.1 (2002): 1–26. 42 See in this connection the aforementioned, important article by Willem A. Bijlefeld, “A Prophet and More than a Prophet? Some Observations on the Qurʾānic Use of the Terms ‘Prophet’ and ‘Apostle,’ ” The Muslim World 59 (1969): 1–28. See too Patricia Crone, “Angels versus Humans as Messengers of God,” in Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity, 315–36, who proposes that the mushrikūn, whose thought lay behind Muhammad’s, had aligned the messengers with angels who brought down God’s admonitions from heaven to men and thought of the prophets as men who ascended to heaven to receive from God a message for humankind. For her thoughts about the mushrikūn, see the earlier referenced article, Crone, “The Religion of the Qurʾānic Pagans.”

8 Textual and Paratextual Meaning in the Recited Qurʾān Analysis of Performance of Sūrat al-Furqān by Sheikh Mishari Rashid Alafasy Lauren E. Osborne The large majority of Muslims cultivate an experience of the Qurʾān that is based less in the text as a written object than in the sound and practice of its recitation; native and nonnative speakers of Arabic devote considerable time and energy to learning to recite and appreciate recitation of the Qurʾān. The practice of recitation forms the foundation of Islamic education worldwide, making the sound and experience of reciting the first point of contact with the sacred text for most believers. Popular reciters have also attained worldwide fame as their recordings have circulated on nearly every form of audio media, and now a simple search online returns innumerable sites for discussing recitation and circulating audio files. In this essay, I address the question of meaning within the recited Qurʾān; as a case in point I focus on two recordings of Sūrat al-Furqān as recited by Sheikh Mishari Rashid Alafasy. What are the different modes of meaning in the recited Qurʾān? The text presents its own discursive or literary meanings, as well as poetic meanings that are developed through rhyme, rhythm, and assonance, even when the text is read simply and without tajwīd-style elaboration. Yet other meanings are generated through the use of melody and pitch, particularly when recited in the melodically elaborated tajwīd style. Second, what types of relationships may occur between these different modes of meaning: when does Alafasy’s rendition seem to correlate with the literary meaning of the sura, and what are the different ways in which this takes place? And on the other hand, is it possible that at times the text and its sound may exist simultaneously but beyond that correspondence may not have a direct relationship with one another? Through this investigation, I  seek to bridge two scholarly discourses on the Qurʾān: the extensive tradition on the written Qurʾān – both the commentary tradition and other studies of the text’s literary devices and structure, or topicallyfocused studies – on the one hand, and the recent scholarly work on the recited Qurʾān within religious studies and ethnomusicology on the other. Recent Englishlanguage literature on the recited Qurʾān, while having taken contrasting approaches and even defined the subject matter in different terms, have often begun with a call to scholars to turn our attention to the recited Qurʾān. As some have pointed

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  229 out, scholars of religion have historically devoted attention primarily to the written Qurʾān, drawing on the model of “scripture” as a written text or book.1 In this regard, the works of William Graham and Frederick Denny have opened many potential avenues for new scholarship on the recited Qurʾān.2 Similarly, Kristina Nelson’s seminal 1985 monograph, The Art of Reciting the Qurʾan, begins with a call to attention to recitation, while going on to provide the most extensive Englishlanguage analysis of the technical vocabulary of recitation, and written and unwritten rules and expectations shaping the sound (Nelson provides invaluable detail about the deployment of the maqāmāt, the modes of Arabic music), with particular reference to the extremely popular mujawwad-style recitations of mid-twentieth century Egypt.3 Given the context of her research (as Nelson notes, the melodically elaborate mujawwad-style recitation is reserved for public performance4), Nelson conceives of her subject matter – Qurʾān recitation – as performance. The approach of recitation as performance may be contrasted with the perspectives of Anna Gade and Anne Rasmussen, both of whom have studied Qurʾān recitation in Indonesia.5 For Rasmussen, recitation serves as an entrée to considering the soundscape of Indonesia, in addition to genres of sacred music, especially visà-vis the role of Qurʾān recitation in public life. Gade’s Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the Recited Qurʾān in Indonesia, on the other hand, is organized around “qurʾānic practical abilities”: memorizing, reading, expressing,6 and competing, specifically as these areas of practice relate to the system of education and training for the national recitation contest. In this work, Gade’s approach emphasizes process and engagement with the text and one’s abilities to recite it over long periods of time, indicating that she does not view qurʾānic recitation through the lens of performance.7 Most directly related to my remarks here about Mishary Alafasy is the recent work by ethnomusicologist Michael Frishkopf.8 Like Nelson’s earlier work, Frishkopf examines Qurʾān recitation in the Egyptian context, drawing extensively on The Art of Reciting the Qurʾan as it serves as a record of aesthetics of Qurʾān recitation in a particular historical moment. Drawing on a wide range of features of Qurʾān recitation (including details of sonic features on a variety of levels but also, e.g., construction of reciters as authorities or celebrities and artwork accompanying recordings), Frishkopf ties changes in aesthetics of popular Qurʾān recitation recordings to changing geographic centers of Islamic religious authority, and correspondingly, changing conceptions of Islam. In doing so, he points out and then asks, “print, recorded and broadcast media facilitate an ongoing ideological debate about Islam – its nature and its normative social role – featuring a wide variety of discursive positions. What is the role of Qurʾanic recitation . . . within this debate?”9 While he is concerned with relating Qurʾān recitation to larger ongoing debates about social and religious change, Frishkopf does so with respect to analysis of many aspects of the sound of recitation. And key to my work in this essay, he points to the recent trend in the Gulf region as a new geographic center of Qurʾān recitation, pointing to a “new ideological distinction between ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Saudi’ tilāwa styles” (as he notes, “tilāwa” is the term used in Egypt to refer to Qurʾān recitation), with the “Saudi-style” recitation in

230  Lauren E. Osborne turn both producing and participating in the new style of “reformist-revivalist Islamic ideology.”10 The issue of reformist-revivalist Islamic ideology, especially in relation to recitation, demands much more explanation than is within the purview of my work here; however, we may see Sheikh Alafasy as one example of a very prominent reciter in the Gulf region, whose recitations are in many ways stylistically in line with what Frishkopf identifies as “Saudi-style.”

Sheikh Alafasy and Sūrat al-Furqān Sheikh Alafasy is an imam of the Grand Mosque in Kuwait City and an extremely popular reciter of the Qurʾān today. His personal website provides not only basic information about his life and career but also a wealth of media material: photographs, videos, and sound material ranging from anāshīd (religious songs), to short clips from services at the Grand Mosque, to several complete recorded versions of the Qurʾān. The site links to his presence as a public figure on the web elsewhere, including personal pages on YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, and so on. He has his own mobile app to deliver the latest clips straight to smartphones and his own television network, Alafasy TV, which broadcasts throughout the Middle East. His website contains some biographical information, including his full name (Mishari bin Rashid Gharib Muhammad bin Rashid Alafasy) and birthdate as eleventh Ramadan, 1396 AH, or September 5, 1976, CE.11 Alafasy is among the most well-known reciters on the Arabian peninsula in the 2010s, both through his mobile media and television network but also with numerous CD releases on the shelves of every bookstore in the Gulf region. This strong media presence goes hand in hand with a high degree of commodification and commercialization of Alafasy as a religious media personality. In an article on the mediation of Islam through contemporary Arab television, Riadh Ferjani remarks that the Alafasy TV network is possibly the most clear example of what he argues is a new brand of commercialized Islam, citing the constant ads on the network for other Alafasy-branded products (recordings, etc.) and commentary running through premium SMS services.12 As for the choice of text, Sūrat al-Furqān is a mid-length sura, made up of seventy-seven verses of varying length but none shorter than a handful of words nor longer than two or three sentences. The length of the sura and of its individual verses provides enough material for analysis of its recitation. The sura itself is long enough to provide enough time and opportunity for development and modulation of maqām, whereas the verses are each long enough to allow for melodic development on the micro level as well (as opposed to the verses in early Meccan suras, sometimes consisting of just one or two words, which although strongly evocative, have fewer syllables and therefore offer fewer options for melodic development). The verses are also long enough that there are occasional markings for stops (awqāf) that are obligatory or optional or places where stops are prohibited. The verses are also long enough that depending on the speed of recitation, a reciter may have to stop and breathe at some point, and if this does not happen at a marked stop (waqf), he will have a repeat the words that occurred immediately before the breath. The sura as a whole is also short enough that a recording of its recitation is a manageable length for listening in one sitting, even for detailed

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  231 study; both of the recordings under consideration in this essay are approximately twenty minutes long. In her study on women and the recited Qurʾān in Indonesia, Anne Rasmussen notes that renowned reciter Hajja Maria Ulfah chooses al-Furqān for practice of more extensive recitation for these very reasons, pointing out that the earlier suras, overall shorter and made up of shorter verses, “do not contain enough words or syllables to use up the long melodic phrases that characterize the modal melodic development that recitation students try to produce.”13 It stands to reason that a text that affords greater opportunities for melodic and modal development, as well as choices of pauses, would have the potential for greater diversity of recordings. Before addressing the sound patterns of the sura and Alafasy’s recordings in particular, I will address the text as text in terms of its literary motifs and structures. Sūrat al-Furqān is marked by a recurring motif of pairs, both in terms of polarity or opposition and overlapping semantic fields.14 Pairs appear on a conceptual level in terms of imagery or themes that appear in the sura – sun and shadow, pious believers and deniers, and the two seas mentioned in the final verses. The word taken as the title of the sura, “furqān,” implies duality in its meaning as it refers to a tool or criterion used to distinguish two things; and in the Qurʾān, it refers on several occasions to scripture as a means of distinguishing right and wrong.15 This sense of pairing or opposition shows up on a linguistic or grammatical level as well. Pairs of adjectives are frequently used to describe a single referent, and these adjectives are typically unrelated to one another (different roots), but in terms of meaning there is overlap in semantic fields.16 Similarly, there are numerous verses wherein a single root appears at least twice.17 The text of Sūrat al-Furqān is extremely fluid in terms of narrative perspective and address.18 Throughout much of the sura, the perspective changes with almost every verse and sometimes even within a verse. Several different individuals or groups are evoked, addressed, discussed, or criticized, and this is done from a variety of perspectives, which are oftentimes nested within one another, reporting the speech of others or directing someone to say something. Sūrat al-Furqān is considered to be the forty-second sura revealed according to the Egyptian chronology, whereas Nöldeke’s chronology places it slightly later, fifty-fifth, in the middle Meccan period.19 The longer verse length and style, lacking the strong oaths of the earliest suras, would seem to support the sura as middle Meccan. Structurally, the sura very clearly fits the tripartite division that some have argued is a hallmark of the middle Meccan period.20 The first nine verses serve as an introduction to the individuals and issues involved. Verses 1 and 2 introduce the divine and the messenger and their key qualities and roles in the context of this sura: the one who sent down the furqān (a criterion for judgment or discernment) and the one who received it for either him or to be a warning (nadhīr). tabāraka lladhī nazzala l-furqāna ʿalā ʿabǝdihī li-yakūna li-l-ʿālamīna nadhīrā Blessed is the one who sent down the furqān to his servant, in order for it/ him to be a warning/warner to the worlds,

232  Lauren E. Osborne alladhī lahū mulku s-samāwāti wa-l-arḍi wa-lam yattakhidh waladaw wa-lam yakul la-hū sharīkuṇ fī l-mulki wa-khalaqa kulla shayʾiṇ fa-qaddarahū taqǝdīrā the one who has dominion of the heavens and the earth; he has no son, nor partner in dominion. He created all things, determining for them a measure. (Q 25:1–2)21 There is some ambiguity about the subject of “to be” (yakūn); the verse is stating either that the servant is a warner or that the furqān is a warning. In any case, these two potential subjects (servant and furqān, warner and warning) are closely linked here. The opening supplication begins with a wording that is repeated many times in the sura: tabāraka lladhī (“blessed is the one who”). The one being praised is the one who sent down the furqān; he has not begotten, has no partner in dominion, created all things, and ordered them. After this statement, the text immediately moves into a description of the group of people that is criticized recurrently throughout the sura. This critique is originally described in the correspondingly opposite terms from the description of God that appeared in the first two verses, mirroring that depiction: wa-ttakhadhū miṇ dūnihī ālihatal lā yakhluqūna shayʾaw wa-hum yukhlaqūna wa-lā yamlikūna li-aṇfusihim ḍarraw wa-lā nafʿaw wa-lā yamlikūna mawtaw wa-lā ḥayātaw wa-lā nushūrā They have taken other gods besides him; these create nothing, but are created, having no control over their own harm nor benefit. They do not control death, nor life, nor resurrection. (Q 25:3) Following these introductory verses, verse 10 then returns to the wording of the beginning, tabāraka lladhī (“blessed is the one who”), but rather than reiterating the same points over again, it moves in a different direction with a depiction of the jannāt (gardens) that is reminiscent of that found in other sections of the Qurʾān, particularly the earlier Meccan suras. tabāraka lladhī iṇ shāʾa jaʿala la-ka khayram miṇ dhālika jannātiṇ tajrī miṇ taḥtiha l-anhāru wa-yajʿal la-ka quṣūrā Blessed is the one who, if he wished, would give you better than those – gardens beneath which rivers flow – and would give castles to you. (Q 25:10) This is contrasted immediately with the statement bal kadhdhabū bi-s-sāʿa (“[emphatically] they deny the hour”). The fate of the deniers is a raging fire, wherein they are packed together tightly pleading for their own destruction. This fate is contrasted with that of the believers as featuring an eternal garden (in verse 15, jannatu l-khuld), but in the latter case, the text is addressing a singular individual (typically understood to be the Prophet Muhammad prophet) and directing him to say that this garden is a reward and a goal. Throughout this extended

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  233 critique that contrasts the deniers and the believers, the text is constantly shifting between modes of perspective and address. The text describes the fate of the deniers from a third-person perspective, also referring to God in the third person. It occasionally addresses a singular individual (again, the Prophet), directing responses to the deniers. Finally, the voice of the narration turns to the qurʾānic “we.” Verse 35 recalls specific communities that have been destroyed for denying: ʿĀd, Thamūd, Rass, and Nūḥ’s people. The examples are cited in quick succession (vv. 35–38), and the text provides an even quicker synopsis in verse 39: wa-kullaṇ ḍarabnā la-hu l-amthāla wa-kullaṇ tabbarnā tatbīrā We gave examples to all of them, and all of them we completely destroyed. (Q 25:39) The wording describing the destruction is emphatic, and it is one example of the pattern of repeating a single root (t-b-r in this case) twice in one verse: tabbarnā tatbīran, “we destroyed to the point of complete destruction,” or more literally, “we destroyed destroyingly.” The root appears in only three other places in the Qurʾān, and two of these appearances are together in the same phrasing seen here. The following example is from Q 17 (Sūrat al-Isrāʾ or Sūra Banī Isrāʾīl), verse 7.22 in aḥsaṇtum aḥsaṇtum li-aṇfusikum wa in asaʾtum fa-la-hā fa-idhā jāʾa waʿdu l-akhirati li-yasūʾū wujūhakum wa-li-yadkhulu l-masjida kamā dakhalūhu awwala marratiw wa-li-yutabbirū mā ʿalaw tatbīrā If you had done well, you would have done well for yourselves; if you had done evil, it was against yourselves. So when the promise of the hereafter (waʿd al-ākhira) came, to disfigure your faces and enter the masjid, just as they had entered it once, and to destroy completely what they had conquered (li-yutabbirū mā ʿalaw tatbīran) (Q 17:7) In this verse the same wording (“destroy destroyingly,” tabbara tatbīran) appears in connection to total destruction wrought by God (in this instance, accomplished through human agents) upon communities who had denied. In the case of Sūrat al-Furqān, the examples of the previous destruction of deniers are located at the center of the sura, and this structurally prominent placement highlights these examples as a section of narrative from which the reader or listener may extract a core message from the sura. Verse 61 of Sūrat al-Furqān marks a return of the vocabulary from the opening and the structural moment at the beginning of verse 10: tabāraka lladhī (“blessed is the one who”). The return of these words mark a key structural moment yet again, as the text moves to the concluding verses. After this reiteration of supplication and description of divine ordering of the universe, in verse 63 the discussion then turns to the servants of God, beginning, wa ʿibādu-r-raḥmāni lladhīna (“the servants of the merciful are the ones who”), and the following sequences of verses offer different ways to complete this sentence and idea. Verse 63 in full reads, “and the servants of the merciful are the ones who walk humbly on the earth. And when the ignorant ones address them, they say peace.” Just as

234  Lauren E. Osborne the opening section of the sura drew our attention to one servant – the one who received the furqān – this closing section mirrors that vocabulary in referring to plural servants – ʿibād, extending the praise and description of God found in the opening verses and generalizing it to an external audience, stating what proper servants of God do and what they believe. The opening clause (wa ʿibādu r-raḥmāni lladhīna, “the servants of the merciful are the ones who”) is extended over the next several verses subsequently beginning with wa lladhīna; so, for example, verse 64 states, “those who spend the night in prostration to their lord, standing,” where the wa lladhīna (“those who”) refers back to wa ʿibādu r-raḥmān at the beginning of the previous verse. Just as the text has returned to the vocabulary of the beginning and is thus a return on the large-scale, sequential verses, here are each a return on the small scale as we approach the end of the sura. Following a short interjection discussing the fates of the ignorant ones (al-jāhilūn), the wa lladhīna becomes so far removed from its semantic beginnings in verses 63 and 64 that it is no longer functioning as the second half of a sentence or idea. Rather, it feels like a new beginning, and the reader or listener feels an increasing sense of expectation. We were initially hearing “those who”; we were understanding it as referring back to “and the servants of God are those who.” But after “those who” is repeated so many times, and we become further removed from “the servants of God are,” we start hearing “those who” as beginning a new thought that is never quite completed. This sequence is finally resolved in verses 74–75, as verse 74 begins the final appearance of the wa lladhīna beginning structure, and verse 75 answers or completes this idea with ulāʾika, stating, “those ones will be rewarded with the highest place in paradise for having been patient. They will be met there with salutations and peace.” In terms of poetics and the sounds of the words, Sūrat al-Furqān is a monorhyme sura, meaning that every verse is part of a rhyming pattern. The entire sura is not composed on a single rhyme, however; in fact there are two sections of rhyme. It is also “near rhyme,” meaning verses end in consonants that sound similar and thus “count” as rhyming with one another. In terms of structure, the rhyme of Sūrat al-Furqān divides the sura into two parts, with the break between the first and second corresponding to a key moment in the literary structure of the sura. The first sixtytwo verses rhyme on īlā/īrā and ūlā/ūrā, beginning the pattern with the final word of the first verse – nadhīr (“warner or warning”). As each verse recalls this sound through the entire first sixty-two verses of the sura, a pattern of sound meaning is generated,23 all linking back to this original word and idea, constantly recalling the role of the prophet as a warner and the revelation as a criterion, furqān, bringing the content of the warning and the means for judgment between right and wrong. Verses 63 to the end are also unified in terms of rhyme but on āmā/ānā. These are both rhymes that are very common in the Qurʾān.24 In this case, what is of note in terms of rhyme is, first, that the sura as a whole sounds cohesive in terms of the consistently rhyming verse endings. Although verse lengths vary so that in both recordings, Alafasy sometimes will pause within a verse, almost every verse ending for the entire sura will rhyme with those of the surrounding verses. Second, given the high degree of unification in terms of rhyme, the moment when the rhyme pattern changes, at verse 63, is quite noticeable.

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  235

Pitch and Melody in Alafasy’s Recordings of Sūrat al-Furqān In terms of the use of pitch and melody in these two recordings from Alafasy, both can be described in terms of the maqām, the modal system of Arab music. In recording A, Alafasy begins and ends the sura in maqām kurd.25 In many ways this performance directly correlates to the literary structure that I’ve already outlined. The first nine verses of recording A sound very unified and form a small melodic arc. They begin in the mid-vocal register at the bottom of maqām kurd (in the lowest tetrachord), and the first few verses each begin with the same melodic gesture, always returning to the initial pitch at the end of each verse. As I have noted earlier in the essay, the opening verses of the text begin with a supplication to “the one who sent down the furqān,” emphasizing dominion and oneness, and creating and ordering of the world, before drawing an immediate contrast with the deniers that are criticized throughout the sura, depicting them in opposing terms to the ones introduced in the first two verses. Melodically, in his recitation of these opening four verses, Alafasy highlights the lowest tetrachord of maqām kurd; broadly speaking, the tetrachord (a unit typically – though not always – made up of four pitches) is the basic building block of a maqām, with the maqām taking its name from the tetrachord that makes up its base, forming its core. As is shown in Figure 8.1, Alafasy outlines the kurd tetrachord with a repeated motif, opening verses 1, 3, and 4 with an ascending interval of the outer pitches of the kurd tetrachord, notated as D to G and returning to the base pitch (in the case of this transcription, indicated as a D) at the ends of verses 1, 2, and 4. tabāraka lladhī nazzala l-furqāna ʿalā ʿabǝdihī li-yakūna li-l-ʿālamīna nadhīrā Blessed is the one who sent down the furqān to his servant, in order for it/ him to be a warning/warner to the worlds, alladhī lahū mulku s-samāwāti wa-l-arḍi wa-lam yattakhidh waladaw wa-lam yakul la-hū sharīkuṇ fī l-mulki wa-khalaqa kulla shayʾiṇ fa-qaddarahū taqǝdīrā the one who has dominion of the heavens and the earth; he has no son, nor partner in dominion. He created all things, determining for them a measure. wa ttakhadhū miṇ dūnihī ālihatal lā yakhluqūna shayʾaw wahum yukhlaqūna walā yamlikūn – walā yamlikūna li-aṇfusihim ḍarraw walā nafʿaw walā yamlikūn – walā yamlikūna mawtaw walā ḥayātaw walā nushūrā They have taken other gods besides him; these create nothing, but are created, having no control. – Having no control over their own harm nor benefit. They do not control. – They do not control death, nor life, nor resurrection.26 wa qāla lladhīna kafarū in hādhā illā ifkuni ftarāhū wa aʿānahū ʿalayhī qawmun ākharūn – faqad jāʾuw ẓulmaw wazūrā The ones who deny say that this is nothing but a lie that he made up, and other people helped him with it. – They brought forth injustice and falsehood. (Q 25:1–4)

236  Lauren E. Osborne Verses 5 and 6 begin to move up to the second tetrachord, a bit higher and building up a small amount of melodic tension. Whereas the first four verses primarily highlighted the kurd tetrachord, the core of the maqām, verse 5 draws primarily on the second tetrachord of the maqām, notated in Figure 8.2 as pitches

Figure 8.1  Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:1–4

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  237

Figure 8.1  (Continued)

G through B-flat. By the end of verse 6, however, Alafasy returns to the base kurd tetrachord and again ends on the base pitch of the maqām (notated again as a D). wa qālū āsāṭīru l-awwalīna ktatabahā fahiya tumlā ʿalayhi bukrataw wa aṣīlā They say “fables of the ancestors, he caused them to be written. They are dictated to him in the early morning and late afternoon.” qul aṇzalahu l-ladhī yaʿlamu s-sirra fī s-samāwāti wal-arḍ – innahū kāna ghafūrar raḥīmā Say, he sent it down, the one who knows the secret in the heavens and the earth. – He is indeed most forgiving and most merciful. (Q 25:5–6) Verse 7 then begins with the motif highlighted in the opening verses, the ascending interval from D to G, but following that opening outline of the bottom tetrachord, the following verses primarily explore the upper portion of the maqām, resolving the melodic tension by returning to the base kurd tetrachord and the lowest pitches, ending on the base pitch, notated as D. This conclusion in the base tetrachord serves to shape the first nine verses of recording A as forming a single melodic unit, which in this case corresponds to the textual unit of the first nine verses. As I pointed out earlier in this essay, the first nine verses may be read as forming an introduction to the sura, and verse 10 begins

238  Lauren E. Osborne

Figure 8.2  Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:5–6

with a return of the vocabulary with which the sura began (tabāraka lladhī, “blessed is the one who”), marking a key structural moment in the text. wa qālū māli hādhā r-rasūli yaʾkulu ṭ-ṭaʿāma wa yamshī fī l-aswāqi law lā uṇzila ilayhi malakuṇ fayakūna maʿahū nadhīrā They say, what is with this messenger; he eats food and walks in the streets? (Has) an angel has not been sent down to him with a warning? aw yulqā ilayhi kanzun aw takūnu lahū jannatuy yaʾkulu minhā wa-qāla z-ẓālimūna iṇ tattabiʿūna illā rajulam masḥūrā Or has a gift been cast to him, or does he have a garden from which to eat? The transgressors say, you follow none other than a bewitched man. unẓur kayfa ḍarabū la-ka l-amthāla fa-ḍallū – fa-ḍallū fa-lā yastaṭīʿūna sabīlā Look how they give you examples. They have strayed. – They have strayed, and cannot [find] a path. (Q 25:7–9) In verse 10, the pace suddenly slows (see Figure 8.3). This allows for much more melodic elaboration; Alafasy holds syllables longer, and single syllables last for several pitches. Over the next few verses the pace gradually quickens

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  239

Figure 8.3  Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:7–9

again, but the difference between verses 9 and 10 is quite marked. This elongation of verse 10 correlates with the moment I’ve pointed out in the literary structure of the sura, but it also highlights a verse that contains a very evocative description of the gardens beneath which rivers flow and palaces. uṇẓur kayfa ḍarabū la-ka l-amthāla fa-ḍallū – fa-ḍallū fa-lā yastaṭīʿūna sabīlā Look how they give you examples. They have strayed. – They have strayed, and cannot [find] a path.

240  Lauren E. Osborne tabāraka lladhī iṇ shāʾa jaʿala la-ka khayram miṇ dhālika jannātiṇ tajrī miṇ taḥtiha l-anhāru wa-yajʿal la-ka quṣūrā Blessed is the one who, if he wished, would give you better than those – gardens beneath which rivers flow – and would give castles to you. (Q 25:9–10) The modulations from one maqām to another are possibly the most striking feature of recording A (see Figure 8.4). The performance stays firmly in kurd through the first thirty-four verses, and with the exception of the shift in pace that I noted at verse 10, the performance sounds very melodically and rhythmically unified for the first thirty-four verses. But at the beginning of verse 35, he is very abruptly in a new mode: maqām ʿajam. alladhīna yuḥsharūna ʿalā wujūhihim ilā jahannama ulāʾika sharrum makānaw wa-aḍallu sabīlā Those who are packed together in Jahannam are on their faces – those ones will be evil of place and astray of path.

Figure 8.4  Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:9–10

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  241 wa la-qad ātaynā mūsa l-kitāba wa-jaʿalnā maʿahū akhāhu hārūna wazīrā We gave Mūsā the book and we made with him his brother Hārūn as a wazīr. (Q 25:34–35) A more typical way to modulate would be to use pitches common to both maqām involved and focus on those pitches as a way of transitioning from one maqām to the other. Instead what happens here (see Figure 8.5) is that Alafasy ends one verse in maqām kurd and begins the next in ʿajam, which makes for a very pronounced moment. The modulation takes place in such a way that there are no common pitches held between the two maqāms, which leads to the feeling of remoteness between them. On the textual level, this is the verse where the discussion moves from a conceptual critique of those who disbelieve into specific examples of communities from the past. The modulation is occurring abruptly at what is also a conceptual shift within the literary structure of the sura. From here on he stays in ʿajam until verse 63, when he is suddenly back in kurd (see Figure 8.6). Verse 63 begins the prolonged point about the qualities or acts of the servants of God and the reward that awaits them. I have discussed this extended description

Figure 8.5  Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:34–35

242  Lauren E. Osborne earlier as the several verse sequence beginning with the phrase, “the servants of the merciful are the ones who” (wa ʿibādu r-raḥmāni lladhīna). wahuwa lladhī jaʿala l-layla wa n-nahāra khilfatal li-man arāda ay yadhdhakkara aw arāda shukūrā He is the one who made night and day follow one another for whoever wants to remember or wants to thank. wa ʿibādu r-raḥmāni lladhīna yamshūna ʿala l-arḍi hawnaw wa-idhā khāṭabahumu l-jāhilūna qālū salāmā The servants of the merciful are the ones who walk humbly on the earth. And when the ignorant ones address them, they say peace. (Q 25:62–63)

Figure 8.6  Alafasy Recitation A, Q 25:62–63

Alafasy’s second recording under consideration here, although it is a recitation of the same sura, and by the same reciter, sounds very different.27 The mood is more somber, in part because of the choice and use of maqām but also because of the pace of the recitation. Although recording B is only thirty seconds longer than A in terms of total time, Alafasy pauses much more frequently in B – both midverse (occasionally not at a pause designated by the tajwīd markings, so when he

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  243 resumes, he repeats the last few words that came before the pause) and between verses (the pauses between verses are also occasionally more pronounced). The pauses lend a more contemplative mood to the recording, especially when compared to the comparatively quick-paced Saudi murattal recordings being produced contemporaneously. The overall mood of this recording is also determined in large part by both the overall choice of maqām and its use throughout the approximately twenty-minute performance. The sura begins in maqām nawā athar. This is another one of the twelve most commonly used maqāmāt; it has a very distinctive mood and sound with two augmented second intervals, one in the lower portion of the maqām and one in the upper. Whereas recording A features very marked moments of modulation from one maqām to another and melodies that very clearly convey which maqām they are in, recording B works in the opposite manner. While the sura begins in maqām nawā athar, after only a handful of verses, Alafasy begins moving between nawā athar and maqām nahāwand. The two maqāms differ only by one note, and he plays with this close relationship by shifting back and forth between the two; although the two maqāms are closely related in terms of the number of pitches that they share, the frequent shifting of a single pitch leaves the listener wondering which maqām Alafasy is in at a given moment. In fact, the maqām is almost constantly shifting throughout the twenty-minute-long recording; the moments of clear structural demarcation of recording A are in no way emphasized in this example.

Concluding Remarks In the way of conclusion, I’d like to offer a few preliminary remarks on how the sound of the sura in these particular recorded examples corresponds to the meanings and sound patterns (i.e., rhyme) of the qurʾānic text and, on the other hand, where there does not seem to be direct correspondence. On the macro level, in terms of structure, Alafasy’s recitation in recording A does mark moments that are significant in the text in terms of its meanings and its rhyme pattern. He does this with changes in pace, melodic elaboration, shifts in vocal register, and modulation. While his performance in this case corresponds to larger structural moments in the sura, there are many details of the text that are not represented in the sound. For instance, I mentioned earlier that the perspective and point of address is constantly shifting in the text; this is all delivered in a tone that is very continuous. Furthermore, as the text turns to describe the fates of the pious versus deniers, this is all done in the same tone of voice, register, and pace. Whereas the text is describing the deniers packed tightly together in jahannam calling out for their own destruction, this section does not sound any different from what surrounds it. In fact, with the exception of the slowing on verse 10, the first thirty-five verses of the sura sound very much the same. There is melodic progression as his voice moves up through the maqām, but the overall affect and melodic register of the performance is continuous. Rather than representing specific ideas evoked with

244  Lauren E. Osborne the words of the text, much of the recording is shaped by performance practice of the recited Qurʾān, such as the choice of beginning and ending in maqām kurd and melodic progression up through the maqām, eventually ending at the same point as where the performance began. The shape of recording B, however, suggests that there are other possibilities. In this case, the melodies correspond neither to the themes of the text nor its structural features. Whereas in the case of recording A, marked modulations broke up an otherwise stable performance of maqām, in recording B the melody is constantly shifting between multiple maqāmāt. The sura does not even end in the same maqām in which it begins. The differences between these two cases suggest that although the sound of a sura may reflect the literary structure to some degree, it is also possible that these pieces may coexist without directly corresponding to one another, with the sound being determined by performance practices that exist alongside, but not in conversation with, the text itself.*

Notes * My sincere thanks go to Michael Sells and Angelika Neuwirth for including my essay in this volume and to Francesca Chubb-Confer, Izzet Coban, Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed, and Elizabeth Sartell for their invaluable editorial assistance. Any errors contained in this essay are my own. 1 William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 79–80. 2 Graham, Beyond the Written Word; Frederick M. Denny, “The Adab of Qurʾan Recitation: Text and Context,” in International Congress for the Study of the Qurʾan: Australian National University, Canberra, 8–13 May 1980, ed. Anthony H. Johns (Canberra: Australian National University, 1980), 143–60; ibid., “Qurʾān Recitation: A Tradition of Oral Performance and Transmission,” Oral Tradition 4.1/2 (1989): 5–26; ibid., “Exegesis and Recitation: Their Development as Classical Forms of Qurʾanic Piety,” in Transitions and Transformations in the History of Religions, ed. Frank E. Reynolds and Theodore M. Ludwig (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 91–123; ibid., “Islamic Ritual: Perspectives and Theories,” in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. Richard C. Martin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 71–5; ibid., “The Great Indonesian Qurʾan Chanting Tournament,” The World & I, 6 (1986); ibid., “Nawawi: Etiquette in Recitation,” in Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life, ed. John Renard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 55–7. 3 Kristina Nelson, The Art of Reciting the Qurʾan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). 4 Ibid., xxiv–xxv, 110–11. 5 Anna M. Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the Recited Qurʾān in Indonesia (Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2004); Anne K. Rasmussen, Women, the Recited Qurʾan, and Islamic Music in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 6 Gade, Perfection Makes Practice, 6. 7 Ibid., 122–23. 8 Michael Frishkopf, “Mediated Qurʾanic Recitation and the Contestation of Islam in Contemporary Egypt,” in Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, ed. Laudan Nooshin (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 75–114.

Textual and Paratextual Meaning  245 9 Ibid., 75. 10 Ibid., 76. 11 “Alafasy Official WebSite ,” accessed October 4, 2013, http://alafasy.me/. As of February 21, 2016, this website is offline; however, Alafasy now has a personal webpage at http://www.misharialafasy.net, accessed February 21, 2016. 12 Riadh Ferjani, “Religion and Television in the Arab World: Towards a Communication Studies Approach,” Middle East Journal of Culture & Communication 3.1 (2010): 87. 13 Rasmussen, Women, the Recited Qurʾan, and Islamic Music in Indonesia, 101. 14 Anthony H. Johns, “Reflections on the Dynamics and Spirituality of Sūrat Al-Furqān,” in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾān, ed. Issa J. Boullata (Richmond: Curzon, 2000), 189. 15 Ibid., 192. 16 One such example occurs in Q 25:53, which reads in part, huwa lladhī maraja l-baḥrayni hādhā ʿadhbun furātun wa-hādhā milḥun ujājun (“He is the one who let flow the two seas: this one sweet and palatable, and this one salty and bitter”). Here ʿadhbun and furātun are both possibly understood as meaning “sweet,” with the root of ʿadhbun referring to something that is easily drunk or swallowed or sweet water most specifically; see Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. ʿ-dh-b. The root of furātun also refers to sweet water but, in addition, water that quenches thirst with its sweetness but also may refer to the Euphrates river as an epithet; see Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. f-r-t. In Lisān al-ʿArab, this verse is cited in defining furātun, which is done with respect to ʿadhbun: “ashadd al-māʾ ʿudhābatan”; see Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. f-r-t. And following, the bitter water is referred to as milḥun, meaning salty or brackish (see Hava, s.v. m-l-ḥ), which Lisān al-ʿArab gives as an opposite to ʿadhbun; see Lisān al-ʿArab, s.v. m-l-ḥ. Ujājun then refers to, according to Lane, “anything burning to the mouth, whether salt or bitter or hot”; see Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. m-l-ḥ. The key characteristic in this case would seem to be the sensation of the tongue – burning – most often associated with extreme saltiness or bitterness rather than the flavor itself. 17 There are many examples of verses in Sūrat al-Furqān that contain a single root twice, some of which are discussed in my analysis in this chapter. For example, I address the repetition of a single root in verse 39 in the wording, tabbarnā tatbīran, as meaning, in a relatively literal rendering, “destroy destroyingly.” Another type of root repetition occurs in verse 22, which ends with the words “ḥijran maḥjūran” – a forbidden forbidden thing. 18 Johns, “Reflections on the Dynamics and Spirituality of Sūrat Al-Furqān,” 188. 19 Carl W. Ernst, How to Read the Qurʾan: A New Guide, with Select Translations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 39, 219. 20 Ibid., 106. 21 In this essay, when discussing verses that are recited, I have tried to transliterate all qurʾānic Arabic so as to represent as clearly as possible the sound of the text as pronounced according to the rules of tajwīd, as opposed to representing the written form of the text. When transliterating and transcribing verses as recited by Sheikh Alafasy, I  have noted the places where he pauses mid-verse with a dash (–) and included a second time any words that he repeats when he resumes reciting (as is normally done when a reciter pauses at a place that is not specifically marked for a pause in the written text). Additionally, the qalqala, or “bounce” vowel that is pronounced between certain consonants, is represented with a schwa – ə – so as not to confuse it with a short vowel written in the text. 22 Sūrat al-Isrāʾ opens by recalling the journey of God’s servant from the sacred mosque (al-masjid al-ḥarām) to the farthest mosque (al-masjid al-aqṣā) to show him some of the signs (some of our signs – min āyātinā). It goes on to recall messages given to previous prophets, with specific focus on banī isrāʾīl – the book (kitāb) was given to Mūsā as a guide (hudan) (Q 17:2); Nūḥ is briefly mentioned (Q 17:3); and the

246  Lauren E. Osborne

23 24 25

26

27

divine addresser states that “we decreed (qaḍaynā) to banī isrāʾīl in the book (kitāb) that they would become corrupted or cause mischief (la-tufsidunna) on the earth and would become arrogant (Q 17:4). The subsequent verses describe this process, and the consequences arrive in verse 7. In the cases of both Sūrat al-Isrāʾ and Sūrat al-Furqān, Mūsā (described in both suras as having received a kitāb) and Nūḥ are mentioned in the verses leading up to the destruction. Michael Sells, Approaching the Qurʾán: The Early Revelations (Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 2007), 165–66. Devin J. Stewart, “Sajʿ in the Qurʾān: Prosody and Structure,” Journal of Arabic Literature 21.2 (1990): 109. For simplicity and clarity of writing, I simply refer to these two recordings as “recording A” and “recording B.” This recording is available for streaming or download through Alafasy’s personal web page via his SoundCloud site. It was recorded in California in 2008. “25-Al-Furqan by Alafasy on SoundCloud – Hear the World’s Sounds,” accessed September 25, 2013, https://soundcloud.com/alafasy/25-al-Furqan. In keeping with the style of transliteration used in this essay, in which I seek to represent the sound of the text as it is pronounced, rather than its written form, I have also noted the places in the recitation where Alafasy pauses mid-verse. When he pauses where there is not a stop (waqf) indicated, he typically repeats the last phrase recited before the pause, as is customary. In these cases, I have included the repeated words. This recording was available on an older version of Alafasy’s personal site; at the time of writing, it appears to no longer be available online. “3-furqan.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object),” accessed October  18, 2013, http://alafasy.me/alafasy2/1423/Noor-fourqan/ 3-furqan.mp3.

Part 3

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9 Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us Ghassan el Masri

“In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author, new things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.” Samuel Johnson, The Life of Pope1

What is the nature of the thematic and literary relations common to the Qurʾān and ancient Arabic poetry, and how are these grounded in the culture of pre-Islamic Arabia? An extensive research program must be put in place to answer this question that the Arabic literary tradition has left open. For an answer, one first needs to identify the commensurable elements between ancient Arabic poetry and scripture, where the ensemble of literary conventions, motifs, tropes, metaphors, themes, and subjects are surveyed as a first step in a thorough comparative study of Arabic literary practices before and after the rise of Islamicate culture. Having a viable answer to our fundamental question is indispensable for understanding the precise rhetorical and literary dynamics at play between scripture and literature, the sacred and the profane. This will inevitably lead to a better appreciation of the reception of the Qurʾān among the first community of believers and its situatedness in the literary cultural space of Arabia. Looking at the Qurʾān through the looking glass of poetry is a long overdue – cultural – desideratum; it is an act most conducive to understanding the shift – if any – in existential and spiritual dispositions that accompanied the spread of the new faith. As a prelude to a partial answer, I shall communicate an observation that I gathered from a close reading of some of the oldest extant collections of pre-Islamic poetry, that is, al-Muʿallaqāt, al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, and al-Aṣmaʿiyyāt, in juxtaposition with the Qurʾān. This observation integrates recent results from Arabian epigraphy and archaeology pertinent to envisaging the culture of Arabia around the time of the appearance of the Qurʾān. This observation leads to the preliminary conclusion, first, that the cultural transformation that occurred with the rise of Islam is partly visible in the reconfiguration of stock literary terms, figures, and tropes that were common in pre-Islamic poetry in a novel style of religious prose; second, that the literary mechanism of this reconfiguration was a process of theologization of some salient elements of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda most visible in a number of literary elements in the Meccan suras; and third, that these elements are centered on the ubi sunt motif and the topos of the ṭalal that is part of the nasīb

250  Ghassan el Masri (i.e., the “deserted encampments,” “desolation,” or “wasteland” and the “amatory prelude,” respectively), whose “similes [present] not in fact the beloved as an object of description, but the mythopoetic world of the lost garden or meadow,”2 which in turn subsumes an existential question typically about the rationale of the human predicament of having to face the ruinous and unrelenting will of time (dahr), like modern man faces the deterministic laws of nature that inhibit, if not cancel, his free will. This basic existential condition that permeates a large number of prominent pre-Islamic poems is strategically addressed in the Qurʾān’s rhetoric through recourse to divine design in history first and eschatology second, where God reveals his mercy and justice in the manifestations of his will through the unfolding of the hic et nunc of – salvation – history and subsequently in the Hereafter. The ṭalal, which is presented by the poet as the ostensible trace of the “ruinous will of time” is theologized and turned into the abodes of al-awwalūn, whose example serves to illustrate the divine design inherent in punishment and retribution in the revelations of the prophet and which are in turn the necessary counterparts to revival, judgment, and merciful reward.

Some Notes on the Study of the Pre-Islamic Qaṣīda In the last few decades there have been some significant developments in the scholarly representation of the cultural environment in Arabia on the eve of Islam; parallel to this, new readings appeared of the most prominent poetic form of the pre-Islamic times, that is, the qaṣīda.3 The results of the two areas of study, however, have not been integrated thus far. Scholars have offered different models for understanding the qaṣīda form and suggested alternatives to the classical view commonly cited from al-Shiʿr wa al-Shuʿarāʾ of Ibn Qutayba (d. 885 CE)4 and reproduced countless times in the works of scholars both traditional and modern. According to the classical view, the qaṣīda is a highly typified polythematic poem following a strict conventional construction and an equally strict meter. The convention is that an ode typically starts with an “amatory prelude” (nasīb) that contains a moment where the poet stands before the ṭalal. The poet, in this section of the ode, laments the loss of a beloved and the locale she deserted and, at times interrogates the void, which according to the classical view is meant to prepare the listener’s psychology to the two following sections of the poem (raḥīl and madīḥ, “departure” and “eulogy,” respectively). Modern writers in the field have given strong reasons to question the classical view about the “psychological function” of the prelude, arguing that it only applies to a particular set of odes5 and eventually showing its inapplicability to pre-Islamic odes in general.6 In addition to offering a critique of the classical approach, scholars have introduced new elements to supplement – if not revise – our understanding of the constituents of the classical qaṣīda, such as applying the instruments of modern stylistic and literary theory; introducing a structuralist approach; following a historical approach; applying psychological or psychoanalytical readings; or applying anthropological tools to reveal the hidden semiotics of the texts.7 Keeping with the tradition of these scholars, but attempting to resolve the question of the broader culture in which the qaṣīda originated and its relationship to the Qurʾān, I shall integrate

Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us  251 new knowledge – derived from archaeology and epigraphy – concerning the natural and cultural environment of the poets. This environment, I argue, must have affected the character of their compositions and therefore ought to be factored into our reading of their poetry. Recent archaeological and epigraphic findings will certainly have a profound impact on our interpretation of the cultural context of the pre-Islamic poet, mainly example, through the light they shed on the topological and architectural nature of the referent of the ṭalal and the nasīb, which is the key of the entire qaṣīda.8 From these findings we are now aware of a sharp and steady decline in urban settlements in Arabia in the two centuries that preceded the Prophetic mission,9 which invites a rereading of the possible significance of the topos of the ṭalal insofar as it refers to the concrete cultural environment, i.e. architectural, through poetic spatial signifiers. These findings suggest that through the nasīb motif in the qaṣīda, the pre-Islamic poet was making complex references to cases of moral, cultural, and sociopolitical decline in Arabia using spatial and topological imagery of the “wasteland” and “desolation.” The key to unlocking these complex references is a rereading of the metaphors of space, habitation, and desolation – as well as other derivative motifs – that are centered around the ṭalal. What makes the question of the ṭalal most pertinent is the fact that the themes of desolation and ruin are extensively treated in the Qurʾān as well, a fact that raises several questions about the mutual function of the motif in the two contemporaneous corpora. Was the motif of the wasteland that we see in the nasīb at the beginning of the pre-Islamic ode and elsewhere in pre-Islamic poetry a mere literary convention as claimed by traditional commentators, or was it a genuine, though impressionistic, statement of the state of physical, social, and cultural decline and destruction that affected parts of Arabia at the time? This hypothesis was certainly alluded to by some authors, but not fully investigated as a historical claim,10 and deserves some illustration.

Imruʾ al-Qays, the Kindite, and the Case of Maʾsal The nasīb of the muʿallaqa of Imruʾ al-Qays is perhaps the most celebrated in the history of Arabic poetry. It was emulated by countless poets, mocked by some, and certainly known to all. There is little disagreement – rather, little is known – among the commentators about the identity of the female figures mentioned and the places where the poet purportedly met with them in his amatory pursuits and erotic escapades. For this reason, taking this poet as a case study would readily illustrate the differences between the persuasions of the early Muslim commentators about the function of his nasīb on the one hand and the historical situation of these places as it can be reconstructed from both early literary and modern epigraphic sources on the other. In his muʿallaqa, the poet mentions Maʾsal, where he met his beloved ladies Umm al-Rabāb and Umm al-Ḥuwayrith. The verse reads as follows: Ka-daʾbika min Ummi l-Ḥuwayrithi qablahā wa-jāratihā Ummi r-Rabābi bi-Maʾsalī Like your custom with Umm al-Ḥuwayrith before her, and Umm al-Rabāb her neighbour, at Maʾsal11

252  Ghassan el Masri Traditional commentators such as al-Anbārī tell us that Maʾsal is a place (name) or mawḍiʿ (locale) without any further specification,12 and the same is true of the commentaries of al-Khaṭīb al-Tibrīzī, Zawzanī, and al-Naḥḥās. As far as these commentators were concerned, it was a place where the poet had his amatory encounters – probably with his father’s wife, of all people (Umm al-Ḥuwayrith). Geographers and authors of works containing geographical information, such as al-Zamakhsharī in his al-Jibāl wa al-amkina wa al-miyāh, mention Dārat Maʾsal as being in Dārat ʿUqayl then add that Maʾsal is either a palm grove, a dune, a mountain, or a water (source).13 Yāqūt in his Muʿjam al-buldān does not add much about the locale, except to say that Maʾsal contains a water source and palm trees, and adds an indirect reference from poetry to a battle involving the tribe of Ḍabba.14 Ayyām al-ʿArab gives the additional information that Dārat Maʾsal was a scene of the battle (yawm) between the tribes of Kilāb and Ḍabba.15 Modern geographical studies and atlases such as those of Ibn Bulayhid and Junaydil or the index of Thilo that relied on different poets and different (geographical, historical, and literary) sources to chart places mentioned in pre-Islamic Arabia leave its location open but list three possibilities: it is either taken to be a place somewhere in the middle of the plateau of Najd, as being equivalent to today’s Maʾsal al-Jumḥ, or to be found in the area of Ḥaṣāt Āl ʿUlayyān.16 The matter of the exact location of Imruʾ al-Qays’s Maʾsal appears to remain unresolved. ʿAbdullāh al-Shāyiʿ, who consecrated an extensive study closely investigating the toponyms mentioned by Imruʾ al-Qays, refrains from pinpointing the exact location of the poet’s Maʾsal but suggests that it is in the area of the tribe of Banū Kalb, namely because the two female figures mentioned in the verse are from that tribe.17 Al-Shāyiʿ’s mode of reasoning, which is the object of my critique of the tradition, can be resumed thus: given – the commentators’ claim – that it is the pre-Islamic poet’s convention to mention his beloved and the place where they met, and given that they met where her tribe spent their spring or their summer before the seasonal transhumance, and in view of the fact that Umm al-Ḥuwayrith and Umm al-Rabāb hail from the tribe of Banū Kalb in northern Najd, then Maʾsal must be in these tribal locales, ergo, in the northern parts of Najd. I am inclined to reverse the order of justification and use geography and history (here epigraphy) to question the commentators’ suppositions about a convention: what do our modern sources tell us about Maʾsal, and how does this reflect on our understanding of the nasīb of Imruʾ al-Qays and our ability to identify the referents of his toponyms? First, epigraphy: Maʾsal al-Jumḥ stands out with two highly interesting inscriptions (Ry 509 and Ry 510),18 found in situ belonging to a date between 521 and 440–450 CE, respectively. Ry 50919 first mentions the place itself as Maʾsal Jumḥān and, second, mentions the Kindites – that is, Imruʾ al-Qays’ tribe. This inscription lists the achievements of the king, Abīkarib, and mentions his progeny and his pedigree and that he is the king of Sabaʾ, Dhū-Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt, Yamnat, and the Arabs of the higher lands (Najd!) and the coast. He made this inscription in the wādī of Maʾsal Jumhān, when they (the king and his company) came and journeyed in the lands of Maʿadd at the occasion of the establishment

Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us  253 of some of their (allied) tribes in these lands, along with the tribes of Ḥaḍramawt, Sabaʾ, and the people of Maʾrib, with the youngest of the qayls (princes), their officers, their cavalry, their hunters, and their troops, as well as with the Arabs of Kinda, Saʿd, and others.20 According to this, Maʾsal was a gathering place for the garrison of Ḥimyar. The poet Imruʾ al-Qays, a Kindite prince, was supposedly born not much after the date of this inscription – if not between the two inscriptions – and we are told in the traditional accounts that the sociopolitical events surrounding the demise of the rule of Kinda have left deep traces on the poet’s life, leaving visible traces in his poetry as well as his legend. As such one ought to seriously entertain the possibility that the Maʾsal in the poet’s nasīb is none other than Maʾsal Jumḥān, where his tribe’s fighting forces gathered with their Ḥimyaritic patrons and their tribal allies before the Hujrite kingdom’s untimely demise. This status of Maʾsal as a garrison quarter is corroborated by references made to it by other poets contemporaneous with or slightly subsequent to Imruʾ al-Qays. If one considers the appearance of Maʾsal in other pre-Islamic verse, one sees that it was a place of a rather specific quality. It is at times associated with hunt scenes in thinly veiled references to tragic human fate, with ruin, exile, war, loss, and the ephemerality of strength and goodness raising the question of the true object of loss, which Imruʾ al-Qays was so tearfully lamenting. In the following verse from Ibn al-Mubārak’s Muntahā al-ṭalab, Imruʾ al-Qays ibn Jabala al-Sakūnī, a somewhat obscure poet, describes a thirsty animal left behind by its hunter, bleeding, nearing death in a thicket of the desert.21 This thicket is in Maʾsal: Yuʾammilu shirban min Thamīlin wa Māsalin wa-mā l-mawtu illā ḥaythu arakka Māsalū It [the injured prey] hopes for a drink between Thamīl and Māsal but death is nowhere but where it rested [in] Māsal The poem continues with a description of a hunting scene whose subtext is a description of a war where the hero is hunted down by assailing enemies: not a rare metaphor in pre-Islamic poetry. The gharaḍ (“motive,” “purpose”) of the poem is clearly not the hunt, but treachery, war, and the vicissitudes of fate. In another poem, al-Nimr ibn Tawlab,22 who converted to Islam in his old age but continued to compose jāhilī fakhr poetry, mentions Yadhbul, which is equally present in Imruʾ al-Qays’s muʿallaqa, and Maʾsal as a deserted place (aṭlāl) that was once home for a strong band of people: Taʾabbada min aṭlāli jamrata Maʾsali fa-qad aqfarat minhā Sharāʾu fa-Yadhbulū Many of the ruins of the band [of fighters]23 of Maʾsal have become old, for Sharāʾ and Yadhbul are now derelict The poem continues with mention of prosperous areas where tribes resided (manāzil), as if ornamented with precious stones (luʾluʾ and zabarjad), necklaces (naẓm), scented drinks with misk and kāfūr, and waters that quench every thirst.

254  Ghassan el Masri In another poem that reflects a significant sum of elements from Imruʾ al-Qays’s muʿallaqa, the mukhaḍram poet Tamīm ibn Muqbil reuses the poetical motifs of his jāhilī predecessor.24 He mentions Maʾsal as a scene of a great tragedy and begins with evoking a people that were, but are no longer, there: Wa-li-d-dāri min janbay Qarūrā ka-annahā kitābu wuḥiyyin atbaʿathu anāmiluh Ṣaḥā l-qalbu ʿan ʾahli r-Rakāʾi wa-fātahū ʿalā Maʾsalin khillānuhu wa-ḥalāʾiluh Akhū ʿabarātin sīqa li-sh-Shāmi ahluhū fa-lā l-yaʾsu yuslīhi wa-lā l-ḥuznu qātiluh And the abode [as it appears] from the sides of Qarūrā [is] like an inscribed missive that was engraved by the fingers [of the former residents of these abodes] The heart has become sober [from the memory] of the people of Rakāʾ but [the heart had] missed at Maʾsal its dear and its beloved ones A tearful man, whose folk has been driven [captives] to Syria; despair shall not lighten his heart, nor will his grief kill him Labīd ibn Rabīʿa al-ʿĀmirī,25 probably the best known of the mukhaḍram poets, mentions Maʾsal as an example of the ephemerality of life, introducing it with a note from the ethics of the new Muslim faith: Bal kullu saʿyika bāṭilun illā t-tuqā fa-idha nqaḍā shayʾun ka-ʾan lam yufʿalī Law kāna shayʾun khālidan la-tawāʾalat ʿaṣmāʾu muʾlifatun ḍawāḥī Maʾsalī Everything shall be undone, except piety; [all acts/things] once they are finished, it is as if they were never done/made If anything was [ever] meant to be immortal then refuge [from death] would have been granted to some white-heeled mountain goat [living] in the purlieus of Maʾsal The third- and fourth-century geographer al-Hajarī, who produced one of the most detailed geographical records of the Arabian peninsula, refrained from specifying the exact locale of Maʾsal but sufficed with this: Maʾsal, qariyatun wa nakhīl, “it is a town and a palm grove”;26 he cited a pre-Islamic poet that mentions the place, ʿĀmir ibn Namīr,27 about whom little is known: Fa-hal ashrafanna d-dahru akhrāba Māsalin ḍuḥayyan wa-libdī fawqa muṭṭaridin nahdī Did time honour the ruins of Māsal in the early bright [hours of the] morning, when I was firmly [seated] on [a steed] chasing [its prey] . . . breathless!

Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us  255 The use of akhrāb, “ruins,” is highly significant and indicates that the place must have had some built settlement. Al-Hajarī adds a verse that he attributes to a man from the tribe of Numayr.28 The verses are most probably early Islamic, but they remain useful for our purposes as they reflect the perception and handling of the female figure at the ṭalal: Fa-lammā badat ʿArwā wa-ajzāʿu Maʾsalin wa-Dhū Khushubin kāda l-fuʾādu yaṭīrū Li-dhikri l-latī lam yajʿali Llāhu dhikrahā li-nafʿin wa-lākin dhikruhā sa-yaḍīrū And when ʿArwā appeared with the thickets of Maʾsal and Dhū Khushub, the heart fluttered From remembering her whose memory God did not make useful; nay remembering her shall [only] harm. From epigraphy, it seems more likely that the Maʾsal mentioned by Imruʾ alQays was a garrison quarter of the kings of Ḥimyar and their Kindite subcontractors, who together formed one of the strongest regional forces of their time. It is, moreover, a place poets mention as rather significant, occupied by a strong band of people who had met a tragic end and were exiled to somewhere in Syria. Given the discrepancy between the traditional commentators’ claims and the historical context, one ought to question the extent to which the medieval commentaries’ claims about the poetic practices and conventions of pre-Islamic poets reflect the social and historical context of this poetry. For even if we put the mention of Maʾsal by other poets to the side, the Kindite poet and aspiring prince, who was born around the year 500,29 that is, between the date of the two inscriptions (Ry 509 ca. 521 and Ry 510 ca. 450), could not have been ignorant of the worth and significance of Maʾsal al-Jumḥ, especially when we know – or so is traditionally claimed – that he was involved in the political life of his tribe, had firm alliances with local rulers (e.g., Taymāʾ’s al-Samawʾal ibn ʿĀdiyāʾ), had sought vengeance for his father’s death, and had lost his life in what seems to be a political ruse of regional proportions. It makes little or no sense that he evoked Maʾsal only because he is keen to remind his audience of his amatory frolics, with his stepmother at that. The case of Maʾsal is one example of the stark discrepancy between the medieval commentators’ perception of the topoi of the pre-Islamic poets and the historical contexts of the places they mention once seen through the perspective of other poets, geography, epigraphy, and archaeology. Maʾsal is not an isolated case; preliminary research has shown that this example can be replicated, and these will be published in due course. Understanding and identifying the referent of the toponym in the nasīb are crucial for our understanding of the function of the qaṣīda as a whole and thus of the literary practices in pre-Islamic Arabia and subsequently the rhetorical strategies of the qurʾānic response. So far, no attempts have been made to relate the common topos of the ṭalal to the demise of – urban – culture in Arabia. Nor have there been any attempts to relate the topos of the ṭalal to its homologue in the Qurʾān, that is,

256  Ghassan el Masri the frequent mention of the abodes of al-awwalūn, ʿĀd, and Thamūd; the function of qurʾānic architectural notions like masākin, manāzil, qarya, and so on; and the relationship of both to the issues of time, fate, and justice, which are abbreviated in the classical ubi sunt question.30

The Theologization of Arabic Lore Vis-à-vis poetry, the Qurʾān is not only a rereading of scriptural literature, rewriting it and culturally translating it into Arabic. It is also a rereading of Arabic poetry by semiotically rewriting it with the scriptural pen. This dual character of the Qurʾān qua Arab scripture can be grasped only if we treat it as a transformative text: an act of Arabizing the Bible and biblicizing Arabic lore. A fair number of scholars have already written on the qurʾānic act upon the poetic lore,31 but these valuable exploratory attempts barely skim the surface of this complex poetic corpus. In the case of the working hypothesis here proposed, the process of theologizing or scripturalizing the topos of the ṭalal and the existential question expressed in the poet’s ubi sunt is heuristically presumed to be the core of the rhetorical dynamics at work between the Qurʾān and its poetic milieu and perhaps the reason for the survival of this genre of poetry. Focusing on the ṭalal and by extension the ubi sunt motif will bring in a number of seemingly dispersed elements of the pre-Islamic qaṣīda into a single organic paradigm that gives sense to its constitutive parts. We have good reasons to believe that pre-Islamic poetry conveys large terrains of the moral and spiritual landscape in Arabia at the eve of Islam.32 Poetry reflects much of the worldview from which the Qurʾān emerges, and according to the model here proposed it is neither an ideological-cum-theological other to Islam (i.e., the jāhiliyya/Islam dichotomy) nor a repository of miscellaneous linguistic data to compare and contrast with the Qurʾān as lexicographers, grammarians, and exegetes largely did. Pre-Islamic poetry is a reflection of a cultural reality that serves as a frame, a hermeneutical foil to the qurʾānic fact containing themes and figures that bring out particular aspects in the meaning of the Qurʾān by virtue of standing in a contrastive relationship to each other. The axis of this semiotic opposition is the topos of the ṭalal, which receives diametrically opposed treatment in the two corpora. Consider, for example, the very first anthology of Arabic poetry compiled by al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī; it contains some hundred and twenty poems that treat a number of varying issues, yet most of these can be said to converge on the issue of al-dahr, “the ruinous will of time,” and the question of humankind’s existence in the constantly shifting fortunes of the world. War, loss, and destruction figure very prominently in this anthology, as do the ethics and dispositions to cope with them: courage, nostalgia, nihilism, heroism, hedonism, and so on. The second such anthology, that of al-Aṣmaʿī, contains some eighty poems, a significantly large portion of which deals with wars and conflict interlaced with references to quasi-existential questions regarding human life and moral values. The same is true of the themes of the muʿallaqa in general, whose nasīb epitomizes the themes of desolation, loss, and nostalgia on both

Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us  257 the personal and the collective level. The Qurʾān, especially in the Meccan suras, takes up these literary constituents, presents the “divine perspective” on these existential issues, and gives them a different role in its new moral and social paradigm. The themes of loss and desolation encapsulated in the subject of al-dahr and the topos of the ṭalal in the nasīb are refigured in the Qurʾān as the abodes of the previous generations and are neither lamented nor are they seen as indicative of the essentially tragic nature of life. The poetic ṭalal, which at times accompanies a frank ubi sunt question stirring and reflecting an existential aporeia regarding human choice and fate, is explicitly echoed in the Qurʾān when it raises the question of the fate of the “first epochs,” “fa-mā bālu l-qurūni l-ūlā?” (Q 20:52). The Qurʾān in turn offers an answer and a resolution to the human impasse by appeal to eschatology, salvation history, and cyclical mundane temporality. The rhetoric of the Qurʾān strives to persuade the listener of the ultimate justice of the rule of God, as opposed to the ultimate injustice of the rule of the blind will of time (al-dahr), and thus directs the listener into a positive moral commitment toward a nascent umma instead of negative moral lassitude occasioned by the lost fathers ābāʾ, whose glory will never be resurrected. Whereas the pre-Islamic poet repeatedly spoke of al-dahr as the unrelenting and blind will of time that destroys everything, time under the command of God reveals itself in divinely aware and designed temporality according to a measure of timed justice (cf. the uses of ajal, qadar, miqdār), both in the unfolding of history in the “here and now” and in the “hereafter.” The audience of the Qurʾān is presumably the same as the poets’, who in turn were oppressed by the fatalistic predicament of humankind and the machination of time, where the tribe or the benefactor king offered the only refuge. This audience was spurred by the rhetoric of the Qurʾān to shed tragi-fatalistic determinism and adopt an optimistic form of merciful predetermination. The morality that ensues from the poet’s fatalist view of history is negotiated in the eschatological sections of the Meccan suras. In the qurʾānic narratives about al-awwalūn, the historicity of the salvific moral plea is impossible to determine and moves freely between the historical and the eschatological, and in many an early sura, the line between the two is thoroughly blurred.33 The topos of bygone people in the Qurʾān is laden with the opposite semiotic charge than that of poetry: al-awwalūn were reduced to a ruinous ṭalal because they justly deserved it; they are not to be lamented (Q 44:29, fa-mā bakat ʿalyhim al-samāʾ wa-l-arḍ), and such will be the fate of those who do not realize divine law and prophetic authority. In addition, note that the qualities of the heavenly reward promised by the prophet contrast diametrically with the earthly wasteland described by the poet. Consider the melancholy of loss associated with the nasīb, which is countered to a great extant in the loci of nostalgia of the pre-Islamic qaṣida: if the ṭalal is an empty wasteland, then “what it was” in the poetic representation is a locus amoenus full of luxuries, wine, women, vigor of youth, greenery, and running waters. This is how the poet remembers – perhaps reconstructs – his past. The similarity between the description of the lost bliss seen through the poet’s memory and the

258  Ghassan el Masri qurʾānic heaven is very striking, and the content of the memory of the poet, on the one hand, and the future reward of the believer, on the other, appear to be almost identical at times (e.g., Mufaḍḍaliyya XLIV by al-Nahshalī).34 Moreover, the realignment of symbolic topography applies to the topos of hell; the now-desolate ṭalal and the formerly locus amoenus of the poet are transposed to two alternative future temporal and/or eschatological frames in the Qurʾān: the ṭalal is employed to represent the prospect of suffering and annihilation, and by contrast, images of the nostalgically remembered locus amoenus are recycled to construct a new hope and instill the audience with faith in the prospects of bliss and prosperity that they have known – or have known of – in former times. These transposed poetic images are proposed by the prophet as a concrete historical opportunity – often in eschatological garb – of cultural resurgence by reviving the dead and ruined and recreating a new locus amoenus in a paradisiac – janna – at a future time and space. Alternatively, submitting to fatalist propensities like the poets tend to do and persisting in their socio-moral nihilistic ethos will lead the – unbelieving – subjects to the destruction of the last remaining [Meccan!] “sanctuary” and turn it into yet another ṭalal (cf. Q 28:57 and Q 29:67). As such, the Qurʾān’s ability to persuade the first audience rests in part on theologizing familiar poetical motifs and biblicizing Arabic poetic lore, which in turn was a reflection of concrete social reality. The groundedness in reality of the impressionistic topoi at hand is essential for them to be rhetorically effective. The nasīb in general and the ṭalal in particular ought to be investigated as a poetic expression of the situation of at least parts of Arabia. Some poets spoke openly of war being the culprit behind the ruin and the departure of the beloved (e.g., the Muʿallaqa of Ṭarafa). That is beside the large number of explicit mentions by poets of traces of campsites whose inhabitants left because of changing fortunes, wars, and shifting alliances or for the seasonal transhumance, which in turn may be a broad metaphor of life’s cycle and its shifting fortunes. By reconfiguring the familiar Arabian topos of the ṭalal and with it the nasīb motif and their broad set of significances into a new religious narrative, the Qurʾān has effectively issued a theopoetic manifesto that transformed the landscape of Arabian literary culture; in one stroke it rendered its eschatonic theology familiar, and the familiar Arabian poetry, new.

Notes 1 Samuel Johnson, trans. The Poems of Alexander Pope (Chiswick, UK: C. Whittingham, 1822), 112. 2 Michael Sells, “Guises of the Ghūl: Dissembling Simile and Semantic Overflow in the Classical Arabic Nasīb,” in Reorientations: Arabic and Persian Poetry, ed. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), 130. 3 Typically described as a very conventional piece of verse of a minimum of seven verses but often much longer, with one rhyme and a uniform meter and typically, though not necessarily, has a common tripartite internal division. See Renate Jacobi, Studien zur Poetik der altarabischen Qaside (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1971). 4 ʻAbdullāh ibn Muslim Ibn Qutaybah, Liber Poësis Et Poëtarum, ed. Michael Jan de Goeje (Lugduni-Batavorum: Brill, 1904). 5 See Gustave von Gruenebaum, Die Wirklichkeitweite der früharabischen Dichtung (Wien: Selbstverlag des Orientalischen Institutes der Universität, 1937).

Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us  259 6 Renate Jacobi, “The Camel-Section of the Panegyrical Ode,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 13 (1982): 1–22. 7 For modern stylistic and literary theory, see Jacobi, Studien zur Poetik, 1971. For a structuralist approach, see Kamal Abu-Deeb, “Towards a Structural Analysis of Pre-Islamic Poetry,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6.2 (1975): 148–84. For a historical approach, see Nöldeke, Theodore, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Poesie der alten Araber (Hanover, C. Rümpler, 1864); D. S. Margoliouth, “The Origins of Arabic Poetry,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (1925): 417–49; Najīb al-Bahbītī, al-Shiʿr al-ʿarabī fī muḥiṭihī al-tārīkhī al-qadīm (Casablanca: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1987); Sayyed Ḥanafī Ḥasanayn, al-Shiʿr al-jāhilī: Marāḥiluhu wa ittijāhātuhu al-fanniyya (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li al-Taʾlīf wa al-Nashr, 1971). For psychological or psychoanalytical readings, see al-Yūsuf, Maqālāt fī al-shiʿr al-jāhilī (Damascus: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah wa al-Irshād al-Qawmī, 1975); A. Ḥifnī, Maṭlaʿ al-qaṣīda al-ʿarabiyya wa dalālatuhu al-nafsiyya (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʻĀmma li al-Kitāb, 1987). For applications of anthropological tools, see A. Muḥammad Aḥmad, al-Manhaj al-usṭūrī fī tafsīr al-shiʿr al-jāhilī (Beirut: Dār al-Manāhil, 1987); M. Nāṣif, Qirāʾa thāniya li shiʿrinā al-qadīm (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1981); S. ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr, Qirāʾa jadīda li shiʿrinā al-qadīm (Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-ʿArabī, 1968); Thomas Bauer, Altarabische Dichtkunst: Eine Untersuchung ihrer Struktur und Entwicklung am Beispiel der Onagerepisode (Wiesebaden: Harrassowitz, 1992); S. Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); James Montgomery, The Vagaries of the Qasidah: The Tradition and Practice of Early Arabic Poetry (Cambridge, UK: Gibb Memorial Trust, 1997). 8 The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft project directed by Masri, From Ruin to Resurrection: The Response of the Qurʾān to Ancient Arabic Poetry at Corpus Coranicum–Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, is intended to shed light on the nature of the literary relations between the Qurʾān and ancient Arabic poetry first and explore how these relations are grounded in the culture of pre-Islamic Arabia second. The research is designed to identify the commensurable elements between the two textual corpora and distinguish the nature and character of the shared literary constituents (motifs, tropes, metaphors, themes, etc.). 9 See Jeremie Schiettecatte, “Villes et urbanisation de l’Arabie du Sud à l’époque préislamique: Formation, fonctionnalités et territorialités urbaines dans la dynamique de peuplement régionale,” Thèse de doctorat (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2008); Jeremie Schiettecatte and C. J. Robin, L’Arabie à la veille de l’Islam: Bilan clinique (Paris: De Boccard, 2009); A. Korotayev, V. Klimenko, D. Proussakov, “Origins Of Islam: Political-Anthropological And Environmental Context,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 52.3/4 (1999): 243–76. 10 See al-Bahbītī, al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabī; A. Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Salam al-Kindy, Le Voyageur sans Orient: Poésie et philosophie des Arabes de l’ère préislamique (Arles: Sindbad-Actes Sud, 1998). 11 See A. J. Arberry’s translation in The Seven Odes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), 61: “Even so, my soul, is your wont; so it was with Umm al-Huwayrith before her, and Umm ar-Rabát [sic] her neighbour, at Maʾsal.” 12 Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Anbārī, Sharḥ al-qaṣāʾid al-sabʿ al-ṭiwāl al-jāhiliyyāt, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963), 27–9. 13 Maḥmūd ibn ʻUmar al-Zamakhsharī, Az-Zamak̇s̈arīi Lexicon Geographicum: Cui titulus est: Kitāb al-jibāl wa al-amkina wa al-miyāh, ed. T.G.J. Juynboll and M. de Grave (Leiden: Brill, 1856), 62. 14 Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1955), 5:42. He adds a verse attributed to ʿAmr ibn Lajʾ: “Do not lampoon Ḍabba, O Jarīr, for they have killed from the heads [of the tribe] what had not been killed,” lā tahji Ḍabba yā Jarīr fa-innahum // qatalū min al-ruʾasāʾ mā lam yuqtalī,” ibid., 2:429.

260  Ghassan el Masri 15 Muḥammad Aḥmad Jād al-Mawlà, Ali Muḥammad al-Bajāwī, and Muḥammad Abu al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, eds., Ayyām al-ʿarab fī al-jāhiliyya (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 1974), 390. 16 Ibn Bulayhid, Ṣaḥīḥ al-akhbār ʿammā fī bilād al-ʿarab min al-athār (Riyadh: Dār ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Āl Ḥusayn, 1371 AH), 19; Saʿd ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Junaydil, Muʿjam al-amākin al-wārida fī al-muʿallaqāt al-ʿashr (Riyadh: Markaz Ḥamad al-Jāsir al-Thaqāfī, 2004); Ulrich Thilo, Die Ortsnamen in der altarabischen Poesie (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1958). 17 ʿAbdullāh ibn Muḥammad al-Shāyiʿ, Maʿa Imruʾ al-Qays bayna al-Dakhūl wa Ḥawmal (Riyadh: n.p., 1998), 168–72. 18 This inscription has been studied by Philby, al-Jāsir, Ryckmans, Caskel, Beetson, Garbini, Abdullah, Robin, and others; see G. Ryckmans, “Inscriptions sud-arabes,” Le Muséon, LXVI (1953): 207–317; Ḥamad al-Jāsir, Madīnat al-Riyāḍ ʿabr aṭwār al-tārīkh (Riyadh: Dār al-Yamāma, 1966), 129–59; W. Caskel, Entdeckungen in Arabien (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1954); A. Beeston. “Review of W. Caskel, Entdeckungen in Arabien,” Orientalia 25 (1956): 292–302; G. Garbini, “Osservazioni linguistiche e storiche sull’iscrizione di Maʿdikarib Yaʿfur (Ry 510),” Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli 39.3 (1979): 469–75; A. Beeston, “A Note on Maʿdikarib’s Wādī Māsil Text,” Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli 42.2 (1982): 307–11. 19 Christian Robin, “Le Royaume Hujride, dit ‘royaume de Kinda,’ entre Himyar et Byzance,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Comptes rendus 140.2 (1996): 665–714. 20 Ibid., 677; Ry 510 mentions Maʾsal Jumḥān as well and lists the tribal alliances as well the geographical extant of their influence and their confrontations with their enemies. 21 Muḥammad Ibn al-Mubārak, Muntahā al-ṭalab min ashʿār al-ʿarab, ed. Muḥammad Nabīl Ṭurayfī (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1999), 8:348. 22 Ibid., 1:272. 23 Al-jamra according to al-ʿAyn (entry j-m-r) is: kullu qawmin yaṣīrūna ilā qitāli man qātalahum lā yukhālifūna aḥadan wa-lā yanḍammūna ilā aḥadin, wa-takūnu l-qabīlatu nafsuhā jamratan taṣbiru li-muqāraʿati l-qabaʾil: “Every folk that marches to war against those that assail them, neither getting involved in disagreements with other tribes, nor joining another [in alliance], and the tribe can itself be a jamara; resilient in its struggle against other tribes.” 24 Ibn al-Mubārak, Muntahā al-ṭalab, 1:326. 25 Labīd ibn Rabīʿa, Sharḥ dīwān Labīd ibn Rabīʿa al-ʿĀmirī, eds. Iḥsān ʿAbbās and ʻAlī ibn ʻAbdullāh Ṭūsī (Kuwait: Wizārat al-Irshād wa al-Anbāʾ, 1962), 272; Labīd ibn Rabīʿa, Dīwān Labīd b. Rabīʿa, ed. Ḥamdū Ṭammās (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 2004), 82. 26 Abū ʿAlī Hārūn ibn Zakariyyā al-Hajarī, al-Taʿlīqāt wa al-nawādir, ed. Ḥamad al-Jāsir (Riyaḍh: Dār al-Yamāma, 1992); see page 211 for the Maʾsal reference. 27 Ibid., 737. 28 Ibid., 902. 29 See Ibrahim Mumayiz, The Vagabond King: The Life and Poetry of Imruʾ al-Qays (Amman: Jordan University Press, 2002), 17–8, which deals with the poet’s name and genealogy; see also Dīwān Imruʾ al-Qays, ed. Muṣṭafà ʿAbd al-Shāfī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1983), “Introduction.” Imruʾ al-Qays’ date of birth (ca. 500) is an approximation given in G. Olinder’s Kings of Kinda of the Family of ākil al-Murār (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1927), 95. The date of his death is more accurately fixed as 542, when he died of the plague at Ankyra on his way back from Constantinople. See Irfan Shahid, “The Last Days of Imruʾ al-Qays,” in Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boullata and Terri DeYoung (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 215. 30 C. H. Becker, “Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere,” in Aufsätze zur Kultur- und Sprachgeschichte vornehmlich des Orients, ed. L. Scherman and C. Bezold (Breslau: M. & H. Marcus, 1916), 87–105.

Maʾsal: What the Ṭalal Would Tell Us  261 31 See, for example, Omar A. Farrukh, Das Bild des Frühislam in der arabischen Dichtung von der Higra bis zum Tode ʿUmars 1–23 D.H./622–644 N. CH. (Leipzig: August Pries, 1937). 32 Ludwig Ammann, Die Geburt des Islam: Historische Innovation durch Offenbarung (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2001). 33 Perhaps better than ‘eschatological’ to describe the Qurʾān’s temporal discourse is eschatonic understood as the divinely ordained climax of history, be it in the here and now or the hereafter; see C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet & Co., 1935). 34 This has already been noted by Georg Jacob in Altarabisches Beduinenleben: Nach den Quellen Geschildert (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1897), 48–9, 104–5; see also Josef Horovitz, “Das koranische Paradies,” in Der Koran, ed. R. Paret (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), 53–73. Horovitz, expanding on Jacob, remarks on a number of common elements between the construction of Paradise in the Qurʾān and description of women and material culture in pre-Islamic poetry; see 65–71; see also my article in the volume Qurʾān and Adab, ed. Nuha Shaar (Oxford Press, forthcoming).

10 Aḥbār and Ruhbān Religious Leaders in the Qurʾān in Dialogue with Christian and Rabbinic Literature Holger M. Zellentin mā ḍayyaʿa llāhu fī badwin wa-lā ḥaḍarin raʿīyatan anta bi-l-iḥsāni rāʿīhā May God not destroy, in the desert or in inhabited lands, a flock whose shepherd in beneficence you are.

–Muslim b. al-Walīd

The Qurʾān reflects dialogues with a multitude of contemporaneous traditions. Whereas the oral culture of this discourse can be only partially reconstructed, we can approach it through a selection of Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Mandean, Samaritan, and Manichean texts. In a recent publication, I placed great emphasis on the importance of the Didascalia Apostolorum for the reconstruction of what I  called the Qurʾān’s “legal culture,” that is, the discursive space it creates by embedding specific laws in broader legal narratives about the origin and history of God’s law.1 My emphasis on the pertinence of the Didascalia for the construction of the Qurʾān’s interlocutors should not be read as presuming a sterile exchange between two parties or, worse, between two texts. Understanding my readings this way would miss my point (as the many references to other Christian and especially rabbinic voices throughout the essay will hopefully have shown). One could indeed bring countless examples of the importance of rabbinic, other Christian, and other biblical and post-biblical literature to the understanding of the Qurʾān. Yet I  do, in fact, argue that what I  termed “Judeo-Christian legal culture,” as largely reconstructable with the help of the Didascalia, the Clementine Homilies, and the Qurʾān itself, holds a central place among the direct interlocutors of the longer suras of the Qurʾān, often attributed to its “Medinan” period of composition.2 The purpose of this essay is to consider the religious leaders named in the Qurʾān, first in the context of the Qurʾān itself and then in light of the rabbinic, the Syriac-Christian, and the Judeo-Christian legal cultures. By way of introduction, I  will first define the term used in my recent study, “Judeo-Christian,” at least in as far as it pertains to religious leaders.3 The Judeo-Christian legal culture most clearly appears in the Clementine Homilies and is corroborated by the Qurʾān and other late antique texts. It is based on the

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  263 concomitant recognition of both Judaism and non-Jewish belief in Jesus as two distinct valid forms of worship. This legal culture imposes a diverging ritual law on Jews and on non-Jewish believers in Jesus: the former have to follow the entire Torah, whereas the latter have to follow the very selection of biblical laws that we also find in the Qurʾān. This concept is well-attested, yet no separate JudeoChristian group based on this culture necessarily existed: in light of the growing pressure from both Jewish and Christian orthodoxies, the strict differentiation between Jews and non-Jews may have made the formation of a single community increasingly untenable. Aspects of this Judeo-Christian legal culture were thus preserved both in Jewish communities and in Greek-, Aramaic-, Ethiopic-, and Coptic-speaking circles, possibly even beyond the seventh century.4 Followers of this tradition should thus be designated according to their ethnicity as “Christian” or as “Jewish” yet never as “Jewish-Christians” (or “JudeoChristians”). To put it simply, Jews would continue to practice the Torah and accept Christianity as the right way of worship for Gentiles. Gentiles would accept Judaism for Jews, but would themselves only follow the teachings of Jesus. The “ecumenical” impulse of such people and their view on Jesus as a non-divine “Prophet of Truth” may be incompatible with aspects of the dogmas prevalent in patristic or rabbinic circles. Yet believers following such teachings fully or partially would most likely still be members of the established churches and synagogues.5 Furthermore, we can see that both the Didascalia and the Clementine Homilies endorse the apostolic and the episcopal tradition: local communities of Jesus-believing non-Jews are led by a single epi-scopos, an overseer, who is called bishop. And this brings us to the present attempt to evaluate the qurʾānic reactions to the episcopal ideals of late antique legal culture more broadly. The central questions are these: one, which Christian and Jewish leaders were known to the qurʾānic community, and two, how would knowledge of these religious leaders and their roles improve our understanding of the Qurʾān’s nuanced criticism of them? The qurʾānic, that is the earliest Islamic, community seems to have participated in the Judeo-Christian legal culture. It recognizes both Judaism and Christianity as legitimate heirs of Israel and accepts the leaders of these groups as religious authorities. At the same time, we can see that the qurʾānic community, in dialogue with its prophet, further develops the Judeo-Christian legal culture. Especially in the longer suras of the Qurʾān, which likely belong to the later, traditionally designated “Medinan” phase of the community’s development (I shall henceforth use the terms “Meccan” and “Medinan” with implied quotation marks), we can see the beginnings of a specifically Islamic legal culture. Here, Judaism and Christianity are still seen as legitimate traditions, yet they are simultaneously confronted with the ideal of the return to the faith of Abraham. In the demand of the dissolution of Judaism and Christianity, and the absorption and “elevation” of these two traditions into Islam, the Qurʾān’s legal culture moves toward the formation of a single community and thereby away from its underlying Judeo-Christian legal culture. An “ecumenical” community of all believers, Jews and non-Jews alike, is indeed increasingly evoked in the Medinan Qurʾān and generally posited in the “Constitution of Medina.”6 How does the Islamic demand for a return to a posited Abrahamic faith play out in the Qurʾān’s criticism of Jewish and Christian leaders? These leaders appear

264  Holger M. Zellentin in the Qurʾān as judges and guardians over religious matters, as keepers of scripture, and as those responsible for the communal finances; I will turn to the central verses Q 5:44, Q 5:63, and Q 9:34. The Qurʾān juxtaposes the Jewish and Christian hierarchy with the ideal of an egalitarian Islamic community, in which such leaders appear only in limited ways. The ideal imām, at least in the Medinan Qurʾān, is Abraham (Q 2:124), whose imitation should be pursued not only by an elite but by every believer. Simultaneously, the societal position of the prophets, and especially that of Muhammad, becomes ever more central in the Medinan phase. This development provides the context of the surging conflicts between the qurʾānic community and Jewish and Christian leaders. The growing social responsibility of the prophet also explains the increasingly detailed communications in the social instructions of the Medinan Qurʾān, at least to a degree. This heightened responsibility, at the same time, is rhetorically strictly separated from human influence and thereby from comparability with Jewish and Christian leaders: “And how should they make you (i.e., Muhammad) a judge, while with them is the Torah, in which is God’s judgment?” God asks his prophet in Q 5:43. The authority of the scribes is thereby strictly separated from that of the prophet, echoing Luke 12:14, where Jesus directly asks, “Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” The Qurʾān may not question the legitimacy of Jewish and Christian leaders as such. Yet it does accuse them, in continuity with a rich Jewish and Christian tradition, of self-aggrandizing as well as embezzlement, and their position is thus ultimately undermined. A comparison of Jewish and Christian texts with the Qurʾān gives the relatively clear criticism of religious leaders a new historical depth. We shall see how closely the Medinan community was acquainted with aspects of the Jewish and the Christian tradition, and how important these traditions are for determining the precise meaning as well as the deliberate momentum of this criticism. At the same time, this contextual analysis allows us to determine the meaning of the Arabic terms “aḥbār” and “ruhbān” with more precision and to establish their semantic field as the overseer of, respectively, a Jewish and a Christian community. Whereas there certainly were former monks among the Christian bishops of Arabia, I will argue that the term “rahbāniyya,” first attested in the Qurʾān as describing the “office” of the ruhbān, cannot, in its context, designate “monasticism” or “celibacy” (as it is now often understood). Rather, the aḥbār and the ruhbān represent the overseers of their communities regardless of their marital status. This reading follows if one attributes greater importance to the Qurʾān’s testimony than to that of later exegetical or philological constructions. The primary testimony of the Qurʾān should of course secondarily also be understood in dialogue not only with the Muslim but also with the Christian and the Jewish traditions, as proposed in the title of this essay. In this second step, I  will attempt to compare the Qurʾān’s aḥbār with the cognate ḥbrym that we know from the rabbinic tradition, namely the members of the Palestinian rabbinic academy and the leaders of the Jewish community on whom the rabbis have bestowed the same honorary title. The Qurʾān’s ruhbān in many ways seem comparable to the Christian leaders as they are known, for example, from the Didascalia. Whereas they are designated as “bishops” in this text, they must be married

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  265 men and must be installed in a very local hierarchy by their own communities. The historical circumstances of the qurʾānic community are, in the end, not fully reconstructable, and the extant Aramaic Christian and Jewish sources only allow an indirect gaze at the encounter of this community with the Jewish and Christian communal leaders of Arabia. The Aramaic evidence, however, still helps us to understand how the qurʾānic reorientation of the Judeo-Christian legal culture, especially in the Medinan phase, recognizes as well as undermines the identifiable religious leaders under the postulated word of God and his last prophet.

The Qurʾān and the Beloved Sons of God One compelling set of examples illustrates the perhaps crucial, though by no means exclusive, position of the Didascalia and of the rabbis for our reconstruction of the Qurʾān’s legal culture. The following discussion shows how the Qurʾān positions itself vis-à-vis two hierarchies: that of the naṣārā, the Christians, whose Syriac milieu can be reconstructed with texts such as the Didascalia, and that of the yahūd (e.g., Q 5:18) or alladhīna hādū (Q 6:146, see also Q 2:62 and Q 62:6), the rabbinic Jews.7 The Qurʾān’s longer suras engage the rabbinic Jews in intimate dialogue as the group that, together with the Christians, the naṣārā, comprises the “People of the Book.” Furthermore, the Qurʾān employs a number of rabbinic teachings, so the identification of the Jews appearing in the Qurʾān as rabbinic seems relatively certain.8 In the following example, I will suggest a reading strategy for the Qurʾān that may be applicable to many of the instances in which the text simultaneously relates to its contemporaneous Jewish and Christian traditions. Most qurʾānic references to the traditions of “the People of the Book” are twofold, combining a critique of the rabbis with a critique of Christianity.9 Initially, the Qurʾān’s apparent divergences from rabbinic and Christian teachings may be perceived as vague polemics or as indicative of a lack of precise familiarity with their traditions. In fact, we do have to engage in a subtle incremental approach to reconstructing the oral culture of the Judaism and Christianity to which the Qurʾān reacts. Closer consideration, indeed, allows us to see that the Qurʾān’s simultaneous dialogue with rabbinic literature displays the same precision I sought to illustrate for the ways in which the Qurʾān addresses the oral tradition encapsulated by the Didascalia. The Qurʾān evokes and corrects the traditions of both Jews and Christians; the precision of its references is geared toward this polemical context. I will seek to illustrate how the Qurʾān’s intentional distortion of rabbinic tradition generates a polemical message for a Medinan audience that was sufficiently familiar with Jewish discourse. Most importantly, considering that the Qurʾān deals with its two most central interlocutors in the same way allows us to transfer insights between the ways in which it engages both traditions, as in the following verse: The Jews and the Christians (al-naṣārā) say: “We are God’s sons (abnāʾu-llāhi), and His beloved ones (aḥibbāʾuhū).” Say: “Then why does He punish you for your sins? Rather you are humans from among His creatures.” (Q 5:18)

266  Holger M. Zellentin The Qurʾān here laments that the Jews and the Christians call themselves “sons of God”; elsewhere, it charges that the Christians call Jesus this.10 In my view, the Qurʾān addresses both the rabbinic and the Christian oral traditions with great precision and patent familiarity: the rabbis indeed explicitly state that “Israelites are beloved (ḥbybyn) as they are called ‘the sons (bnym) of God’ ” (Mishna Avot 3:14), a statement based on the Bible and reiterated throughout the rabbinic tradition that surely must be seen as part of rabbinic oral culture.11 The teachings of the rabbis, as well as their choice of words, are both well captured in this first example. The Qurʾān reflects the rabbinic claim to divine “sonship” as well as the roots used in the rabbinic tradition, bn, “son,” and ḥbb, “to love.” The degree of accuracy is high enough for an audience acquainted with the rabbinic teaching to admit that the Qurʾān’s presupposition about rabbinic culture is adequate even if it may well reject the polemics themselves. The pertinent parallel Christian tradition, equally evoked by the Qurʾān, can best be reconstructed with the help of the Didascalia. This text sees its community as part of the people of Israel and addresses its members explicitly as “sons of God” (e.g., bnwhy d’lh’ in DA II, 14.15 or bny’ .  .  . d’lh’ in DA XI, 129.15) and its audience as “beloved sons” (bnyn ḥbyb’, DA VI, 70.5).12 The Qurʾān emphasizes, again with sufficient precision regarding both choice of words and content, the broad overlap of the Jewish and Christian teachings. Accusing Jews and Christians of claiming divine “sonship” for themselves, the Qurʾān reflects and synthesizes these teachings accurately enough to generate a precise message of polemical difference from the teachings of both groups. What is the worth of a special relationship with God, the Qurʾān asks, if it does not offer protection from punishment – thereby utilizing a central trope known from the Jewish-Christian polemics of Late Antiquity?13 This sufficient, though not necessarily complete, presupposed familiarity with Jewish and Christian teachings known to us thus allows for a better comprehension of both the Qurʾān and its contemporaries. Elsewhere, the Qurʾān again accuses the Jews and Christians by polemicizing against the role of two official titles whose precise nature has yet to be determined: They have taken their aḥbār and their ruhbān as lords (arbāb) besides God, and also the Messiah, Mary’s son, though they were commanded to worship only one God There is no god except Him; He is far too immaculate To have any partners that they associate (yushrikūna) with Him (Q 9:31) On the surface, the Qurʾān here seems merely to polemicize against attributing lofty status to religious leaders, the aḥbār and ruhbān. The Qurʾān likely turns the table on Christians by echoing the tradition of Matthew, which depicts Jesus as denouncing those who like to be called “lord,” “rby” (Peshitta on Mt. 23:7–8).14 In addition, however, the Qurʾān engages both sides of the porous linguistic border between Aramaic and Arabic by simultaneously addressing its own audience and

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  267 its adversaries in their own respective idioms. A close reading first of the rabbinic literature and then of the Didascalia will illustrate the Qurʾān’s strategy in addressing its interlocutors and help us determine the identity of the aḥbār and ruhbān as well as allowing us historically to contextualize the charges leveled against these figures. This literary and philological inquiry will allow us once more to situate the Qurʾān more precisely “in between” the Didascalia and rabbinic literature, that is, in a trialogue with both the Christians and the Jews of its time. In opposition to earlier “orientalist” or “traditional” Islamic studies, which often impose a sense on the Qurʾān’s terms that is known from Jewish, Christian, or Muslim literature, I propose an inversion of the hermeneutical hierarchy. In my view, only a primary analysis that rests on the Qurʾān alone can illustrate the prominent, but not exclusive, value of texts such as the Didascalia and of rabbinic literature for our secondary historical reconstruction of the religious leaders named in the Qurʾān.

Taking the Aḥbār as Lords beside God As Abraham Geiger has long observed, the term the Qurʾān uses to designate the Jewish dignitaries, “aḥbār” (often translated as “scribes”), is a term “borrowed” from the rabbinic tradition – both words are based on the same consonants ḥ-b-r.15 As we will see shortly, the terms “ḥbry” in the Aramaic plural or “ḥbrym” in the Hebrew plural designate a number of people. In the Talmudic period, these can be “colleagues” of equal rank or the members of an elusive elite group within the rabbinic movement who paid special attention to purity and the payment of the tithe. In post-Talmudic times, the ḥbr is a member of the Palestinian rabbinic academy or a communal leader honored by the rabbis through this title; in Babylonia the term even designates one of the leaders of the rabbinic academy. In qurʾānic Arabic, the self-designation of the rabbis would invoke the root “ḥbr” that describes “delight,” here associated with Paradise (Q 30:15 and Q 43:70), causing the title to sound pretentious. Regardless of the possibly problematic associations with the rabbinic titles, to which I shall return, and even before determining any of their titles more precisely, we can see that the Qurʾān, in addition to “rabbi,” uses a second rabbinic self-designation, “ḥbr” – and it may well use a third one. The Qurʾān associates the aḥbār explicitly with the rabbis and perhaps with “the sages,” the ḥkmym, as in the following passage: The prophets, who had submitted, judged by it (yaḥkumu bihā,   i.e., by the Torah) for those who profess Judaism, and the rabbis (rabbāniyyūn) and the aḥbār (should judge) by what they were charged to preserve (bi-ma stuḥfiẓū) from the Book of God. (Q 5:44) In Q 5:44 we learn that the rabbis (rabbāniyyūn), along with the aḥbār, function as judges over the Jewish community. Q 5:63 as well associates both titles with one another in an accusing question: why these Jewish leaders “do not prohibit

268  Holger M. Zellentin (law-lā yanhāhum) the Jews from sinful speech and from devouring (aklihim) illicit gains.” The Qurʾān thus associates the two rabbinic titles, “rabbis” and “aḥbār” with one another, and in its statement that they yaḥkumu, “should judge,” it may even allude to the preferred self-designation of the rabbis, ḥkmym, which can equally sound pretentious in Arabic.16 The Qurʾān presents the religious leaders of the Jews in this case as judges and as guardians over the people who could and should enforce a prohibition and who were charged with the preservation of the Torah. This allows us to grasp the Qurʾān’s allusion in Q 9:31, the passage previously cited: the title “rabbi” is not used here, yet the audience is expected to connect this title with the accusation of taking the aḥbār as “lords,” (arbāb) – an Arabic term that uses the same root as the Arabicized Hebrew and Aramaic rabbinic title. The aḥbār, after all, are part of the rabbinic sociocultural milieu. The fact that the Aramaic and Arabic root for “lord,” rb(b), denotes both God and the rabbis then leads to the Qurʾān’s first message: the title “rabbi” is as hubristic as the titles “ḥbr” and possibly even “ḥkm.”17 The Qurʾān hence accuses the rabbis of perhaps the most outrageous variant of shirk, of associating another deity with God: it accuses them of playing gods themselves.18 This charge of course seems flatly to contradict the monotheism of the rabbinic corpus.19 Would the Qurʾān have expected its audience really to believe that the rabbis saw themselves as “lords beside God”? In the preserved literature, explicit self-deification is not known as a hallmark of rabbinic Judaism. To the contrary, God corrects the angels, who initially take Adam to be divine, by putting the first man to sleep, and he ostentatiously flogs an angel just because a rabbi mistook it as a deity. That rabbi may well be a stand-in for mystically or Christian-inclined Jews, yet the flogging drives home the point of the unity of God.20 Is the Qurʾān’s claim regarding the “deification” of rabbis historically unsustainable, or were perhaps the Jews of Arabia not rabbinic after all? A close reading of the previously cited qurʾānic passage in dialogue with the rabbinic tradition suggests that at least part of the Qurʾān’s audience would have grasped a reference to very specific rabbinic tradition; the reference would then generate the Qurʾān’s message as precise polemical hyperbole. Whereas it may seem at first sight that the Qurʾān does not grasp the theology of its adversaries, consideration of the rabbinic tradition allows for a deeper understanding: indeed, the deification of aḥbār and of rabbis reflects the Qurʾān’s polemical engagement with rabbinic claims to authority. The following example from a rabbinic saying is widely attested in Palestine as well as in Babylonia and can therefore be safely assumed to be part of the rabbinic oral tradition: Rabbi El‘azar ben Shammu‘a says: “Let the honor of your disciple be as dear to you as your own, and the honor of your colleague (ḥbr) as the fear of your rb, and the fear of your rb as the fear of Heaven.” (Mishna Avot 4.12)21 Rabbi El‘azar defines the honor due to a teacher in typically climactic fashion, suggesting that each status within rabbinic society should be elevated by one

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  269 step: disciples should be honored as equals, equals as teachers, and teachers as God. Within rabbinic discourse, there would be no danger here of confusing the subject of divine honor, one’s rabbi (rb), with God Himself – the teacher is honored only because he embodies the rabbinic tradition that as a whole is endorsed by God. Yet the tradition, with which the Qurʾān seems familiar, is wide open for polemical recasting from a critical outside perspective, for the teachings of Q 9:31 and of the rabbis overlap doubly, with both associating the roots “ḥbr” and “rb(b)” with God (“heaven” in rabbinic parlance).22 The tradition, apparently known to the Qurʾān’s community, forms the basis for a reiteration in the form of a criticism: it is implied that the step from fearing the leaders like God to their actual deification is a very small one. The rabbinic tradition thereby allows us to correct our course toward assuming that the Qurʾān engages a specific Jewish saying known to its audience, which it criticizes through hyperbole without spelling it out. If so, the audience will understand the charge not as a systematic doctrinal statement claiming that the Jews actually take the rabbinic aḥbār to be “lords beside God.” Instead, the charge is very precise: if one needs to fear the aḥbār as if they were God, they may as well be thought of as God, leading to the said charge of shirk. Read against the rabbinic literature, the Qurʾān’s charge becomes reasonable – which of course does not adjudicate the ultimately theological question of whether the charge would have been justified or not. In this case and others, the Qurʾān’s divergence from rabbinic tradition seems not to be motivated by ignorance but by issuing a “polemically corrective” statement, to use Sidney Griffith’s felicitous term.23 In emphasizing that they should not be taken as “lords beside God,” the Qurʾān by no means dismisses the authority of the rabbis and the aḥbār as such, as we already saw in Q 5:44 and 63. It is clear, however, that the rabbinical statement diverges clearly from the Qurʾān’s usage in one point: in the rabbinic passage cited, the ḥbr clearly designates an equal colleague, whereas the Qurʾān speaks explicitly of the deification of the aḥbār alone, with the rabbis only implicitly evoked. The Qurʾān’s use of the title “aḥbār” thus seems to designate the apex of the rabbinic leaders, whereas the term “rabbāniyyūn,” “rabbis,” seems to be the more general term. The equation of rabbis and ḥbrym, as it appears especially in the Babylonian Talmud, is thus not reflected in the Qurʾān. It is of crucial importance for the comparative reading of the rabbinic tradition and the Qurʾān to pay attention to such small divergences. Seth Schwartz’ use of the term “misprision” seems relevant here: the Qurʾān reconstructs rabbinic Judaism in a manner that partially overlaps with the rabbinic tradition, although the Qurʾān represents this tradition only in as far as it matters for its complaints against the Jews.24 When the Qurʾān thus castigates the rabbinic “deification” of the aḥbār, it evokes the rabbinic tradition again with enough precision to let one recognize the rabbinic teaching in question. Still, the Qurʾān does not deviate from its own use of language, in which the aḥbār are recognizable as the rabbinic leaders. We can corroborate this proposition if we consider the cognate meaning of the term as rabbinic leaders in another verse. The Qurʾān here charges that the

270  Holger M. Zellentin rabbinic aḥbār (as well as the ruhbān, whose role is to be determined) “wrongfully eat up the people’s wealth”: Oh you who have faith! Indeed many of the aḥbār and the ruhbān Wrongfully eat up (la-yaʾkulūna) the people’s wealth, And bar [them] from the way of God Those who store up gold and silver And do not spend it in the way of God Inform them of a painful punishment.

(Q 9:34)

The aḥbār, yet not the rabbis in general, are accused of eating up the goods entrusted to them; the Qurʾān here again uses the root “ʾkl” as it did in the verse Q 5:63 already discussed. The fact that at least some rabbis were supported by the biblical tithe is historically demonstrable. The biblical tithe guarantees an income for priests, Levites, and the poor; charges of abuse of the priestly tithe are as old as the practice itself. In the Gospels, Jesus levels the accusation that the scholars and Pharisees “devour (d’klyn) widows’ possessions” (see Peshitta on Mt. 23:13, see also Mk. 12:40, and Lk. 20:47). Indeed, after the destruction of the temple, the tithes, originally reserved for priests and Levites, went increasingly to scholars. The rabbis were thus in charge of communal funds, of which part was designated for them and part for the poor.25 These communal payments to the scholars, considered along with the Christian anti-Jewish tradition, constitute the historical background against which we should read the Qurʾān’s charge of embezzlement against the Jewish leaders. The Qurʾān itself, by contrast, follows the Judeo-Christian legal culture, which stipulates that no religious leader is entitled to earthly wages.26 All qurʾānic passages that detail the lawful distribution of charity point to the poor, not to the religious leaders. In its dispute with rabbinic Judaism (as well as with Christianity, as we shall see), the Qurʾān’s community thus strives both for charitable openness and for a correction of a perceived breach of the first biblical commandment, the avoidance of shirk. In light of the Qurʾān’s accusations and descriptions of the aḥbār, we can now define the meaning of this word more precisely. The cognate Hebrew term, “ḥbr,” has, as already mentioned, several meanings, three of which are especially pertinent for the Qurʾān. First, the most common usage denotes a rabbinic “colleague” of equal rank; especially in the Babylonian usage, ḥbr simply designates any rabbi.27 Even though this meaning is clearly implied in the cited teaching regarding the divine fear of one’s teacher, it is not compatible with the hierarchy the Qurʾān implies between regular rabbis and the aḥbār. Second, the rabbinic ḥbrym supposedly constituted an elitist group that laid particular emphasis on the conscientious obedience to purity and the raising of tithes. This second meaning seems attractive in light of the Qurʾān’s criticism that the aḥbār had embezzled communal funds. Several historians, however, have doubts whether or not such a group ever existed and, if so, whether it would have

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  271 survived the destruction of the temple.28 The association of the ḥbrym with the tithe and with a rabbinic elitist group in Talmudic discourse, however, remains relevant even if it did not reflect any sociocultural reality in the seventh century. This association, in addition to the “deification” of the rabbinic leaders, therefore offers a second point at which we can understand the qurʾānic polemic better with the help of rabbinic literature. A third meaning, finally, concerns the hierarchy indicated in the Qurʾān, in which the aḥbār stand above the regular rabbis, for this hierarchy stands closest to the post-Talmudic Palestinian rabbinic use of the term. In the Babylonian academy, the title “ḥbr” was used for those rabbis who sat in the first row. Yet in Palestine it designated all members of the rabbinic academy and was equally bestowed upon scholars who were not part of the academy as well as on communal leaders. A ḥbr was thus an honorary title among the rabbis and Jews of Palestine, a first among equals but also a judge and a communal leader – a meaning it also has in later Islamic texts.29 Whereas the Babylonian usage is too strictly confined, the Palestinian one is cognate to the Qurʾān’s sense of the aḥbār as the rabbinic leaders more broadly. I would therefore suggest translating the title simply as “rabbinic overseer,” to whom the regular rabbis are subordinate in the Jewish community – we cannot learn any more or any less from the Qurʾān, and we cannot corroborate any more or any less through rabbinic literature.30 The example of deified rabbis is also helpful in adjusting our focus: just as in the case of the Didascalia, in no way should we assume that the Qurʾān makes direct use of rabbinic writing. The rabbinic saying on honoring one’s rabbi had become part of the broader Jewish tradition in the time of the Qurʾān; there is, however, no trace of direct contact between the Qurʾān and rabbinic literature. Rather, we should see both the Qurʾān and the rabbinic saying as reflecting an oral Jewish culture that stretched from Palestine to Sassanian Babylonia as well as to the large area south of both lands, Arabia, all the while showing local variations. The Qurʾān presumes its audience’s sufficient familiarity with aspects of especially the Palestinian rabbinic tradition. The rabbis and their leaders are recognized at the same time as they are called to repent. This also holds true for the Qurʾān’s expectations toward its audience’s knowledge of the Christian tradition. And in this, as in many other cases, the Qurʾān’s critical references reflect a twofold engagement with both parties of “the People of the Book,” the rabbinic Jews and the Christians. We can now approach the teachings and the communal structures of the Qurʾān’s Christians especially (yet not exclusively) through the affinity of the Qurʾān with the Didascalia. Keeping the example of the aḥbār and the rabbis in mind, we can turn to the ruhbān and the qissīsīn.

Taking the Ruhbān as Lords beside God It is often claimed that the traditional Islamic lexicography understands the ruhbān as “monks” and their “office,” rahbāniyya, as “monasticism,” or even “asceticism.” Western scholars generally rely on this presupposition.31 In a forthcoming

272  Holger M. Zellentin essay, however, Samuela Pagani illustrates persuasively that the traditional Muslim interpretation diverges from this supposition in three main points: • • •

First, the tradition by no means ignores the juridical and institutional authority exercised by the ruhbān. Furthermore, the jurists who deny any legitimacy to the office of the ruhbān do not make any distinction between “monks” and “clerics.” Finally, some exegetes see in rahbāniyya the faithful heritage of Jesus and the apostles, who separated themselves from the corrupt imperial church.32

My interpretations in the following are thus not new, but they are derived and further developed in a novel manner. I will point to the fact that an exclusive limitation of the term “rahbāniyya” to specific forms of the bishopric, monasticism, or even celibacy would not do justice to the context of Q 57 Sūrat al-Ḥadīd. Here, in verse 27, we find a reference to the “true observance” (ḥaqqa riʿāyatihā) with which the ruhbān should have exercised their office, the rahbāniyya. The passage, in its stipulation of a deviation, presupposes that such a “true observance” (or perhaps “oversight,” as I will suggest) must exist, which necessitates a form of rahbāniyya that does fall in line with Qurʾān’s teachings. Because celibacy and thereby a substantial part of common Christian ideals of monasticism and the bishopric are incompatible with the teachings of the Qurʾān, the term “rahbāniyya” in Sūra 57 must have a different denotation (without necessarily excluding an ascetic connotation). Based on a primary literary analysis of the Qurʾān’s material in a secondary dialogue with the material transmitted by the Didascalia, I will suggest that the ruhbān are simply the “overseers of the Christian community.” These may well include the married and locally appointed “bishops” as they are described in the Didascalia. At the same time, it remains well possible that other, likely male, communal leaders are designated by this term and that some of these may well have been unmarried. The one certainty we will find is that the Qurʾān does not address celibacy explicitly. The novelty of my suggestion is its inner-qurʾānic and cultural basis, not the suggestion itself.33 The initial impulse for the reinterpretation of the word “ruhbān,” was already given by Geiger, who suggested that the Arabic word “ruhbān,” regardless of the medial hāʾ of the root “rhb,” should be derived from the Semitic root “rbb,” which of course can mean “rabbis” as well as “lords,” “overseers,” and “high officials.” For Geiger, ruhbān simply denotes “clerics.”34 Geiger’s suggestion was recently reiterated more carefully by de Blois, who hears an echo of rwrbn’, the plural form (with a doubling of the initial resh) of the Syriac rb, “leader,” in the Arabic ruhbān.35 I do not fully disagree with the interpretations of Geiger and de Blois, yet I take exception with the relative confinement especially of Geiger’s reading as well as with the methodology of both scholars. It is necessary neither to invent a new etymology nor to restrict the meaning of the term arbitrarily. It is the Qurʾān itself that associates the roots “rbb” and “rhb,” as we have seen. It charges the Christians with having taken their ruhbān as arbāb, as “lords beside God,” doubly evoking the

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  273 multilingual term “rb(b)” at the center of the polemic against rabbinic and Christian leaders in Q 9:31. Indeed, one of the Didascalia’s terms for Jesus is rb’ (DA XIX, 190.11), just as the Qurʾān claims when accusing the Christians of taking Jesus as Lord (Q 9:31). Furthermore we will see that the Didascalia designates the bishops several times with the root “rb.” Geiger and de Blois thus were certainly right in observing that ruhbān sounds a lot like rb(b) and maybe also that it can designate “clerics” or “overseers,” yet the homophony itself says nothing about the meaning of the word. This can be derived only from the Qurʾān, whose language should be brought into contact with other Late Antique sources only secondarily. Thus back to the Qurʾān itself. As we saw in Q 9:31, in addition to accusing the Jews of taking their aḥbār as “lords beside God,” the Qurʾān accuses Christians of taking their ruhbān as such. Further, after accusing the aḥbār, the rabbinic officials, of wrongfully eating up the people’s wealth, the Qurʾān in turn accuses the ruhbān of doing so. It seems, then, that the ruhbān held a position of esteem and monetary compensation in the Christian community akin to that of the aḥbār in the rabbinic community. This suggests that the ruhbān were the overseers of the Christian community. And, just as the aḥbār were superior to the regular rabbis in the case of the Jewish community, we find a class of officials to which the Christian ruhbān relate in the same way, as we can see in the following qurʾānic passage: Surely you will find the most hostile people towards the faithful to be the Jews (al-yahūd) and the associators (alladhīna ashrakū) and surely you will find the nearest of them in affection to the faithful those who say “we are Christians (naṣārā)” That is because there are qissīsīn and ruhbān among them And they are not arrogant. When they hear what has been revealed to the Apostle, You see their eyes fill with tears Because of the truth they recognize. (Q 5:82–83) This verse makes it clear that, just as we encountered two titles of rabbinic officials, the Christians also seem to employ two titles: that of the “ruhbān” and that of the “qissīsīn.” As was the case with the rabbinic titles, the Qurʾān’s positive evaluation here endorses the two offices designated by the two titles in principle. In the previously discussed passages, however, the text pointed to the undue veneration of the ruhbān alone as well as to their embezzlement of public funds alone. Inversely, the Qurʾān does not accuse the Christians of deifying the qissīsīn nor the qissīsīn of misusing funds. With regard to the parallel relationship between the rabbis and their overseers, the aḥbār, it therefore seems probable that the ruhbān may well be the overseers over the qissīsīn and the latter the religious leaders of the Christians, who themselves are subordinate to the ruhbān. Based on this hypothesis, which relies primarily on the Qurʾān, we can now turn to the Late Antique Christian tradition. The Qurʾān’s term “qissīs” is often

274  Holger M. Zellentin translated as “priest.” The term is well-attested in Arabic inscriptions and ancient poetry; yet it is, as Geiger again noted, related to the Syriac term “qshysh,” which can denote “elder” or “priest” – a clear differentiation between these two positions is foreign to much of the Syriac literature. These “priests” and “elders,” or “presbyters” in Western languages are the regular subordinate Christian leaders.36 The terminologies of the Qurʾān and of the Syriac are thus related. In this situation, the parallel testimony of the Didascalia and cognate writings is relevant. Here – as throughout much of the Christian tradition – the “elders” are depicted as the church leadership, under the bishop: And for the elders (lqshysh’) let there be separated a place on the eastern side of the house, and let the chair of the bishop (d’pysqwp’) be among them and let the elders (qshysh’) sit with him. (DA XII, 143.23–25) Indeed, the Didascalia portrays the bishop as the head of the council of elders; the two offices are codependent throughout the text: But concerning the bishops, hear likewise. The shepherd (r‘y’) is who is appointed bishop (’pysqwp’) and head among the council of elders (bqshyshwt’) in the church and in every congregation. (DA IV, 52.6–7) The church leadership hence is made up of a group of elders who are headed by a r‘y, a “shepherd,” the bishop – a common Christian structure at least since the time of Ignatius of Antioch, similarly endorsed by the Clementine Homilies.37 Each time that the Didascalia mentions the elders, it actually does so in conjunction with the bishop to whom they are ranked second. In chapters IX, XI, and XII, the Didascalia specifies the roles and privileges of these two offices, together with those of the various lesser roles in the Church, such as deacon, subdeacon and lector. It is important to note that the Didascalia presupposes a very local ecclesiastical structure: every congregation has a bishop, who is a married man, but no higher office is mentioned. The Didascalia’s biblical classification of the bishops and elders changes: the bishop can be compared to the high priest, to the priest, to the Levite, or to the prophet. The elders, in turn, are then referred to as apostles, then as priests, and then as Levites.38 In the Didascalia, the bishop is nothing but a locally appointed overseer, whereas the elders are the communal leaders subordinate to him. It is the Didascalia’s description of a bipartite acme of the church leadership that suggests a comparison to the Qurʾān’s two titles for Christian officials. The subordination of the qissīsīn under the ruhbān that is implied in the Qurʾān, as well as the linguistic affinity to Syriac qshysh’, suggests that the qurʾānic-Arabic expression “qissīsīn” may simply denote the Christian communal leaders subordinate to the ruhbān, parallel to the regular rabbis who act under the aḥbār. This in turn leads us to consider the question of whether we can be sure that the

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  275 ruhbān are indeed the superior Christian leaders. For despite the Qurʾān’s close affinity with the Didascalia’s legal culture that I posit, it seems at first sight that the Qurʾān makes no reference to the bishopric. Indeed, ecclesiastical hierarchy is the one element of the Didascalia’s teaching that seems, at least to me, conspicuously absent from the Qurʾān’s engagement with this tradition – if one follows the traditional reading of ruhbān, which arbitrarily restricts its meaning to denote “monks.” I will now illustrate that there are further historical, philological, and especially inner-qurʾānic reasons to dismiss such a restriction and to take the term “ruhbān” much more broadly. First we should note that the term “ruhbān,” or “rāhib” in the extra-qurʾānic singular, is well-attested in Arabic inscriptions and poetry where it is usually understood to denote “monk” or “anchorite.”39 This reading makes good sense as a possible meaning in Late Antique Arabic. Monks seem to have been known to the qurʾānic community; the Qurʾān elsewhere speaks of monks’ cells (ṣawāmiʿ, Q 22:40, using a term that is related to “fasting”). Likewise, the two charges of the Qurʾān – that the ruhbān were venerated as if they were God and that they misused funds – can easily be related to the broader evidence: monks were often accused of embezzlement, and there is no shortage of evidence for the Christian veneration of holy men, which can easily appear excessive to outsiders.40 There is hence no doubt – and no way to disprove – that the Arabic term “ruhbān” denotes Christian leaders; as Pagani and Griffith emphasize, monks and especially abbots are figures of central authority if not communal leaders in their own right.41 The question, however, remains whether the denotation of the term “ruhbān” is that of the “overseer” more broadly or that of the celibate monk more specifically. It must be part of the answer to this question to explain the post-qurʾānic restriction of the term “ruhbān,” even if this restriction did not go very far in the time of classical Islam, as Pagani has shown. How could the “Christian leaders” in qurʾānic Arabic shift their meanings as known from many ḥadīth and tafsīr texts, namely to “monasticism” and “celibacy”? It seems to me, on the one hand, that those classical interpreters who keep their focus on the authority of the ruhbān, and especially those who also involve the clerics in their deliberations, seem to understand the text much better than our contemporaneous translators. On the other hand, the traditionally Islamic association of the rahbāniyya with Jesus as well as with the apostles may well reflect the bishops’ claim for apostolic succession as described, for example, in the Didascalia. Here, we have to point also to Griffith’s observation about the proximity that the Qurʾān evokes between its “helpers of God” and the Christian apostles, for the term “helpers of God” in the Didascalia refers to the bishops as successors of the apostles.42 Also in this case, hence, parts of the Islamic tradition seem to be related to the suggested simple reading of the term “ruhbān” as “overseers.” Yet how did the topic of celibacy ever enter the Qurʾān’s exegesis if it was indeed foreign to its discourse? Even if a full answer to this question surpasses the frame of the present considerations, I would like to point to one possible further development of the thesis of Pagani and Emran El-Badawi: that the development of celibacy in post-qurʾānic times may have been a factor in the development of

276  Holger M. Zellentin the term “ruhbān.” For the spread of celibacy was a relevant topic already long before the Qurʾān. I suspect that the Christians known to the Qurʾān’s community may have resembled those of the Didascalia, whose leaders were married. This does not exclude the possibility that some of the ruhbān were unmarried. It is, moreover, clear that the doctrine of the Didascalia regarding marriage was already on its way out in the seventh century in most strands of Christianity, being replaced by the ascendency of celibacy.43 Most of the interpreters of the Qurʾān who lived after the dissemination of Islam in the Caliphates of the Umayyads and the Abassids were therefore accustomed to forms of the bishopric different from that of the Qurʾān’s community and familiar especially with the celibate bishopric that became binding in many churches of the east after 692. Claudia Rapp pointed out that the spread of celibacy since the fourth century was accompanied by the increasing tendency to install former bishops as monks.44 This double transformation, the rise of celibacy among the clerus and the rise of former monks among the clerics, which could be reflected in parts of the later Islamic exegesis, may explain how the early interpreters of the Qurʾān transformed the word “ruhbān” to fit their own context. This line of thought, however, must be pursued separately from a study focused on the Qurʾān. So once again, back to the Qurʾān and its own time. There are many good reasons to tread carefully when investigating the meaning of the term “ruhbān” in the Qurʾān. None less than Sidney Griffith recently defended a very confined meaning of the terms “ruhbān” as “monks” and “qissīsīn” as “priests.” In a recent discussion of my work, Griffith writes: [Zellentin] points to the etymological associations of the root consonants of the term [ruhbān] with fear and awe, as in the expression “God fearers.” The problem is that in no Christian tradition have bishops as a class been so characterized, while monks, whose voices were often in late antiquity heard with more authority than those of bishops, were widely esteemed precisely for their fear of God. What is more, in his Ecclesiastical History (6.38) the late antique historian Sozomen (d. 450 CE), originally from Palestine, recalled that the Saracens of his time “shared in the faith of Christ by intercourse with the priests and monks,” just as the Qurʾān has it!45 At first sight, Griffith’s short discussion regarding the etymological association of ruhbān with “fear” and his invocation of Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History makes perfect sense. A closer consideration, however, shows that both of Griffith’s arguments against my reading point to the importance of bishops at least as much as to that of monks. There are indeed many cases in which individual bishops are associated with theosebeia, the fear of God; not least, in Sozomen’s Ecclesiastical History it is easy to find such an example (see, e.g., 3:2:5 and 3:23:2 on Athanasius). I will thus return to the association of bishops as a “class” with “fear” and “awe,” especially in the Didascalia after first considering the historical context. Griffith ends his considerations with a reference to the fifth-century historian Sozomen, who pointed out that the Saracens had learned their faith in Christ

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  277 through their dealings with priests and monks. Griffith’s double equation – that of the Saracens with the Qurʾān’s primitive community as well as that of the Saracen faith in Christ with the Qurʾān’s Islam – seems a bit quick, which of course can be excused in the pithy format of a book review. Yet even if we admit the testimony of Sozomen, and there are good reasons for doing so, we find that it serves as a point of departure not only for the history of monasticism but also of the bishopric in Arabia – and especially for the increasingly unclear division between bishops and monks. Since the fourth century, these often exchanged their “offices” – an ascetic life became a condition for the bishopric in all those churches that increasingly demanded celibacy for their clergy.46 Indeed, Sozomen’s History illustrates the rapprochement of the development of monasticism and the bishopric in an Arabian context very well. His sentence about the actions of the “priests and monks” (ἱερέων καὶ μοναχῶν, Sozomen 6:38:14) among the Saracens, as quoted by Griffith, follows a report about the attempt of the Queen of the Saracens, Mania, to enforce the ordination of Moses, an anchorite, as bishop (ἐπίσκοπος, 6:38:4) over her people. Moses rejects the ordination for political and personal reasons, invoking the testimony of the “bishops, the elders, and the deacons” (ἐπίσκοποί τε καὶ πρεσβύτεροι καὶ διάκονοι, 6:38:8). He also makes it clear that he is not worthy of the title of “high priest” (ἀρχιερέως, 6:38:5) – a typical reaction for a pious man in Late Antiquity that designates him as especially pious. According to Sozomen, Moses spends the rest of his life as “priest” (τὴν ἱερωσύνην, 6:38:9) among the Saracens.47 Sozomen’s testimony shows as one among many that the office of the monk often came into contact with that of the priest and the bishop and that an overly exacting differentiation between the offices often did not apply. At the same time, it seems important to note that both of Sozomen’s contemporary colleagues, Theodoret of Cyrrhus (Ecclesiastical History 4:20) and Socrates Scholasticus (Ecclesiastical History 4:36) describe in detail that Moses eventually did accept the bishopric over the Saracens. General church history, if one wants to pay attention to it, thus illustrates the possible affinity of the Arab world with “monks and priests” as well as with “bishops, elders, and deacons,” also known from so many Christian sources. The process of the Christianization of Arabia and the spread both of monasticism and the bishopric through most of its regions are generally well-documented.48 Sozomen’s testimony invites us to accept the importance of both monks and bishops in Arabia and therefore not to define the term “ruhbān” too narrowly. His testimony, though, is not compatible with the Didascalia in one point, that is, the likely celibacy of Moses and other bishops. I therefore suggest first turning to the qurʾānic passage that supposedly deals with “monasticism” or even “celibacy” and placing it in its historical context only after an independent analysis. If the ruhbān are Christian leaders, which few people seem to doubt, then rahbāniyya can hardly mean “monasticism,” as it is now often understood. If one reads Q 57:27, the one passage in which the term appears, in its literary context in Sūrat al-Ḥadīd, paying special attention to the nuanced use of Arabic words, then we gain a relatively clear sense of its meaning that challenges most

278  Holger M. Zellentin contemporaneous translations of the term, though not all traditional Islamic interpretations, as we have seen. The famous passage has God state in the pluralis majestatis: Then we followed [Noah and Abraham] with Our apostles And We followed [them] with Jesus son of Mary, And We gave him the Gospel, And We put in the hearts (fī qulūb) of those who followed him kindness (raʾfatan) and mercy (raḥmatan) and rahbāniyya (f.), they innovated it (ibtadaʿūhā, f.), —We had not written it (katabnāhā, f.) for them – Only seeking God’s pleasure (ibtighāʾa riḍwāni llāhi). Yet they did not observe it (mā raʿawhā) with due observance (ḥaqqa riʿāyatihā) So we gave the faithful among them their reward (ajrahum), But many of them are transgressors (wa-kathīrun minhum fāsiqūna). (Q 57:27) The text associates the institution of rahbāniyya with the followers of Jesus as well as with the Christian community. The Qurʾān describes the office either as a divine institution, which was subsequently corrupted, or as human innovation, likely with the purpose of ensuring God’s pleasure. Both possibilities are plausible, and both have already been discussed intensely in previous scholarship: the first option seems to be preferable based on reasons of content, whereas the latter seems grammatically preferable.49 As the Qurʾān does not dismiss the institution of rahbāniyya, and rather praises the ruhbān, its representatives, as we saw in Q 5:82, accepting them as capable of “true observance,” we can exclude the origin of the institution – divine or human – from consideration for the present purposes. To understand the term “rahbāniyya” and thereby the function of the ruhbān, a brief reading of the passage in its context is necessary. This context suggests rather clearly that the unspecified transgression of the ruhbān in verse Q 57:27 is again financial misconduct, as Pagani and El-Badawi have rightly observed.50 The main theme of the sura, accordingly, is the expenditure of money in a way that pleases God, as verse Q 57:7 already emphasizes: Have faith in God and His Apostle, and spend (wa-ʾanfiqū) out of that wherein He has made you successors. Those of you who have faith and spend (wa-ʾanfaqū), – there is a great reward (ʾajrun) for them. The sura Q 57 repeatedly uses these and similar expressions that condemn avarice and praise charity, for example, in verses 10, 11, 18, 19, 20, and 24. The reward promised in verses 7 and 18, ajr, also explains the reward for the righteous ruhbān in our verse 27. The Qurʾān, moreover, uses most of the words that appear in verse 27 earlier in the same sura, corroborating the financial character of transgression with which it charges the ruhbān. The theme in verse 16 is God’s truth (al-ḥaqq)

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  279 and the hardened hearts (al-qulūb) of those to whom the scripture (al-kitāb) had been given previously, thus including the Christians. Verse 16 ends with the statement that “many of them are transgressors” (wa-kathīrun minhum fāsiqūna). Verse 27, when repeating the terms “true,” “heart,” and “written,” as well as reiterating the entire sentence “but many of them are transgressors” (wa-kathīrun minhum fāsiqūna), clearly continues to discuss the theme of financial misconduct. This is the transgression of the People of the Book, in verse 16, as well as that of the ruhbān in verse 27. To these “transgressors,” verse 18 juxtaposes men and women who give “alms and (thereby) a good loan to God,” who can eventually expect a “noble reward” (ʾajrun); according to verse 20, they will, in Paradise, receive “forgiveness from God and pleasure” (maghfiratun mina llāhi wa-riḍwānun). Verse 27 again takes up these themes of reward and God’s pleasure when stating that the righteous among the ruhbān have received their reward (ʾajrahum). It is they who already strive for God’s pleasure (riḍwāni llāhi) or, depending on one’s reading of the verse, at least should do so. The tight net of references weaved from these (admittedly quite common) Arabic words in verse 27 and throughout the entire sura allows us to determine the transgression of the Christian ruhbān as the retaining of money with which they were entrusted by their community and apparently ultimately by God himself. The transgressions that the Qurʾān associates with the institution of rahbāniyya are thus exactly the ones with which the ruhbān were charged in Q 9:31: the inappropriate use of communal funds.51 Sūra 57, moreover, contains the key to the meaning of rahbāniyya. As already indicated, reading the sentence carefully, that the transgressing ruhbān “do not observe” (mā raʿawhā) the rahbāniyya with “true observance” (ḥaqqa riʿāyatihā), presupposes that “observing with true observance” must be possible. The generally very precise use of language in the Qurʾān encourages such a supposition; furthermore, verse 57:16 speaks of God’s “truth” (al-ḥaqq), priming the audience for the usage of the same word in verse 27. Throughout the Qurʾān, we find that this central theological term refers directly or at least indirectly to God’s higher truth (see, e.g., Q 2:26 and Q 70:24). The “true observance” of the rahbāniyya in verse 27 must thus be pleasing to God no matter whether their office is of divine or human origin. If we were to posit that the term “rahbāniyya” designates “monasticism” or even “celibacy”, then we have to ask what such a qurʾānic monasticism, which would be practiced with “true” and God-pleasing “observance,” would look like. The qurʾānic (as well as the Judeo-Christian) legal culture categorically endorses marriage and sexual intercourse, an endorsement not compatible with any kind of celibacy – not even with the attested sexual abstinence of married man after the ordination.52 The Qurʾān may endorse fasting and names the “monks cells” already mentioned with reference to this practice. Beyond this, however, there is no explicit monasticism in the Qurʾān. Rahbāniyya in Q 57:27 fully harmonizes with what the discussion until now has already shown: it describes the “office of the Christian overseers,” who are responsible especially for the communal finances and who are accused of misusing funds also in Q 9:34. The testimony of Q 57:27 therefore confirms that the ruhbān are nothing but the Christian

280  Holger M. Zellentin “overseers.” And were we to admit an extra-qurʾānic source at this point, then I would suggest that the married “overseers” of the Didascalia, for once, would fall within the semantic field of ruhbān. The bishops who, since the time of Sozomen, are former or even current monks, cannot of course be excluded – we can exclude celibacy as a part of the meaning of the term “rahbāniyya,” yet we cannot exclude the possibility that some ruhbān were not married. There are, furthermore, a few additional philological and historical hints that may corroborate the importance of the Didascalia for the even more precise understanding of the term. The relevance of the Syriac tradition becomes clear immediately if we consider that the Qurʾān, in Q 57:27, uses the Arabic verb rʿy in a sense that is well-attested both elsewhere in the Qurʾān as well as in Syriac. As just discussed, the Christian leaders who fill the office of the rahbāniyya “did not observe (mā raʿawhā) with true observation (ḥaqqa riʿāyatihā).” The Arabic word for “observance,” rʿy, occurs elsewhere in the legal context of keeping a religiously significant covenant; in Q 23:8 and again in Q 70:32, it is equated with qualities such as prayer, charity, and matrimonial faithfulness. These meanings reinforce the necessity that the office of the rahbāniyya should at least be potentially pleasing to God. The qurʾānic root “rʿy,” at the same time, also describes the shepherd rāʿi (see Q 28:23). In the entirety of the Syriac tradition, the root rʿy designates the “shepherd” in like manner, and thereby the bishop, as El-Badawi has duly noted.53 If we read the term “rahbāniyya” as designating the superior Christian overseers, then the passage in verse 27 gains a discernible message; this message can now secondarily be considered in light of its lexical and conceptual overlaps with Syriac literature and especially with the Didascalia. The Didascalia calls the bishop r‘y’, “shepherd” (DA IV, 52.6), the common Syriac term for bishops54 and a central metaphor that it draws out in many verses (DA VII, 78.5–80.18; see also DA IV, IX, and X). In a remarkable passage, the affinity between the Didascalia’s description of the bishops and the description of the ruhbān in Sūrat al-Ḥadīd is especially poignant: the Didascalia instructs the bishops to judge “as it was prescribed” (ktb’): “with kindness (bnyḥ’) and mercy (wbrḥm’)” (DA VI, 71.17–18). The Qurʾān, in turn, complains that even though God put “kindness (raʾfa) and mercy (raḥma)” into the hearts of Jesus’ followers, many of the ruhbān are transgressors and innovated something that God “has not prescribed for them” (mā katabnāhā ʿalaihim, Q 57:27). The double lexical and threefold negative conceptual overlap between the Didascalia’s instruction to the bishops could of course be explained with the participation of both cultures in the Judeo-Christian legal culture, and this would be quite right. Kindness and mercy are central to many Jewish, Christian, and qurʾānic passages. Yet it seems to me once again that the Didascalia is an especially valuable example for reconstructing the discourse already current among the Qurʾān’s audience, familiarity with which the Qurʾān implies and on which it builds. The aforementioned set of affinities is only one of many examples. Especially the Qurʾān’s central accusation against the ruhbān, the charge of financial misconduct, is pervasively reflected in the Didascalia, again combined with the use of cognate words. The entire eighth chapter of the Didascalia, as well as several passages in the Qurʾān, warns the “overseers” not to waste the wealth of the people and informs

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  281 them about the account they will have to give to God on the Day of Judgement should they transgress his commandment. The Didascalia even anticipates the Qurʾān’s charge of “wrongfully eating the wealth of the people” when warning the bishops as follows: As good stewards (rb’ bt’) of God, therefore, do well in dispensing those things that are given and come into the congregation. . . . Thus distribute and give to all who are in want. But be you also nourished and live from these things which come into the church. And do not swallow (tbl‘wn) them by yourself alone, but let those who are in want be sharers with you, and you shall be without offence with God. (DA VIII, 94.13–24) The Qurʾān of course rejects any use of communal funds for the overseers. Yet just as we saw it using the Gospel’s charge against the Pharisees against the rabbinic leaders of its own time, we now see it using the Didascalia’s charge against the bishops and indeed combining the two accusations in stating that many of the Jewish and of the Christian leaders “eat up” (la-yaʾkulūna) the wealth of the people. It informs them of a “painful punishment” (Q 9:34), and this second point is reflected in the Didascalia as well: You are they who have heard how the word is furious, hard against you if you despise and do not preach God’s will. You are those who are in grave danger of destruction if you despise your people. And you are those to whom a great reward (’gr’ rb’) is promised by God, which is trustworthy and which will not be held back. (DA VIII, 96:13–17) Individually, each of the themes here discussed has countless parallels in Late Antique literature. Yet the combination of the warning against the misuse of church funds, the imagery of “eating” them, and the stern warning of punishment and the promise of reward (’gr’ / ajr, see Q 57:27) that follows in both texts, in the context of addressing these communal leaders, indicates a shared discourse. The general nature of the issues shows of course that the Didascalia can be only one of my witnesses for a reconstruction of the Christian discourse known to the Qurʾān’s community. Yet even if it is not a direct witness, it is an important one. The Qurʾān’s respective charges against the Christians to have elevated the ruhbān to lords (arbāb, Q 9:31) beside God, and including the usage of the root “rbb,” reflect the language used in the Didascalia with even greater polemical precision than we saw regarding deification of the rabbinic aḥbār. In the passage previously cited, the bishops were already called “stewards,” or “lords of the house” (rb’ bt’). The bishops are also often called “your high priests” (rby khnykwn), as in the following passage, again using the root “rb.” The Didascalia, as well as other Christian writings, both Greek and Syriac, emphasize a role for the bishops that surpasses those of the high priests by far.55 Their role is more comparable to God

282  Holger M. Zellentin himself as “Lord.” Two typical passages show both the position of the bishops comparable to God as well as their financial responsibility: Indeed, great power, heavenly, that of the Almighty, is given to [the bishop]. Nevertheless, love the bishop and be afraid of him (wdḥlyn) as of a king, and honor him as God (dl’lh’). Your fruits and the works of your hands present to him, so that you may be blessed. Your first fruits and your tenths and your vows and your oblations give to him. For it is required that he may be sustained from them, and that he may provide also for those who are in want, to each as it is right for him. (DA IX, 111.22–112.8) But today the offerings that are presented through the bishops to the Lord God, for they are your high priests (rby khnykwn). . . . [The bishop] is a servant (mshmshn’) of the word and mediator (wtlyty’), but to you a teacher, and your father after God. . . . This is your chief (ryshkwn) and your leader and he is a mighty king (wmlk’) to you. He guides in the place of the Almighty (’ḥyd kl). But let him be honored (myqr) by you as God, because the bishop sits for you in the place of the Almighty God (’lh’ ’ḥyd kl). (DA IX, 103.15–25)56 The bishops, like the rabbinic overseers, thus receive tithes and their authority is compared to that of God. The fear of the bishop resembles the fear of God. Members of the Qurʾān’s community who were acquainted with such language will have recalled it when the Qurʾān charges the Christians with taking the ruhbān as “lords beside God” and the ruhbān themselves with the misuse of communal funds. The Qurʾān’s precision, as we already saw in the case of the rabbinic aḥbār, is again sufficient exactly for its polemical correctives. Given the close parallels with the treatment of the rabbinic literature with respect to Q 9:31 – the bishops’ portrayal in association with the elders, their godlike veneration, and their reception of tithes in the Didascalia – it then seems that “Christian leader” is a much more likely reading of the qurʾānic ruhbān than the artificial restriction of the term as designating “monks.” The Qurʾān’s image suits the ideal of the bishops in the mold of the Didascalia very well, regardless of the question how many former or current monks were in turn part of the church leadership known to the Qurʾān’s community. This reading follows from weighing the Qurʾān’s own testimony and including its quality as a polemical corrective to the actions of these figures as more valuable than that of some classical and most contemporary readings. Unlike qshysh for “elder,” however, the term “rhb” is not associated with the episcopacy anywhere in the Syriac literature. We have learned that we must not read any Syriac etymology as necessarily determinative of the meaning of any word in qurʾānic Arabic.57 The broader deictic field of the term “ruhbān” and the associated qurʾānic word “riʿāya,” “care” (Q 57:27), however, are worth

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  283 considering in the context of the Syriac term “r‘y’,” “shepherd,” as partially shown above. Linguistic associations thus remain valuable in the context of our understanding of the Qurʾān’s polemic against perceived Jewish and Christian excesses. If understood broadly as determining the complexities of the semantic context, then Syriac and Aramaic can be helpful to establish the meaning of certain Arabic words; etymology is a technique that the rabbinic as well as the Muslim exegetical traditions themselves discovered a long time ago. Yet its power is limited in the present case. The root “rhb,” which underlies both the title “ruhbān” as well as the office of the rahbānīyyah, is well-attested in Syriac. It usually denotes a “promise,” or “fear” yet precisely not the “fear of God,” which is usually expressed with the root “dḥl.”58 To the best of my knowledge, the Didascalia uses the root “rhb” only three times and only in its secondary sense of a “promise,” to name the “promise of the resurrection” (rhbwn’ dqymtn, DA XX 197.17, XXI 215.12, and XXVI 265.12) that lies in Jesus. It does not associate this promise with the bishop. It thus seems more likely that the qurʾānic expression “ruhbān” relates to the Arabic root “rhb.” This root evokes the “fear of God” (see, e.g., Q 2:40 or Q 21:9, here applied to the parents of John the Baptist), which is of course a central qurʾānic concept, even though it is not often usually expressed with the root “rhb.” More commonly, the Qurʾān expresses the “fear of God” with the words “khashya” and “khawf” (see Q 2:74 and Q 2:150, among others). Nevertheless, the underlying meaning of “fear” should not be entirely neglected when it comes to determining the identity of the Christian leaders. It should be noted that the “fear of God” (Syriac dḥlt’ ’lh’ and Hebrew yr’t hshm) constituted one of the most central theological concepts of the Syriac as well as the rabbinic traditions.59 It is thus not surprising that a term for a Christian official would connote “fear.”60 Whereas I would like to limit the significance of etymology in general, I agree with previous studies that the “fear of God” also indicates a specific Christian meaning of the term “ruhbān.” With this, I would like to return to Griffith’s second criticism of my interpretation (in addition to the historical one already discussed), that in “no Christian tradition have bishops as a class been so characterized,” namely in association “with fear and awe, as in the expression ‘God fearers.’ ” Even if the fear of God is too central a topic to exclude any Late Antique religious group from the discourse around it, a concluding look at the Didascalia will be helpful. Here, the association of bishops with both fear and awe is quite patent. More specifically, the Didascalia connects the concept of the “fear of God” with the fear of the bishop, as we have already seen: “Nevertheless, love the bishop and be afraid of him (wdḥlyn) as of a king, and honor him as God (dl’lh’)” (DA IX, 111.3). The Didascalia calls not only for the “fear of God” (dḥlt’ ’lh’) repeatedly, but it specifically presents anyone ascending to the episcopacy as having to be “fearful” (dḥwltn, DA IV), that is, fearful of God. More importantly, the bishop must be an object of fear himself by his household (DA IV, 54.12) and by his community (DA VII, 74.19). The laymen are indeed judged according to whether “the layman loves the bishop and honors him and fears (wdḥl) him as father and lord (wmr’) and god after God Almighty” (DA VII, 75.12–14, see also DA IX,

284  Holger M. Zellentin 112, 3 and DA XV, 164.5). The association of bishops “as a class” with fear is thus very clear in the Didascalia, despite Griffith’s objection. If the bishop fears and must be feared (as “god after God”!), it would thus not be surprising that its Arabic rendering would not reflect the Greek origin of the Syriac term, ’pysqwp’, “overseer.” Rather, it seems plausible that the Arabic term “ruhbān,” if it designated Christian leaders in the Qurʾān, would reflect one of its Syriac associations, “fear,” as expressed in Arabic.61

Religious Leaders in the Qurʾān The simple identification of the Qurʾān’s aḥbār and ruhbān with the respective overseers over the Jewish and Christian communities, thus, is more than an exercise in lexicography. It rather contains the key to appreciating the measured criticism that the Qurʾān levels against these religious leaders. This criticism in turn shows that the Qurʾān’s community was adequately acquainted with rabbinic and Christian discourse and perhaps especially with the legal culture it shares with the Didascalia, including its view of the bishops. Even if the precise determination of the function of the four types of religious leaders mentioned in the Qurʾān quickly reaches its limits, the present discussion leads to three clear results. First, the qurʾānic title “aḥbār” corresponds to parts of Talmudic and especially to Palestinian post-Talmudic use of the cognate Hebrew and Aramaic terms. Furthermore, we can disconnect the notion of celibacy from the denotation of the Arabic term “ruhbān,” even if an increasing number of the bishops known to the qurʾānic – perhaps late Medinan – and early Islamic community were unmarried or at least sexually abstinent. Finally, it seems that the Qurʾān, in its simultaneous recognition and criticism of Jewish and Christian overseers, participates in the JudeoChristian legal culture also in regard to the religious leaders. Reading the Qurʾān in dialogue with the oral world of the Jews and Christians of Late Antiquity opens up a vivid world marked by recognition and conflict. The present study may have shown the advantages of interpreting the Qurʾān first in its own context and secondarily in dialogue with more than one of its many interlocutors among the panoply of Late Antique religions. The remarkable, but by no means singular, importance of the Didascalia in the reconstruction of this polyphony cannot be proven, yet it can be corroborated with many examples that show that the qurʾānic polemics were by no means uninformed about the practices and discourses of its contemporaries. I would therefore call for the Qurʾān to be established, to a far greater extent than is common in Western scholarship, as a trustworthy historical witness to the Judaism and Christianity of its time – never disinterested yet very well versed on contemporaneous discourse. If we take the Qurʾān seriously as a source of historical and literary integrity, we can learn much not only about the primitive Islamic community but also about the Jews and Christians whom this community encountered in its earliest development.*62

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  285

Notes * Syriac as well as Jewish Aramaic and Hebrew are transliterated in accordance with the defective (i.e., non-vocalized) tradition, as follows: ’ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ‘ p ṣ q r sh t; Arabic is transliterated according to IJMES standards. Text and translations of the Didascalia are based on the critical edition and translation of Arthur Vööbus, The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac I-IV, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 1979), 401–2 and 407–8, occasionally emended to give a more literal sense. Citations from the Didascalia in the form of DA I, 1.1 denote chapter I, page 1, line 1 in Vööbus’ Syriac. The vocalized text of the Qurʾān is that of ʿĀṣim (transmitted by Ḥafṣ), that is, the Cairo text. Translations are largely based on Sayyid ʿAli Quli Qara’i, ed. and trans., The Qurʾān with an English Paraphrase (Centre for Translation of the Holy Qurʾān: Qom, 2003). I regularly amend this translation to give an even more literal sense of the text. I have also consulted a number of standard English translations as well as the German of Rudi Paret, Der Koran (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2004 [1966]). Most common names are rendered in their English equivalents. Biblical citations are based on the New Revised Standard Version. All other translations of ancient texts, unless otherwise noted, are my own. 1 See Holger Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). A shorter version of the present article first appeared as an epilogue to The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, 203–88; the present version is printed with generous permission of the publisher and will appear simultaneously in German translation as idem, “ʾaḥbār und ruhbān: Religiöse Leitfiguren im Koran in Dialog mit christlicher und rabbinischer Literatur,” in Episteme in Bewegung: Beiträge zu einer transdisziplinären Wissensgeschichte, ed. Nora Schmidt, Nora K. Schmid, and Angelika Neuwirth (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, forthcoming). The term “legal culture” has been used to describe the continuum of culture and law; see, for example, the volume edited by Csaba Varga, Comparative Legal Cultures (New York: New York University Press, 1992). Austin Sarat has already advocated that law shapes “society from the inside out by providing the principal categories in terms of which social life is made to seem largely natural, normal, cohesive and coherent” (Sarat, “Redirecting Legal Scholarship in Law Schools: Review of Paul W. Kahn, The Cultural Study of Law (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999),” The Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 12 (2000): 134). Yet, the mutually constitutive relationship of law and culture has especially been emphasized by Naomi Mezey, who states that “law is both a producer of culture and an object of culture” and advocates the crucial insight that we must see “law as culture” (Mezey, “Law as Culture,” The Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 13 (2001): 46). For a more thorough discussion of Late Antique and especially Judeo-Christian legal culture see Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, 17–32. 2 See Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, for example, 80–1. The Didascalia, according to many scholars, is supposed to have originated already in the third century, yet a complete text is not attested before the fifth century, in Latin, and a complete Syriac text is not attested before the eighth century. Written documents such as the Didascalia are usually developed in stages and orally; we can therefore posit an “origin” of the Didascalia in its present form in the fourth or fifth century. The Clementine Homilies, in their current form, have likewise originated in the fourth or fifth century. Independently of their genesis we can posit that both texts, the Clementine Homilies as well as the Didascalia, were part of a broader multilingual oral culture of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. See ibid, 14–5 and 49–50 n. 59. 3 In the monograph I  argue that the traditional use of the term “Judeo-Christian,” or “Jewish-Christian,” generally depends on the dissolution of the definition who is and

286  Holger M. Zellentin

4 5

6

7

who is not a Jew and on the reconstruction of one or several Judeo-Christian groups. An exhaustive overview of previous research can be found in Patricia Crone, “Jewish Christianity and the Qurʾān (Part One),” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74.2 (2015): 225–53. Such an approach, and including that of Crone, confuses Late Antique patristic polemics with sociocultural reality and sees in Judeo-Christianity a confusion of Judaism and Christianity that cannot historically be demonstrated. Differentiating itself from such an approach, the Judeo-Christian legal culture reconstructed by the triangle constituted by the Clementine Homilies, the Didascalia, and the Qurʾān itself posits a clear separation of Judaism and non-Jewish Jesus belief. For a further discussion of Late Antique and especially Judeo-Christian legal culture, see Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, 17–32. My claim for the importance of the Judeo-Christian legal culture for the Qurʾān does not discount the equally privileged pertinence of the broader Aramaic tradition in its original iteration or through possible intermediary cultures. On the contrary, the importance of the Christian Aramaic (or “Syriac”) tradition becomes ever more apparent in present scholarship – writings such as those of Philoxenus of Mabbug and of Jacob of Serugh have not yet been fully explored in their own contexts, let alone in their Islamic reception history. The Qurʾān, likewise, cannot be historically understood in ignorance of the rabbinic tradition. The present article is set out to extend the discussion to include the rabbis more fully as interlocutors with the Qurʾān, both balancing and enhancing the role I have attributed to the Didascalia’s Christians in the said monograph. See Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, for example, 49 n. 59, 80–1, and 176 n. 2. Whereas the Qurʾān is largely and the Clementine Homilies are fully invested in the Judeo-Christian legal culture, the Didascalia constitutes a closely related external perspective. Here, Judeo-Christian ideals are described negatively yet with far more detail and reliability than in most of the patristic heresiology. Moreover, the Didascalia itself favors a theology that includes the fulfilment of the law (yet not of the second legislation) as prerequisite to salvation; see ibid., 83–5. On the importance of the Clementine Homilies for the legal culture of the Qurʾān, see ibid., 77–126 and 175–202. On the anti-christological dogmatism of the rabbis, see, for example, Holger Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 137–227; on the anti-Jewish dogmatism of the church fathers, see for example, Robert Louis Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Whether or not this “Medinan” community became or remained a historical reality is difficult to assess, given the lack of evidence between the Qurʾān and the earliest Islamic historiographical sources (not to mention the lack or inaccessibility of archaeological remains). The qurʾānic record of such a community seems well founded, yet it seems to me (and others) that, for example, Fred Donner’s idea of a functioning ecumenical community, despite its merits, fuses discourse and reality a bit too quickly, see idem, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010). One of the most active scholars on the Jews of Arabia is without doubt the student of Meir Jacob Kister, Michael Lecker. His collection on Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998) exemplifies his approach. In my view, the early Islamic historiography should be read with more restraint than Lecker does in this collection as well as in The ‘Constitution of Medina’: Muḥammad’s First Legal Document (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2004). For an integration of post-qurʾānic documents (and similar problems with the reliability of the early Islamic historiography), see also Haggai Mazuz, The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina (Leiden: Brill, 2014). It is not known whether and to what extent the Jews and Christians known to the Qurʾān’s community used Aramaic (especially in liturgical settings) in addition to the Arabic essential in for day-to-day interactions. The importance of the Aramaic culture for these groups, however, can be affirmed regardless of this difficult question; see Sidney Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the People of the Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 7–53.

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  287 8 The loci classici may be Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5 and Q 5:32 as well as Bavli Avodah Zarah 2b and Bavli Shabbat 88a and Q 4:153–54; see also Q 7:171. A full discussion of the often polemical qurʾānic use of rabbinic teachings remains a desideratum to which I hope to respond in due course. For a good summary, see Reuven Firestone, “Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 267–302, and the classical piece by Shlomo Dov Goitein, “Who Were the Notable Teachers of Muhammad? (Offering a New Solution for an Old Problem),” Tarbiz 23 (1951–52): 146–59 [Hebrew]. See also EQ, s.v. “Jews and Judaism,” by Uri Rubin, and Gordon D. Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009 [1988]), as well as note 6 for this essay. Newby’s contributions are helpful but often go further than the evidence allows. 9 See Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, 162–63. 10 For the Quran’s polemics against portraying God as a father, see also Q 2:116–17; Q 10:68–69; Q 17:111; Q 19:88–95; Q 23:91; Q 43:81–83; and Q 72:3. 11 Mishna Avot 3:14 is quoting Deuteronomy 14:1 as proof. For divine sonship, see also, for example, Exodus 4:22, Shemot Rabbah 33:17, and Bemidbar Rabbah 9:14, but see Bereshit Rabbah 26:5 for rabbinic polemics against individual claims to being a son of God. See also Holger Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2011), 201–2 and 213–36, and Peter Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 150–59, and idem, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 49. For Israel as beloved, see also Shemot Rabbah 27:9, Midrash Zuta Shir haShirim 3:4, and Pesikta Rabbati 20:3. 12 For the Didascalia’s view of an ethnic continuity of the Church with the people of Israel, and the importance of this concept for the Qurʾān’s view of Christians as children of Israel, see Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, 163–64, cf. also Crone, “Jewish Christianity and the Qurʾān,” 230. Note that the full phrase in DA II, 14.15 is “servants, sons of God” (‘bdwh bnwhy d’lh’). Whereas the Qurʾān rejects the language of divine sonship, it calls the faithful “servants of God” (ʿibāda-llāhi, Q 37:40; see also Q 37:74, 128, 160, 169, and Q 44:18). Communal claims to divine sonship are of course not exclusive to the Didascalia but reflect an (ultimately biblical) Matthean tradition; see Mt. 5:9 and Joel Marcus, “The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Didascalia Apostolorum: A Common Jewish Christian Milieu?,” Journal of Theological Studies 61.2 (2010): 611–12. Most notably, just as God the father has become a central element of the Jewish and Christian liturgy, the Didascalia equally depicts God and the bishop as fathers and Jesus, as well as any male member of its community, as a “Son of God” (br’ l’lh’, DA IX, 109.16); see also the similar wording in chapters DA X, DA XVIII, and DA XXI. 13 See, for example, Bavli Avodah Zarah 4a; see also Holger Zellentin, “Jerusalem Fell after Betar: The Christian Josephus and Rabbinic Memory,” in Envisioning Judaism, ed. Raʿanan Boustan et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:319–67. 14 This Matthean tradition can be found in many Late Antique texts in several languages; see, for example, the statement in the Clementine Homilies that there will be no salvation through the “faith in teachers (διδασκάλοις) and invoking them as lords (κυρίους)” (Clementine Homilies 8:5, cited according to Bernhard Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen I: Homilien (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1969), ad. loc.). 15 See Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (Bonn: F. Baaden, 1833), 49–53; Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1926), 63; and Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938), 49–50. Note that the Qurʾān’s term for “rabbis,” rabbāniyyūna, is a plural whose formation is also cognate to one of the Aramaic plural forms for “rabbi,” rbnn; see already Geiger, Was hat Mohammed, 49–51, and Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary, 137–38.

288  Holger M. Zellentin 16 The rabbinic usage, in Aramaic as well as in Hebrew, features ḥkm, sage, as well as rb, “rabbi,” as very common self-designation; the title “ḥbr” is less common. In the Qurʾān, by contrast, the Arabic root “ḥkm” is very common and designates both the act of judging as well as wisdom; whereas judges can be human, God alone is called “the wise” (al-ḥakīm, e.g., in Q 2:32). Should the Qurʾān’s audience thus be familiar with the third cognate rabbinic self-designation, ḥkm, it would again have reason to designate it as pretentious. On the Arabic rbb see more in notes 22, 27, and 30; see also the next note. 17 Note that rb in Aramaic and Syriac can also denote the deity or divine epithets; for example, ’lh’ rb’ (“great God,” Bavli Sanhedrin 96a; see Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 1052), rbwn kl ‘lmy’ (“Lord of the universe,” i.e., God; M. L. Klein, Genizah Manuscripts of the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch [Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1987] on Genesis 38:24, cited by Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, 513). On the meanings of rb in Syriac, as Joseph Witztum reminds me, rbb can of course also denote a secular lord in qurʾānic Arabic, especially in Q 12, where this usage is not necessarily sanctioned but still employed. On the title “ḥbr,” see the previous note. 18 The qurʾānic concept of shirk (“associationism”), defined as the association of God with other divine powers, is sadly missing from European languages (outside of the “associationism” in abstract algebra). The useful expression coined, to the best of my knowledge, by John of Damascus, “heterists” (ἑταιριαστάς, De Haeresibus 100.60, cited according to P. Bonifatius Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos [Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1981], vol. 4, ad. loc.) and describing Christian “associators,” has regrettably been eclipsed in our language by the anthropological term for primitive promiscuity, “heterism,” which derives from the same root. On “associationism” and “associators,” see Gerald Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); see also EQ, s.v. “Idolatry and Idolaters,” by idem. Missing here is Patricia Crone, “The Quranic Mushrikūn and the Resurrection (Part II),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 76.1 (2013): 1–20; eadem, “The Quranic Mushrikūn and the Resurrection (Part I),” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 75.3 (2012): 445–72; and eadem, “The Religion of the Qurʾānic Pagans: God and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57.2/3 (2010): 151–200. 19 Similarly, the Qurʾān’s charge that the Jews call ʿUzayr the son of God (9:30) or that the Christians deify Mary along with Jesus (5:116) as part of the Trinity may not be based on either qurʾānic misapprehension or on peculiarities of Arab Judaism and Christianity (which certainly existed; see Epiphanius’ often noted description of Arabian Collyridianism in Panarion Haer. 79) but may rather be based on subtle polemics. The infancy Gospels, for example, exalt Mary in a way that is only minimally shy of her deification; similarly, it does not take a giant leap to recast Mary’s Byzantine status of theotokos as anthropolatry; see Averil Cameron, “The Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Religious Development and Myth-Making,” in The Church and Mary, ed. Robert N. Swanson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), 1–21, and Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 55; see also Viviane Comerro, “Esdras est-il le fils de Dieu?,” Arabica 52.2 (2005): 165–81. 20 See Genesis Rabbah 8:10, Bavli Hagiga 15a, and Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 103–49. On Metatron in general, see Saul Lieberman, “Metatron: The Meaning of His Name and His Functions,” in Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, ed. Ithamar Gruenwald (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 235–41; see also Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism, Leiden, 1977. For rabbinic polemics against individuals claiming divine sonship, see also note 11. 21 See Mekhilta Amaleq 1, Bavli Pesahim 108a, Avoth de Rabbi Nathan 27, Tanhuma Beshalah (Warsaw) 26, Shemot Rabbah 3:17, cf. also Bavli Nedarim 41b and Pesachim 22b.

Aḥbār and Ruhbān: religious leaders  289 22 See Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 1157, and idem, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, 557. 23 Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 33 and especially 37. As Griffith concisely puts it, “The underlying problem here, in my view, is to have mistaken the Qurʾān’s religious critique of Christian beliefs and practices, and the polemical rhetoric in which it is expressed, for historical reports or accounts of these same beliefs and practices”; see Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qurʾān: a Hermeneutical Reflection,” in New Perspectives on the Qurʾān: The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context 2, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2011), 301–22. See also Griffith’s useful comments on the Qurʾān’s view of the trinity in Griffith, “Syriacisms in the ‘Arabic Qurʾān’: Who Were “Those Who Said ‘Allāh Is Third of Three’ ” according to al-Mā’ida 73?” in A Word Fitly Spoken: Studies in Medieval Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible and the Qurʾān, ed. Meir M. Bar-Asher et al. (Jerusalem: The Ben Zvi Institute, 2007), 83–110. See also Neuwirth, Der Koran als Text der Spätantike: Ein europäischer Zugang (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2010), 723–68, and eadem, Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community: Reading the Qurʾān as a Literary Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. chapter one. 24 See Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 164. 25 The reference to the cited Gospel passage was suggested to me by Cecilia Palombo. On rabbinic communal finances, see, for example, Mishna Demai 4:1–6; Bavli Gittin 30b; and Gregg Gardner, The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); see also Encyclopaedia Judaica, s.v. “Terumot and Ma‘aserot,” by A’hron Oppenheimer, 19:652–54. 26 According to the Didache (11:5–10), every prophet who asks for money is a false one; this theme also is known to the Shepherd of Hermes (43:12). 27 In Aramaic, the term “ḥbr” often denotes a rabbinic “colleague”; see Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 428–29, and idem, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 184; see also Catherine Hezser, “Rabbis and Other Friends: Friendship in the Talmud Yerushalmi and in Graeco-Roman Literature,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Catherine Hezser and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 2:189–254. In Christian Syriac Aramaic, the term only denotes a friend or “another” more generally; see Michael Sokoloff, A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 410. 28 See, for example, Hayim Lapin, “The Origins and Development of the Rabbinic Movement in the Land of Israel,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. W. D. Davis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 4:218, as well as Yonder Moynihan Gillihan, Civic Ideology, Organization, and Law in the Rule Scrolls: A Comparative Study of the Covenantor’s Sect and Contemporary Voluntary Organizations in Political Context (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 24–31. 29 See Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 102–3 and Encyclopaedia Judaica, s.v. “Ḥaver, Ḥaverim,” 8:468–70. 30 Rabbinic historiography in Palestine in the time of the Qurʾān is admittedly scarce. The documents from which we can derive knowledge of the Palestinian use of the title “ḥbr” come from the Cairo Geniza and refer to the ninth century at the earliest. Yet the later usage is already present in the Palestinian Talmud. Here, we find smaller councils of rabbinic ḥbrym, and here, the title is also associated often with judges and communal leaders; see Alexei Sivertsev, Private Households and Public Politics in 3rd–5th Century Jewish Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2002), 149–50. 31 The question whether or not the term “rahbāniyya” designates an official “office,” a “function,” or simply a spiritual quality of the ruhbān is of course part of its interpretation; I take the liberty to use the designation as “office” or “function” in anticipation

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of my own reading to simplify my language. On the classical Islamic interpretation, see Samuela Pagani, “L’invention des ādāb: ‘innovations’ soufies et monachisme dans l’exégèse de Coran 57:27,” in Ethics and Spirituality in Islam: The Sufi Adab, ed. Francesco Chiabotti and Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming); see also Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially 221–37; and Sara Sviri, “Wa-rahbānīyatan ibtada‘ūhā: An Analysis of Traditions Concerning the Origin and Evaluation of Christian Monasticisms,” Journal for the Study of Arabic and Islam 13 (1990): 195–208. A good overview can be found in EQ, s.v. “Monasticism and Monks,” by Sidney Griffith. All standard translations known to me translate the term “rahbāniyya” as “monkery” or, more commonly and as for example in Quli Qara’i, “monasticism.” Pagani writes: “L’examen du tafsīr montre en tout cas que la tradition exégétique, au contraire de ce qu’on a suggéré, n’ignore pas la question de l’autorité légale et institutionnelle exercée par les «moines», et ne restreint pas le sens du terme rahbāniyya au célibat. . . . [L]es commentateurs selon lesquels la rahbāniyya renvoie à des pratiques ascétiques « extrêmes », dont le célibat, et est condamnée par le Coran, tendent à effacer toute distinction entre les moines et les clercs, parce qu’il nient aux uns et aux autres toute continuité avec la tradition apostolique. . . . A l’opposé, cette distinction est à l’arrière-plan des récits exégétiques qui font remonter les origines de la rahbāniyya à la séparation des fidèles héritiers de Jésus et des apôtres d’avec les hiérarchies ecclésiastiques soumises aux “rois””; see Pagani, “L’invention des ādāb,” forthcoming. Pagani and also Emran El-Badawi, with reference to my study about the legal culture shared by the Didascalia and the Qurʾān, have recently suggested possible reasons how and why the early Islamic shift of the term from “communal leaders” (or in the case of El-Badawi, “clerics”) to “monasticism” and “celibacy” may have taken place, a topic to which I  will return below. See Pagani, “L’invention des ādāb,” forthcoming. El-Badawi suggests that the medieval exegetes simply understood the term “ruhbān” in the context of the monasticism they knew, see El-Badawi, “From “Clergy” to “Celibacy:” The Development of rahbānīyyah between the Qurʾān, Ḥadīth and Church Canon,” Al-Bayān Journal of Qurʾān and Ḥadīth Studies 11 (2013): 1–14. El-Badawi’s discussion is suggestive, but the sources adduced by him are not sufficient. See Geiger, Was hat Mohammed, 50–1, see also Edmund Beck, “Das christliche Mönchtum im Koran,” Studia Orientalia 13 (1946): 3–29. Unfortunately, there are no parallel examples of such a “transformation” of a root in between Semitic languages. It is possible that words with a hollow root can gain a medial hāʾ in other Semitic languages (such as Hebrew dwr and Arabic dhr; see Q 45:24:12), yet this does not apply to geminate roots such as rbb. De Blois suggests that “the Arabic plural ruhbān comes from the (reduplicated) Syriac plural rawrßānē (also rabbānē), either with dissimilation of r-r- to r-h-, or by popular etymological attachment to the (Arabic, not Aramaic) root r-h-b, with back-formation of the singular rāhib.” See de Blois, “Naṣrānī (Ναζωραȋος) and ḥanīf (ἐθνικός): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65.1 (2002): 9. See Geiger, Was hat Mohammed, 50–1, and especially Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 64. For the Syriac term, see Sokoloff, A Syriac Lexicon, 1419–20. The ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Clementine Homilies, like that of the Didascalia, consists of the bishop, elders, deacons, and widows; see Clementine Homilies 3:64–67 and 11:36; see also 7:5 and 20:23. See, for example, DA IX, 103.17–19. On church hierarchy in the Didascalia, see also Wayne Meeks, “Social and Ecclesial Life of the Early Christians,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine, ed. Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 145–73; Georg Schöllgen, Die Anfänge der Professionalisierung des Klerus und das kirchliche Amt in der

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41 42

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syrischen Didaskalie (Münster: Aschendorff, 1998); and Allen Brent, “The Relations between Ignatius and the Didascalia,” The Second Century 8 (1991): 1–29. On authority through knowledge in the Clementine writings (especially in the Recognitions but with much material on the Homilies), see Nicole Kelley, Knowledge and Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines: Situating the Recognitions in Fourth-Century Syria (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), especially 208–12. See Griffith, The Bible in Arabic, 12; EQ, s.v. “Monasticism and Monks,” by idem; Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 64, and the extensive discussion in McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians, 221–37. Already Beck has pointed to this context of the veneration of holy men; see Beck, “Das christliche Mönchtum im Koran,” 42. See also Peter Brown’s substantial article, “Holy Men,” in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14, Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600, ed. Averil Cameron et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 781–810; for a central text depicting the veneration of a holy man, see Robert Doran, ed. and trans., The Lives of Simeon Stylites (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992); see also the introduction to the Lives by Susan Ashbrook-Harvey. See note 33. Note that while the Qurʾān describes the disciples as “helpers of God” (anṣāru llāhi), the Didascalia designates the bishops, to whom the apostles address the Didascalia, to be “helpers of God” (m‘drn’ ‘m ’lha, DA XII, 143.15). Pointing in turn to the linguistic proximity of the qurʾānic terms for “helpers” and “Nazarenes,” Sidney Griffith has pointed out that “one might . . . assume that the Naṣārā of the Qurʾān are thought to be the spiritual descendants of Jesus’ first disciples”; Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qurʾān: A Hermeneutical Reflection,” 302. The term “helper,” of course, is quite common in the Qurʾān and used in many other ways. For example, the emigrants “help” the believers in Q 8:72 and 74; in Q 59:8, they even “help God” (yanṣurūna llāha) and his apostle. Yet the terminology and description for the “helpers” passages, Q 61:14 and Q 43:65, suggest the designation of a specific group. This in turn makes an association of the naṣārā, and thereby of the Christian leaders as depicted by the Didascalia with the “helpers for/ towards God” in Q 3:52 and Q 61:14 very suggestive. See also J.M.F. Van Reeth, “Le Prophète musulman en tant que Nâsir Allâh et ses antécédents: Le “Nazôraios” évangélique et le livre des Jubilés,” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 23 (1992): 251–74; see also Theresia Hainthaler, Christliche Araber vor dem Islam: Verbreitung und konfessionelle Zugehörigkeit: Eine Hinführung (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). See, for example, Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Hermeneutics of Holiness: Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) and the short but helpful discussion of John Madey, “Die Priester der Ostkirchen. Priestertum und Zölibat in der Überlieferung des östlichen Christentums,” Kyrios 10 (1970): 34–42. The Nestorians, just as the Didascalia, despite the antiNestorian rhetoric in its Syriac version, constituted an exception to this development. See Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 147; see also El-Badawi, “From “Clergy” to “Celibacy,” 11–2. Sidney Griffith, “Review of Holger Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture,” Theological Studies 76 (2015): 172–73. Griffith here somewhat circularly equates the “traditional” reading of the Qurʾān with the Qurʾān, which may well be forgiven as a rhetorical device. According to Rapp, many monks even attempted to combine their monastic lives with the bishopric; the clear division of the two offices in the scholarship is an inheritance of Protestant church historians; see Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 137–52. All passages from Sozomen were cited according to Günther C. Hansen, Sozomenus: Kirchengeschichte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1960), ad. loc. Regarding the Arab bishops, see recently Aziz al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allāh and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 262–70, as well as the fundamental study of Hainthalers, Christliche Araber vor dem Islam, 2007.

292  Holger M. Zellentin 49 See especially Beck, “Das christliche Mönchtum im Koran,” 21–2; Pagani, “L’invention des ādāb”; McAuliffe, Qurʾānic Christians, 260–84; and EQ, s.v. “Monasticism and Monks,” by Griffith. The passage Q 57:27 could be argued to display the hallmarks of editorial intervention (possibly even in the time of the prophet himself), such as an uneven rhyme scheme, grammatical and hermeneutical difficulties, and an improved readability if one were to bracket some of its segments as editorial additions. Yet without any manuscript evidence or any consensus on a clear and consistent methodology for such textual interventions (as suggested, e.g., by Nicolai Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung: Studien zur frühen Koraninterpretation [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009]), it seems to me premature to speculate about possible emendations. 50 See Pagani, “L’invention des ādāb” and El-Badawi, “From “Clergy” to “Celibacy,” 4–5. 51 The consistence of the Qurʾān’s moral theology and its usage of language are also reflected in other Medinan suras. It uses the expression appearing in Q 57:27, “seeking for God’s pleasure” (ibtighāʾ riḍwān allāh) three further times. Two passages, Q 2:265 and Q 4:114, associate “striving for God’s pleasure” primarily with the giving of alms, all the while using further vocabulary we also see in Q 57 (e.g., yunfiqūna, “those who spend,” in Q 2:265 and bi-ṣadaqatin, “for alms and ajran, “reward,” in Q 4:114). In a third passage, Q 2:207, the “seeking of God’s pleasure” presupposes a full dedication to God. It therefore seems clear that God prescribes the seeking of His pleasure to those ruhbān who are fully dedicated to him as the just spreading of communal funds also in Q 57:27. 52 See Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, 115–17, and note 46 above. 53 See Emran El-Badawi, The Qurʾān and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 77. An example of the pervasiveness of the image of the good shepherd not only in the Jewish and Christian but also in the Islamic tradition can be found in the poem by Muslim b. al-Walīd cited above as motto; see Sāmī Dahhān, Sharḥ Dīwān Ṣarīʿ al-Ghawānī Muslim Ibn-al-Walīd al-Anṣārī (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1957), 216, cited according to Stefan Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry: A Structural Analysis of Selected Texts (3rd Century AH/9th Century AD–5th Century AH/11th Century AD) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 169. 54 See Sokoloff, A Syriac Dictionary, 1480; r‘ywt’ denotes the episcopate. 55 See also Ignatius’ Letter to the Magnesians and Didache 4:1, see also Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, 31–4; and Arthur Marmorstein, “Judaism and Christianity in the Middle of the Third Century,” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 232 [10], note 46; Marmorstein also notes the affinity between the Didascalia and the rabbis on bestowing divine honors on their leaders. 56 The Qurʾān’s accusation of Jewish and Christian anthropolatry becomes even more poignant when considering the Didascalia’s attributes for the bishop, such as “teacher,” “king,” and “father.” The first two terms can both evoke divine attributes in the Qurʾān (even though both are also used in a “secular context,” as Joseph Witztum reminds me), one of them even homophonously (malik, e.g., Q 59:23, 20:114, for “teacher;” see Q 2:31). Associating the terms with the church leadership rather than with God seems therefore especially outrageous; the Qurʾān likewise explicitly and repeatedly dismisses God’s role as father; see note 11. 57 In light of the recent advances – and derailments – of the use of Syriac materials for the reading of the Qurʾān, it must be emphasized that lexical affinity between two literary corpora has limited significance in and of itself. The Didascalia and the Qurʾān are both simply written in Semitic languages and will naturally share many lexemes. More concretely, both of the Semitic texts from Late Antiquity are reflective of a similar tradition of preserving and interpreting scripture in and around Arabia and will naturally share stylistic elements. The lexical affinity between the Didascalia and the Qurʾān, however, remains a doubly potent device of inquiry, first by guiding us toward the especially close lexical affinity in matters of law and ritual and, second, by corroborating the adjacent conceptual affinities. For a clear warning against the excesses

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60

61 62

of the “Syriac turn,” see, for example, Walid Saleh, “The Etymological Fallacy and Qurʾānic Studies: Muhammad, Paradise, and Late Antiquity,” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Neuwirth et al., 649–98; Griffith, “Syriacisms in the ‘Arabic Qurʾān,’ ” 83–110; and Angelika Neuwirth, “Qurʾān and History – A Disputed Relationship: Some Reflections on Qurʾānic History and History in the Qurʾān,” Journal of Qurʾānic Studies 5.1 (2003): 1–18. Sokoloff, A Syriac Dictionary, 1439–40 See Adam Becker, “Martyrdom, Religious Difference, and ‘Fear’ as a Category of Piety in the Sasanian Empire: The Case of the Martyrdom of Gregory and the Martyrdom of Yazdpaneh,” Journal of Late Antiquity 2.2 (2009): 300–36 and idem, Fear of God and the Beginnings of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). The concept is equally common among the rabbis; see Mishna Avot 1:3 and 4:12; note also the liturgical function in Bavli Berakhot 16b. Indeed, Theodor Nöldeke already suggested that the Qurʾān’s term “ruhbān,” as the “God-fearing” ones, parallels the Pahlavi term “tarsāk,” which also originally denoted the “fear of God” but came to stand simply for Christians in general. This observation can, in my view, be only of comparative value; see Theodor Nöldeke, “Review of Friedrich Schulthess, Homonyme Wurzeln im Syrischen,” in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 54 (1900): 163; see also Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 64; and Siegmund Fränkel, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (Leiden: Brill, 1886), 267–68; as well as Shlomo Pines, “The Iranian Name for Christians and the ‘God-Fearers,’ ” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2 (1968): 143–52. De Blois also criticizes the lexical association as “semantically tenuous; whereas the Persian term encompasses the Christians as a whole, the Arabic word [rāhib] has a much narrower meaning” (see François de Blois, “Naṣrānī [Ναζωραȋος]) and ḥanīf [ἐθνικός]: 9). There are indeed many Syriac loanwords in qurʾānic Arabic yet far fewer, if any, Greek loanwords; see the helpful summary in EQ, s.v. “Foreign Vocabulary,” by Andrew Rippin.  Cecilia Palombo, in a recent presentation, has discussed the evidence for the Qurʾān’s strictly Arabic expression for religious leaders especially in the Meccan suras. Her insights into the phraseology and ideology pertaining to these figures presents a crucial step beyond the present papers but have unfortunately reached me too late to allow me to integrate them; see Palombo, “Why Do the Rabbis and Religious Authorities Not Forbid Them from Uttering Sinful Words?”: Qurʾānic and Late Antique Attitudes towards Religious Scholars,” given 20 November 2015 at the Annual Meeting of the International Qurʾānic Studies Association in Atlanta, GA.

11 Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism of Other Religions Mun’im Sirry

In a modern society, it is more or less self-evident that religious beliefs of others must be respected and tolerated. Perhaps this “norm” of the modern world has led to some sort of reluctance among scholars to discuss the element of the Qurʾān that criticizes other religions, both in terms of doctrines and social interactions. The qurʾānic criticism of the other has usually been viewed as an obstacle to peaceful coexistence among different religious communities. It is, therefore, understandable that the polemical aspects of the Qurʾān have often been left unexplored in modern scholarship. As Michael Cook has rightly noted, “It would be considered ill-mannered and parochial to refer to the religious views of others as false and one’s own as true; for those fully educated into the elite culture of Western society, the very notion of absolute truth in matters of religion sounds hopelessly out of date.”1 However, avoiding a scholarly discussion on those difficult passages is not a solution because many radical Muslims have used them to justify their violent actions. Unless we address these violent passages of our scriptural traditions head-on, the world will continue to be locked in an endless cycle of misunderstanding, hatred, prejudice, and violence. This essay discusses those passages in the Qurʾān that have shaped, and continue to shape, the Muslim approach to the other even today. Given that those passages reflect ongoing conflicts emerging from the early formation of Islam, they can be reinterpreted differently in light of religious diversity in the modern context. This essay will also explore the various exegetical strategies employed by modern Muslim scholars in their Qurʾān commentaries and highlight the degree of difficulty that they have faced in their interpretation of the scriptural polemical texts within a context that is less polemical than that of the classical period.

Ambivalent Attitudes It must be stated at the outset that the Qurʾān displays an ambivalent attitude toward the other. On the one hand, there are passages in the Qurʾān that seem to extend salvific promise to other religious communities. One of the oft-quoted verses is Q 2:62, which is repeated almost verbatim in Q 5:69: “Those who believe and those Jews, Christians and Sabeans, whoever believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  295 them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”2 In this verse, the main criteria for salvation are: belief in God and the Last Day, and doing good deeds. Q 5:48, especially the second part – “For each one of you We have appointed a law (shirʿa) and a way (minhāj). If God so willed, He would have made you a single people (umma)” – clearly allows for the possibility of religious plurality. The notion of tolerance in this passage is so arresting in its breadth, suggesting that religious diversity should not only be tolerated but is also a necessary good.3 Perhaps the qurʾānic vision of religious freedom is best captured in the following two verses: “There will be no compulsion in religion” (Q 2:265) and “To you your religion and to me mine” (Q 190:5). On the other hand, several passages in the Qurʾān advocate an exclusivist approach to other religions by depicting Islam as the only true path to salvation. There are at least three qurʾānic passages that have commonly been understood to support some kind of exclusionary and intolerant theological orientation. Such verses include the following: Q 3:19: Verily the right religion with God is al-islām. Those to whom the Book had been revealed differed among themselves only after Knowledge had come to them, competing in rivalry with one another. Whoso blasphemes against God’s revelations, God is swift at reckoning. Q 3:85: Whoever desires a religion other than al-islām, it shall not be accepted from him; and in the afterlife he will be among the losers. Q 5:3: Today I  have perfected your religion; and I  have completed My bounty upon you; and I have sanctioned al-islām as your religion. It is only in these three verses that islām is referred to in the context of al-dīn, which is usually rendered as religion. These verses speak of islām as being the only acceptable faith, and thus they have generally been invoked to claim the superiority of Islam to other religions and that the theology and rituals of Islam are the exclusive path to salvation. It is, therefore, hardly surprising to hear Muslims claiming that religions other than their own have no ground on which to claim any amount of religious truth. Referring to these passages, Yohanan Friedmann asserts that from early generations, “Muslims have come to believe earnestly that Islam was the only true religion.”4 In his discussion of orthodox Qurʾān commentators, both medieval and modern, Mahmoud Ayoub concludes that they “have used the verse [3:85] to argue for the finality and supersession of Islam over all other religions.”5 Another Muslim author describes “the dominant medieval theological position which can be fairly characterized as a strong commitment to the notion of ‘no salvation outside of Islam.’ ”6 Belonging to this category of exclusivist passages are those verses of the Qurʾān that criticize the religious beliefs of others. In two places (Q 5:17 and 5:72), the Qurʾān criticizes what seems to be the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus: “They disbelieve who say that God is the Messiah son of Mary.” Other passages criticize the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, such as Q 4:171 (“So believe in God and His messengers, and do not say: ‘Three!’ Desist, for this

296  Mun’im Sirry would be best for you”) and Q 5:73 (“They disbelieve who say that God is the third of three”), which seem to suggest the idea of tritheism rather than trinity. In Q 5:116, the qurʾānic Jesus himself speaks out to disown the errors of Christians. When asked by God as to whether he told people to take him and Mary “as two gods, apart from God,” Jesus insists, “It is not mine to say what I have no right to.” One may infer from the last three verses that the qurʾānic understanding of the Trinity consists of God, Jesus, and Mary rather than the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Of course, these passages raise a host of important questions: What precisely is being criticized in the Qurʾān? Why does the Qurʾān seem to include Mary as one of the three persons of the Trinity? Does the qurʾānic understanding of the Trinity oppose a truly Christian concept of God, or does it reflect a rather heretical teaching? In addition to theological aspects, the Qurʾān also addresses the social facet of inter-religious relations. There are several passages in the Qurʾān that seem to restrict inter-religious engagements between Muslims and non-Muslims, especially Jews and Christians. In Sūrat al-Māʾida (Q 5:51), it is said: “O believers, take not Jews and Christians for awliyāʾ; they are awliyāʾof each other. Whosoever among you takes them as his awliyāʾ is counted of their number. God guides not the wrongdoers.” The word “awliyāʾ” is left in its original Arabic because it has various meanings, such as friends, allies, patrons, guardians, protectors, or leaders – the precise meaning of which becomes a contentious issue among modern scholars. In Sūrat al-Māʾida alone this prohibition is repeated in verses 57 and 81. The Qurʾān sometimes uses the term “kuffār” (“unbelievers”), instead of Jews and Christians (Q 4:89,139,144). The frequent occurrence of this prohibition is indicative of the seriousness of the matter, at least at the time of Muhammad. Certainly, these seemingly conflicting attitudes of the Qurʾān have perplexed scholars both classical and modern. In the classical Qurʾān commentaries, even the ecumenical passages of the Qurʾān have usually been interpreted to mean the opposite, for instance, with arguments that those passages have been abrogated by the more exclusive ones. This theory is known as al-nāsikh wa al-mansūkh (the abrogating and the abrogated). Naskh or “abrogation” is a legal strategy by which a verse of the Qurʾān revealed earlier is considered superseded or abrogated by a later revelation, thereby becoming inactive. The theory of naskh as a hermeneutical stratagem to solve seemingly contradictory materials has been elaborated quite early on by Muslim scholars. Abū Jaʿfar al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950) wrote a book on this subject titled al-Nāsikh wa al-mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, in which he lists several ecumenical passages that have been abrogated or superseded by the overtly exclusive passages.7

Particularizing Discourses Interestingly, most modern Muslim exegetes examined in this study do not ascribe to such a supersessionist approach. The Indonesian exegete Hamka (d. 1981), for instance, strongly rejects the common assumption that exclusive passages like Q 3:85 have abrogated Q 2:62. Whereas Q 3:85 claims that Islam is the only

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  297 true path to salvation (“Whoever desires a religion other than al-islām, it shall not be accepted from him”), the latter extends salvific promise to other religions. Hamka’s argument is twofold. First, he argues that the meaning of islām in Q 3:85 is an inclusive islām, which is the religion of all prophets. Even if one accepts the exclusive meaning of islām, this verse does not abrogate Q 2:62 because the real meaning of Islam contains submission to God, faith in the hereafter, and the performance of good deeds. Second, and in a similar vein, Q 2:62 preaches the idea of inclusivity and not exclusivity. Hamka further argues that “if it is stated that Q 2:62 has been abrogated by Q 3:85, that would encourage fanaticism – claiming for themselves an Islam even though they never practice it, and claiming the Paradise only for themselves. However, if we understand the two verses as supporting one another, then the gate of daʿwa (preaching) is always open, and the status of Islam as a religion of purity (agama fitrah) can be maintained.”8 In a similar vein, the Iranian scholar Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabaṭabā’ī (d. 1981) understands islām in Q 3:83 not in its reified sense but rather in its generic sense: submission. It is the dīn that God revealed to all prophets throughout the ages. He acknowledges some differences in the sharias of prophets, but the essence is one, that is, submission and obedience to God in the way all of the prophets had delivered. “The differences among these sharias in perfection and deficiency,” he asserts, “do not imply contradiction or exclusion, or superiority of one over the others. They are all one in that they are manifestations of submission and obedience to God in all that He demanded from His servants, as conveyed by His Prophets.”9 Ṭabaṭabā’ī then concludes: “It is clear from the preceding that what is intended is that the true faith, which is with God and in His presence, is one sacred law (sharia) that differs only in the degree [of comprehensiveness and perfection] in accordance with the different capacities of the different communities. In essence, however, it is one, one in the form which God has implanted it in humankind in their original state (fiṭra) of pure faith.”10 With this understanding, Ṭabaṭabā’ī sees no contradiction between Q 2:62 and 3:85, and therefore there is no need for the theory of naskh. In his exegesis of Q 2:62, the learned Shīʿī scholar asserts, “At the gate of bliss no importance will be attached to names and titles, e.g., whether a group is called the believer or a faction is called those who are Jews or a party is called Sabeans or others are called the Christians. The only important thing is belief in God and the Last Day and doing good.”11 Another strategy employed by Muslim exegetes to address the Qurʾān’s conflicting attitudes is by referring to the occasions of revelation (asbāb al-nuzūl), a specific genre in the tafsīr tradition that is intended to provide historical contexts for revelations to help Muslims understand the circumstances in which certain passages were revealed. By situating a key qurʾānic criticism within a certain historical context, modern Muslims attempt to restrict its general applicability. This is especially true of the qurʾānic reference to aspects of social interaction. Concerning Q 5:51, which prohibits Muslims from taking Jews and Christians as awliyāʾ (“leaders,” “guardians,” “friends,” “allies,” “protectors”), modern Muslims emphasize the hostile environment as the backdrop against which the verse was revealed. Q 5:51 says “O you who believe, do not take Jews and Christians as

298  Mun’im Sirry awliyāʾ, they are awliyāʾ to one another.”12 Commenting on this verse, the Egyptian scholar Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935) seems less concerned with the possible various meanings of the term “awliyāʾ”; his main focus is to understand the prohibition within a certain context by bringing a significant number of asbāb al-nuzūl narratives into discussion. From the outset, Riḍā realizes the problem with different asbāb al-nuzūl related to one verse, and therefore, he devises a theoretical framework to harmonize those conflicting narratives. In his magnum opus Tafsīr al-manār, Riḍā distinguishes between two types of asbāb al-nuzūl: general (sabab ʿām) and specific (sabab khāṣ). By the former he means the hostile surroundings especially among three Jewish tribes in Medina, namely the Banū Qaynuqāʿ, Banū Naḍīr, and Banū Qurayẓā’. The prophet had opened an initiative to live in peace with them by making a pact, Riḍā claims, but they breached the pact and conspired to kill him. It is under such a hostile environment that the prohibition of befriending (muwālā) the People of the Book should be understood.13 With regard to the latter (sabab khāṣ), Riḍā mentions different, conflicting narratives without judging their authenticity, a position that is common among earlier mufassirūn, such as Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), who conclude that there is no evidence for the authenticity of any of these stories to the exclusion of the others. It can be safely assumed that the verse relates to a hypocrite (munāfiq) who did not want to give up his friendship with Jews or Christians for fear of losing their protection. In any case, Ṭabarī argues, the verse should be interpreted according to its evidence and general meaning, not with specific reference to any occasion of revelation.14 Riḍā argues that the verse should be understood within the general context of its revelation, namely the hostile environment. Thus, the prohibition of taking the unbelievers as awliyāʾ, however this term is to be understood, only applies to such a condition in which they waged a war against the prophet or against the believers, and they were the ones who showed enmity. He argues that Muhammad did not fight except against those who conspired to kill him. Even among contemporary scholars there have been several attempts to restrict the general meaning of Q 5:51 by closely considering its occasion of revelation. Haris Aziz, for instance, argues that awliyāʾ need to be understood as guardians or patrons in the strict military sense. This is because when this verse was revealed, Muslims were in a precarious position in Medina, with the Meccans planning to attack the Muslims and some of the Christian and Jewish tribes conspiring against the Muslims.15 In that particular situation, Aziz argues, Muslims were instructed to consolidate themselves and not depend on anyone needlessly. In line with this, Oliver Leaman concludes by saying, “So we can see that the translation of awliyāʾ as ‘friends’ is misleading and that it should be rendered perhaps as ‘protectors’ or ‘guardians’ in the strict military sense of these terms.”16 Like others who suggest an understanding of awliyāʾ in the strict military sense, David Dakake considers taking the unbelievers as awliyāʾ as a kind of “dissention” in the ranks of the believers. In his own words, “From the perspective of Islam, the prophet realized that a young community, faced with great peril, could not allow such ‘dissention’ in the ranks of the faithful as would be created by various individuals making bonds of loyalty with other groups not committed to the Islamic message.”17

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  299 In the Qurʾān, the word “awliyāʾ” and its singular “walī” occur eighty-six times and are derived from the root “w-l-y,” which can have numerous meanings depending on its context. All of its related cognates can be said to designate a type of relationship between persons of either equal or unequal stature. It can, for example, be used for the relationship between lord and servant, patron and client, ruler and subject, as well as between paternal relations or friends.18 Certainly, the meaning of the word “awliyāʾ” in the Qurʾān is not static, and this is also reflected in the way modern Muslims understand it. The political connotation of awliyāʾ, according to some modern Muslim scholars, cannot be grasped from the internal evidence in the Qurʾān but rather from the external sources, namely the asbāb al-nuzūl. However, Ṭabaṭabā’ī rejects the political-military connotation of awliyāʾ because there is no indication in the Qurʾān to justify such a meaning. He questions the whole corpus of asbāb al-nuzūl as historically spurious. For the Iranian scholar, “these reports [of its occasion of revelation], like most of the narratives giving theoretical reasons, are in fact mere attempts to fit some occurrences on a verse, and then claiming that it was revealed for this reason. These are merely theoretical reasons; the verse most probably does have general application.”19 He, therefore, calls into question the tendency of early mufassirūn to propose a meaning of the word “awliyāʾ,” which is not supported by the internal evidence in the Qurʾān. However, this does not mean that Ṭabaṭabā’ī supports the idea that prohibition is related to all kinds of interreligious relations. He goes to great lengths to insist that the personalist dimension, “affectionate closeness,” is the essence of its meaning.20 Although the root “w-l-y” denotes authority to manage something, that is, guardianship, Ṭabaṭabā’ī argues that “the word has been used – with increasing frequency – in the context of love and affection; if two people love each other, each feels free to look after the other’s affairs as love empowers the beloved to manage the affairs, and influence the life, of the lover.”21 What is being prohibited here is not taking Jews and Christians as political leaders or friends but rather taking the unbelievers as awliyāʾ in the sense of establishing a psychological rapport with them to the extent that such an affectionate closeness would taint the believer’s vision and adversely affect the believer’s thoughts and character.22 Recognizing that this is a less tolerant reading, he supports his contention with several lines of debate. In particular, he refuses an understanding of wilāya/ walāya in terms of help or contractual alliance as suggested by some mufassirūn. According to Ṭabaṭabā’ī, some mufassirūn oppose interpreting wilāya as love and affection because this interpretation is not supported by the context of revelation (asbāb al-nuzūl). Instead, various narratives of the context of revelation of Q 5:51 seem to support the idea that the verse forbids entering into a covenant and wilāya of mutual help between the Muslims on the one hand and the Jews and the Christians on the other. However, the tendency of some mufassirūn to bring the context of revelation into discussion is rejected by Ṭabaṭabā’ī, arguing that the narratives of asbāb al-nuzūl are contradictory and do not present a single meaning that can be relied upon. For Ṭabaṭabā’ī, those narratives are not only weak but also “merely attempts to apply historical events on the qurʾānic verses which appear to

300  Mun’im Sirry have some relevance to them.”23 Even if we accept the authenticity of those narratives, he contends, such historical events can neither particularize nor restrict the generality of a qurʾānic verse; otherwise, “the Qurʾān would have died with the death of those about whom such verses were revealed.”24 Here we can see the tendency among modern Muslim exegetes to particularize qurʾānic discourse either by looking at the internal textual evidence or by recourse to the asbāb al-nuzūl. Such strategies, however, do not prevent them from engaging with their own local contexts. One may assume that, by ascribing to the political connotation of awliyāʾ, Riḍā would use Q 5:51 to argue against the appointment of non-Muslims to public office, as many medieval Muslim exegetes had assumed. However, this is not the case. In fact, Riḍā rejects the views of earlier scholars such as Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) and Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286), who do not permit non-Muslims to become public officers in Islamic lands. They narrate a story in which the second caliph ʿUmar b. Khaṭṭāb asked Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī to dismiss his Christian secretary by referring to Q 5:51. In his argument against both Zamakhsharī and Bayḍāwī, Riḍā tells a personal story that took place during his visit to Dār al-Funūn in Istanbul in 1909. One of the teachers there taught the meaning of Q 5:51 by referring to Bayḍāwī, and a student stood up and asked: If that was the case as Bayḍāwī said, why does the state sometimes appoint Jews and Christians as ministers, senators, parliamentarians, or civil servants? We are told that the teacher was in a state of mortal fear because if he said something against the constitution, he would be severely punished. In that situation, Riḍā asked the teacher if he could respond to the student. In Riḍā’s own words, “I explained that wilāya in the verse is about the wilāya of helping (wilāya al-naṣra) and the verse does not prohibit the employment of non-Muslim dhimmīs. The student was satisfied with my explanation, so too other listeners. The teacher also looked happy.”25 Riḍā’s point is that there is nothing wrong with non-Muslim appointment to public office, let alone mutual friendship and collaboration with them, as long as they are not fighting or conspiring against the Muslims.

Generalizing Discourses While the strategy of particularizing the qurʾānic criticism at the social interaction level has been effectively used by modern Muslims to restrict its general applicability in the modern context so also has the strategy of generalizing the qurʾānic discourses. This is evident in the way the Indonesian Muḥammad Quraish Shihab interprets the qurʾānic prohibition of taking Jews and Christians as awliyāʾ. For Shihab, such a prohibition is not only directed at Jews and Christians. He argues that Q 5:51 does not pertain to Jews and Christians only, nor to all Jews and Christians, but that it rather means all those who behave in the negative way depicted in Q 5:51–53 and the preceding passages of the Qurʾān. Although Q 5:12–50 describes the negative behaviors of specific Jews and Christians, Shihab does not associate the prohibition with those specific Jews and Christians, but rather he looks at the negative behaviors as the main reasons for their being prohibited as the awliyāʾ of the believers. He, therefore, concludes that whoever’s

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  301 behavior is like that of specific Jews and Christians should be banned from being the awliyāʾ.26 These strategies of particularizing and generalizing discourses can also be detected in modern Muslim exegeses on the qurʾānic passages dealing with Christian doctrines. The Syrian scholar Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī (d. 1914), for instance, was aware of the Qurʾān’s unorthodox understanding of the Trinitarian doctrine. Because Christians do not believe that Mary is a member of the Trinity, the Syrian scholar associates such a doctrine with a specific group of Christians (firqa) called “Collyridians” who worshipped Mary as one of the three gods. In his exegesis of Q 5:116, he mentions this unorthodox teaching, saying, “It is possible that this matter was written in their manuscripts (nusakh) and therefore the Qurʾān denied it.”27 Qāsimī also cites Kitāb ʿilm al-yaqīn, which had referred to a Christian sect called “Maryāmiyyūn.”28 To further reinforce his view, he argues that even the historian Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150/767) in his Sīra also affirms that among the Christians of Najrān who visited the prophet, there were some who said “Jesus is God,” others who said “He is the son of God,” and still others who said “He is the third of three,” namely God, Jesus, and Mary. And Q 5:73 was revealed in response to all of their statements.29 Therefore, Qāsimī glosses the qurʾānic phrase “God is the third of three” as follows: “One of the three gods; it means, one of them, namely God, Mary, and Jesus.”30 Similarly, in his interpretation of Q 4:171, the qurʾānic phrase “Do not say: Three!” is glossed “Three gods: God, the Messiah, and Mary.” From the modern inter-religious perspective, Qāsimī’s understanding of qurʾānic criticism as referring to Collyridians is significant for Christian-Muslim conversation in the sense that he acknowledges that the Qurʾān does not criticize the belief of the mainstream Christians. Interestingly, it is only in the second half of the twentieth century that some Western scholars ascribed to this view. Writing in 1965, the British scholar Geoffrey Parrinder writes, “It is more likely that it is heretical doctrines that are denied in the Qurʾān, and orthodox Christians should agree with most of its statements.”31 According to Parrinder, “The Collyridians, an Arabian female sect of the fourth century, offered to Mary cakes of bread (collyrida), as they had done to the great earth mother in pagan times. Epiphanius, who opposed this heresy, said that the Trinity must be worshiped, but Mary must not be worshiped. The Qurʾān may well be directed against this heresy. It gives its support against Mariolatry, while at the same time it recognizes the importance of Mary as the vessel chosen by God for the birth of his Christ.”32 Since then, this explanation has been widely accepted as a standard explanation of the qurʾānic criticism of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Referring to the qurʾānic verses already mentioned, Timothy George asserts that “what is rejected in the Qurʾān itself is not the proper Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but rather a heretical belief in three gods.”33 The problem is that the information about this Christian sect is only recorded by St. Epiphanius of Salamis who denounced the cult as “foolish, crazy idolatry and the work of the devil.”34 Epiphanius describes the Collyridians as a group of women first in Thrace and Scythia and then Arabia who “prepare a certain

302  Mun’im Sirry carriage with a square seat and spread out fine linens over it on a special day of the year, and they put forth a bread and offer it in the name of Mary, and they all partake of the bread.”35 Some modern scholars like Michael P. Carroll downplay the importance of this sect, saying, “If anything, the lack of references to the Collyridians in the early literature on heresy suggests that they were an obscure sect of no great importance.”36 According to Stephen Shoemaker, Epiphanius’ attack on the Collyridians’ practices can be understood within a broader critique of the veneration of saints. Of course, Epiphanius exaggerates in his critique to such an extent that he smears his opponents with the charge of replacing God with Mary. Shoemaker has argued persuasively that “it is by no means clear that this widely held opinion of the Kollyridians represents an accurate understanding of their beliefs and practices.”37 It can be argued that it is not at all impossible that the qurʾānic accusation that Christians claim Mary as God can be understood as a rhetorical statement to polemicize their beliefs and practices. In more recent scholarship of the Qurʾān, as represented by the works of Sidney Griffith and Gabriel Reynolds, there is a shift from the “heretical explanation” to the emphasis on the rhetorical language of the Qurʾān. When the Qurʾān claims that Christians said, “God is Jesus the son of Mary” or “God is the third of three,” these should be understood as polemical statements. The Qurʾān is aware that Christians did not say that. In the words of Griffith, “The Qurʾān’s seeming misstatement, rhetorically speaking, should therefore not be thought to be a mistake, but rather a polemically inspired caricature, the purpose of which is to highlight in Islamic terms the absurdity, and therefore the wrongness, of the Christian belief, from an Islamic perspective.”38 Elsewhere Griffith contends that “the Qurʾān’s seeming espousal of a position earlier owned by some Jewish Christians hardly constitutes evidence for the actual presence of one or another of these long-gone communities in its seventh-century Arabian milieu.”39 In the same line of argument, Reynolds persuasively argues that “in passages involving Christianity in the Qurʾān we should look for the Qurʾān’s creative use of rhetoric, and not for the influence of Christian heretics.”40 This is a significant development in the critical study of the Qurʾān because the assumption about the Hijāz as the home of Jewish and Christian heresies is no longer defensible. The seeming inaccuracy of its criticism does not denote qurʾānic misapprehension. Instead, understood within its “sectarian milieu” (to use Wansbrough’s term), the Qurʾān’s message reflects polemical hyperbole. Even if we insist on the qurʾānic reference to Jewish Christian heresies in some way, we may still ask: Why does the Qurʾān generalize its criticism as being addressed to Christians as a whole? In his The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture, Holger Michael Zellentin makes an interesting observation that, rather than assuming “Judeo-Christianity” as being an independent heretical group, it is more likely “that Judeo-Christianity constituted an integral part of various forms of Judaism and Christianity throughout Late Antiquity, as evidenced by the explicit statements of the Didascalia and by the preservation of its heritage in the Qurʾān.”41 The challenge for modern Muslim scholars is how to make the qurʾānic text of seventh-century Ḥijāz relevant for all times and places (ṣāliḥ likull zamān

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  303 wa-makān). One may ask, given that the Collyridians do not exist any longer, how can the qurʾānic criticism transcend its context? Some Muslims try to find the relevance of the qurʾānic criticism today, even though the actual opponent might have disappeared from the historical stage. Hamka and Ṭabaṭabā’ī, for instance, believe that the practice of worshipping Mary continues among certain Catholic churches. The Indonesian exegete makes mention of the Armenian and Coptic Churches as examples of those Christians who worshipped Mary. He says that “in addition to the belief of the Trinity, the Eastern and Western Churches, especially Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic, have elevated Mary to the divine status, to whom they pray, ask for blessing and healing, and offer various kinds of worship.”42 For Hamka, the Christian belief of what is generally known as “Marian apparitions” is a form of worship.43 He also alludes to an interesting phenomenon in Indonesia where most Catholics have Mary’s statue in their houses and regard it with a high esteem. He then concludes: “As a result, in addition to the belief of One God in three Persons (Trinity), they [Catholics] also take Mary as a goddess. However, this additional belief has been rejected by the Protestants.”44 Ṭabaṭabā’ī does not agree with the view that the Qurʾān ascribes Mary to the person of the Trinity (thalātha). He distinguishes between taking Mary as a god and believing in her divinity. Taking someone as a god is applicable to submitting to her or him with humility. The Qurʾān claims that Christians take (ittakhadū) Mary as a goddess and not that they believe in her as a goddess. The Iranian Shīʿī exegete offers an elaborated discussion on this issue, given that some people have found it hard to explain Q 5:116 because Christians do not believe in the divinity of the Virgin Mary. When the Qurʾān says that Christians had taken Christ and his mother as gods besides Allah, for Ṭabaṭabā’ī, it is because the taking is other than naming: taking them for gods occurs when they worship them, and this is what happening in their case. We are told that he first came to know that the Christians indeed worshiped Mary when he read a book titled al-Sawāʿī,45 from among the books of the Greek Orthodox, which he saw in a monastery called Dayr al-Tilmīdh. Elsewhere in this book, Ṭabaṭabā’ī tells us, “The Catholics declare openly about that and take pride in it.”46 He also refers to the Jesuit magazine, al-Mashriq (no.  9), published in Beirut in 1904, which is decorated with Mary’s pictures and colored designs. In its seventh-year edition of 1904, which was designed as a souvenir to celebrate the Golden Jubilee at the end of the fiftieth year since the announcement of Pope Pius IX that the Virgin Mary had been conceived without original sin (known as the doctrine of Immaculate Conception in 1854), the editor-in-chief of this magazine, Louis Cheikho, wrote an article in which he explicitly says that “the worship by the Armenian Church of the chaste Virgin, the Mother of God, is certainly a well-known affair” (la-amr mashhūr).47 He also writes: “The Coptic Church is distinguished by its worship of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God.”48 The bottom line is that both Hamka and Ṭabaṭabā’ī strive to prove that the Qurʾān neither misunderstands the Christian doctrine, nor is its criticism only applicable to a certain period in history. Hamka takes a step further, generalizing this qurʾānic criticism as directed not against Christians per se but also Muslims.

304  Mun’im Sirry When explicating the qurʾānic criticism of the divinity of Jesus, he claims that this warning does in fact apply to all people, not only to Christians who believe in the divinity of Jesus but also to those who regard their “Holy men” (Orang Suci) and priests like God, venerating them and asking them for blessings (berkat) and intercession (syafa’at). Moreover, Hamka asserts that the warning also applies to the Muslims who venerate the so-called saints (wali) and sacred places (tempat keramat) by asking them to give blessing, instead of asking God, as on the Day of Judgment those saints and sacred places would not be able to offer them any help.49 It is worth noting the extent to which Hamka attempts to “indigenize” the meaning of the Qurʾān to fit into the Indonesian experience. It is common in Indonesia for Muslims to go to shrines or grave sites of Sufis for blessings and intersession. In his interpretation of Q 4:73, which warns Christians of their excessive attitude toward Jesus (lā-taghlū fī dīnikum), Hamka contends that such a reminder is also applicable to Muslims, as Muhammad is reported to have said: “Do not elevate me like Christians elevated the son of Mary. Instead, I am but His servant and Messenger.”50 Of course, one may argue that the heart of the Christian teaching is not that Jesus was elevated to a divine status but rather that God descended to earth and was incarnated in a human body. However, Hamka’s point is simply to generalize the qurʾānic criticism so as to make it applicable to Muslims as well. For him, the qurʾānic discourses on Jews and Christians must also be applicable to Muslims in such a way that the latter should not follow erroneous beliefs and practices. In addition, the Qurʾān records rivalries and divisions among the People of the Book: “Those to whom the Book had been revealed differed among themselves only after knowledge had come to them, competing in rivalry with one another” (Q 3:19). Writing his commentary from the perspective of the twentieth century, Rashīd Riḍā reminds Muslims that “it is necessary for us not to forget about differences and conflicts that have afflicted us.”51 While explicating the qurʾānic text dealing with Christians, he warns Muslims of the danger of falling into rivalries and sectarianisms that have caused division and schism in the history of Christianity, and he cites several passages of the Qurʾān that stress its message for all Muslims to unite. Indeed, Riḍā’s discussion of the Christian doctrines seems to be informed by his polemics with Christian missionaries in Egypt to the extent that he generalizes the qurʾānic criticism of those doctrines by referring to Western scholarship. He spends a great deal of time discussing such Christian doctrines as the divinity of Jesus, his divine sonship, and the Trinity, as preserved in and criticized by the Qurʾān. To prove his point, he alludes to nineteenth-century Western scholars’ critiques of the Trinity, including Thomas Maurice’s Indian Antiquities and Thomas William Doane’s Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions, who ascribe to the doctrine a pagan origin. The latter is cited as saying, “If we turn to India we shall find that one of the most prominent features in Indian theology is the doctrine of a divine triad, governing all things. This triad is called Tri-murti – from the Sanskrit word tri (three) and murti (form) – and consists of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. It is an inseparable unity, though three in form.”52 Doane goes on to

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  305 explain that Brahma is the Father, Vishnu the Son, and Shiva the Holy Spirit. Riḍā also refers to James Bonwick’s Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought (1878) and Godfrey Higgins’ Anacalypsis (1836) and concludes that “as for the paganistic nature of this doctrine, European scholars have explained in detail and provided many examples to show the ancient traces in this doctrine.”53 It seems clear that the way Riḍā approaches the qurʾānic criticism of the seemingly Christian doctrines is different from his discussion of the social aspects of the qurʾānic polemics. It is widely known that Riḍā was involved in theological debates with Christian missionaries, and such an involvement had a profound impact on his exegesis of the Qurʾān. As has been noted by Ignaz Goldziher, Christian missionary activities and their polemical writings against Islam “produced a forceful reaction in al-Manār.”54 Charles Adams also argues that al-Manār placed particular emphasis on “counteracting the activities of Christian missions in Muslim land” by forming Jamʿiyyat al-daʿwa wa al-irshād (translated by Adams as “Society of Propaganda and Guidance”).55 Recent studies by Simon Wood and Umar Ryad also point to the polemical nature of Riḍā’s works.56 However, a closer examination of his Tafsīr al-manār reveals that his view of other religions is much less polemical than is sometimes supposed. It is hardly surprising because the tafsīr is the fruit of protracted study and meditation, pursued over many years. Nevertheless, the polemical tone of his arguments is not altogether absent in his tafsīr.

Concluding Remarks The two hermeneutical strategies employed by modern Muslim scholars, as discussed, can be seen as an attempt to present the picture of Islam in a way that will appeal to modern minds. The crux of the matter, it seems to me, lies in their struggle to be faithful to the qurʾānic text and, at the same time, be sensitive to the religious beliefs of others in the modern context. Their emphasis is primarily on how to make the Qurʾān function within modern society and history rather than standing outside it. As the Italian scholar Massimo Campanini has pointed out, “The most original part of modern qurʾānic exegesis, leaving aside the more traditionalist and conservative or the more strictly philosophical interpretations, has been directed at discovering the Qurʾān’s practical dimension, which is to say its function in modifying the structure of social reality and revolutionizing human relations.”57 Their wrestling with the seventh-century religious text is evident from the ways in which they, on the one hand, try to restrict its general application for the sake of religious tolerance and, on the other hand, generalize the qurʾānic criticism of others to include reminders for Muslims. With such double-edged approaches, modern Muslim exegetes have been able to derive from the Qurʾān a practical guidance for both religious harmony (al-tasāmuḥ al-dīnī) and religious reform (al-islāḥ al-dīnī). Faced with the increasingly pluralized societies of the modern time, they address difficult questions affecting Muslim attitudes toward other religions. Some of the key polemical qurʾānic references about Judaism and Christianity were undoubtedly responsible for the development of the Muslim

306  Mun’im Sirry theology of the “other,” and it is therefore understandable that modern Muslim exegetes have struggled to recontextualize the Qurʾān in light of modern realities. Thus, modern tafsīr – like classical and medieval Qurʾān commentaries – is not merely a theoretical explication of the words of God independent of the social realities in which it emerged but rather an undertaking embedded in a specific socio-historical context. Modern Muslim approaches to the qurʾānic criticisms examined here offer ground-level awareness of challenges to turn these difficult issues into opportunities for peaceful inter-religious relations.58

Notes 1 Michael Cook, The Koran: A  Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 33. 2 For the translation of the qurʾānic verses in this essay, I have used Tarif Khalidi’s The Qurʾān: A New Translation (New York: Viking Penguin, 2008), with a few modifications where I deem necessary for the purpose of my presentation of the qurʾānic text. 3 For a discussion of Q 5:48, see Mun’im Sirry, “ ‘Compete with One Another in Good Works’: Exegesis of Qurʾān Verse 5.48 and Contemporary Muslim Discourses on Religious Pluralism,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 20.4 (October 2009), 423–38. 4 Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 34. 5 Mahmoud Ayoub, The Qurʾān and Its Interpreters: The House of ʿImrān (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 2:241. 6 Mohammad Fadel, “No Salvation outside Islam: Muslim Modernists, Democratic Politics, and Islamic Theological Exclusivism,” in Islam, Salvation and the Fate of Others, ed. Mohammad Hassan Khalil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5. 7 Abū Jaʿfar al-Naḥḥās, Kitāb al-nāsikh wa al-mansūkh fī al-Qurʾān al-karīm (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-ʻAllāmīyah 1938). 8 Hamka, Tafsir al-Azhar (Jakarta: Pembimbing Massa, 1967), 1:187. 9 Ibid., 3:120–21. 10 Ibid., 3:121. 11 Muhammad Ḥusayn Ṭabaṭabā’ī, Al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Mu’assasa al-aʿlāmī li al-maṭbūʿāt, 1970), 6:67. 12 The prohibition of taking nonbelievers as awliyāʾ occurs several times in the Qurʾān with different identifications of nonbelievers. Whereas Q 5:51 refers explicitly to al-yahūd (Jews) and al-naṣārā (Christians), in three occurrences (Q 3:28, 4:139, and 4:144) the Qurʾān simply refers to al-kuffār (unbelievers). Elsewhere the prohibition applies to “those who took your religion as a subject of mockery and entertainment” (Q 5:57), “your fathers and brothers” (Q 9:23), “other than God” (Q 13:16, 29:41, 39:3, 42:9) and “My enemy and your enemy” (Q 6:1). As expected, modern Muslim exegetes devote more detailed discussions to the first occurrence of this prohibition in Q 3:28 than to the other verses. 13 Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā, Tafsīr al-manār, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbduh, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Dār al-Manār, 1947), 6:424. 14 Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl al-Qurʾān (Cairo: Dār al-maʿārif, 1954), 10:399. Ṭabarī says, “fa al-ṣawāb an yaḥkum li ẓāhir al-tanzīl bi al-ʿumūm ʿalā mā ʿamma.” 15 Haris Aziz, “Anti-Semitism amongst Muslims,” in Islamic Political Radicalism: A  European Perspective, ed. Tahir Abbas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 79. 16 Oliver Leaman, Jewish Thought: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 71.

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  307 17 David Dakake, “The Myth of a Militant Islam,” in Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition, ed. Joseph E. B. Lumbard (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), 8. 18 See Maria Massi Dakake, The Charismatic Community: Shiʿite Identity in Early Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 16. 19 Tabatabā’ī, Mīzān, 5:285. Among Western scholars, both the historicity and function of the so-called asbāb al-nuzūl have been subjected to critical scrutiny. A number of scholars consider the asbāb al-nuzūl merely as the product of an exegetic elaboration on the qurʾānic text. Andrew Rippin argues, “Narrative expansion of the qurʾānic verse is a more frequent feature in the asbāb, ranging from the most simple setting of the scene to a full elaboration, spinning an entire narrative structure around a qurʾānic verse.” See Rippin, “The Function of Asbāb al-nuzūl in Qurʾānic Exegesis,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 51.1 (1988): 4. Elsewhere Rippin writes that stories found in the biography of the prophet (sīra) were designed to provide asbāb al-nuzūl of the Qurʾān. See Rippin, “The Exegetical Genre Asbāb al-nuzūl: A Bibliographical and Terminological Survey,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 48.1 (1985): 1–15. In line with this, Uri Rubin goes a step further arguing that “although the traditions known as asbāb al-nuzūl occur in the collections of tafsīr – for example, al-Ṭabarī’s – the birthplace is in the sīra, where they do not yet function as asbāb.” See Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muḥammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995), 227. I assume that Rubin has in mind stories used by Ibn Isḥāq. However, if we examine Muqātil’s tafsīr, the question that the traditions known as asbāb al-nuzūl were born in the sīra literature seems to be problematic. As is well-known, Muqātil used asbāb al-nuzūl extensively in his tafsīr. It is more plausible to argue that those traditions were already in the air during the first two centuries of Islam and that authors might have incorporated them into their works, either sīra or tafsīr. 20 For a brief discussion of Ṭabaṭabā’ī’s view, see Jane McAuliffe, “Christians in the Qurʾān and Tafsīr,” in Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions, ed. Jacques Waardenburgh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 111–12; Farid Esack, Qurʾān, Liberalism and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 183. 21 Ṭabaṭabā’ī, Mīzān, 3:151. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 3:429. 26 M. Quraish Shihab, Tafsir al-Mishbah: pesan, kesan, dan keserasian al-Qurʾan (Jakarta: Lentera, 2001), 3:113. 27 Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-bābī al-ḥalabī, 1957), 5:1765. 28 Ibid., 6:2098. I have not been able to ascertain the author of the Kitāb ʿilm al-yaqīn in question because there are many books with the same title. 29 Ibid., 6:1922. 30 Ibid. 31 Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qurʾān (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965), 133. 32 Ibid. 33 Timothy George, Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? Understanding the Differences between Christianity and Islam (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 59. 34 Stephen Benko translates St. Epiphanius’ description of a Collyridian ceremony as follows: “For some women decorate a carriage or a square chair by covering it with fine linen, and on a certain definite day of the year [on certain days] they set forth bread and offer it as sacrifice in the name of Mary.” See Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 171.

308  Mun’im Sirry 35 Cited by Stephen Shoemaker, “The Cult of the Virgin in the Fourth Century: A Fresh Look at Some Old and New Sources,” in Origins of the Cult of the Virgin Mary, ed. Chris Maunder (London: Burns & Oates, 2008), 76–7. 36 Michael P. Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 44–5. 37 Shoemaker, “The Cult of the Virgin in the Fourth Century,” 77. 38 Sidney H. Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qurʾān: A Hermeneutical Reflection,” in New Perspectives on the Qurʾān: The Qurʾān in its Historical Context 2, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2011), 11. 39 Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the People of the Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 37. 40 Gabriel Said Reynolds, “The Qurʾān, qurʾānic Rhetoric, and Christianity.” I am grateful to Professor Reynolds for sharing his unpublished draft with me. 41 Holger M. Zellentin, The Qurʾān’s Legal Culture: The Didascalia Apostolorum as a Point of Departure (Tübingen: Möhr Siebeck, 2013), 26. 42 Hamka, Tafsir al-Azhar, 7:90. 43 Ibid. The word “apparition” comes from the late Latin word apparition, which means “appearance” or “presence.” An apparition refers to the sudden appearance of a supernatural entity that directly manifests itself to a human individual or group. Within a Catholic context, it could be the appearance of any supernatural figure. In A Catholic Dictionary, “apparition” is defined as “the name sometimes reserved for certain kinds of supernatural vision, namely, those that are bodily or visible, as is often used for the manifestation of Our Lady of Lourdes, of St. Michael on Monte Gargano, etc.” See Donald Attwater, ed., A Catholic Dictionary (New York: MacMillan, 1961), s.v. “Apparition,” 30. As for the Catholic Church’s position on this, one Catholic scholar says: “The Church accepts the authenticity of a supernatural apparition only with great circumspection. She requires that the facts, which she submits to a severe examination, should in themselves be striking and also insists on waiting before passing judgment.” See Louis Lochet, Apparitions of Our Lady: Their Place in the Life of the Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1960), 30. 44 Hamka, Tafsir al-Azhar, 7:90. 45 Probably, Ṭabaṭabā’ī refers to kitāb salā al-sawāʾī (book of prayer of the hours), a collection of prayers for Catholic Melkites that appeared in the sixteenth century. 46 Ṭabaṭabā’ī, Mīzān, 7:244. 47 Ibid. See also Louis Cheikho, “ʿAqīda al-ḥabl bi lā danas fī al-kanāʾis al-sharqiyya,” al-Mashriq 9 (1904): 399. 48 Ṭabaṭabā’ī, Mīzān, 7:403. 49 Ibid., 7:305. 50 Hamka, Tafsir al-Azhar, 6:75. 51 Riḍā, Tafsīr al-manār, 3:259. For a further discussion of Riḍā’s view, see Esack, Qurʾān, Liberalism and Pluralism, 127–34. See also, for comparison, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Muslim Scholarly Discussions on Salvation and the Fate of “Others” (PhD Dissertation, The University of Michigan, 2007), 187–90. 52 Riḍā, Tafsīr al-manār, 6:88. See also T. W. Doane, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (New York: The Truth Seeker Company, 1882), 369. 53 Riḍā, Tafsīr al-manār, 6:88. 54 Ignaz Goldziher, Die Richtungen der Islamischen Koranauslegung: An der Universität Upsala gehaltene Olaus-Petri-Vorlesungen (Leiden: Brill, 1920), 342; Goldziher, Schools of Koranic Commentators, trans. and ed. Wolfgang H. Behn (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 215. 55 Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muḥammad ʿAbduh (New York: Russell & Russell, 1968), 196. 56 While Wood focuses on Riḍā’s work, Shubahāt al-naṣārā wa ḥujaj al-Islām, which was previously published as a series of articles in al-Manār as a response to the activities and publications of Christian missionaries in Egypt, Ryad analyses three major

Reinterpreting the Qurʾānic Criticism  309 issues, namely (1) al-Manār’s view of Christianity, (2) Riḍā’s relation with his fellow Arab Christians, and (3) his response to Christian missionary writings on Islam. See Simon Wood, Christian Criticisms, Islamic Proofs: Rashīd Riḍā’s Modernist Defense of Islam (Oxford: OneWorld, 2008); Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformation and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā and his Associates (1898–1935) (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 57 Massimo Campanini, The Qurʾān: Modern Muslim Interpretations, trans. Caroline Higgitt (London: Routledge, 2011), 4. 58 For a detailed discussion on this, see Mun’im Sirry, Scriptural Polemics: The Qurʾān and Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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Bibliography, Qurʾānic Studies Today

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316  Bibliography, Qurʾānic Studies Today Dawson, David. Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Dayeh, Islam. “Al-Ḥawāmīm: Intertextuality and Coherence in Meccan Surahs.” In The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu, edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx, 461–98. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Deichmann, Friedrich Wilhelm, ed. Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967. Denny, Frederick M. “The Adab of Qur’an Recitation: Text and Context.” In International Congress for the Study of the Qur’an: Australian National University, Canberra, 8–13 May 1980, edited by Anthony H. Johns, 143–60. Canberra: Australian National University, 1980. ———. “Exegesis and Recitation: Their Development as Classical Forms of Qur’ānic Piety.” In Transitions and Transformations in the History of Religions, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and Theodore M. Ludwig, 91–123. Leiden: Brill, 1980. ———. “The Great Indonesian Qur’an Chanting Tournament.” The World & I 6 (1986), 216–23. ———. “Islamic Ritual: Perspectives and Theories.” In Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, edited by Richard C. Martin, 63–77. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985. ———. “Nawawi: Etiquette in Recitation.” In Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life, edited by John Renard, 55–57. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. ———. “Qur’ān Recitation: A  Tradition of Oral Performance and Transmission.” Oral Tradition 4.1/2 (1989): 5–26. Déroche, François. La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam le codex Parisino-petropolitanus. Leiden: Brill, 2009. ———. Le Coran. Paris: PUF, 2005. ———. Qur’ans of the Umayyads: A First Overview. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Dibelius, Martin. From Tradition to Gospel. Translated by Bertram Lee Woolf. New York: Scribner, 1935. Diem, Werner, and Stefan Wild, eds. Studien aus Arabistik und Semitistik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1980. Doane, T. W. Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions. New York: The Truth Seeker Company, 1882. Dodd, C. H. The Parables of the Kingdom. London: Nisbet & Co., 1935. Dohmen, Christoph, and Manfred Oeming. Biblischer Kanon, warum und wozu?: Eine Kanontheologie. Freiburg: Herder, 1992. Donner, Fred. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010. ———. “The Qurʾān in Recent Scholarship: Challenges and Desiderata.” In The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context, edited by Gabriel Said Reynolds, 29–50. London: Routledge, 2008. Doran, Robert, ed. The Lives of Simeon Stylites. Translated by Robert Doran. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992. Droge, Arthur J. Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1989. Effenberger, Arne. Frühchristliche Kunst und Kultur: Von den Anfängen bis zum 7. Jahrhundert. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1986. Ehlich, Konrad. “Text und sprachliches Handeln.” In Schrift und Gedächtnis: Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation, edited by Aleida Assman, Jan Assman, and Christof Hardmeier, 24–44. Munich: W. Fink, 1983.

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334  Bibliography, Qurʾānic Studies Today Ullmann, Manfred. Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970. van Ess, Joseph. “Review of Quranic Studies.” Bibliotheca Orientalis 35 (1978): 349–53. van Reeth, J. M. F. “Le prophète musulman en tant que nâsir Allâh et ses antécédents: Le ‘Nazôraios’ évangélique et le Livre des Jubilés.” Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 23 (1992): 251–74. van Winden, J. C. M. An Early Christian Philosopher: Justin Martyr’s Dialogue With Trypho, Chapters One to Nine. Leiden: Brill, 1971. Varga, Csaba, ed. Comparative Legal Cultures. New York: New York University Press, 1992. Vico, Giambattista. La scienza nuova. Naples, n.p., 1725. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich. Zukunftsphilologie! Eine Erwiderung auf Friedrich Nietzsches’ “Geburt der Tragödie.” Berlin: Gebrüder Borntraeger, 1872. Vööbus, Arthur. The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac I–IV. 4 vols. Louvain: Secrétariat du Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 1979. Wansbrough, John E. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. ———. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Edited by Andrew Rippin. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004. ———. The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Waszink, J. H. “Tertullian’s Principles and Methods of Exegesis.” In Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition, edited by William R. Schoedel and Robert Louis Wilken, 17–31. Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1979. Weil, Gustav. Historisch-kritische Einleitung in den Koran. Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1878. ———. Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre: Aus handschriftlichen Quellen und dem Koran geschöpft und dargestellt. Stuttgart: Metzlerschen Buchhandlung, 1843. Welch, Alford T. “Formulaic Features of the Punishment-Stories.” In Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur’ān, edited by Issa J. Boullata, 77–116. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000. ———., ed. Studies in Qur’an and Tafsir. Chico, CA: American Academy of Religion, 1980. Wensinck, A. J. Mohammed en de Joden te Medina. Leiden: Brill, 1908. West, Edward W., ed. Pahlavi Texts, vol.  1, The Bundahis, Bahman Yast, and Shāyast Lā-Shāyast. Translated by Edward W. West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Wheeler, Brannon M. “Moses.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, edited by Andrew Rippin, 248–65. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. ———. Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2002. ———. Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to the Quran and Muslim Exegesis. New York: Continuum, 2002. Wild, Stefan. The Qur’ān as Text. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Wilken, Robert Louis. John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Wischmeyer, Wolfgang. “Die vorkonstantinische christliche Kunst in neuem Lichte: Die Cleveland-Statuetten.” Vigiliae Christianae 35.3 (1981): 253–87.

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Index of Qurʾānic References

Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

Q 2 (Sūrat al-Baqara)

26 275 27 112 278n56 31 32 264n16 212 39 – 41 40 201n61, 279 44 201n61 201n64 57 61 211 261, 290, 292, 62   293 74 279 218 75 – 79 116 – 17 262n10 201n61 122 260 124 150 279 275n51 207 219 206 265 275n51, 291 268 195 286 202n71

Q 3 (Sūrat Ᾱl ʿImrān)

— 1 – 68 3 – 4 7 – 8 19 21 28 33 33 – 34 49 – 50 50 52 58 78 83

45, 192 201n56 218 202n74 291, 300 211 294n12 215 192 195 192 271n42 206 218 293

338  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

85 121 144

291, 292, 293 110 166n4

Q 4 (Sūrat an-Nisāʾ)

22 73 89 114 139 144 153 153 – 54 153 – 60 160 163 163 – 65 171

101 300 292 275n51 292, 294n12 292, 294n12 195 261n8 195 195, 201n65, 202n71 96n36 211 291, 297

Q 5 (Sūrat al-Māʾida)

3 4 5 12 – 50 17 18 32 43 44 48 51 51 – 53 57 63 69 72 73 82 – 83 87 116

291 201n65 201n65 296 291 261 261n8 260 260, 263, 265 291, 291n3 292, 293, 294, 294n12, 295, 296 296 294n12 260, 263, 265, 266 290 291 292, 297 269 201n65 264n19, 292, 297, 299

Q 6 (Sūrat al-Anʿām)        1 26 52 66 83 – 90 86 99 104 107 146

294n12 261 102 102 209 96n36 172n36 102 102 195, 202n71, 261

Q 7 (Sūrat al-Aʿraf)

25 – 45, 50n48, 63, 121, 126, 157 34 36

— 1 – 9 3

Index of Qurʾānic References  339 Sūra

Verse 4 8 – 9 26 – 58 32 34 59 60 60 – 63 64 65 66 66 – 68 72 73 75 75 – 77 76 78 – 82 79 80 – 84 83 85 85 – 93 88 88 – 90 93 94 – 102 103 103 – 26 109 127 130 137 – 38 143 – 55 157 163 – 68 169 – 78 171 176 179 – 206 190 – 98 196 199 206

Page Number(s) 36 36 34 201n65 113 35 35, 201n64 36 35, 37 35 35 36 35 – 36, 37 35 35, 37 36 37 45 36 69 50 35 25 – 26 35, 37 36 36 34 35 156 35 35 35 36 201n62 195, 201n65, 202n71, 216 35 35 261n8 206 34 36 36 37 37

Q 8 (Sūrat al-Anfāl)        32 72 74

117n15 271n42 271n42

Q 9 (Sūrat at-Tawba)       23 28 – 35 30 31

294n12 213 264n19 262, 264, 265, 269, 275, 277, 278

340  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

34 70

260, 266, 275, 277 31

Q 10 (Sūrat Yūnus)         — 91 – 92, 97n52, 101 – 17,   118 – 19n29 11 117n15 13 105, 117n9 20 106 33 105, 117n8 37 218 105 40 40 – 41 105 42 105 105 43 46 105 – 6 211 47 105 48 49 113 107, 119n31 50 51 107, 119n31 105 65 68 – 69 262n10 71 – 73 106 102 72 73 106 105 74 74 – 93 106 88 105 97n52 92 – 94 93 201n64 105, 218 94 94 – 95 105 96 105, 117n8 96 – 98 86 97 92 98 91 – 92, 106 – 8 99 106, 108, 110 99 – 100 106 100 106 101 105 102 106 103 106 108 102, 107 109 107 Q 11 (Sūrat Hūd)          — 25 – 42, 63, 68 – 69, 101 – 17,   118n21, 118 – 19n29 1 – 24 37 3 107, 117n14 5 107 6 183 8 107, 117n16

Index of Qurʾānic References  341 Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

9 10 9 – 10 11 12 17 18 25 25 – 99 36 38 38 – 39 42 – 43 48 50 51 – 57 58 59 60 61 62 – 63 66 68 69 77 77 – 83 78 – 80 81 82 82 – 83 84 84 – 95 94 95 96 99 100 – 23 104 109 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

107 107 118n18 118n18 107, 118n18 105, 107 – 8 38 37 37 108 38 38 69 37 37 38 37, 106 38 38 37 38 37, 106 38 38 38 68 38 37 32 38 37 26 – 27 37, 106 38 37, 38 38 37 107 – 8, 118n17 105, 108 108 108, 118n19 108 108, 110 108 108 117n10 106, 108

Q 12 (Sūrat Yūsuf)         — 11 – 18 13 17

101 – 17, 118n21, 118 – 19n29 188 188 188

342  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

21 44 54 56 87 101 103 104 106 110 111

110 110 110 110 111 110 110 102 110 110 – 11, 118n27 218

Q 13 (Sūrat ar-Raʿd)       — 1 6 7 10 – 11 11 14 16 18 19 20 – 21 21 22 24 25 27 28 31 40

101 – 17, 118n21, 118n28, 118 – 19n29 111 – 12, 119n30 111 111 – 12 111 111 111 112, 294n12 111 – 12 112, 206 112 112 112 112 112 112 112 112 – 13, 119n32 106, 113

Q 14 (Sūrat Ibrāhīm)       — 10 10 – 11 11 13 – 14 15 17 44 47 48 – 52

101 – 17, 118n28, 118 – 19n29 113, 119n34 114 102 114 114 105 113, 119n33 114 114

Q 15 (Sūrat al-Ḥijr)       — 63, 67 – 68, 101 – 17, 118n28,   118 – 19n29 2 114 – 15 3 115 4 115 4 – 5 115 5 113 9 115 13 115, 211n24

Index of Qurʾānic References  343 Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

36 – 37 51 – 77 60 64 65 – 66 73 – 75 75 – 77 76 76 – 77 85 94 97 99

115 67 67 115 67 67 67 67 79n102, 79 – 80n103 115 115 115 115, 119n38

Q 16 (Sūrat an-Naḥl)        — 1 2 41 58 61 103 118

111, 116 117n15 135, 201n64 110 96n41 113 218 195, 202n71

Q 17 (Sūrat al-Isrāʾ)        2 – 4 7 54 70 77 105 111

229n22 229 102, 116 201n64 30, 211n24 102 262n10

Q 18 (Sūrat al-Kahf)        — 64 – 82

116 71, 98n68

Q 19 (Sūrat Maryam)        — 2 7 12 – 15 16 49 51 88 – 95

45, 98n68, 116 183 212 212 188 69 183, 217 262n10

Q 20 (Sūrat ṬāHā)          — 116, 120, 136 – 37, 151, 188 – 96,   155, 170n23 1 – 79 120 – 73 1 – 8 131 – 33 7 156 9 121 9 – 14 171n27 9 – 15 190 9 – 16 132, 133 – 39

344  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse 9 – 49 10 10 – 12 10 – 14 10 – 17 11 11 – 24 14 15 15 – 16 17 – 21 17 – 41 21 24 24 – 32 25 25 – 35 26 27 – 34 36 – 38 37 – 38 38 39 40 42 – 43 40 – 41 42 – 56 47 – 48 44 52 50 – 55 55 56 56 – 64 60 – 65 68 – 70 65 – 70 71 71 – 76 77 77 – 79 77 – 99 78 79 79 – 83 80 – 82 80 – 98 81 81 – 82 83 – 99 99 113 – 14

Page Number(s) 125 158 134 160 142 158 189 170n21 151, 156, 158 152 158 – 59 132, 139 – 45 159 141 190 – 91 136, 191 142, 160 191 158 142 – 43 160 171n31 – 32 141, 171n32 141, 152 14 170n25 132, 145, 153 153 131 151, 152, 159, 253 149 172n43 153 132, 153 – 55 154 147 132, 155 – 57, 170 160 132, 157 – 58 160 – 61 132, 160 – 61 194 161 161 193 – 94 193, 195 132 195 194 193 170n21 132

Index of Qurʾānic References  345 Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

114 115 – 23 124 124 – 28 125 126 127 128 129 – 30 135

122, 278n56 132 159 132, 157 – 59 159 159 159 – 60 159 – 60 132 117n11

Q 21 (Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ)          — 5 9 22 25 26 36 42 56 66 75 76 83 84 85 87 87 – 88 88 89 89 – 90 105 107 108 112

90 – 92, 97n52, 116 110 279 98n63 98n63 98n64 98n64 98n64 98n63 98n63 98n64 98n65 98n64 – 65 98n64 98n64 136, 96n39 86, 90 – 91, 97n52 91 96n40 98n65 212 98n64 98n63 98n64

Q 22 (Sūrat al-Ḥajj)            — 40 42 – 46 52

116 271 32 204n4

Q 23 (Sūrat al-Muʾminūn)          — 8 25 43 72 91

29, 116 276 117n11 113 102 262n10

Q 24 (Sūrat an-Nūr)           —

116

Q 25 (Sūrat al-Furqān)          — 1

30, 224, 226, 227 102

346  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

1 – 2 1 – 4 3 5 – 6 7 – 9 9 – 10 10 22 34 – 35 35 – 38 39 40 43 53 61 62 – 63 63 64 74 – 75

228 232 228 233, 234 234 236 228 227n17 237 229 227n17, 229 79n88 102 227n16 229 238 229 230 230

Q 26 (Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ)       — 25 – 30, 33, 38 – 42, 63, 64 – 69,   79n87, 88, 104, 121, 126,   157, 171n27, 173n44,   203 – 23 1 – 6 218 38 1 – 9 2 218 205 2 – 6 5 218 7 – 9 206, 219 219 8 – 9 10 219 206, 219 10 – 68 10 – 191 38 13 – 15 170n26 16 – 62 219 18 – 51 156 43 – 44 157 45 157 65 – 66 206 67 – 68 206, 219 69 – 104 207, 219 69 – 70 219 70 207 70ff. 39 77 – 102 219 83 – 102 207 102 – 4 207 103 – 4 219 105 – 6 219 105 – 22 207, 219 106 207, 211 107 207

Index of Qurʾānic References  347 Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

107 – 8 108 109 110 119 – 20 121 – 22 123 123 – 24 123 – 40 124 125 – 26 127 129 129 – 30 139 – 40 141 141 – 42 141 – 59 142 143 – 44 144 145 158 158 – 59 160 160 – 72 160 – 75 161 161 – 63 162 – 63 164 171 173 174 174 – 75 176 – 91 176 – 77 177 178 – 79 178 – 88 180 190 – 91 192 – 96 192 – 99 192 – 217 192 – 227 201 214 217 – 20 221 – 27 223 227 266 – 67

219 207 102, 207, 219 207 207 207, 219 207 219 207, 219 207, 211 207, 219 102, 207, 219 207 207 219 208 219 208, 219 211 219 208 102, 208, 219 208 208, 219 208 45 65, 208, 220 211, 220 208 220 102, 208, 220 65 208 67 208, 220 208, 220 220 208 208, 220 27 102, 208, 220 208, 220 220 209 220 38, 209 209 39 220 220 220 209 220

348  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

Q 27 (Sūrat an-Naml)        — 8 54 – 58 55 – 59 77 83

39, 63, 68, 98n68, 104, 136, 138 136 68 45 203 96n40

Q 28 (Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ)        — 7 9 13 23 29 35 57

104, 121, 125, 136, 138, 171n27 143 152 152 276 136 173n45 254

Q 29 (Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt)       — 14 – 15 33 – 35 35 38 39 – 40 41 67 Q 30 (Sūrat ar-Rūm)         15

30, 40 – 46, 63 40 69 67 40 40 294n12 254 263

Q 31 (Sūrat Luqmān)         —

117n7

Q 32 (Sūrat as-Sajda)      

—

118 – 19n29

Q 33 (Sūrat al-Aḥzāb)        38 62 40

30 30 166n4, 204, 215, 216n40

Q 34 (Sūrat Sabāʾ)         40

113

Q 35 (Sūrat Fāṭir)          — 39 43 45

111 101 30, 211n24 113

Q 37 (Sūrat aṣ-Ṣāffāt)        — 37 40 74 75 78 – 81 81 – 96 108 – 11 119 – 22 123

63, 64 – 69, 88 – 92, 93n8, 97n52 97n48 262n12 262n12 96n40 97n47 69 97n47 97n47 97n48

Index of Qurʾānic References  349 Sūra

Verse 128 129 – 32 133 133 – 38 135 137 – 38 139 139 – 48 140 141 143 143 – 45 143 – 48 146 160 169

Page Number(s) 262n12 97n47 97n48 64 65 66 97n48 86, 88 – 90 97n53 97n53 98n58 89 96n39 97n53 262n12 262n12

Q 38 (Sūrat Ṣād)              41

96n40

Q 39 (Sūrat az-Zumar)           3 9 41

294n12 206 102

Q 40 (Sūrat Ghāfir)            — 10 35 54 82 85

103 101 101 206 30 30

Q 41(Sūrat Fuṣṣilat)             —

103

Q 42 (Sūrat ash-Shūrā)           — 6 9 48

103 102 294n12 102

Q 43 (Sūrat az-Zukhruf)          — 17 65 70 81 – 83

103 96n41 271n42 263 262n10

Q 44 (Sūrat ad-Dukhān)          — 18 29 41

103 262n12 253 81n119

Q 45 (Sūrat al-Jāthiya)           — 16

103 201n64

350  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

Q 46 (Sūrat al-Aḥqāf)          — 9

103 106

Q 47 (Sūrat Muḥammad)        2

166n4

Q 48 (Sūrat al-Fatḥ)          23 29

30 166n4

Q 50 (Sūrat Qāf)           45

102

Q 51 (Sūrat adh-Dhāriyyāt)       — 24 – 37 32 – 33 35 – 36 37 40

63 – 64, 97n52 63 64 64 67 97n52

Q 52 (Sūrat aṭ-Ṭūr)          30 46 48 48 – 49

106, 117n11 81n119, 96n42 87 87

124, 190 – 91, 171n27, 200n48 Q 53 (Sūrat an-Najm)         — 1 191 124, 132, 142, 160 – 61, 170n25, 1 – 18   171n27 4 142 191 5 10 143 143 13 13 – 18 190 14 – 16 171n27 171n27 18 53 – 54 66, 79n88 161 54 Q 54 (Sūrat al-Qamar)         — 29 – 30, 33 – 35, 40, 42, 45,   49n44, 63 – 64, 88 6 36 33 – 34 64 33 – 39 64 Q 57 (Sūrat al-Ḥadīd)         — 268, 275, 276, 275n51 7 274 10 274 11 274 14 117n11 16 274, 275 18 274, 275 19 274 20 274, 275 24 274 27 268, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277,   278, 275n51

Index of Qurʾānic References  351 Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

Q 59 (Sūrat al-Ḥashr)          8 23

271n42 278n56

Q 61 (Sūrat aṣ-Ṣaff)           — 2 – 3 4 5 – 6 6 9 10 11 – 12 13 14

101 – 3, 109 101 101 101 166n3, 201n61 102 101 101 101 101 – 2, 271n42

Q 66 (Sūrat at-Taḥrīm)          — 1 1 – 5 1 – 12 2 6 6 – 9 7 8 9 10 10 – 12 11 11 – 12

63, 69 – 72, 74n10 70 70 69 – 70 70 70 70 70 70 70 70, 71 70 71 70

Q 68 (Sūrat al-Qalam)          — 1 – 16 17 – 33 17 – 34 35 – 52 48 48 – 50 49 49 – 50

86 – 92, 96n41, 96n42, 97n52 86 71 86 86 87, 96n39, 117n12 86 – 88 87, 89, 98n58 87, 96n39

Q 69 (Sūrat al-Ḥāqqa)          9

31, 66, 79n88

Q 70 (Sūrat al-Maʿārij)         8 – 14 24 32

79n98 275 276

Q 71 (Sūrat Nūḥ)           4

113

Q 72 (Sūrat al-Jinn)          3

262n10

Q 73 (Sūrat al-Muzzammil)       — 1 – 10 4 5

103 – 4 181 181 181

352  Index of Qurʾānic References Sūra

Verse

Page Number(s)

19 20 Q 74 (Sūrat al-Muddaththir)        —

198n21 181 103 – 4

Q 76 (Sūrat al-Insān)          1 – 9

216n40

Q 79 (Sūrat an-Nāziʿāt)          — 121, 126 – 31, 133, 138, 151,   168 – 69n15, 171n27,   169n16 10 – 11 158 15 121 126 – 31, 160 15 – 26 16 134 131 19 171n27 20 20 – 24 154 – 55 151 26 25 159 130 27 27 – 34 158 33 130, 151 130, 158 34 35 151, 158 151 – 52 42 – 45 45 131, 151 Q 80 (Sūrat ʿAbasa)           33 – 42 40

66, 79n97, 81n119 66

Q 82 (Sūrat al-Infiṭār)           5

166n5, 167n9

Q 85 (Sūrat al-Burūj)           17

166n3

Q 88 (Sūrat al-Ghāshiya)         1 22

166n3 102

Q 89 (Sūrat al-Fajr)           27 – 28

166n5

Q 90 (Sūrat al-Balad)          12 – 18

66

Q 94 (Sūrat ash-Sharḥ)          — 1 – 6 1 – 8

124, 200n50 160 124, 191

Q 102 (Sūrat at-Takāthur)         —

64

Q 105 (Sūrat al-Fīl)           —

64

Q 108 (Sūrat al-Kawthar)         —

64

Q 109 (Sūrat al-Kāfirūn)         5

291

Q 110 (Sūrat an-Naṣr)          —

109

Index

Aaron 125 – 26, 140 – 42, 146, 153 – 56, 160, 163, 164, 170n26, 172n35, 173n45, 191, 206, 236 – 37 Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. 117, 118n21, 118n26 – 27, 119n33, 119n35, 119n37, 149, 166n6 Abraham 53, 61, 63, 67 – 69, 80n111, 84, 88, 110, 180, 192, 210, 213 – 16, 274; faith of 259 – 60; God of 138 – 39, 189; in Qurʾān 43, 45, 51n61; in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt (Q 29) 40 – 41; in Sūrat al-Ḥajj (Q 22) 32; in Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) 37 – 38; in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 38 – 39, 207, 219 Adams, Charles 19, 301 Adūnīs, ʿAli Aḥmad Saʿīd Aṣbar 7, 13n32, 167 – 68n10 aḥbār 260, 262 – 63; as lords beside God 263 – 67, 269 Alafasy, Mishari Rashid 11, 14n46, 224 – 36, 239, 241n21; pitch and melody of recordings 231 – 39; Sūrat al-Furqān and 226 – 31; website 241n11, 242n25 – 27 Allāh 30, 88, 122, 127, 132 – 33, 136 – 38, 144, 149 – 50, 154, 156 – 57, 159, 162, 164 – 65, 171n33, 172n38, 299 analepsis 150 antetype 87 anthropolatry 284n19, 288n56 apocryph 177, 184, 212 Arabic poetry 7, 10, 30, 129, 167n10, 197n1, 245 – 53 Arabizing/Arabized 102, 216, 252 asbāb al-nuzūl (occasions for revelation) 5, 293 – 96, 303n19 associationism (shirk) 264 – 66, 284n18 assonance 7, 123, 127, 129, 141, 168n12, 168 – 69n15, 234

audience 167n10 audients 124 – 26, 134 – 35, 147, 150 – 51, 153, 155 – 56, 161, 166n5; singular 8, 146, 167n10 aurality 1, 7 – 8, 123, 161, 167, 169n17 awliyāʾ 292 – 97, 302, 302n12 Ayoub, Mahmoud 291 al-Azmeh, Aziz 5 Babylonian Talmud 55, 74n18, 95n27, 265 Banī Isrāʾīl 120 – 21, 146, 153, 163, 193, 229, 241 – 42n22; see also Israelites Bell, Richard 23, 29, 31 Berg, Herbert 18, 19 Bible 2; Christian 13n18, 58, 185, 186 – 88; Hebrew 21, 31, 44, 56, 84 – 85, 168n12, 170n24, 176, 180, 185, 192 – 94, 196 – 197, 201n57; interpreted 10, 65, 82, 86, 180, 186, 191 – 92, 196; manifestations in Late Antiquity 184 – 87; Qurʾān and 32, 44, 53, 54 – 62, 94n9, 168n12, 174 – 76, 180, 181, 184 – 87, 196, 197n1, 203 – 4, 212, 217 – 18, 252, 258; term 185; work of literature 11n3, 197n3 biblical tradition: Christian typology and allegory 187 – 88; conversation with Christian Bible 187 – 88; conversation with Jewish Bible 191 – 95; eclipsing 191 – 95; emergence of early suras from spiritual exercise 180 – 82; emergence of liturgies and spiritual pericopes 183 – 84; Hebrew Bible 192 – 94; manifestations of Bible in Late Antiquity 184 – 87; middle Meccan shift of paradigm 182 – 83; Qurʾān and 180 – 91; transfer of halakhic authority from Moses to Muhammad 194 – 95 bifocal reading 56

354  Index Bonwick, James 301 Boyarin, Daniel 9 Bultmann, Rudolf Karl 20 – 25, 42 – 43, 177 cadence 7, 123, 153, 170n25, 173n45 canonical criticism 17, 43, 45, 51n62 – 63 canonical text 12n12, 22, 24, 28, 104, 192 canonization 20; Qurʾān 23, 28, 44, 51n63 casting: Mūsā-Firʿawn duel 120 – 21, 125 – 29, 131, 140 – 41, 145 – 65, 172n43, 173n44 – 45 celibacy 260, 268, 271 – 73, 275 – 76, 280, 286n33 Cheikho, Louis 299 Childs, Brevard S. 4, 43, 51n62 chosen: messengers 83, 87 – 88, 96n40, 204, 297; verb 67 chosenness 88, 96n40, 192 Christian art: Chamber of the Velatio 84, 95n19; Chapel of Exodus, 85, 96n31, Endymion Sarcophagus 85, 95n24; Jonah in early Christian 84 – 86; Sarcophagus with Jonah story 84, 95n23; statue of Jonah praying 86, 96n33 Christian Bible 13n18, 58, 185, 186, 187 – 88 Christianity: Judaism and 21, 23, 44, 73, 87, 185, 259, 261, 280, 282n3, 284n19, 298, 301 Christological interpretation 58 Chrysostom, John 66, 71 – 72, 77n74, 78n76 Church 283n12, 299, 304n43; early 60; history 178, 186, 188, 273; leadership 270, 278 Clementine Homilies 11, 258 – 59, 270, 281n2, 282n5, 283n14, 286n37 Collyridians 284n19, 297 – 99, 303n34 community: Christian 17, 20 – 21, 43 – 44, 167n9, 260, 268, 269, 274; Jewish 57, 192, 259 – 60, 263, 267, 269; JudeoChristian 177, 214; qurʾānic 265 – 66, 272, 277 – 78, 280, 282n7 Conzelmann, Hans 43 Cook, Michael 290 Corpus Coranicum project 1, 11n1, 12n16, 78n86, 79n87, 93n6, 198n19 Cyril of Jerusalem 60, 77n73 Dakake, David 294 Dayeh, Islam 12n9, 92 – 93n1, 103, 116, 117n3 Day of Atonement 192 – 94, 201n58

Day of Judgment (Judgment Day, Day of Reckoning, Hour of Reckoning, Apocalypse) 34, 67, 83, 92, 107, 114, 132, 138, 150 – 52, 158 – 60, 168n12, 169n17, 211, 214, 215, 300 Day of Resurrection 38, 50n46, 151, 159 – 60 deity 128 – 29, 156; communication 134, 144, 152; identification 170n23, 264, 284n17; reference to 122 – 23, 136; single 30; YHWH and Elohim 138 delay: notion of 30, 107, 113 – 14, 117n15 de-mythified/de-mythification 188, 200n46 Denny, Frederick 225 Derrett, J. 21 dhikr, dhikrā 112, 115, 123, 134, 138, 141, 170n21, 183, 205 – 6, 210, 251 diachrony 4, 7 – 8, 11, 82, 195 – 96; shibboleth of qurʾānic studies 178 – 80 Dibelius, Martin 20 – 21, 24, 42 – 43 Didascalia 11, 258 – 63, 269 – 73, 276 – 80, 281, 281n2, 282n3, 282n5, 283n12, 286n33, 286n37, 286 – 87n38, 287n42 – 43, 288n55 – 57, 298 Doane, William 300 Dohmen, Christoph 4 dominion 101 – 2; of heaven and earth 228, 231; Muhammad 114; notion of 110 Donner, Fred 41, 282n6 earth: in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 206, 219 electedness see chosenness Elohim 138, 139 embedding 124 – 25, 175, 178, 187, 258 Ephrem the Syrian: Jonah 84, 97n45; Lot’s wife 61 – 62, 66, 71 epigonic text 176 Epiphanius 284n19, 197 – 98, 303n34 Epistles 23, 83 evangelion: concept of 43 – 44 evangelium, Muhammadan 23 exegetical 2, 5, 9, 22, 260; additions 187; direction 60; literature 152; method 59, 77n57; model 217 – 18; principles 192, 200n55; reading of Bible 176; reception of Qurʾān 179; strategies 290; tradition 54, 112 – 13, 115, 166n5, 279; see also tafsīr and sīra fear of God 272, 278, 279, 294n60 feminist criticism 17 Firʿawn see Pharaoh foreshadowings 188

Index  355 form criticism 12n12, 17, 19 – 20, 22, 25, 47n14 form-history 17, 20 – 21 Friedman, Yohanan 201n69, 222n33, 291, 302n4 Frishkopf, Michael 225 – 26 Frye, Northrup 2, 11 – 12n3, 175, 185, 197n3 Gade, Anna 225 Geiger, Abraham 4, 175 – 76, 263, 268 – 70 Gemeindebildung (formation of community) 24, 28 Gentiles 84, 86, 213, 259 Gnostics 59, 60 golden calf: story of 192 – 96, 201n58 Goldziher, Ignaz 301 good shepherd: imagery 86, 95n20, 288n53 Gospels 17, 22 – 25, 43 – 44, 86, 113, 177, 284n19; John 24; Jonah in 94n10; Luke 20, 44, 76n50, 92, 94n10, 266; Mark 20, 44, 46; Matthew 20, 32, 44, 70, 92, 94n10 Graham, William A. 18, 225 “Great Code” 2, 4, 11 – 12n3, 175, 197n3 Griffith, Sidney 10 – 11, 14n43, 53, 54, 82, 86, 94n9, 180, 186, 197n1, 199n38, 203 – 23, 265, 271 – 73, 279 – 80, 285n23, 286n31, 287n42, 287n45, 288n49, 298; messengers and prophets 203 – 23 grounded in culture: pre-Islamic Arabia 245, 255n8 Gunkel, Hermann 20 haggadic exegesis 19 halakhic: exegesis 19, 180, 192, 201n69, 202n72 – 73; authority transfer from Moses to Mohammad 194 – 95 Halbertal, Moshe 179, 198n16 Hamartigenia (Prudentius) 52 – 53 Hamka 292 – 93, 299 – 300 Hārūn see Aaron Hawting, Gerald 18 Hebrew Bible 21, 31, 44, 56, 84 – 85, 168n12, 170n24, 176, 180, 185, 192 – 94, 196 – 97, 201n57 heresiology 282n5 heterism 284n18 heterist 284n18 Higgins, Godfrey 301 historical-critical: qurʾānic scholarship 3 – 4, 82 – 83 historical criticism 17, 177

Hoffman, Thomas 7, 166n6 Holy Land 182 – 83 Horovitz, Josef 29 – 31, 34, 49n44, 49 – 50n46, 257n34 ḥ-sh-r 127, 154, 157, 159 Hūd 27, 29, 33 – 39, 41, 108, 208, 210; in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 210, 219 Humphreys, Stephen 18 hymnic style and passages 70, 124, 127, 169, 183 hymnographer 61 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyiddīn 152, 170n34, 172n23 Ibn Barrajān 145, 149, 159, 170n21, 172n34, 173n46 Ibn Hazm 145, 171n33 Ibn Isḥāq 297, 303n19 Ibn al-Munayyir, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad 149, 171n31, 172n38 Ibn Sāʿida, Quss 168n12 iltifāt 122 – 23, 136, 153, 160, 166n6, 172n38 Imruʾ al-Qays 247 – 52 incantation 168 – 69n15 incantatory discourse 124, 127, 129, 138, 141, 158, 167n9, 169n15, 169n17 interdiscursivity 1, 7 – 8, 127 interpreted Bible 65, 82, 86, 180, 186, 191 – 92, 196; concept of 10, 53; Lot’s wife in 54 – 62 intertextuality 8, 10, 83, 86, 93 – 94n8, 103, 169n17, 179, 181, 197n1 ʿĪsā see Jesus Iṣlāḥī, Aḥsan 103, 116 Israelites 5, 139, 180, 189, 193 – 95, 201n58, 201n63, 262; see also Banī Isrāʾīl Jeffrey, Arthur 215 Jesus (ʿĪsā): 83 – 84, 101 – 2, 144, 166n4, 177, 192, 195, 202n73, 204, 206, 210, 213 – 15, 259 – 60, 262, 266, 268, 269, 271, 274, 276, 279, 281 – 82n3, 283n12, 284n19, 287n41, 291 – 92, 297, 298, 300 Jewish Christians 177, 196, 204, 214, 216, 259, 262, 281 – 82n3, 283n12, 298 Jewish studies 3, 10 jihād: path of God 116 – 17; term 110, 112; war and 102 – 3, 117n1 – 2 Johnson, Samuel 245 Jonah: city of 85 – 87, 89, 94n10, 94n12, 96n40, 98n61, 106, 107; Ephrem the Syrian 84, 97n45

356  Index Jonah story: Christian readings of 83 – 86; early Christian art 84 – 86; early Christian writings 83 – 84; New Testament 83; Qurʾān 86 – 92, 93 – 94n8, 96n39 – 40; in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (Q 21) 90 – 91; in Sūrat al-Qalam (Q 68) 86 – 88; in Sūrat aṣ-Ṣāffāt (Q 37) 88 – 90; in Sūrat Yūnus (Q 10) 91 – 92 Josephus, Flavius 55, 57, 66 Judaism 187, 194; belief in Jesus 259; Christianity and 21, 23, 44, 73, 87, 185, 259, 261, 280, 282n3, 284n19, 298, 301; gravediggers of 3, 12n11; Hebrew Bible 192; rabbinic 264 – 66 Judeo-Christian legal culture 11, 258 – 59, 261, 266, 275, 276, 280, 281n1, 282n3, 282n5 Kermani, Navid 7, 13n32, 167n9, 168n11 khawf (fear) 128, 152, 279 khashya (awe) 128 – 29, 151, 279 Kindite 247 – 52 Koch, Klaus 21 Kugel, James, 10, 53, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 80n118, 186 Last Day 26, 27, 290 – 91, 293 Last Judgment 71, 90, 189 Late Antiquity 2, 4, 7, 182; Arabic 271; biblical concepts 189, 194; culture 82, 281n2; divine interventions 196; fear of God 272, 279; Jonah story in Jewish context 85; literature 277; manifestations of Bible in 184 – 87; Matthean tradition 283n14; paradigms of sense and the Qurʾān 52 – 73; pious man 273; Qurʾān and 9 – 10, 212 – 14, 269, 272; Qurʾān and Judeo-Christian dialogue 258 – 59, 282n3, 298; relationship with God 262; religious leaders in Qurʾān 280; Semitic texts 288 – 89n57; traditions 175 – 77, 180 Leaman, Oliver 294 legal culture: Didascalia 271, 286n33; Islamic 259; Judeo-Christian 11, 258 – 59, 261, 266, 275, 276, 280, 281n1, 282n3, 282n5; late antique 259; Qurʾān 180, 195, 258, 259, 261, 275, 281n1, 281n5, 286n33, 298; term 281n1 lexicography 4, 97n52, 252, 267, 280 liturgies 185; Christian 23, 84, 167n9, 283n12; emergence of 183 – 84; Jerusalem 84; Jewish 192, 194, 196,

283n12; staging of 201n57; Yom Kippur 192, 194, 196 Lord 32, 36 – 38, 53, 59 – 60, 87, 101, 114, 122, 206 – 10, 278, 290; Christ 44; Jesus as 269; Muhammad and his 109; Mūsā’s 128 – 29, 142, 146 – 48, 153, 156, 160; repentance 94n12; YHWH 138 lords beside God: aḥbār 263 – 67; ruhbān 267 – 80 Lot 45; in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt (Q 29) 40 – 41; in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7) 34 – 36; in Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) 37 – 38; in Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) 33; in Sūrat ashShuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 27, 38 – 39, 208, 220 Lot’s wife 52 – 54, 72 – 73; differentiating believers from unbelievers 63 – 64; early literal interpretations 55; employing allegory 58 – 60; Ephrem the Syrian 61 – 62, 66, 71; interpreted Bible 54 – 62; negotiating scriptural interpretations 69 – 72; promoting literal sense 60 – 62; qurʾānic conundrum 62 – 72; rejection of sinful relatives 64 – 69; turning to allegory 56 – 58 magic, magician 120, 126, 147, 153 – 57, 160, 164 – 65, 168n15 Mani 110, 213 – 14, 215 Manichaeism 44 Manichees 204, 214, 215 Marshall, David 29, 31, 42, 116 Marxsen, Willi 43 – 44, 46, 51n68 Maʾsal 247 – 52 masoretic text and treatment 19, 53, 185 el Masri, Ghassan 11, 245 – 57 mathal: notion of 71, 80n112 – 13 Maudoodi, Abul Aʿla 149 Meccans 30, 39, 105, 117n15, 294; Muhammad 106 – 10, 113, 116; unbelieving 42 Medinan Jews 196, 201n68 messengership 211, 213, 215 – 17 Messiah 188, 200n46, 204, 213, 262, 291, 297 metalepsis 172n35 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 52 meter, metrical 7, 129, 167n10, 168n12, 246, 254n3 Metzger, Bruce 21 Midrash 77n63, 85, 95n27, 199n44, 283n11 miracles 111 – 14, 206 mnemotope 183

Index  357 monasticism 261, 267 – 68, 271, 273, 275, 286n31, 286n33 monorhyme 7, 167n10, 230 Montgomery, James 9 Mosaic law 195 – 96 Moses 29, 32 – 39, 41, 55, 61, 69, 71, 80n111, 101, 120 – 73, 143, 149, 196, 210, 219 – 21, 223; ark and 120, 121, 125, 139 – 47, 160, 163, 172n34; biblical figure 88, 180, 182, 187; burning bush 138 – 39; in Exodus 138 – 43, 156, 170n23, 170n24, 171n27, 173n45; fire and 121, 125, 131, 133 – 39, 142, 152, 162, 171n27, 172n39; halakhic authority to Muhammad 194 – 95; Hārūn and 126, 146, 153 – 54, 156, 160, 172n35, 173n45; in Hebrew Bible 138 – 43, 156 170n23, 170n24, 171n27, 173n45, 193 – 94; Jesus and 213; mother of 120, 121, 125, 139 – 47, 152, 160, 163, 170n25, 171n25, 171 – 72n33, 172n34; Muhammad and 188 – 91; opening the breast of 143; ordination of 223; people of 183; Pharaoh (Firʿawn) and 29, 35, 37, 39, 106, 108, 70 – 71, 80n108, 88, 97n52, 98n77, 106, 108, 110, 120 – 73, 189 – 90, 193, 206, 210, 219, 224 – 27, 231 – 32, 234 – 40, 241n21, 242n26; staff of 120, 125, 126, 138 – 41, 155 – 60, 162, 164, 173n45; the prophet of the Qurʾān and 120, 122, 124 – 25, 128, 131 – 32, 134 – 35, 141 – 43, 147 – 48, 150 – 53, 160 – 61, 170n25, 171n27, 188, 190, 191; in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7), 121, 126, 156 – 57; in Sūrat an-Naml (Q 27) 121, 136 – 38; in Sūrat an-Nāziʿāt (Q 79) 126 – 31, 133 – 34, 138, 151, 154, 160, 171n27; in Sūrat al-Qaṣaṣ (Q 28) 121, 136 – 38, 143, 152, 171n27, 173n45; in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 206; in Sūrat ṬāHā (Q 20) 120 – 73 Muhammad 9; Abraham 207; audience of 193 – 94; authority of 29, 39, 86, 194 – 95, 202n71, 202n73; experience 30 – 32, 97n44; God’s closing address to 209 – 11; God’s opening address to 205; inter-religious relations 291; Manicheism 214; Medinan Qurʾān 260; messenger 203 – 5, 215 – 18, 300; messengers 205 – 6, 222n24; mission of 33 – 37, 212; Moses and 188 – 89; orations by 168n12; political clashes with Jews 200n52; portrayed as

author of Qurʾān 45, 83; principle of typology 188 – 91; prophet 223n40 – 42; prophetology 94n9; punishment stories 42, 50n46; Qurʾān and 220; role as prophet 101 – 16; scholarship of 176 – 78, 180; war 294; word in Qurʾān 166n4 Mūsā see Moses nabī, nubuwwa (prophet, prophecy) 144 – 45, 171n33, 210 – 11, 216, 221n4 Narkiss, Bezalel 85, 95n26 narration 8, 49n45, 172n38; biblical 182; Jonah 89; Lot’s wife 63, 68 – 69; Mūsā 122, 125 – 26, 128 – 29, 131, 135, 141, 147 – 48, 150, 156 – 57, 160; Qurʾān 120; qurʾānic chronology 63; voice of the 229 narratological perspective 93 – 94n8, 123 – 24, 142 Neuwirth, Angelika 1, 11, 12n12, 14n43, 14n45, 30, 33, 42 – 43, 45, 49n44, 54, 63, 71 – 72, 92 – 93n1, 97n52, 119n36, 167, 169, 171n27, 174 – 204, 240, 281n1 New Testament 17, 20 – 23, 27, 31, 44, 47n13, 74n11, 83, 176 – 77, 185, 187 – 88, 212 Nietzsche, Friedrich 3 Nineveh: Jonah preaching in 85 – 87, 89, 94n10, 94n12, 96n40, 98n61, 106, 107 Noah: story 30 – 31, 35 – 39, 106, 108; in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt (Q 29) 40 – 41; in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7) 34 – 37; in Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) 26, 37 – 38, 69; in Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) 33; in Sūrat ashShuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 27, 38 – 39; 207, 219; wife of 70 – 72 Nöldeke, Theodor 5, 12n12, 42, 62 – 63, 78n86, 79n87, 79n91, 93n3, 116, 118n28, 169, 178, 227, 289n60 n-z-l (inzāl, tanzīl, tanazzul) 152, 172n36, 187, 209, 220 Oeming, Manfred 4 Ong, Walter 124 Origen 58 – 60, 78n76 Osborne, Lauren E. 11, 14n46, 224 – 42 overhearers 126, 155, 166n5 overseers 260, 268 – 69, 275 – 78, 280 Ovid’s Metamorphoses 52 pagan 57, 297; doctrine 300 – 301; lamb bearer in art 95n20; marrying wives of one’s father 101; poetry 197n1; symbol

358  Index of death 84 – 85; tradition 4, 18, 41, 71, 75n29 Pagani, Samuel 268, 271, 274, 286n31 – 33 paganism 189 Papias of Hierapolis 23 Paradise 70, 71, 76n41, 81n120, 101 – 2, 230, 257n34, 263, 275, 289n57, 293 parallelomania 53, 74n11 parallel schematic format 30 Parrinder, Geoffrey 297 Pentateuch 73n7, 185, 196, 284n17 People of the Book 105, 180, 186, 191, 203, 209, 211, 215, 216, 218, 261, 267, 275, 294, 300; see also Scripture People pericope 2, 6, 40 – 41, 45, 89; Abraham 207; liturgies and scriptural 183 – 84; Moses 206; qurʾānic 97n50; retribution 29; term 23 period of repentance 193, 201n58 Pharaoh (Firʿawn) 29, 35, 37, 39, 70 – 71, 80n108, 88, 97n52, 98n77, 106, 108, 110, 120 – 21, 125 – 29, 131, 139, 140 – 41, 145 – 65, 172n43, 173n44 – 45, 189 – 90, 193, 206, 210, 219, 224 – 27, 231 – 32, 234 – 40, 241n21, 242n26 philology: contested 1 – 6; host discipline of qurʾānic studies 174 – 78; meaning 195 – 97 poetry: Arabic 7, 10, 30, 129, 167n10, 197n1, 245, 247, 252; pre-Islamic 66, 96n41, 245 – 53, 257n34 Pollock, Sheldon 2, 3, 4 prefigurations 72, 80n111, 86, 92, 187, 190 – 91 proclamation 184; identity 138; orations 168n12; Qurʾān 6 – 7, 9, 62, 66, 96n39, 126, 133, 135, 183, 187, 197n1, 212; stages of creation 158 prophecy 124, 168n12, 179 – 80, 196, 198n16, 203, 211 – 17, 221n5; Umm Mūsā and 139 – 47, 170n24, 171n33 prophethood 171n33, 189, 210, 215, 216 prophetic logia 21 – 25, 28 – 29, 44 prophetism 203 Prophet-Messiah 204 Prophet (Muhammad) 31, 54, 69 – 70, 72, 79n91, 80n111, 120 – 73 Prophet of Truth: Jesus 259 prophetology: conversation with Jewish Bible 191 – 95; Judeo-Christian 213 – 14; qurʾānic 29, 82 – 83, 92n9, 203, 211 – 13, 215 – 16 prophet/prophets 19, 23, 28, 32, 176 – 78, 230; Arabian, Hūd and Ṣāliḥ 41; biblical

5, 23, 39; career of 11, 34; idea of “True Prophet” 214; Jonah 87 – 88, 90 – 92, 94n10, 95n16, 96n36; message 29 – 31; messengers and 205 – 6, 208 – 14, 215 – 18, 221n13, 221n4; ministry 6 – 7; Moses 149, 180, 188 – 91, 196; Mūsā 120 – 28, 131 – 36, 141 – 45, 150 – 53, 160, 166n5, 170n25, 171n27, 171n33; role in Qurʾān 203 – 5; Shuʿayb 28; stories in Qurʾān 105 – 15; see also prophecy Prudentius: Hamartigenia 52 – 53 Psalms 181 – 82, 199n25, 210, 212, 217 pseudepigraphs 184, 221n5 punishment stories: Qurʾān 29 – 32, 41 – 42, 44 – 45, 48n31, 49n42, 49n44, 49 – 50n46, 51n68 qaṣīda 245 – 46, 251, 252 – 53 Qāsimī, Jamal al-Dīn al- 297 Qurʾān: ambivalent attitudes of others 290 – 92; aurality and interdiscursivity 7 – 8; beloved sons of God 261 – 63; Bible and 2, 32, 44, 53, 94n9, 168n12, 174 – 76, 180, 181, 184 – 87, 196, 197n1, 203 – 4, 212, 217 – 18, 252; canonization 23, 28, 44, 51n63; community 2, 6, 10, 28, 42, 46, 72, 83, 91 – 92, 125, 178, 186 – 87, 195, 259 – 61, 265 – 66, 272, 277 – 78, 280, 282n7; generalizing discourses 296 – 301; groups of suras as “booklets” 103 – 5; Jonah story 86 – 92, 93 – 94n8, 96n39 – 40; Late Antiquity and 9 – 10; literary scholarship 6 – 7; Lot’s wife 53, 62 – 63; organization 11; particularizing discourses 292 – 96; philology contested 1 – 6; punishment stories in 29 – 32, 41 – 42, 44 – 45, 48n31, 49n42, 49n44, 49 – 50n46, 51n68; reading of Sūras 10 – 15 as a group 105 – 15; recitation of 224 – 26; religious leaders in 280; term 181, 198n20 Qurʾānic Event 4, 6, 176, 197 qurʾanic studies: diachronic vs. synchronic approaches 178 – 80; historical-critical 3 – 4, 82 – 83; philology as host discipline 174 – 78; shibboleth of 178 – 80 Qurānic Studies (Wansbrough) 12n12, 17 – 22, 24 – 25, 177 rabbinic tradition 188, 260 – 65, 267, 279, 282n3 Rahman, Fazlur 152, 172n42 Rasmussen, Anne 225, 227

Index  359 al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn 144 – 45, 171n32 recastings 8, 45, 127, 199n24, 265 recite, reciter, recitation 7, 11, 14n46, 123, 140, 163, 170n25, 180 – 83, 194, 199n24, 199n27, 206 – 7, 209, 217 redaction: chronology and 131; of Gospels 22 – 23, 43; history 43, 44 redactional insertions 187 redactional interventions 76n50 redaction criticism 17 – 23, 42 – 45, 47n11 referentiality 13n29, 50n60, 119n36, 168 religious leaders 258 – 61; aḥbār as lords beside God 263 – 67; beloved sons of God 261 – 63; in Qurʾān 261 – 63, 280; ruhbān as lords beside God 267 – 80 rereading 9 – 10, 92, 194, 247, 252 reworking 10, 44, 106 Reynolds, Gabriel 78n84, 90, 92, 298, 304n40 rhyme 7, 79n90, 97n52, 121, 123 – 25, 127, 129, 141 – 42, 151, 167n10, 168n12, 168 – 69n15, 170n25, 184, 224, 230 – 31, 239, 254n3, 268n49 rhythm 62, 123 – 24, 141, 168n12, 168 – 69n15, 224, 236 Riḍā, Muḥammad Rashīd 294, 296, 300 – 301, 304 – 5n56 Rippin, Andrew 14n43, 18, 303n19 Rubin, Uri 49n36, 103, 200n52, 201n69, 221n4, 283n8, 303n19 ruhbān 260, 262 – 63; as lords beside God 267 – 80 Ryad, Umar 301, 304 – 5n56 sacralization 135 Saleh, Walid A. 11, 101 – 19 Ṣāliḥ, 29; in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt (Q 29) 41; in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7) 34 – 37; in Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) 26, 37 – 38, 108; in Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) 33; in Sūrat ashShuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 27, 38 – 39, 208, 219 Sandmel, Samuel 53, 73, 74n11 Schaefer, Peter 9 Schedl, Claus 89, 98n60 Schmid, Nora K. 11, 52 – 81, 92 – 93n1 Schoeler, Gregor 18, 167n9 Scholem, Gershom 3, 4, 12n11 Schreiner, Stefan 83, 89, 92, 93n8, 96n39 – 40 Schwarzbaum, Haim 10 scriptural interpretation: Lot’s wife 69 – 72 Scripture People 105, 180, 186, 191, 203, 209, 211, 215, 216, 218, 261, 267, 275, 294, 300; see also People of the Book

The Sectarian Milieu (Wansbrough) 17, 19 – 21, 298 Sells, Michael A. 1, 7, 11, 120 – 73, 240 semiotics 246, 252 – 53 Septuagint 85, 97n54, 185, 189 Shoemaker, Stephen 298 Shuʿayb 11, 14n46, 25, 27 – 29, 36, 40 – 41, 144, 220; in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt (Q 29) 40 – 41; in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf (Q 7) 25 – 26, 34 – 37; in Sūrat Hūd (Q 11) 26 – 27, 37 – 38; in Sūrat al-Qamar (Q 54) 33 – 34; in Sūrat ash-Shuʿarāʾ (Q 26) 27 – 29, 38 – 40, 208, 220 sign (āya): of Jonah 82, 83 – 85, 92, 94n10; in Qurʾān 63, 65, 67, 104, 111 – 12, 114, 117n9, 119n30, 125 – 29, 132, 140, 141, 145 – 48, 153 – 54, 156 – 57, 159 – 60, 162 – 64, 170n24, 190, 205 – 9, 211, 217 – 20, 221n11 – 12, 241n22 Silberstein, Adam 187 Sinai, Nicolai 6, 43, 45, 50n49, 78n86, 93n3, 96n41, 171n27 sīra 4 – 6, 79n91, 150, 177, 300, 303n19 Sirry, Mun’im 11, 290 – 305 situatedness 82, 151, 245 Sodom and Gomorrah story 31 – 32 sonship 262, 283n11 – 12, 284n20, 300 source criticism 17 Sozomen 272 – 73, 276, 286n47 Sprenger, Aloys 29, 31, 35, 45 Stern, M. S. 109 – 10, 118n22 – 23 Stewart, Devin J. 11, 12n12, 14n46, 17 – 51 Strecker, Georg 43 structuralist 246, 255n7 subdeacon 270 al-Sulamī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn 170n23 sunna of our messengers 203 – 5, 209 – 12, 215 – 18, 222n24 Suyūṭī 103 syncretists 2, 5, 178, 189, 199n30 Syriac 61, 86, 181, 185, 199n24, 206, 213 – 14, 216 – 17, 258, 261, 268, 270, 276 – 80, 281, 282n3, 284n17, 288n57; belief 213; Christianity 61; hymns 199n24; literature 270, 276, 278; manuscript 86; reading 181, 199n24; speaking 185, 206, 214, 216 – 17; tradition 276, 282n3 Ṭabarī, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al- 294, 302n14, 303n19 Ṭabaṭabāʾī, Muhammad Ḥusayn 293, 295, 299, 304n45

360  Index tafsīr 126, 145, 150, 172, 179, 271, 286n32, 293, 301, 302, 303n19 Talmud 55, 263, 265, 267, 280, 285n30 Targum/Targumim 6 – 7, 55, 65, 71, 76n46, 185, 187 Tertullian 58 – 59, 76n53 – 55, 77n57 textual criticism 17 theologization 245; Arabic lore 252 – 54 theologoumenon 194 theology of war 101 – 2, 117n1 topos 29, 246 – 47, 251 – 54 Torah 56, 170n24, 182, 192, 216, 217, 259 – 60, 263 – 64 trialogue 263 Trinity 284n19, 285n23, 291 – 92, 297, 299 – 300 tritheism 292 typology 71, 75n13, 80n111, 80n1118, 84, 94n9, 187 – 88, 190, 212

waḥy 122, 124 – 25, 131 – 152, 156, 170n24, 170n25 waiting: Jonah 87; Muhammad 117n11, 119n38; notion of 108 – 9 Wansbrough, John 11, 14n46, 17 – 46, 177 – 78, 298 war: qurʾānic theology of 101 – 2, 117n1 warners 102, 107, 129, 131, 151, 209, 211, 217, 227 – 28, 230 – 31 Watt, W. Montgomery 29, 31 Weil, Gustav 5 Westermann, Claus 21 Western scholarship 1 – 2, 4 – 5, 22, 82 – 83, 174 – 79, 267, 280, 297, 301, 303n19 Witztum, Joseph 92 – 93n1, 187, 195, 199n24, 202n71, 202n73, 284n17, 288n56 Wood, Simon 301, 304 – 5n56

Ulfah, Hajja Maria 227 Umm Mūsā 120, 121, 125, 139 – 47, 152, 160, 163, 170n25, 171n25, 171 – 72n33, 172n34 urtext 175 – 76

YHWH 138, 139 Yom Kippur 87, 95n21, 192, 194, 196, 201n58

variant traditions 34, 41 – 42; hypothesis 25 – 29; theory of 17, 22 vernacularization 177 Vico, Giambattista 176 Virgin 284n19, 299 virginity 60, 70, 188

al-Zamakhsharī, ʿUmar al- 144 – 45, 149, 171n30 – 31, 172n38, 248, 296 al-Zarkashī, Muḥammad ibn al-Bahādur 169n15 Zellentin, Holger M. 11, 74n10, 180, 195, 258 – 59, 298 Zoroaster 218 – 19, 258 Zwettler, Michael 29, 31, 33, 38, 39