Обсуждение:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān

Ссылки

Abbott, Studies II: N. Abbott, Studies in Arabic literary papyri. II. Qurʾānic commentary and tradition, Chicago, 1967
ʿAbd al-Bāqī: Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras li-alfāẓ al-Qurʾān al-karīm, Cairo, 1945
ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mutashābih: ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-Asadābādī al-Qāḍī al-Hamadhānī, Mutashābih al-QurʾānʿAdnān M. Zarzūr, 2 vols., Cairo, 1969
ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Tanzīh: ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. Aḥmad al-Asadābādī al-Qāḍī al-Hamadhānī, Tanzīh al-Qurʾān ʿan al-maṭāʿin, Beirut, 1966
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿAṣrī: ʿĀʾisha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, al-Qurʾān wa-l-tafsīr al-ʿaṣrī, Cairo, 1970
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Tafsīr: ʿĀʾisha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, al-Tafsīr al-bayānī lil-Qurʾān al-karīm, 3rd ed., Cairo, 1968
ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf: ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī, al-MuṣannafḤabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī, 11 vols., Beirut, 1390/1970, 2nd ed., Johannesburg, 1983Muḥammad Sālim Samāra, 4 vols., Beirut, 1408/1988
ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr: ʿAbd al-Razzāq b. Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī, al-TafsīrMuṣṭafā Muslim Muḥammad, 3 vols. in 4, Riyadh, 1410/1989ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Amīn Qalʿajī, 2 vols., Beirut, 1411/1991Maḥmūd Muḥammad ʿAbduh, 3 vols., Beirut, 1419/1999
Abū Dāwūd: Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān b. al-Ashʿath al-Sijistānī, SunanMuḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, 4 vols., Cairo, 1339/1920Kamāl Yūsuf al-Ḥūt, 2 vols., Beirut, 1988
Abū l-Futūḥ Rāzī, Rawḥ: Abū l-Futūḥ Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī Rāzī, Rawḥ al-jinān wa-rūḥ al-janān, 12 vols., Tehran, 1282-7/1962-5, 5 vols., Qumm n.d.
Abū Ḥayyān, Baḥr: Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī, Tafsīr al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ, 8 vols., Cairo, 1328-9/1911, Beirut, 1983ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd, ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ, 8 vols., Beirut, 1993
Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr: Abū l-Layth Naṣr b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Samarqandī, Baḥr al-ʿulūmʿAbd al-Raḥīm Aḥmad al-Zaqqa, 3 vols., Baghdad, 1985-6ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ, 3 vols., Beirut, 1413/1993
Abū Shāma, Murshid: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ismāʿīl Abū Shāma, Kitāb al-Murshid al-wajīz ilā ʿulūm tataʿallaq bi-l-kitāb al-ʿazīzṬayyar Altikulaç, Istanbul, 1968
Abū ʿUbayd, Faḍāʾil: Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, Faḍāʾil al-QurʾānWahbī Sulaymān Khāwajī, Beirut, 1411/1991
Abū ʿUbayd, Gharīb: Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, Gharīb al-ḥadīthMuḥammad ʿAbd al-Muʿīd Khān, 4 vols., Hyderabad, 1384-7/1964-7, 2 vols., Beirut, 1406/1986Ḥusayn Muḥammad M. Sharaf, 4 vols., Cairo, 1404-15/1984-94Masʿūd Ḥijāzī, Cairo, 1419/1999
Abū ʿUbayd, Nāsikh: Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, Kitāb al-Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkhJ. Burton, Cambridge, 1987
Abū ʿUbayda, Majāz: Abū ʿUbayda Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā al-Taymī, Majāz al-QurʾānF. Sezgin, 2 vols., Cairo, 1954-62
Akhfash, Maʿānī: Abū l-Ḥasan Saʿīd b. Masʿada al-Akhfash al-Awsaṭ, Maʿānī l-QurʾānFāʾiz Fāris al-Ḥamad, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Kuwait, 1981ʿAbd al-Amīr Muḥammad Amīn al-Ward, Beirut, 1405/1985Hudā Maḥmūd Qurrāʿa, Cairo, 1990
Allard, Analyse: M. Allard, Analyse conceptuelle du Coran sur cartes perforées, Paris, 1963
Ālūsī, Rūḥ: Maḥmūd b. ʿAbdallāh al-Ālūsī, Rūḥ al-maʿānī fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm wa-l-sabʿ al-mathānī, 30 vols. in 15, Cairo, 1345/1926, Beirut n.d.
ʿĀmilī, Aʿyān: Muḥsin al-Amīn al-ʿĀmilī, Aʿyān al-shīʿa, 56 parts, Damascus, 1935-63, 11 vols., Beirut, 1986
Anbārī, Bayān: Abū l-Barakāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. al-Anbārī, al-Bayān fī gharīb iʿrāb al-QurʾānṬāhā ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Muṣṭafā al-Saqqā, 2 vols., Cairo, 1969-70
Anbārī, Nuzha: Abū l-Barakāt ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Anbārī, Nuzhat al-alibbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-udabāʾ, Cairo, 1294, Stockholm, 1963Ibrāhīm al-Sāmarrāʾī, Baghdad, 1970
Arberry: A.J. Arberry, The Koran interpreted, London, 1955
Arkoun, Lectures: M. Arkoun, Lectures du Coran, Paris, 1982
ʿAyyāshī, Tafsīr: Muḥammad b. Masʿūd al-ʿAyyāshī, Tafsīr, 2 vols., Tehran, 1380/1961
Baghawī, Maʿālim: al-Ḥusayn b. Masʿūd al-Shāfiʿī al-Baghawī, Tafsīr al-Baghawī al-musammā bi-Maʿālim al-tanzīlKhālid ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿAkk, Marwān Sawār, 4 vols., Beirut, 1983
Baghdādī, Farq: Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. Tāhir al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayna l-firāqMuḥammad Badr, Cairo, 1328/1910Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Cairo n.d.
Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Baghdād: Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 14 vols., Cairo, 1349/1931
Baḥrānī, Burhān: Hāshim b. Sulaymān al-Baḥrānī, Kitāb al-Burhān fī tafsīr al-QurʾānMaḥmūd b. Jaʿfar al-Mūsawī al-Zarandī, 4 vols., Tehran, 1375/1995, Beirut, 1403/1983
Baljon, Modern: I.M.S. Baljon, Modern Muslim Koran interpretation (1880-1960), Leiden, 1961, 1968
Bāqillānī, Iʿjāz: al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib al-Bāqillānī, Iʿjāz al-Qurʾānal-Sayyid Aḥmad Ṣaqr, Cairo, 1954
Bāqillānī, Intiṣār: al-Qāḍī Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib al-Bāqillānī, Nukat al-intiṣār li-naql al-QurʾānMuḥammad Zaghlūl Salām, Alexandria, 1971
Bayḍāwī, Anwār: ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar al-Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-taʾwīlH.O. Fleischer, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1846, Beirut, 1988
Beeston, chal: A.F.L. Beeston, The Cambridge history of Arabic literature, 4 vols. to date, Cambridge, 1983-
Bell, Commentary: R. Bell, A commentary on the QurʾānC.E. Bosworth, M.E.J. Richardson, 2 vols., Manchester, 1991
Bell, Qurʾān: R. Bell, The Qurʾān. Translated, with a critical re-arrangement of the sūras, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1939, 1960
Beltz, Mythen: W. Beltz, Die Mythen des Koran. Der Schlüssel zum Islam, Düsseldorf, 1980
Bergsträsser, Verneinungs: G. Bergsträsser, Verneinungs- und Fragepartikeln und Verwandtes im Ḳurʾān, Leipzig, 1914
Biqāʿī, Naẓm: Burhān al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar al-Biqāʿī, Naẓm al-durar fī tanāsub al-āyāt wa-l-suwar, 22 vols., Hyderabad, 1969-84, Cairo, 1992
Birkeland, Lord: H. Birkeland, The Lord guideth. Studies on primitive Islam, Oslo, 1956
Birkeland, Opposition: H. Birkeland, Old Muslim opposition against interpretation of the Koran, Oslo, 1955
Blachère: R. Blachère, Le Coran. Traduit de l'arabe, Paris, 1966
Blachère, Introduction: R. Blachère, Introduction au Coran, Paris, 1947
Bobzin, Koran: H. Bobzin, Der Koran. Eine Einführung, Munich, 1999
Bobzin, Reformation: H. Bobzin, Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde in Europa, Beirut/Stuttgart, 1995
Bouman, Conflit: J. Bouman, Le conflit autour du Coran et la solution d'al-Bāqillānī, Amsterdam, 1959
Bouman, Gott und Mensch: J. Bouman, Gott und Mensch im Koran. Eine Strukturform religiöser Anthropologie anhand des Beispiels Allāh und Muḥammad, Darmstadt, 1977
Böwering, Mystical: G. Böwering, The mystical vision of existence in classical Islam. The qurʾānic hermeneutics of the Ṣūfī Sahl at-Tustarī (d. 283/896), Berlin, 1980
Brockelmann, gal: C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2nd ed., 2 vols. and 3 vols. suppl., Leiden, 1943-9, Leiden, 1996
Buhl, Das Leben: F. Buhl, Das Leben Muhammeds, Leipzig, 1930; 1931, (3rd ed.)
Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ: Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥL. Krehl, T.W. Juynboll, 4 vols., Leiden, 1862-1908, 9 vols., Cairo, 1958
Burton, Collection: J. Burton, The collection of the Qurʾān, Cambridge, 1977
Chabbi, Seigneur: J. Chabbi, Le seigneur des tribus. L'islam de Mahomet, Paris, 1997
Creswell, ema: K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim architecture, 2 vols., Oxford, 1932-40, 2nd ed., London, 1969
Dāmaghānī, Wujūh: al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Dāmaghānī, al-Wujūh wa-l-naẓāʾir li-alfāẓ Kitāb Allāh al-ʿazīzMuḥammad Ḥasan Abū l-ʿAẓm al-Zafītī, 2 vols., Cairo, 1412-16/1992-5ʿAbd (as Qāmūs al-Qurʾān) al-ʿAzīz Sayyid al-Ahl, Beirut, 1970
Damīrī, Ḥayāt: Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 2 vols., Cairo, 1956
Dānī, Muqniʿ: Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dānī, al-Muqniʿ fī rasm maṣāḥif al-amṣār maʿa Kitāb al-Naqṭ = Orthographie und Punktierung des KoranO. Pretzl, Leipzig/Istanbul, 1932Muḥammad al-Ṣadīq Qamḥawī, Cairo n.d.
Dānī, Naqṭ: Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dānī, al-Muḥkam fī naqṭ al-maṣāḥifʿIzzat Ḥasan, Damascus, 1379/1960
Dānī, Taysīr: Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dānī, Kitāb al-Taysīr fī l-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ = Das Lehrbuch der sieben KoranlesungenO. Pretzl, Leipzig/Istanbul, 1930
Dāraquṭnī, Muʾtalif: Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿUmar al-Dāraquṭnī, al-Muʾtalif wa-l-mukhtalifMuwaffaq b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Qādir, 5 vols., Beirut, 1986
Dārimī, Sunan: ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Rāḥmān al-Dārimī, Sunan, Cairo, 1966
Darwaza, Tafsīr: Muḥammad ʿIzzat Darwaza, al-Tafsir al-ḥadīth, 12 vols., Cairo, 1381-3/1962-4
Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt: Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Dāwūdī, Ṭabaqāt al-mufassirīnʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar, 2 vols., Beirut, 1983
Dhahabī, Mufassirūn: Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Dhahabī, al-Tafsīr wa-l-mufassirūn, 2 vols., Cairo, 1976
Dhahabī, Qurrāʾ: Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Maʿrifat al-qurrāʾ al-kibār ʿalā l-ṭabaqāt wa-l-aʿṣārSayyid Jad al-Ḥaqq, n.p., 1969
Dhahabī, Siyar: Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾShuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 25 vols., Beirut, 1981-8
Dhahabī, Tadhkira: Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ, 4 vols., Hyderabad, 1375/1955
Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh: Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-IslāmʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī, 52 vols. to date, Beirut, 1989-, 4 vols.Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf, Beirut, 1408/1988
van Ess, tg: J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 6 vols., Berlin/New York, 1991-7
Fārisī, Ḥujja: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Fārisī, al-Ḥujja lil-qurrāʾ al-sabʿaBadr al-Dīn al-Qahwajī, 6 vols., Damascus, 1984-92
Farrāʾ, Maʿānī: Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā b. Ziyād al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-QurʾānAḥmad Yūsuf Najātī, Muḥammad ʿAlī l-Najjār, 3 vols., Cairo, 1955-72
Fīrūzābādī, Baṣāʾir: Majd al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Fīrūzābādī, Baṣāʾir dhawī l-tamyīz fī laṭāʾif al-kitāb al-ʿazīzMuḥammad ʿAlī l-Najjār, 6 vols., Cairo, 1964-73, Beirut n.d.
GAP: W. Fischer, H. Gätje, Grundriss der arabischen Philologie, 3 vols., Wiesbaden, 1982-92
Gardet and Anawati, Introduction: L. Gardet; M.M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, Paris, 1948, 3rd ed., 1981
Gilliot, Elt: C. Gilliot, Exégèse, langue, et théologie en Islam. L'exégèse coranique de Ṭabarī (m. 310/923), Paris, 1990
Gimaret, Jubbāʾī: D. Gimaret, Une lecture muʿtazilite du Coran. Le tafsīr d'Abū ʿAlī al-Djubbāʾī (m. 303/915) partiellement reconstitué à partir de ses citateurs, Louvain/Paris, 1994
Goldziher, gs: I. Goldziher, Gesammelte SchriftenJ. Desomogyi, 6 vols., Hildesheim, 1967-73
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Goldziher, Richtungen: I. Goldziher, Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung, Leiden, 1920, 1970
Graham, Beyond: W.A. Graham, Beyond the written word. Oral aspects of scripture in the history of religion, Cambridge and New York, 1989
Grimme, Mohammed, I-II: H. Grimme, Mohammed. I, Das Leben nach den Quellen. II, Einleitung in den Koran. System der koranischen Theologie, Münster, 1892-5
Grünbaum, Beiträge: M. Grünbaum, Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sagenkunde, Leiden, 1893
Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf: Muṣṭafā ʿAbdallāh Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn, 7 vols., Leipzig, 1835-58Şerefettin Yaltkaya, Kilisli Rifat Bilge, 2 vols., Istanbul, 1941-3, Beirut, 1992-3
Hawting, Idolatry: G.R. Hawting, The idea of idolatry and the emergence of Islam. From polemic to history, Cambridge, 1999
Hawting and Shareef, Approaches: G.R. Hawting, A.A. Shareef, Approaches to the Qurʾān, London, 1993
Ḥawwā, Tafsīr: Saʿīd Ḥawwā, al-Asās fī l-tafsīr, 11 vols., Cairo, 1405/1985
Horovitz, ku: J. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, Berlin/Leipzig, 1926
Hūd b. Muḥakkam, Tafsīr: Hūd b. Muḥakkam; Muḥkim al-Huwwārī, TafsīrBalḥājj Saʿīd Sharīfī, 4 vols., Beirut, 1990
Ibn ʿAbbās, Gharīb: ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās, Gharīb al-QurʾānMuḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Beirut, 1993
Ibn Abī l-Iṣbaʿ, Badīʿ: Ibn Abī l-Iṣbaʿ al-Miṣrī, Badīʿ al-QurʾānḤifnī Muḥammad Sharaf, Cairo n.d.
Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn: Aḥmad b. al-Qāsim b. Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾA. Müller, 2 vols., Cairo, 1299/1882, 3 vols., Beirut, 1957
Ibn al-Anbārī, Īḍāḥ: Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim b. al-Anbārī, Īḍāḥ al-waqf wa-l-ibtidāʾ fī Kitāb AllāhMuḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ramaḍān, 2 vols., Damascus, 1391/1971
Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām: Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, 2nd ed., Cairo, 1392/1972
Ibn al-ʿArabī, Tafsīr: Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, 2 vols., Beirut, 1968
Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh: ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat DimashqʿAbd al-Qādir Bardān, Aḥmad ʿUbayd, 7 vols., Damascus, 1329-51/1911-31, 19 vols., Amman n.d., 29 vols., Damascus, 1404-8/1984-8Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿUmar b. Gharāma al-ʿAmrāwī, 80 vols., Beirut, 1995-2000
Ibn ʿĀshūr, Tafsīr: Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir b. ʿĀshūr, al-Tafsīr al-taḥrīrī wa-l-tanwīrī, 30 vols., Tunis, 1984
Ibn ʿAskar, Takmīl: Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Ghassānī b. ʿAskar, al-Takmīl wa-l-itmām li-Kitāb al-Taʿrīf wa-l-iʿlāmḤasan Ismāʿīl Marwa, Beirut/Damascus, 1418/1997
Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil: ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī b. al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkhC.J. Tornberg, 14 vols., Leiden, 1851-76, 13 vols., Beirut, 1385-7/1965-7
Ibn al-Athīr, Nihāya: Majd al-Dīn al-Mubārak b. al-Athīr, al-Nihāya fī gharīb al-ḥadīth wa-l-atharṬāhir Aḥmad al-Zāwī, Maḥmūd al-Ṭanāḥī, 5 vols., Cairo, 1963-6
Ibn ʿAṭiyya, Muḥarrar: Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq b. Ghālib b. ʿAṭiyya al-Gharnāṭī, al-Muḥarrar al-wajīzʿAbd al-Salām ʿAbd al-Shāfī Muḥammad, 5 vols., Beirut, 1413/1993
Ibn Ḍurays, Faḍāʾil: Muḥammad b. Ayyūb b. Ḍurays, Faḍāʾil al-QurʾānGhazwa Budayr, Damascus, 1988
Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb: Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Tahdhīb al-tahdhīb, 12 vols., Hyderabad, 1325-7/1907-9, Beirut, 1968
Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad: Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, MusnadMuḥammad al-Zuhrī al-Ghamrāwī, 6 vols., Cairo, 1313/1895, Beirut, 1978Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir, 20 vols., Cairo, 1416/1995
Ibn Ḥazm, Milal: ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd b. Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal fī l-milal wa-l-aḥwāʾ wa-l-niḥalMuḥammad Ibrāhīm Naṣr, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿUmayra, 5 vols., Beirut, 1995
Ibn al-ʿImād, Shadharāt: ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Aḥmad b. al-ʿImād, Shadharāt al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, 8 vols., Cairo, 1350-1/1931-2, Beirut n.d.
Ibn Isḥāq, Sīra: Muḥammad b. Isḥāq, Sīrat rasūl AllāhF. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1858-60, Beirut n.d.Muṣṭafā al-Ṣaqqā, 4 vols. in 2, 2nd ed., Cairo, 1955
Ibn Isḥāq-Guillaume: Muḥammad b. Isḥāq, The life of Muhammad. A translation of Ibn Isḥāqʿs Sīrat rasūl Allāh, Oxford, 1955, Karachi, 1967
Ibn al-Jawzī, Funūn: Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. al-Jawzī, Funūn al-afnān fī ʿajāʾib ʿulūm al-QurʾānRashīd ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿUbaydī, Baghdad, 1408/1988
Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam: Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī b. al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī taʾrīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umamMuḥammad , Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 19 vols., Beirut, 1412/1922Suhayl Zakkār, 11 vols. in 13, Beirut, 1995-6
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Reviewed by Daniel Pipes

Middle East Quarterly Summer 2002

The Dutch publisher E.J. Brill has made a name for itself tackling mega-orientalist projects that no one else would dare undertake; it continues this indispensable work with the Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, projected to be a five-volume reference work.

Edited by a professor at Georgetown University, the Encyclopaedia relies mostly on U.S.-based authors, a fair number of other Westerners and Middle Easterners, and occasional contributors from elsewhere. The writers include Muslims and non-Muslims alike, ranging from the well-known (Oleg Grabar, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd) to the deeply obscure. The entries tend to be on the short side with the exception of a few essay-length efforts ("Chronology and the Qur'an). Some topics are path-breaking, as the bibliographies make clear ("Colors," "Difficult Passages"), while others review familiar ground ("Basmala"). Some are post-modern prattlings ("Contemporary Practices") while others are models of classic orientalist philology ("Animal Life"). While commentators of the Qur'an are not covered, communities of Muslims are ("Deobandis," "African Americans").

The editor forthrightly takes up the issue of what she calls "two parallel conversations" about the Qur'an, meaning Muslim and non-Muslim scholarship on the holy book. These have tended to exist in separate spheres, one pious, the other inquisitive; she also acknowledges that some authors found her concept of the project tainted and chose to stay away from it. Given the immense sensitivities of the task, and the vast range of views about the role of the Qur'an, she has done a sensible job of embracing "a plurality of method and perspective."

Амазон

The Qur'ān is the primary religious text for one-sixth of the world’s population. Understood by Muslims to contain God's own words, it has been an object of reverence and of intense study for centuries. The thousands of volumes that Muslim scholars have devoted to qur'ānic interpretation and to the linguistic, rhetorical and narrative analysis of the text are sufficient to create entire libraries of qur'ānic studies. Drawing upon a rich scholarly heritage, Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Qur'ān (EQ) combines alphabetically-arranged articles about the contents of the Qur'ān. It is an encyclopaedic dictionary of qur'ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis extended with essays on the most important themes and subjects within qur'ānic studies. With nearly 1000 entries in 5 volumes, the EQ is the first comprehensive, multi-volume reference work on the Qur'ān to appear in a Western language.

Cross-referencing and indices Frequent cross-references will draw readers to related entries and each article will conclude with a citation of relevant bibliography. The final volume of the EQ will contain indices of transliterated terms, of qur'ānic references and of the authors and exegetes cited in the entries and essays. It will also include a synoptic outline of the full contents of the EQ.

Fully international work The EQ is a fully international work supported by an international board of advisors. Scholars from many nations have written articles for the encyclopaedia.

Iqbal

The Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān Spread over 2,919 pages in five volumes, with an additional 860 pages of five indices in the sixth volume, EQ has been produced with the intention of providing “rigorous, academic scholarship on the Qurʾān, scholarship that grows from a plurality of perspectives and presuppositions,” as General Editor Jane Dammen McAuliffe states in her preface (EQ 1, ix). The work took thirteen years to complete, from its inception in 1993, when she met Peri Bearman, a senior Brill editor, “to explore the possibility of initiating such a project,” to its completion in 2006 with the publication of an additional, unplanned, sixth volume. “The key words in the preceding sentence are ‘rigorous’ and ‘academic’,” she adds emphatically, while providing background on how the project progressed:

Very quickly, four superb scholars, Wadad Kadi, Claude Gilliot, William Graham, and Andrew Rippin, agreed to join the editorial team. Both the desire to take stock of the field of qurʾānic (sic)² studies at the turn of the century and an interest in seeing this field flourish in the new millennium prompted our initial conversations. From its inception, then, EQ has gazed both backwards and forwards and this dual visioning has shaped the structuring of this encyclopaedia. As the associate editors and I proceeded with the planning, we were determined to create a reference work that would capture this century’s best achievements in qurʾānic (sic) studies. But we also wanted EQ to stimulate even more extensive scholarship on the Qurʾān in the decades to come. (EQ 1, ix-x)

Yet more important than this retrospective and prospective vision was the editors’ desire to “make the world of qurʾānic (sic) studies accessible to a very broad range of academic scholars and educated readers” (EQ 1, x). To this end, the editors made a number of decisions, some of which were not easy:

They decided to use English language entry words primarily to serve the needs of those scholars who do not have command of the Arabic language, even as they recognized that this would result in the loss of precision offered by transliterated Arabic entry-words; and
They decided not to make EQ an encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān and its interpretation, resolving to formally exclude the latter even as they recognized that virtually every article in EQ would necessarily have to draw upon the corpus of Qurʾānic exegesis.

In addition to these two decisions, which have important consequences for the structure of the encyclopaedia, EQ is based on the premise that there is

no single academic tradition of qurʾānic (sic) scholarship. Centuries of Muslim scholarship on the Qurʾān constitutes a timeline that overlaps with that of generations of Western scholarship on the text. And neither of these categories, inexact as they are, represent a single, monolithic approach or a unique, overriding methodology. Both between and within the worlds of Muslim and Western qurʾānic (sic) scholarship one finds vigorous and contentious debate…. Scholarly perspectives can no longer be neatly pinned to religious identification and good scholarship is flourishing in this richly plural environment. The editors of EQ have striven to capture that plurality within the pages of this encyclopaedia, wanting this work to represent the widest possible range of rigorous, academic scholarship on the Qurʾān. (EQ 1, xi)

That these considerations, decisions, premises, and choices construct the broad framework for EQ is obvious. What may not be so obvious, however, is the backdrop from which they have arisen as well as the nature and meaning of certain key words used in the carefully worded preface, which includes “A concluding comment on controversy”:

Some Muslims feel strongly that no non-Muslim should even touch the Qurʾān, to say nothing of reading and commenting upon it. Yet most Muslims do not feel this way. While there are those who choose to ignore non-Muslim scholarship on the Qurʾān as irrelevant or inherently flawed and misinformed, others welcome the contributions non-Muslim scholars have made to this field. (EQ 1, xiii)

The preface ends with a personal statement:

I have deliberately embraced a plurality of method and perspective within the pages of EQ, but I have done so conscious of the fact that not all scholars, whether non- Muslim or Muslim, agree with this approach. There are Muslim colleagues who have preferred not to participate out of fear that association with EQ would compromise their scholarly integrity. There are non-Muslim colleagues who have demurred for exactly the same reason. Nevertheless, these are very much the exceptions. Most scholars who were invited to contribute accepted with enthusiasm and alacrity, pleased to see the appearance of a reference work that would foster continued development within the field of qurʾānic (sic) studies. (EQ 1, xiii)

This summary of the editors’ choices and decisions as well as the broad framework of EQ is enough to start examining, in some detail, claims and premises of this ambitious undertaking, consisting of 694 articles¹ of varying length that fall into two categories: articles “that treat important figures, concepts, places, values, actions and events to be found within the text of the Qurʾān or which have an important relationship with the text; and essay-length treatments of important topics within the field of qurʾānic (sic) studies” (EQ 1, xii). The articles in these two categories have not been distinguished from one another and hence it remains up to the reader to discern which article belongs to which category.

Claims and Premises

In her preface the General Editor of EQ reiterated the editors’ desire for “rigorous and academic scholarship”, explaining further that this is a “scholarship that grows from a plurality of perspectives and presuppositions” (EQ 1, xi).

The adjective “rigorous” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary variously as “severely exact, rigidly accurate or logical, scrupulous, strictly adhered to, unswerving.” Its application to EQ presumes certain pre-existing standards. Although these standards have not been explicitly delineated, one assumes they are the welltouted claims of the academia such as impartiality, reliance on fact rather than opinion, thorough research, inclusion of all available viewpoints, and so on. What is meant by “rigorous academic” has, as noted, been further elaborated by the General Editor as the “scholarship that grows from a plurality of perspectives and presuppositions” (EQ 1, xi).

In a real-life situation, this would mean that scholars contributing to EQ would be known to hold such plurality of perspectives and presuppositions. A quick examination of the list of contributors, however, reveals that an overwhelming majority of contributors holds only one foundational perspective on the Qurʾān — a modernist, relativistic, evolutionary perspective that takes the text of the Qurʾān as a human construction and that calls for a historicist-hermeneutic approach to it. While they may differ in methodology and techniques, most differences among these scholars are peripheral to this foundational perspective. This is as much true of most Muslim contributors as it is of non-Muslims. Nor can this be by default; when an editor invites contributions from someone who calls himself a “secular Muslim”, or from a scholar whose approach to the Qurʾān is steeped in Western feminism, she or he already knows the nature of the contribution such scholars would make to the project. The choice of scholars enlisted for the project is neither incidental nor accidental; rather, it reflects considered preferences and intellectual affinities of the editors.¹ Likewise, when the editors decide that, out of 278 contributors, only about 20 percent would be Muslims of a particular academic lineage, they have already decided in favor of a certain perspective, notwithstanding the rather contentious claim that “religious affiliation is of no consequence in academic scholarship” (EQ 1, xi). Furthermore, Muslim contributions are largely marginal: most of the articles dealing with fundamental concepts, ideas, and terms of the Qurʾān have come from non-Muslim contributors. It is also noteworthy in this context that although there are 278 authors in the list of contributors, 123 have contributed only one article, 65 have contributed two articles each, and 37 have written three articles; thus 47.5% of EQ (330 articles) come from the pen of only 53 authors, 95% of whom are non-Muslim whose Orientalist approach to the Qurʾān borders on polemics.

The claim that EQ includes a plurality of perspectives may be true, but these perspectives stem from the same font—that which negates, ignores, or considers irrelevant the phenomenon of revelation (wahy) as understood in Islam. The perspective that emerges in the absence of this fundamental precept may produce a host of mutually differing opinions, but they cannot be said to be arising out of a plurality of fundamental premises; they all rest on the supposition that the Qurʾān is not the actual Word of God—at least, not as the Qurʾān itself claims—but a human construct, originating orally at a specific time and place and undergoing textual “evolution” like all other oral texts.

There is a claim on the back cover of EQ which tells us that “hundreds of scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have collaborated in the creation of this work.” This is simply incorrect; there are exactly 278 contributors, no more, no less. Within this specific number, about twenty percent are Muslims, many of whom are known to subscribe to the same perspective as of the non-Muslim contributors.

The “Preface” also claims that “centuries of Muslim and non- Muslim scholarship on the Qurʾān constitutes overlapping categories which do not embody any single, monolithic approach or a unique, overriding methodology” (EQ 1, xi). As proof for this claim, the General Editor draws attention to “the presence of vigorous and contentious debates within Islamic scholarship” (EQ 1, xi). But does the existence of one basic and fundamental underlying framework for treating a text foreclose the possibility of vigorous and contentious debates? The entire corpus of Muslim scholarship on the Qurʾān is based on the premise that the Qurʾān is the Word of God sent down to the Prophet of Islam through the medium of an Angel, Jibril, just as He sent revelation to other Prophets before him. Furthermore, Muslims have always believed that, as a revealed text, the Qurʾān is protected from any corruption. This protection has been guaranteed by none other than the One Who Sent it down through a trustworthy Spirit (al-Ruh al-Amin), Jibril; hence, for them, certain questions related to the text of the Qurʾān, so often discussed in modern academic scholarship, have never been valid questions.

While it is true that generations of Muslim scholars have produced a vast body of literature on the Qurʾān, written from a variety of linguistic, legalist, literary, esoteric, and other perspectives, and that within this vast body of literature one finds fierce disagreements, critiques, and debates, yet the overriding fact is that all of this takes place within the boundary condition set by the Sender of the Qurʾān: Verily, We have sent it down and We are its Protector.¹ It is only those who deny its truth, the Qurʾān asserts, who allege that it can be corrupted: Verily, those who deny the truth of this Reminder, when it has come to them [are the losers]; for, behold, it is a Mighty Book; no falsehood can enter it from front or from behind; sent down with great care by the One who is truly Wise, ever to be praised.² In another, rather stern, passage, the Qurʾān forecloses the possibility of any change to its text by anyone, including the Prophet himself: Now if he [whom We have entrusted with it] had dared to attribute something [of his own] unto Us, We would indeed have seized him by his right hand, and would indeed have cut his jugular vein, and none of you could have saved him. Verily, this [Qurʾān] is a reminder to all the God-conscious.³

Obviously al-Zamakhshari’s Tafsir al-Kashshaf ‘an Haqaāiq Ghawamid al-Tanzil and Ibn Kathir’s Tafsir al-Qurʾān al-Azim are two very different kinds of exegesis, using very different methodologies and techniques, but they both arise from the same basic framework mentioned above; their dissimilarity is of a different order as compared to a work that arises from an opposing foundational perspective. Thus, as far as the Qurʾān is concerned, there are only two clearly delineated foundational or meta-perspectives, out of which all other perspectives can be said to have emerged: the first considers it a text whose author is none other than God Himself; the other does not hold this view to be true.

This division is neither new nor ad hoc; it has existed ever since the first Āyahs of the Qurʾān were revealed. The Qurʾān itself refers to these two fundamental divisions and through them classifies human beings into two categories: those who believe it to be a Divine revelation and those who do not. And this Qurʾān is not such as could ever be invented in spite of Allah; rather, it is the confirmation of that which was [revealed] before it, an exposition of the Book— therein is no doubt—from the Sustainer of all the worlds. Or do they say he has invented it! Say: ‘produce, then, a sĈrah like it, and call to your assistance whomever you can other than Allah, if you are truthful’.¹

What is meant by pluralism in the claim by the editors of EQ is, therefore, a pluralism that arises from within the same monochromatic prism, sharing the same basic premise. It is this monochromatic premise which defines the fundamental aspect of approaches to the Qurʾān by non-Muslim scholars. These approaches may be construed as having shades, even diversity, but at best, it is scholarship which remains uncommitted to the authorship of the Qurʾān; at worst, it attributes the text of the Qurʾān to Prophet Muhammad and then tries to discover its “sources”, whether human, psychological, mythical, or historical.

It is noteworthy that the Qurʾān has already responded to these allegations: …and they say: ‘you are an inventor [of this revelation];’ rather, most of them have no knowledge. Say: ‘The Holy Spirit has brought it down from thy Sustainer with truth so that it might firmly establish those who believe, and so that it may be guidance and glad tidings unto all who submit’. And, indeed, full well do We know that they say, ‘he is taught by a human being.’ The tongue of him to whom they maliciously point is a‘jami [non-Arabic] whereas this is clear Arabic.¹

Likewise, for those who claim that the Qurʾān is an inspired book— like the inspiration of poets—rather than revelation, the Qurʾānic response is: By all that you see and what you do not see, behold, this [Qurʾān] is indeed the saying of a noble Messenger, and is neither the word of a poet—however little you may believe—nor the word of a soothsayer, however little you take it to heart; a revelation from the Sustainer of all the worlds.²

Pluralism has become a byword—a politically correct and academically sound but much abused word—often serving to gloss the imposition of a specific worldview which has grown out of a particular history, namely, that of modern Western thought, through a series of revolts against God. These revolts have produced various theological, scientific, and political revolutions in Western thought since the Renaissance. They have given rise to ideologies and philosophies which attempt to construct a Kingdom of Man on earth in which Man himself is the measure of all things.³ This historical process has also given birth to certain foundational institutions, the Western Academy is one such institution. Since EQ is an academic work, a fuller examination of the perspective from which it has emerged requires an understanding of the historical process through which the Academy has gained its current perspectives on religion in general and Islam and its Scripture in particular.

Religion and the Academy

The academic discourse on religion has been shaped by specific currents in Western thought, beginning with a phase of pseudo- Christianization of Aristotelian philosophy—mainly through the influence of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74)—,⁴ and passing through the Reformation,¹ Humanism,² Naturalism,³ Nationalism, the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, Rationalism,⁴ Deism,⁵ Idealism,⁶ Positivism,⁷ Historicism,⁸ Utilitarianism,⁹ Marxism,¹⁰ Scientism,¹¹ and many other “isms”. The Academy being an integral part of the modern Western civilization draws its legal, human, and material resources from that same civilization, and has been influenced by all these currents. Its entire apparatus of teaching, research, and knowledge production rests on the same currents of thought that have shaped modern Western civilization. This civilization has emerged out of a series of revolts against what it subsequently called its “Dark Age”. While there is considerable difference of opinion among scholars working in different fields about when the Middle Ages ended and when what is now called “modern times” began, for our purpose there is a clear demarcation between the two eras: the dawn of the fourteenth century. “This date marks the beginning of a fresh decline,” wrote René Guénon (1886-1951) in The Crisis of the Modern World,

which has continued through various phases and with gathering impetus down to the present day. The real starting point of the modern crisis dates from that moment: it witnessed the first signs of the disruption of Christendom, with which the Western civilization of the Middle Ages was inseparably bound up: at the same time, while it marked the break up of the feudal system, so closely linked with that same Christendom, it also coincided with the origin of the formation of “nations”. Modern times must therefore be regarded as going back almost two centuries farther than is usually assumed to be the case; the Renaissance and the Reformation were both primarily in the nature of results and they were only rendered possible by the preceding decadence; but far from constituting a revival, they denoted a yet more serious decline since they completed the rupture with the traditional spirit, the former in the domain of the arts and science and the latter in the sphere of religion itself, and that, in spite of the fact that this is the field in which it would have seemed most difficult to conceive of the possibility of such a rupture taking place at all.¹

The Renaissance man was, therefore, already a fallen man, the one who sought solace in the philosophical thought of the fifth century BCE—an era deemed to be the golden age of Greek thought, while in fact it was an age of decline and decadence even when compared to the Pythagorean era, not to mention the pre-Pythagorean age. “The Renaissance was really the death of many things; on the pretext of a return to Graeco-Roman civilization it merely took over the most outward part of that civilization…there was a word which rose to repute at the time of the Renaissance and which summarized in advance the whole programme of modern civilization: this word is ‘humanism’.”¹

In short, in the very process of its so-called Renaissance, European religious thought suffered an irreparable loss through

reducing everything to purely human proportions, of eliminating every principle belonging to a higher order and, figuratively speaking, of turning away from heaven on the pretext of gaining possession of the earth; the Greeks, whose example men claimed they were following, had never gone so far in this direction, even at the time of their lowest intellectual decadence, and utilitarian considerations had at least never occupied first place with them as they were very soon to do with the moderns. “Humanism” was already an earliest form of what has subsequently become contemporary “laicism”; and, in attempting to reduce everything to the stature of man taken as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage to the level of his lowest elements and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim which is, in any case, quite illusory, as it continually creates more artificial wants than it can ever hope to satisfy.²

The rise of the “material civilization”,³ which now engulfs all realms of modern life and thought, was only possible at the expense of the destruction of the Kingdom of God, and “Humanism” provided all that was necessary for this barter. As a result, not only did profane sciences of nature emerge, but the whole understanding of the natural order was reduced to a human level. There arose new fields of scholarship with their own methodologies and approaches, all tailored to the needs of the new Kingdom of Man to which “Humanism” gave birth; the academic study of religion was one such new discipline which first made its appearance in European and British universities and then spread to North America. Christianity was the first victim of this academic adventure. It provided a vast field of unending research to academic scholars in fields as varied as historiography, textual analysis, theology, sociology of religion, religious praxis, and so on. In the process of recasting religion and what it means to humanity, the doctors of the Academy developed tools, methodologies, and conventions which they then started to apply to other religions. The Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān is the work of scholars who study religious texts from within this well-established academic tradition.

Certain key features of this tradition were succinctly summarized by Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919-1978) in a short two-part treatise. Part two of this book contains a list of 153 specific presumptions, claims, and approaches to Islam which Askari called aberrations (gumrahi).¹ He pointed out that, in previous eras, aberrations were limited in number and in their geographical spread, but that this is no longer the case. Furthermore, certain foundational religious terms have changed meaning in Western thought so many times during the last three centuries that their use poses basic difficulties in understanding primary concepts; every few years, they are given a new meaning with the result that there is no fixed meaning attached to these terms anymore. “Religion” and “fićrah” are two prime examples of this kind of distortion. They have been used to mean so many different things that they have become meaningless.²

The major aberrations included in Askari’s list are summarized below; evidence of most of these traits can be found in the articles of EQ, as will become more apparent as we examine some typical articles in the next section.

According to Askari, Orientalists and their intellectual heirs, the academic scholars lack the understanding that the religion (din) has three distinct elements: beliefs (‘aqāid); acts of worship (‘ibadat);

and ethics (akhlaq), in this order of importance, or takes one or two of these and leaves the other;

they do not consider beliefs (‘aqāid) to be an integral part of religion; or consider beliefs something that changes from time to time (evolutionary perspective); or as a means of emotional satisfaction;

they consider ‘ibadat (specific acts of worship) mere rituals which can be accepted, rejected, or modified by human beings;

they consider religion a social institution and a means for the organization of society and take religion as a means for improving material life;

they limit religion to ethics or think of religion as an ethical system; they assume that the purpose of religion is characterbuilding— and equate character with those traits that are deemed socially useful;

they think that religion is a product of the human mind and take it as an evolutionary process; they even consider God or the concept of God to undergo evolution;

they consider false beliefs (al-batil) at par with true beliefs (al-haqq) under the pretext of tolerance and liberal thinking;

they apply relativism to religious principles and insist that all ideas are only relatively true, not absolutely;

they deny the existence of the Intellect (‘aql) or equate it with Reason; they deny the existence of knowledge (‘ilm) beyond that which can be gathered by Reason, and negate the existence of means of knowledge that are higher than Reason and thereby limit knowledge to the knowledge of the material world; they reject or rationalize beliefs which are beyond Reason; they even attempt to find rational bases for religious commands (ahkam); they deny miracles or interpret them on rational bases;

they deny the authenticity of the oral tradition and demand textual evidence for all things; they do not accept any authority, even the authority of a Prophet; they insist that their own opinion is as valid as the hukm found in the Book of Allah or in the saying of the Prophet;

their entire framework of study is built upon Positivism, Pragmatism, and Utilitarianism; they make material progress the measure of all things.¹

The Qurʾān and the Academy

The Encylopaedia of the Qurʾān carries the stamp of the Academy; its editors and contributors are trained in the Academy; most of its articles build upon the previous academic scholarship on the Qurʾān. This academic pedigree can be traced back to the work of the nineteenth century Orientalists and, through them, to the five centuries of discourse on the Qurʾān by Christian polemists-cumphilologists who appeared on the Western academic scene in the fourteenth century, when the Church Council of Vienna, held in 1312, announced the establishment of chairs in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon, and Salamanca.² It is the vast store of Orientalism from which most of the articles of EQ draw their material, although “[t]oday an Orientalist is less likely to call himself an Orientalist than he was almost any time up to World War II,” Edward Said noted in 1978.³

The academic discourse on the Qurʾān may have re-cloaked itself in new garb in order to distinguish itself from Orientalism proper, but it is unreasonable to assume that any scholarly tradition can dissociate itself from the core values, assumptions, and premises of its mothertradition. Thus, while the current academic writings on Islam are no more the sole dominion of the erstwhile Orientalist, the study of Islam as a subject alongside other religions in the relatively new departments of religious studies, as well as in the older and well-established area study departments and departments of languages and literature at numerous British, European and North American universities, has umbilical links with the Orientalism of yesteryears. It is not necessary to go into the history of the stages through which polemics changed into Orientalism and Orientalism into contemporary academic writings, as these links are well established in other sources.¹

A general survey of the contemporary Western academic study of the Qurʾān, of which EQ is the most comprehensive and distinguished product, makes it abundantly clear that it cannot rid itself of the very foundation on which it stands, because the “orientalists have, nonetheless, bequeathed to the present generation monumental works of scholarship on the Islamic religion, history, and society, without which Middle Eastern and Islamic studies today would be unthinkable.”² And “yet despite its failures, its lamentable jargon, its scarcely concealed racism, its paper-thin intellectual apparatus, Orientalism flourishes today in the forms I have tried to describe.”³

Furthermore, as far as the Qurʾān is concerned, there is a specific linkage between current Western academic approaches to the Qurʾān and past scholarship. This is so because non-Muslim scholars in Western academia face a unique dilemma when approaching the Qurʾān: they cannot commit themselves to any position about the Divine origin of the Qurʾān because their professional obligation is to maintain an uncommitted detachment from the object of their study. Yet, in this case, the object itself makes it impossible to maintain such neutrality, for the Qurʾān demands that one must settle the fundamental issue of its authorship before any further interaction can occur. One must either accept or reject the Qurʾānic claim to be actual Divine Revelation. A corollary of whatever choice they make is their position regarding the Prophet. Acceptance of the Qurʾān as Divine Revelation simultaneously entails the acceptance of Prophet Muhammad as the final Messenger of Allah. If they reject the Qurʾānic claim, they simultaneously reject his prophethood and thereby find themselves in the difficult position of questioning his honesty and truthfulness—something that polemical writers have done for centuries. This dilemma has been recognized by a number of academic scholars along with the admission that no alternative solutions are available.

The best option, then, for academic scholars is to explicate the message of the Qurʾān from the perspective of believers as well as non-believers—a difficult task similar to trying to wear two hats at the same time. Thus, academic scholars find themselves in an irresolvable dilemma: if they commit to a position on the Qurʾān, they sacrifice their ‘impartiality’; if they do not, they cannot legitimately interact with the text they are studying. This predicament can be more fully appreciated if we keep in view the fact that most non-Muslim academic scholars rely on the work of previous scholars for constructing their own arguments and most of their references go back to the Orientalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who, in turn, constructed their work on the polemics of the Middle Ages. This lineage, inherent in the very structure of academic scholarship, not only includes centuries of accumulated and often detailed scrutiny of source material, valuable manuscripts, and keen insights, but also brings to bear the framework, premises, and biases of previous generations. In the case of the Qurʾān, this genealogy reaches back to the polemical works of medieval Jewish and Christian writers—a tradition that eventually took the form of Orientalist scholarship.

Some Characteristic Features of EQ

Every entry in EQ follows a set pattern: it begins with a definition of the word, term, or concept, counts the number of times the word or term is used in the Qurʾān, and establishes its root. This style gives a certain degree of consistency to the entire work. This initial uniformity is, however, soon lost as individual scholars develop their themes on different patterns. Most attempt to find antecedents of the Qurʾānic idea, term, or concept about which they are writing in Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, or Manichaean sources. This is followed by charting an evolutionary path, which supposedly reflects the “evolution” of the idea or concept during the twenty-three years of Prophetic life, often making use of the demarcation represented by the Makkan and Madinan periods. An overwhelming majority of articles in EQ then proceed to include selected interpretive data from Muslim and non-Muslim sources, often minimizing the importance of well-established Muslim understandings by giving more importance to peripheral or Orientalist’ writings. Thus a Shaked or a Sundermann (EQ III, 144a) stands as tall as an Tabari, and a Gibb is given the chance to say the final word: “Gibb is certain that the doctrine of the last judgment in the Qurʾān was derived from Christian sources, especially from the writings of the Syriac Christian Fathers and monks” (EQ III, 144a).

Yet another wide-spread feature of EQ is doubt. One has to really search for entries which do not have a liberal sprinkling of words like “perhaps”, “may be”, “is doubtful”, “uncertain”, “this poses difficulties”, and “there is confusion in Islamic sources”. This is a general characteristic of Orientalism, but it really stands out in EQ because this work is about a Book in which there is no doubt, a revelation that instills certainty in the hearts of those who seek guidance; EQ seeks to erode certainty. That it is filled with a scholarship which is based on sheer disbelief is obvious; that it is a poor specimen of even that tradition of doubt becomes clear when one examines individual entries in detail. A typical example is “Last Judgment”.

The Last Judgment

Starting with a definition, “God’s final assessment of humanity”, Isaac Hasson, the author of this entry, tells us that this is one of the most important themes of the Qurʾān and it appears in many forms, especially in the first Makkan suwar (EQ III, 136a). He then explains:

Belief in the last judgment, with the concomitant belief in paradise for those who performed good deeds and in hell for those who did not believe in God and did evil, became one of ‘the pillars of faith’ (arkan al-iman, cf. Q. 4:136), as these were called by later Muslim sources. Many sĈras indicate that those who trust in God and in the day of resurrection are considered to be believers (Q. 2:62, 126, 177; 3:114; 4:162; 5:69; 9:18),¹ and those who refute these tenets are unbelievers, or those who have gone ‘astray’, and Muslims must fight them. The hadith literature adds material to emphasize the importance, in Islam, of belief in the resurrection” (EQ III, 136a).

This description is followed by a typical Orientalist twist to the topic:

Certain Western researchers suppose (Seale, Arab’s concern, 90-1) that Muhammad tried, at the beginning of his prophecy, to convince his audience that there was going to be a day of resurrection. Considering their reaction (Q 75:3-4; 79:10-1) to this concept, Muhammad then warned them that there was going to be a day of judgment (Q 44:40). This line of thinking also maintains that the Meccans’ refutation of Muhammad’s doctrine of resurrection and a day of reckoning—and their tendency to ridicule these issues—may explain the abundance of references to these themes in the Qurʾān, as well as to conflation of yawm al-qiyĀma and yawm al-dąn. There is reason to believe that such qurʾānic (sic) abundance, supported by a flux of interpretations and hadiths elaborating the details of the last judgment, may have led P. Casanova to the following explanation for Muhammad’s failure to designate a successor: namely, Muhammad was convinced that the end of the world was so close at hand that he himself would witness it, and, consequently, there was no need for him to name a successor (Casanova, Mohammed, 12; for a critical view, see Watt-Bell, Introduction, 53-4; see Caliph). (III, 136b, emphases added.)

Note the embedded Orientalist views in the italicized text; note also the evolutionary perspective of the author to which attention was drawn in earlier discussions; note also the Orientalists’ claims that there are contradictions in the Qurʾān. It is obvious that anyone deriving such conclusions from certain Āyahs of the Qurʾān or the text of certain ahadith does not understand the difference in time scales used by the Qurʾān for cosmic events and his or her understanding of what constitutes “nearness to the end of time.”² But more than this obvious problem, what we have in this short quotation is the entire subtext of Orientalist scholarship on the Qurʾān in miniature form, displaying, in bold strokes, its total failure to understand or even portray the Qurʾānic view of Prophecy (nubuwwah, risalah), the historic function of the men chosen by Allah to act as His Messengers, and the role of Divine guidance during the entire Prophetic life of the men so chosen for Prophethood. Even though one does not expect academicians to write from the perspective of a believer, academic fairness and scholarly norms demand a minimum level of courtesy toward the beliefs of one fourth of humanity; if nothing else, they can at least acknowledge what the Qurʾān actually says on the topic before plying their trade of pejorative comments. To totally ignore the Qurʾānic view, to leave it out, or misquote and misconstrue Islamic views does not produce vigorous academic scholarship and is indicative of either lack of competence, outright academic dishonesty, or both.

According to the Qurʾānic view, Allah chooses as His Messengers whomsoever He wishes from among human beings. By this selection, they are elevated in their status. While remaining human (bashar) in their constitution, they perform the function of a Prophet through a very special and unique relationship with the Creator. Their submission to the Creator, their sublime character, and their exemplary uprightness make them models for humanity. They convey the Divine Message as they receive it while their own sayings and deeds create the path which becomes the Sunnah followed by those who wish to achieve the everlasting success to which the Divine Message calls all humanity. The time in history during which one of Allah’s Messengers was a resident of this Earth, was unique. Though this time was part of human history in general, it was not like the time when a Prophet was not living among humanity. Allah directs and guides His Prophets in all aspects of their lives. Prophets come to warn and give glad tidings; they bring news from the One from Whose inexhaustible knowledge nothing is hidden. They live in total submission to His commands; they can neither add to nor subtract from the revelation (wahy) they receive; their role is to convey it. In other words, in matters of religion, Allah’s Prophets say nothing from their own, they merely convey the Message.¹ Likewise, in their personal lives, they are under the direct command of Allah: they live where He wants them to live, they marry whom He wants them to marry; they migrate from their places of birth when He instructs them; their hijrah is often linked to their overall Prophetic mission. Although they are the chosen Messengers, it is not in their power to guide anyone, for only Allah guides whomsoever He wishes,¹ and when they depart from this world, they do not leave behind a successor; prophecy is not hereditary. All of this is absent from the purview of the writer of the entry on “Last Judgment”.

Hasson further states that “there is reason to believe that such qurʾānic (sic) abundance, supported by a flux of interpretations and hadiths elaborating the details of the last judgment, may have led P. Casanova to the following explanation for Muhammad’s failure to designate a successor: namely, Muhammad was convinced that the end of the world was so close at hand that he himself would witness it, and, consequently, there was no need for him to name a successor” (EQ III, 136), but he fails to tell his readers that Casanova invented this explanation without any knowledge of such matters; the least what he could have done was to inform his readers what Islamic tradition says in this regard, namely, the Prophet was acting under Divine command. Had the author of this entry given weight to the abundance of ahadith containing prophecies about the end of the world preceded by clear signs of the “Hour”, it would have become clear to him that the Prophet did not think the “Hour” was so imminent. But the author of this EQ entry gives such a prominent position to the opinion of the French Orientalist Paul Casanova (1861-1926), that he does not seem to look in any other direction. Furthermore, he does not tell his readers that Casanova’s distorted views about the Qurʾān and the Prophet were not considered worthy of attention even by his own peers. When he published his Mohamed et la fin du monde,² it was rejected as a flawed work:

His thesis is a development of the view that Muhammad was moved to undertake his mission by the impression made on him by the idea of the approaching Judgment. Casanova thinks that he must have come under the influence of some Christian sect which laid great stress on the near approach of the end of the world. That formed the main theme of his early deliverances and was an essential part of his message from beginning to end of his prophetic activity. As the event, however, did not substantiate his prophecy, the leaders of the early Islam so manipulated the Qurʾān as to remove that doctrine from it, or at least conceal its prominence. This thesis has not found much acceptance, and it is unnecessary to refute it in detail. The main objection to it is that it is founded less upon study of the Qurʾān than upon investigation of some of the byways of early Islam. From this point of view, the book still has value. When Casanova deals with the Qurʾān itself, his statements often display incorrect exegesis and a total lack of appreciation for the historical development of Muhammad’s teaching.¹

Having passed his judgment on what might have led Casanova to his conclusion about why the Prophet did not nominate a successor, the author of the “Last Judgment” goes on to state: “the qurʾānic (sic) material on the last judgment is very rich and colorful but the allusions in the holy book do not provide a comprehensive picture of all of its details” (III, 137b). Moreover, we are told: “since the ordering of events at this stage of the judgment day is not consistent and is sometimes even contradictory, many authors tried to arrange them” (III, 139b). It may be argued that what appears to Hasson as contradictory may not be entirely due to his own failure to understand the Qurʾānic descriptions, but when he tells us that “in Arabic, the root d-y-n (din) poses some difficulties since it has three different etymologies and, in consequence, different connotations” (EQ III, 141b), one begins to understand where the problem lies, for even an elementary student of Arabic language knows that Arabic roots almost always carry multiple meanings and it is their usage that determines which meaning or shade of meaning is expressed in a given text. One expects “rigorous academic scholarship” to meet at least the basic criteria of linguistic expertise, but such is not the case.

Under the subheading “The Place of the Last Judgment”, we read: “The Umayyad regime openly encouraged this view [of ascribing the place of the Last Judgment to al-Quds] because it gave them legitimization to move the Muslim center of worship from Medina, the city of the Prophet, to Syria, which includes Jerusalem” (EQ III, 142b). What does “Muslim center of worship” mean here? The Prophet had supplicated to Allah to make the radiant Madinah (al-Madinah al-Munawarrah) his haram,¹ but it cannot be said to be “Muslim center of worship”. In fact, the very concept of a specific city being the “Muslim center of worship” is utterly foreign to Islam. As far as place of worship is concerned, the entire earth is a place of worship, and although Madinah and the inviolable city of Makkah, wherein is the House of Allah (bayt Allah), both have a very special status, neither can be said to be the “center of worship”, for the center of worship in Islam is Allah, to Whom “everything in the heavens and earth submits, willingly or under compulsion”.²

Hasson concludes his article by doing what most Orientalists do: he tries to find “sources” in previous religions for what the Qurʾān has to say on the topic of his essay and gives the final word to Gibb: “Gibb (Mohammedanism, 26-7) is certain that the doctrine of the last judgment in the Qurʾān was derived from Christian sources, especially from the writings of the Syriac Christian Fathers and monks” (EQ III, 144a).

Let us finally note that “Last Judgment” as a term is in itself of Christian origin and has been imposed on the Qurʾānic theme of accountability (hisab). This imposition is, however, not as blatant as the patently Christian ritual of Baptism which has been given the space of a full entry in EQ. While only the editors can tell why this concept, utterly foreign to the Qurʾān, is present in EQ, its author acknowledges that it is closely identified with Christianity, but resorts to illogical reasons for its justification: “There is one possible reference in the Qurʾān to baptism, Q. 2:138: “The baptism (sibgha) of God and who is better than God in terms of baptizing (sibghatan)?” To translate Ćibgha as “baptism” is obviously incorrect, but the author of that entry attempts to justify it on the basis of certain corrupt English translations (1, 200a)!

EQ on the Qurʾān

One of the most telling features indicative of EQ’s direct descent from Orientalism is to be found in articles which directly deal with the Prophet, revelation, and the Qurʾān itself.¹ Almost all of these were assigned to non-Muslims and almost all of them contain the imprint of the polemical and Oriental works. In “Čadąth and the Qurʾān”, an article divided into eleven sections, G.H.A. Juynboll outlines the structure of his article in a scientific manner, but as soon as he begins to comment, the entire list of Western aberrations begins to make its presence felt. In the very first comment, he dismisses al-Suyti’s Itqan because he quotes “surveys on a variety of qurʾānic (sic) subjects with the name of only one ancient authority (often a Companion like Ibn ‘Abbas or Ubayy b. Ka‘b) prefixed as the transmitting authority” (EQ II, 378a), and then goes to pass a rather typical verdict: “The significance of such isnĀd is slight on the whole, and mentioning them at all seems more a matter of habit than a purposeful attempt to substantiate historically the transmission paths of such studies” (EQ II, 378a). This dismissive attitude, expressed in such authoritative language, reflects a total ignorance of the norms of Islamic scholarship, the nature and purpose of texts such as al-Suyti’s monumental work on the Qurʾān, and the familiar Orientalist view of hadith literature not being reliable.

As already mentioned, Muslim scholars of the pre-modern era were writing within a larger context and intellectual milieu and often for a readership well-versed in the discipline; their work was neither for the layman, nor for the would-be Orientalists of the later centuries who would need footnotes, references, and sources to give credence to a text. When Ibn Kathąr or al-Suyti quoted the final link in a chain of narrators, they were confident of the easy availability of scholars and texts who knew the entire chain, and who could often quote it from memory. Thus they did not need to encumber their works with footnotes and references. It is this peculiar mental makeup of the Orientalists that demands such detailed references and remains unsatisfied when they are provided in source material.

Juynboll’s treatment of the traditions regarding the beginning of wahy (section 2) is no better than the one found in the first section. The whole thrust of his narration is to show, in insidious ways, that the traditions were invented to prove a fabricated story about the revelation. In other words, the Muslim view of the beginning of revelation did not come into existence on the basis of solid, believable, and original accounts of what actually happened; rather, Muslims fabricated a story about how the revelation began, and then invented isnĀd for the fabricated ahadith to prove the story. In this case, he states:

The best-known tradition about the beginning of the revelation (wahy) depicts how the Prophet was visited by the angel Gabriel who gave him a short text to recite, the first divine revelation of all, five verses of Q 96: “Recite in the name of your lord…”. The oldest version of the story extant in the sources may tentatively be attributed to the storyteller (qass) of Mecca, ‘Ubayd b. ‘Umayr (d. 68/687), officially installed in that position by the second caliph, ‘Umar b. al-Khattab. This version was later reworded and provided with some crucial interpolations by the Medinan/Syrian chronicler Ibn ShihĀb al-Zuhrą (d. 124/742). He traced the account back to the Prophet via a ‘Urwa b. al-Zubayr/ĂĊāisha isnĀd. The development of the textual accretions and embellishments of the story—including an attempt of the mawla Yahya b. Abą Kathąr (d. between 129/747 and 132/750) to have Q 74:1-5 accepted as the first revealed verses—as well as of its multiple isnĀd strands, has been studied and provided with diagrams of the isnĀd bundles by Juynboll (Early Islamic society, 160-71) and Schoeler (Charakter, chap. 2; cf. also Rubin, Iqra’). (EQ II, 381)

Note how he constructs his narration about the sanad of the hadith: it is not ‘Aishah/‘Urwa b. al-Zubayr who are the original narrators of this hadith,¹ from whom the alleged “storyteller” received his account, but the other way around. Note the construction: “Jibril gave him a short text” is nowhere to be found in this hadith, which clearly states that Jibril said “Iqra’” (read/recite). Also note the self-perpetuation in the references to his own work and that of two other neo-Orientalists as authorities cited to validate the assertions.

In a like manner the author discredits ahadith about merits of recitation. “The slogan-like Prophetic tradition ‘Adorn the Qurʾān with your voices’ is supported by a complex isnĀd bundle in which the position of the early Successor and Qurʾān expert Talha b. Musarrif (d. 112/730) may be construed as that of common link. In fact, his may be considered one of the earliest datable traditions in the entire canonical hadith corpus. In view of his purported Qurʾān expertise he might conceivably be this tradition’s originator” (EQ II, 387a).

This article repeats numerous polemical and Orientalists contentions in an insidious manner. Commenting on the rules concerning tayammum, the author states: “In all likelihood the discussion dates to the life-time of the Prophet, or in any case to the time when these verses became generally known, probably in the course of the first/seventh century. Traditions about tayammum were inserted in the stories featuring ‘Aisha which have Hisham b. ‘Urwa as common link…”. What is being said in this distorted manner is that Āyahs of tayammum2 were not generally known during the life of the Prophet and that they only became known in the course of the first century of Islam—an assertion that defies all accounts in Islamic literature.

“History and the Qurʾān” by Franz Rosenthal is yet another example of the hybrid scholarship that thoroughly mixes Orientalist tropes with academic scholarship. The article starts in a detached manner, outlining a linguistic topography for the article, and then suddenly we read: “The question of whether the Prophet’s views of the historical process underwent changes during his lifetime does not, it seems, admit of a sufficiently well-grounded answer” (EQ II, 429). Even though one does not expect non-Muslims to write from the premises of a believer, what is remarkable about Rosenthal’s entire article is the total absence of any mention of what Islamic scholarship has to say on this subject, an authoritative style that assumes the Qurʾān to be the book composed by the Prophet as a fact and not as the author’s own view, and the usual Orientalist struggle to locate the “sources” at the Prophet’s disposal.

Where sources cannot be shown to assist in the “composition of the Qurʾān”, as in the story of Ashab al-Kahf, the author presents this absurd theory: “Muhammad seems to have worried about the dearth and inaccuracy of the data available to him. This becomes particularly clear in the discussion of the history of the Seven Sleepers where the Prophet had to acknowledge the lack of chronological information. He worried about the uncertainty of the length of time they spent sleeping in the cave. They themselves did not know it, and the indicated precise number of 309 years is also uncertain” (EQ II, 433b). The author’s total disregard for fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship, his selfcenteredness, and his misreading of the Qurʾān are the hallmark of this “scholarship”: for instance, regarding the Qurʾānic use of “before” (qabl-; min qablu), he passes an authoritative judgment: “It took on a formulaic character and appears sometimes where it might as well have been left unstated, as when the jinn are stated to have been created before man” (EQ II, 433b).

Muslim Sources and EQ

EQ taps into a vast reservoir of exegetical literature as well as the sąrah and hadith texts, but in most of the articles this Muslim material is poured into a pre-established mould, often with explanatory phrases like “Muslims believe,” “the Muslim understanding is,” “Islamic tradition says,” and so on. This usage, however, does not make the perspectives used in EQ pluralistic, for the Muslim material is not used to construct the mould or the perspective, but instead is simply added to a pre-cast Orientalists’ framework. One example will suffice: Gerhard Böwering’s article “God and his (sic) Attributes.” He first tells us that “Muhammad proclaimed the Qurʾān ‘in the name of AllĀh,’” and then goes on to state that “Muslims believe the Arabic Qurʾān to be the actual word of God through which God makes himself (sic) known to humanity (EQ II, 317).” A few sentences later, however, one finds a lineage which Muslims would consider nothing but blasphemous:

From his youth, Muhammad was intimately familiar with this name [AllĀh] for the supreme God since his father’s name was ‘Abdallah, “servant of AllĀh.” It seemed most natural to him, therefore, to employ the word “AllĀh” for God in his qurʾānic (sic) proclamation, rather than to introduce a totally new name for his monotheistic concept of God. (EQ II, 317)

The name of the father of the Prophet comes from the Muslim sources, but this information is appropriated by underlying assumptions which transmute it: it was somehow the Prophet who chose which name to use for Allah; it is his and not God’s Qurʾānic proclamation; he could have introduced a totally new name, but he did not do so for reasons of expediency. This is not an isolated or unique example of how EQ employs Muslim material to present “pluralistic” perspectives.

Lemmata

The editors’ choice of English-language entry-words, or lemmata, has been rationalized on the basis of EQ’s target readership while recognizing the loss of precision due to this move (EQ I, x), but there is no criteria described for the selection of these entry-words. As Izutsu once noted, one cannot simply

pick up out of the whole vocabulary of the Qur’an all important words standing for important concepts like Allah, Islam, nabiy (prophet), iman (belief), kafir (infidel) etc., etc., and examine what they mean in the Qur’anic context. The matter, however, is not in reality so simple, for these words or concepts are not simply there in the Qur’an, each standing in isolation from others, but they are closely interdependent and derive their concrete meanings precisely from the entire system of relations. In other words, they form among themselves various groups, large and small, which, again, are connected with each other in various ways, so that they constitute ultimately an organized totality, an extremely complex and complicated network of conceptual associations.¹

We are not told why certain entry words were selected while others were not. In addition, numerous entries hardly fulfill the minimum academic standard one expects from an encyclopaedic work. For instance, anyone wishing to know the Qurʾānic view of Allah—the proper name of God—would not even find that entry in EQ, even though the word “Allah” has become a much used English word. The article is to be found under “God”, but even that article is not comprehensive in itself; when one looks at other articles, where associated concepts such as “polytheism,” “atheism,” and “idols” are found, one finds there is hardly any connection with the original discussion. The EQ has no article on tawhid, the doctrine that there is one and only one God, Allah. One can hardly conceive of an encylopaedia of the Qurʾān claiming to have articles “that treat important concepts” of the Qurʾān without devoting a substantial entry to this pivotal Qurʾānic concept, especially when the same work contains entries on “Ahmadiyya,” “African Literature,” “Dog,” and “Samson.”

In addition, there are conceptual problems in the way certain technical terms have been used as entry words. These conceptual problems are neither incidental nor limited to a few entries; they are rampant and arise due to the aberrations that have crept into the modern Western understanding of religion. The editors of EQ have constructed their lemmata out of a non-Qurʾānic schema, as if there is no internal conceptual and thematic unity in the Qurʾān. Their disregard for the inherent structure of the Qurʾān has produced a host of artificial and irrelevant entries, with no Qurʾānic roots2 or entries with Christian colorings.³ Another consequence of this artificial schema is ad hoc decisions regarding what should be included or excluded from EQ: certain close Companions of the Prophet are included while others are excluded, and there is no explanation for either selection or omission. Among the animals, birds, and reptiles mentioned in the Qurʾān, one finds articles on “Dog” and “Camel”, but not on “Horse” and “Wolf”. The Queen of Sheba has an article, but the hoopoe carrying the letter of Prophet SulaymĀn to her does not. The “Bee” and the “Ant”—both used in the Qurʾān as sĈrah names—do not have articles devoted to them; there is merely a cursory reference to them in the entry “Animal Life”. Likewise, from the fruits and herbs mentioned in the Qurʾān, one finds an article on “Date-Palm” but not on “Grapes”, “Olives”, or “Pomegranate”.

A Note on EQ Sources

One of the major problems of the material presented in EQ pertains to sources and how they have been used. Some non-Muslim contributors seem to have little familiarity with Muslim source material and sometimes they have made very serious claims based on secondary sources. For instance, while referring to the sixth Āyah of sĈrah aĆ-Ďaff in the article “Names of the Prophet”, the author mentions a variant reading by Ubayy bin Ka‘b which is substantially different from the standard text of the Qurʾān in which God has Prophet ‘Isa say: I announce a messenger who will come after me, whose name will be Ahmad. The variant reading quoted by the author of that article reads: “I announce a prophet whose community will be the final one and by whom God will put the final seal on prophets and messengers” (EQ III, 502a). This important textual variant is presented solely on the authority of Parte.¹ This is not an isolated instance.

Another important problem stems from an utter disregard of the hierarchy of authorities and branches of knowledge in Islam; this creates a great deal of confusion. When an al-Tabari or an Ibn Kathąr gathers all available material on a given subject in his tafsąr, he does so within an existing intellectual milieu and scholarly framework wherein the hierarchy of authorities and relative position of various branches of knowledge is well understood. Whoever approached these encyclopaedic exegeses in their times shared this understanding with them and understood this hierarchical structure and hence used source material accordingly. Subsequent generations of Muslim scholars were trained to use this material within a system of teaching in which authority rested with the teacher and not with the book being used as a text. This system of education has now almost disappeared; it is certainly not present in the Western academia, where a person specializing in hadith or the

Qurʾān does not possess adequate training in reading source material even in his or her own field, let alone in other branches such as fiqh and sąrah. This is in stark contrast to the medieval Muslim scholars, who commanded a vast range of subjects and easily moved from one field to another. Yet, EQ contributors routinely gather all kinds of material for their articles—perhaps because this is what passes for scholarly writings—and, having gathered a vast array of often mutually conflicting and contradictory information on a given subject, they feel lost. They try to escape from this impasse by claiming that there is confusion in Muslim source material. The confusion is there, of course, but it is in their own minds. The EQ article “Revelation and Inspiration” is a typical example of such confusion and lack of adequate training in reading source material.

In the course of this article, we find the author quoting material from diverse Muslim sources such as tafsąr, hadith, and sąrah books, without any understanding of their relative position and authority and ends up with a cul-de-sac from where the only way out is to pass the verdict that there is confusion in sources. Here is what we read under the subheading “The experience of revelation”:

The time leading up to the initial experience of revelation for Muhammad was, according to Muslim tradition, characterized by vivid dreams and portents (Ibn Ishaq, Sira, 151; Tabari, Ta’rikh, i, 1143-6; id., History, vi, 63-7). When the revelation actually begins, one finds a certain vagueness in the tradition about whether the Prophet initially encounters God (as seems to be suggested by Q 53:1-18; see also Ibn Ishaq, Sira, 150; trans. Ibn Ishaq-Guillaume, 104-5; Tabari, Ta’rikh, i, 1147; trans. Watt/McDonald, History, vi, 67-8, where it is said al-haqq, one of the names of God, came to him; see God and His Attributes), or whether his dealings with the divine are always through the medium of Gabriel. The consensus of the tradition has it that the first words of the Qurʾān to be revealed were the beginnings of sĈra 96, when Gabriel came bringing a cloth on which was embroidered the text to be recited. Three times the messenger tells Muhammad to recite and he answers that he is unable, until finally Gabriel teaches him what to recite, and the words remain with him (EQ IV, 441a, emphasis added).

First of all, one notices an indiscriminate use of source material; in the hierarchy of branches of knowledge, Sąrah literature is not considered a sanad for matters of dąn, and hence to base the argument about wahy on an account in Ibn Ishaq is unsound. Second, while it is true that al-Haqq is a Divine attribute, no Muslim scholar would even think of construing an attribute of Allah in this narration to mean God Himself came to the cave. In addition, the full text of this narration, going back to ‘Aishah, and reported by al-Bukhari in his Sahih, has a sequence of events prior to the actual appearance of Jibril in the cave which makes it abundantly clear that what is meant by al-haqq in the said account is “the Truth”; it reads:

The first kind of revelation to which the Messenger of God was initiated was that of true dreams during sleep, and he never saw a dream but it came like the dawn of the morn. Thereafter, solitude became dear unto him, and he used to withdraw into the seclusion of the cave of Hirā and there applied himself to ardent devotions for many nights ere he would return home and provide himself with provisions; then he would return unto Khadąjah and provide himself with food for a similar [number of days] until the truth came unto him whilst he was in the cave of Hirā and the angel came unto him and said: ‘Recite’. He said: ‘I am not of those who read.’…¹

Furthermore, the article mentions an unreferenced “consensus of the tradition” about an actual piece of embroidered cloth that Jibril supposedly brought to the Prophet. The cloth tradition is not a consensus tradition by any means; it is a mursal hadith, reported by Ibn Ashtah in his al-Masahif, on the authority of ‘Ubayd bin ‘Umayr, a tabi‘i, and by two other tab‘is, al-Zuhri and ‘Amr ibn Dinar, both of whom have the same source.² It is ironic that, while Western scholarship has historically been adamant about the written text of the Qurʾān being a post-Prophetic event, we here have a reversal, insisting on a “consensus of the tradition” about an actual piece of cloth on which the text was written right at the beginning of the revelation!

Muslims and EQ

EQ presents special problems for Muslims who have contributed to it as well as for those who will use it as a reference work. All Muslims believe the Qurʾān to be a revelation. This belief is one of the six arkĀn of their faith (Iman).¹ It entails, among other things, the basic presupposition that whatever is contained in the Qurʾān is from Allah and that it is absolutely true. Allah, by definition, is the One Who is al-Haqq (The Truth), the Possessor of Knowledge of the unseen and the seen (‘Alim al-ghayb wa’l-shahadah)—the One Who sent down this Book to His final Messenger and the One Who has vowed to protect it from all corruption. For Muslims, this belief is neither a systematically rationalized premise based on data gathered through the use of the faculty of reason nor a discursive truth, but a foundational a priori truth, an imprint upon the innate nature (fitrah) which they believe in their hearts and testify with their tongues. For them, the Qurʾān is the actual Word of God, a Book wherein is no doubt,² sent down for guiding humanity to the Straight Path (al-sirat al-mustaqim)—a Book whose truth can, nevertheless, be affirmed through the signs present in the cosmos as well as within their own beings: Indeed, We will show them our Signs in the utmost horizons of the cosmos and within themselves so that it becomes clear unto them that this [revelation] is indeed the truth.³ They also believe that the Qurʾān can truly be understood by those who believe in it. The Qurʾān is guidance and healing for the believers; but for those who will not believe—in their ears is deafness, and they remain blind to it; they are those who will be called from a far-away place.⁴

Furthermore, Muslims understand that commenting and writing on the Qurʾān is a serious task. They know and believe that if they mislead others due to their own lack of knowledge or wrong beliefs, they will incur the burden of those whom they have misled: And when they are asked what it is that your Sustainer has sent down, they say: ‘fables of the ancients’! Indeed, they shall carry their own full burdens on the Day of Judgment as well as part of the burden of those whom they have misled without any sure knowledge and know that it will, indeed, be a very miserable burden that they shall carry.¹ They also know on the authority of the one to whom the Qurʾān was revealed—the honest (al-Amin) Messenger, upon whom be peace and blessings of Allah—that “the one who interprets the Qurʾān by his own opinion (bira’ihi) shall find his abode in the fire.^”² For them, the words of the Prophet are not mere conjunctures of an ordinary human being but true news (khabar) from the one whose knowledge comes from the Possessor of Knowledge of the manifest and the hidden. Thus, they understand that their writings on the Qurʾān are not merely an academic exercise and that their words would either guide or misguide others about matters of utmost importance.

These beliefs impose a certain degree of responsibility on the Muslim writers who publish works on the Qurʾān. Thus, the approximately fifty Muslims who have contributed articles to EQ, carry a responsibility for what they have written as well as where they have written. Their contributions to this project, which is marked by the aforementioned set of premises and framework, pose a problem for themselves as well as for their readers. No matter how genuine their own contributions may be, they are part of a work that is full of distortions and occasionally contains blasphemous statements about the Prophet as well as the Qurʾān. Their example is thus like that of a scientist who is assigned a small portion from a large research project which aims to build a weapon of mass destruction. This scientist produces what is required of him or her, without fully recognizing how his or her research fits into the larger project, the nature of which is only known to the managers of the project.

Likewise, EQ presents certain fundamental problems for its Muslim users. One cannot overemphasize the central position of the Qurʾān for Muslims, for whom it is a Mighty Book, sent down by a truly Wise, ever to be praised [God].¹ Memorized by heart in childhood, the Qurʾān for Muslims is the real revealed Word of Allah, governing their everyday life, a lexicon operative in all spheres of their existence, from birth to death. Thus confronted with a scholarship that attempts to analytically dissect this revealed Book, often on the basis of premises utterly foreign to their own beliefs, Muslims cannot but consider such scholarship as inherently flawed and distorted. This distortion has various degrees—from willful, ideologically-construed manifestations to naïve, unconscious embedded forms—and over the course of the last three centuries this tradition of distortion has undergone through a process of rarefaction that has further veiled it. This process of successive veiling of what used to be easily discernible in the polemical works of the pre-modern era has meshed and blended falsehood with truth to such an extent that it has become difficult to recognize these distortions. Hence, the use of EQ by Muslims requires a certain degree of discernment. Those who have doubts about the dangers inherent in this work, may wish to investigate what the editors and most of the contributors of this work have written elsewhere; here is a specimen from Andrew Rippin, one of the four associate editors of EQ:

The Qurʾān — a word taken to mean ‘recitation’ — is the collection of the religious utterances of Muhammad, son of ‘Abd Allah, who was born around the year 570. Muhammad, a native of the Arabian cultic center of Mecca, portrayed himself as a prophet in the line of Israelite prophets, understood to start with Adam and trace a line up through Moses, Abraham, and Jesus up to Muhammad as the final prophet. Muhammad’s utterances take on the characteristics of much of the Biblical material, but, at times, appear to show influences of the Arabian context as well, especially in their rhythmic emphases.²

EQ has been published by Brill Academic Publishers, a publishing company known for its patronage of a specific kind of Orientalism. EQ’s academic lineage clearly includes Brill’s famous Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI), first published in 1907 with a revised second edition completed in 2002 with the publication of volume XI. EQ was financially supported, in part, by grants from such well-known supporters of Orientalism as the Research Tools Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal Agency of the United States Government, the British Academy, and the Oriental Institute, Leiden.¹ Both EI and EQ emerge from a particular tradition of Western scholarship on Islam, both employ similar research methodologies, both operate from the same premises about Islam and its Scripture; many contributors to EI have also contributed to EQ. Several years ago, when “C. E. Bosworth, one of the editors of Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Islam, was asked why Muslim scholars, even those trained in Western institutions, were not invited to contribute to the Encyclopedia’s essential articles (such as the Qurʾān, Hadith, jihad, etc.), he responded that this work was by the Western pen for Western people.”² This may explain the nature of the “pluralism” claimed by the General Editor of EQ as well as the very raison d’être of the work.

The Qurʾān, the Academy, and the Contemporary World

After almost a century of focused attention to Hadith, Orientalism in its reincarnation as academic scholarship now seems to have turned its attention toward the Qurʾān. Today the Academy sees Qurʾānic studies as the cutting-edge field of its research on Islam. This change in focus is not without affinities to certain recent global events which have strained the relationships between Muslims and the West in general. Like the Crusades and the Ottoman Wars of the previous centuries, which produced an enormous interest in the Qurʾān in Western Christendom, current tensions have produced a new round of scrutiny of the Qurʾān by Western thinkers, clergy, and academia. There is, once more, a great deal of interest in the Qurʾān in the Western world both, at the level of general readership and in the Academy.³ These new tensions have created a certain degree of urgency (and funding) to study the Qurʾān, which is now being seen as the very root of the “Muslim problem,” not only by certain politicians but also by some scholars and religious leaders.

This perceived problem comes, more specifically, from the Qurʾānic Āyahs on Jihad, which have attracted the attention of many influential politicians and various think-tanks. As a result of fear, misunderstanding, and sheer ignorance, terrorism is now being linked to the Qurʾān. The vigorous military, political, economic, and cultural campaign now underway has, however, not remained in the domain of politics; it has its academic counterpart, just as the Orientalism of yester-years was not merely an academic exercise.¹ The Qur’an and the West, one of the first books on the Qurʾān published in the West after the events of September 11, 2001, is a case in point. The author, Kenneth Cragg, who “for six decades has been recognized and praised as one of the West’s most gifted interpreters of Islam,” is pre-occupied with the relevance of the Qurʾān to the events of that day, which he takes for granted as being the work of Muslims who were inspired by the Qurʾān. While both these premises are open to doubt, what is relevant here is the sheer force of these events, leading Western scholars and religious leaders like Cragg to look into the Qurʾān to discover the root of the “inner crisis in the liability of Islam”.²

Cragg oscillates between condemning the “harsh belligerence in the Qurʾān, a strong pugnacity on behalf of faith” and what he calls its “gentler side”. Despite his counsel to Westerners to respect the Qurʾān and Muslims, Cragg’s own highly charged book is filled with overt and covert insults and disparaging remarks. His book is primarily an attempt to sift and separate apart from the Book of Allah portions that can be called the “acceptable Qurʾān”—the one that has no political content, no theme under the title of Jihad save the jihad al-nafs, a Qurʾān with no role in the shaping of society, for “the political power-exercise only came at all for the briefer Medinan period and had been firmly excluded throughout the defining Meccan years when only the ever prior preaching task was given [to the Prophet]”.¹ He does this by making a sharp distinction between the Makkan and Medinan period of the Prophet’s life as well Makkan and Medinan suwar—this time in a much harsher manner than he had done in his 1971 work, The Event of the Qurʾān: Islam and Its Scripture.² By so bifurcating the Qurʾān and Sąrah, Cragg’s purpose is to

care about an aberrant Islam, from which the menace comes, by caring with the Islam that can and must disown the other. That there is high tension between them with the Qur’an as party to it, cannot be in doubt. There is a dimension of harsh belligerence in the Qur’an, a strong pugnacity on behalf of faith. Its being there can perhaps be explained by the situation in which Muhammad’s mission was embroiled by the obduracy of his local audience. The legacy of that militancy abides but can well be offset or abandoned by considerations no less explicit in the same Qur’an. These we are set to examine, in company with contemporary Muslims who know their crisis—the crisis between the two ‘minds’— for what it is.³

While concluding her preface, the General Editor of EQ has pointed out that EQ is “an inaugural effort…a first attempt to create a substantial work of reference in a field that has relatively few such resources” (EQ 1, xii). Future editions are supposed to include additional subjects and themes suggested by readers and reviewers. Given the history of Brill Publishers, it is not unlikely that EQ will be reissued in a substantially expanded version in the not too distant a future just like its other publication, the Encyclopaedia of Islam, which has now moved to a third version. The most important question in this regard is: can Western academia develop an altogether new framework for studying Islam and its Scripture that is not tainted by Orientalism? All indicators point to a negative answer, as no structure can stand without a foundation and the foundation upon which the Western academic discourse on Islam stands is utterly flawed.

Built on the characteristic biases, claims, and false premises of the Orientalists, EQ is a non-representative, discourteous, scandalous, and blasphemous hodgepodge of disparate material. It draws its material content from diverse Muslim and non-Muslim sources, but pours all of this material into a mould cast by the founding fathers of Orientalism— men whose understanding of religion in general and Islam in particular continues to dominate the field. They no longer openly call the most Noble Messenger of Allah an imposter and the Qurʾān a forgery, as they used to two hundred years ago, but they are saying the same thing in a slightly refined language. They desire to extinguish the Light of Allah with their mouths; but Allah has willed to spread His Light in all its fullness, however hateful this may be to the disbelievers.¹

Обсуждение:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān

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Reviewed by Daniel Pipes

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Iqbal

Навигация

Обсуждение:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān

Ссылки

Reviewed by Daniel Pipes

Амазон

Iqbal

Навигация

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