Обсуждение:Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān

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https://iais.org.my/icr/index.php/icr/article/view/414/389

Journal of the American Oriental Society

A response to Andrew Rippin’s review of The Integrated Encyclopedia of Qurʾān, Volume I, published in Journal of the American Oriental Society 136.1 (2016), pp. 222-225.

University of Victoria Professor Emeritus of Islamic History and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London Andrew Rippin’s review of the first volume of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ) describes it as “sumptuous and carefully produced,” “an impressive beginning”, and “a considerable contribution to the study of the Quran” (p. 222 par. 1). His review goes downhill from there. In the process he appeals to a purported shared understanding of the nature of academic scholarship on Islam and makes serious charges that give pause and warrant scrutiny, which this response is meant to be.

Rippin asserts that IEQ “does not participate in all the norms of academic work” (p. 222 par. 1) and “does not partake of the cumulative nature of the academic enterprise” (p. 223 par. 4). This critique is alarming because of the assumption on which it is based: that serious scholarship on Islam is defined by Orientalism sine qua non. That is, the historical tradition of knowledgeproduction is primarily vested in the culture of Western institutions of higher education. Such a bias shows lack of awareness of another view that considers Orientalism an elaborate syllabus of errors in which are occasionally found pearls. There is unquestionably another, independent and older scholarly tradition on Islam that is arguably more authoritative, and that it should have been the focus of every academe to study and convey with utmost transparency, because it has its own unexplored trove of insights. However, while Orientalism has vastly capitalized on that tradition, it has also actively occulted it in order to pass itself off as original knowledge; worse, it has distorted it in order to make it say the opposite of what it actually says, for a variety of reasons. This is what projects like IEQ are good at debunking and this is why the tightly held industry is expected to chafe.

Rippin’s presumptions about academic neo-Orientalism being the guardian of serious scholarship on Islam also emerge from the penultimate paragraph of the review: “Academic scholarship… aims for as broad an audience as possible, meaning that all readers should be able to feel addressed within the discourse… the language employed should not exclude anyone…. Academic writing is directed to a community of scholars defined by their sharing in an academic discourse [emphasis added], not by their membership in a religious community… which such absence of ‘agnosticism’ conveys” (p. 225 par. 1). I have italicized the lapalissade in the last sentence as a classic example of a circular platitude (“we are agnostic writers because we all agree to write agnostic writings”) where the endogamy of the Orientalist industry is proudly displayed right under the reader’s nose. It also escaped the reviewer that he had claimed, only five lines before, that academic scholarship was neither elitist nor clannish (this is the nearest he comes to admitting a universal ethical and moral role to scholarship). As for scholarly agnosticism and all readers feeling included, it is as if he had no idea that Orientalism had specialized in excluding countless generations of readers from its discourse, and leaving plenty feeling violated as well. From Ludovico Marracci’s (d. 1700) pan- European summa of anti-Qur’an commentary to Helmut Gätje’s (d. 1986) The Qur’an and Its Exegesis with its identical brazen suggestions that the Prophet was a master Biblical plagiarist and docetic syncretist, to the first statement about Hadith and its transmission chains I ever heard from my former teacher at Columbia the late Jeanette Wakin (d. 1998) as being “all made up from the bottom up,” nothing has changed. Think also of the historical responsibility of Orientalism in helping to shape policies and agendas that were detrimental to one specific religious community.

Rippin accuses IEQ of lacking complexity again and again (p. 222 par. 3, p. 223 par. 4, p. 224 par. 2, p. 225 par. 2). He objects that “the contents… rarely reflect any sense of historical development within the understanding of a unified ‘Islamic tradition’ [his quotes]… for the most part… presented as an undifferentiated, singular entity” (p. 222 par. 2) instead of addressing the “complexities,” the “sometimes mutually contradictory statements” (p. 222 par. 3). “IEQ tends to take a monolithic view of the Islamic heritage” (p. 225 par. 2). These are sweeping accusations that are hardly substantiated by the examples he gives, which show resistance to IEQ methodology, a poor reading of the text under review and a selective understanding of Qurʾānic concepts as the next paragraph illustrates.

Rippin views the fact that IEQ did not include human beings in its discussion of animals in the Qurʾān as a “speciesist” offence (p. 223 par. 5) However, no commentator or lexicographer has argued, on the basis of the ḥaqīqa lughawiyya of the Qurʾānic term dābba (“earth-crawler”), for a subitemization of human beings, jinns and angels under the category of dawābb in the sense of animals. Furthermore, a qualified speciesism is certainly found in the Qurʾānic concepts of taskhīr and khilāfa among others; linguistic commentators pointed out that ʿālamīn in the Fātiḥa is a personalized plural (instead of the expected ʿawālim) for that very reason. He faults IEQ for not contextualizing the relationship of ablutionary acts in attitudes towards bodies (p. 224 par. 2), but such notions of historical subjectivism are peripheral to, and arguably outside Islamic scholarship proper; the entry “Ablution” is certainly complete without indulging them. He states, “In the entry ‘Abu Lahab’ the theological problems of the mention of a historical person in an eternal text receives [sic] no consideration” (p. 224, par. 2) but it appears he overlooked the entry “Ability” 50 pages up, which does discuss Abu Lahab and similar cases within the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī codification of the concept of istiṭāʿa in precisely the terms he brings up. He continues, “The topic of foreign vocabulary in the Quran is acknowledged—for example in the entry ‘Animal’ [sic] under the subsection ‘Lion’—but there is no attempt to discuss its merits or to investigate it through contemporary philological considerations.” This criticism is also out of place, because the already oversized entry “Animals” would not be the right place to treat the muʿarrab of the Qurʾān, which surely warrants its own category, especially given its extensive considerations in actual Qurʾānic scholarship long before we turn to contemporary considerations. All in good time.

Rippin refuses to accept the main tenet of the raison d’être of IEQ, which he finds to be exclusionary of readers who do not hold Muslim beliefs. His proposed solution is to alter the style of IEQ: he suggests that all its main statements be subordinated to the premise “Most Muslims have understood that....” (p. 225 par. 1); but his whole review up to that point is an acknowledgment that the introduction to IEQ has already made this point abundantly clear. The critical mass of mainstream cumulative scholarship known as ʿilm more than amply justifies IEQ’s sourcing methodology and the organization (and hierarchy) of its scholarship. Yet for Rippin, what is not acceptable as the philosophical premise underlying the entire work becomes acceptable as a stylistic caveat emptor using the most dubious distancing quotation marks possible. He raises the astonishing complaint that “Particular knowledge based on the Quran and the Sunna is suggested to be needed in order to counter the sense of being confounded when confronted with the complexities of those classical sources and their sometimes mutually contradictory statements” (p. 222 par. 3). It is as if IEQ’s axiomatic view of the necessity of solid knowledge of and prerequisite grounding in the Islamic disciplines for any Qurʾānic scholarship worthy of the name must be problematized as some unscholarly subterfuge designed to evade complexity. Alternately, IEQ is being reprimanded for too cohesive and straightforward a picture of the Islamic knowledge tradition and its contents: it should have indulged the market’s demand for peripheral themes, disharmony, absurdity. In the review’s penultimate paragraph he scoffs at IEQ’s sourcing methodology as a case of “the older the better” (p. 225 par. 2) after having previously made light of IEQ’s madhhab-bound sourcing as “slott[ing] into intellectual categories of later construction (Ashʿarī, Ḥanafī etc.)” (p. 222 par. 2): here IEQ is either antiquated or newfangled. The same paragraph shows his lack of understanding of scholarly khilāf as khilāf muʿtabar, not just any wild dissent and bizarrerie in the history of Islam.

Biased as it is, Rippin’s review is nevertheless helpful. He critiques from the very perspective that IEQ is warning against and which he insists is the only valid one. The pulpit of an Orientalism born out of medieval heresiography, morphing into missionarism then colonial littérature de surveillance then area studies still has its preachers to the choir; but from the perspective IEQ has defined as its own, such fault-finding is a confirmation that IEQ is on the right track. There is an Orientalist EI, an Orientalist EQ, now even a syncretist “Study Quran;” let there be a ʿUlematic IEQ as a work that keeps faith with the field’s oldest standards, a work that refuses to put everything on a par and in which there is a qualitative and epistemological differentiation between Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and 1,001 Nights! It is not all literature and intertextuality. Such is only one of many unsound doctrines of which it is hoped IEQ shall serve as the antidote of choice in our time.

Gibril Fouad Haddad

University Brunei Darussalam

Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic Studies

A Note about the IEQ Project

The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur’an (IEQ) is the first English language encyclopedia of the Qur’an that presents all concepts, persons, events, places, and things mentioned in the Qur’an from within the Muslim tradition of Qur’an interpretationon over the last 1400 years. The project was launched by the Center for Islamic Sciences (CIS), Canada, in 2009. The first volume was published in 2013 and it received wide-ranging recognition as a superb work of scholarship. In 2020, IEQ was reconfigured as an open-access online work. Imitation leather print version of Volume 1 is available for purchase at IEQ website.

IEQ employs English-language titles for most of its entries and its extensive cross-referencing facilitates a fuller understanding of the message of the Qur’an. It draws its entries from the thematic structure of the Qur’an, integrates fourteen centuries of scholarship, and presents a breadth of authoritative knowledge on the Qur'an. With almost one fifth of its anticipated 515 entries completed, IEQ is an unmatched source of fully documented explanation of all concepts, persons, places, events and things mentioned in the Qurʾān.

Conventions

The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān devotes individual entries to most concepts, persons, places, events, and things mentioned in the Qurʾān, but in some cases these may be subsumed under another entry or combined into a single entry. For instance, discussion of abortion is found under Child-Bearing; the pre-Islamic chieftain Abraha is not mentioned in the Qurʾān by name but appears in the exegetical and biographical literature in reference to Q 105 (al-Fīl, “the Elephant”), and so is discussed under the entry People of the Elephant. Blind entries direct readers to the appropriate title (e.g., “Anti-Christ, see Dajjāl”; “Apocalypse, see Resurrection”). In some cases, individual mentions are collectively presented: for example, the entry on Animals includes all thirty-two animals and categories of animals mentioned in the Qurʾān in a single entry.

IEQ employs English-language lemmata for most of its entries, but certain Qurʾānic terms as well as all Qurʾānic proper names have been retained in original Arabic form because of their distinct semantic associations. Recognizing that this may pose difficulties to readers unfamiliar with the original names or terms, all such entries are extensively cross-referenced and internally related. Thus the entry for the Prophet ʿĪsā, upon him peace, is found alphabetically under “I”, with cross-references under “C” (“Christ, see ʿĪsā”) and “J” (“Jesus, see ʿĪsa”); the entry for the distinctive Islamic term iḥsān is listed alphabetically, its approximate translations, such as “Excellence” and “Perfection”, are cross-referenced to the entry title. Likewise, the entry for Laylat al-qadr is listed under Night of Qadr and cross-referenced at the common approximations (“Night of Destiny”, “Night of Power”).

In certain cases, this convention may not appear straightforward. For instance, Hijra, Anṣār, and Muhājirūn are respectively translated as “Emigration”, “Helpers”, and “Emigrants”; but their distinctive Islamic usage is lost in such generalizing translations because these Qurʾānic terms refer to a specific event and specific groups of people. These terms are, therefore, transliterated, not translated, while their approximate English renditions provide cross-references. IEQ entries often provide both translations and transliterations of key terms or turns of phrase, in order to at once facilitate search and accessibility. Arabic words which have become part of the English language and are found in major dictionaries are not italicized, including such words as Hajj, Hijra, Ramadan, Sunna, and sura.

Finally, cross-references within each entry indicated by (q.v.)—quod vide—direct readers to additional entries pertaining to the topic under discussion. For example:

They had lived in Yathrib (q.v.) for many generations before the Hijra (q.v.) of the Prophet to their city in 622 CE. They were two distinct parts of the first Islamic polity in Madina (q.v.) which came into existence through the fusion of these two communities, establishing a high level of spiritual kinship, mutual support, and friendship.

Bibliographic References

A key feature of IEQ is its extensive documentation; it has brought a large number of classical and traditional sources in the contemporary discourse on the Qurʾān. References to the Qurʾān provide sura and verse numbers, and all translations from the Qurʾān are italicized without being bound by quotation marks. Thus Q 2:6 refers to the sixth verse of Sūrat al-Baqara: As for the disbelievers, it is the same for them whether you warn them or warn them not: they do not believe.

Frequently cited sources are abbreviated. Where a publication does not contain the Common Era date, only the Hijri date is given.

In-line references to Qurʾān commentaries provide the author name and title followed by reference to the Qurʾānic verse commented upon, unless it is implicit from the context. For example:

The calligraphy of the basmala developed into an ornate genre in its own right, partly due to its merits and ritual significance. The Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (ca.62-101/682-720; r. 98-101/717-720), an eminent scholar in his own right and great-grandson of ʿUmar b. Al-Khaṭṭāb, used to tell his calligraphers: “Honoring the speech of Allah Most High, lengthen the bāʾ, write the sīn distinctively, keep a distance between [the two letters], and make the mīm circular” (Thaʿlabī, Kashf, fī faḍl al-tasmiya, sub Q 1:1; Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, sub Q 1:1). Abū Khālid b. Yazīd al-Murādī comments that the reason why the bāʾ is lengthened is that the alif is elided, its length being incorporated into the bāʾ (Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf).

In-line references to Hadith collections and commentaries similarly provide the author name, title of the book, and bāb. The titles of the following hadith collections are often presumed (and only seldom listed when needed for additional clarity): the Muwaṭṭāʾ of Imam Mālik, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the Sunans of Ibn Mājah, Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, and al-Nasāʾī, and the Musnad of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. For example:

ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb saw a similar dream (Tirmidhī, Ṣalāt, mā jāʾa fī badʾ al-adhān; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī, qawluhu bāb badʾ al-adhān; Aḥmad, Musnad Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq 1:218 §45).

In-line references to lexicons note the consonantal root, unless it is implicit from the context. For example:

The Qurʾānic collective noun for birds, al-ṭayr, is mentioned twenty times (singular ṭāʾir, plural ṭayr, ṭuyūr, and aṭyār). Lexically, al-ṭayr refers to “two-winged animals that fly,” though the category includes flightless birds (Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān, sub ṭ-y-r).

Animals, dawābb, singular dābba, often used specifically for mounts, from the root d-b-b, contracted verbal form dabba, “to tread the earth,” aortive yadibbu, infinitive noun dabīb (Jawharī, Ṣiḥāḥ).

Verse, bāb, and consonantal root references respectively suffice in lieu of page numbers for Qurʾān commentaries, hadith collections, and lexicons, given the multiple editions (and hence conflicting paginations) often available. All other in-line references provide volume and page numbers—for example, “Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb 2:747-748” and, for single-volume works, “Ibn Jubayr, Riḥla p. 127.”

Overview

Conceived as an authoritative scholarly work based on fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship, the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ) is the first English language reference work on the Qurʾān based entirely on primary sources. Held to a high standard of academic rigor, IEQ draws on a wide range of traditional Muslim sources, including exegeses, Hadith collections and commentaries, classical lexicons, biographical dictionaries, universal histories, works of jurisprudence, Prophetic biographies, and treatises on spiritual and moral psychology--some of which have never before been presented in any encyclopedic work in a Western language. IEQ integrates source material at several levels: its conceptual structure presents an integrated view of the overall message of the Qur’an; it incorporates and integrates various strands of Islamic scholarly tradition on the Divine text; and it presents a cohesive, cross-referenced text that is at once contemporary and classical.

Introduction

One in every four human beings now living on the Earth believes that there is no god except Allah, and Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allah. Proclaimed by the tongue and attested in the heart, this testimony (shahāda) makes them Muslim. Muslims believe the Qurʾān is the last revealed Scripture sent by God to the last of His Messengers to guide humanity to the Straight Path (al-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm) and the best model to follow is the life of the Prophet Muḥammad, upon him blessings and peace. The Qurʾān and the vast repository of texts dealing with the life of the Prophet (his Sunna in the broadest sense of the word) are in classical Arabic, as are most of their commentaries. Only about 15 percent of all Muslims today speak Arabic as their mother tongue and not all of them understand classical Arabic. Of the non-Arabic speaking majority, which is rapidly increasing due to population growth and conversion, only about 8–10 percent have knowledge of classical Arabic. This means that, at best, only about 20 percent of all Muslims today understand the language of the primary sources of their religion.

This linguistic disconnect with the Qurʾān and the primary sources of religion is a recent phenomenon for Muslims. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, a large proportion of literate Muslims could read the Qurʾān in its original Arabic. This rupture with the language of revelation has occurred through a series of fundamental shifts in the makeup of the Muslim world and has resulted in the emergence of men and women whose links with their spiritual and intellectual heritage have been severely damaged.

Radical, and often violent, changes which have been reconfiguring most regions of Dār al-Islām—the vast geographical area where Islam has been practiced for centuries and where its scholarly traditions flourished—is a complex process of social engineering on a global scale. These changes have left one fourth of humanity in a state of spiritual privation and cultural schizophrenia. Rapidly increasing and widespread religious illiteracy has also exacerbated (and perhaps precipitated) a certain crises of authority and concomitant confusion in various aspects of beliefs and practices. This has, in turn, contributed to the social and political instability.

The Qurʾān and Muslims

Despite these enormous changes, displacements, and widespread religious illiteracy, the Qurʾān remains the uncontested source of Muslim beliefs and practices. It is a relatively small text; according to the enumeration of Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī (d. 444/1052) in his al-Bayān fī ʿadd āy al-Qurʾān, it comprises 77,439 words (kalim) in 6,216 verses (āyāt) arranged into 114 suwar (sing. sūra). The shortest sūra contains 3 verses; the longest, 286. Muslims believe the Qurʾān to be the actual Speech of Allah (kalām Allāh), revealed to the Prophet over a period of 23 years. The Descent (nuzūl) of the Qurʾān from the Well-Guarded Tablet (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ) took place within the sacred time of revelation. Muslims believe that the descent of the Qurʾān—this entrance of Divine Speech into human history—completes and terminates the coming down of the Divine Revelation and Muḥammad was the last Prophet and Messenger in the series which began with Ādam, upon him and all Prophets be peace. The consecration of its language and Divine protection prevents any corruption of the text of the Qurʾān: Indeed, We, even We, have sent down the Qurʾān and verily We are its Protector (Q 15:9).

Revealed in a language spoken by human beings, the Qurʾān bowed neither to the conventions of Arabic prosody (naẓm) nor to the rhymed prose (sajʿ) of the pre-Islamic Arab poets, whose idiom had set the contemporary standards for eloquence. Rather, it came with its own characteristic style, in the process imparting to Arabic a quintessential sublimity. The remarkable stability of the root forms of Arabic, moreover, is such that the etymology of every Arabic word can always be traced back to the living sources of the fundamental meanings of its consonantal root. Neither poetry nor prose, the Qurʾān makes full use of the resources of the Arabic language but is not confined to them. Its eloquence, its grandeur, and its sublime beauty inspire awe and reverence of an order unmatched by any other book. It contains a rich array of vivid imagery, powerful oaths, instructive parables, and arguments which employ both the dialectical and rhetorical formulations, all contributing to its inimitability (iʿjāz). Its terse prose and rhymed passages, its ellipses, its parallelisms, its characteristic way of presenting two propositions of striking contrast—all impose upon the intelligence an irresistible imperative to discover Truth, while making it impossible to translate it into any other language.

Reading the Qurʾān is no ordinary event. A first-time reader, reciter, or listener—whether a believer in its Divine origin or not—is awestruck and unsettled by this unearthly text. The narrative structures are unique: one might find oneself reading the story of a past Prophet, then encounter a reminder of God’s unchanging way of dealing with transgressors, and soon thereafter receive mention of His unbounded Mercy and Compassion. The Qurʾān seizes its readers in the midst of their everyday lives and makes demands on their spiritual and intellectual resources in a manner that no other book does. The sheer force of its narrative, its evocative imagery, its powerful oaths, its historical sweep, its gentle reproaches, and its insistent invitations to discover and dwell in the sublime and tranquil realm of Godwariness (taqwā)—all combine to produce in receptive readers a flowering of the heart, leading to an unquenchable thirst for further discovery of the Book that has remained the most revered source of guidance for countless generations since its revelation some fourteen centuries ago.

Even though a large proportion of contemporary Muslims do not know the language of the Qurʾān, it remains central to their lives. It is recited at all solemn occasions during one’s passage through life. Millions of believers recite it or hear it recited in its entirety in their mosques and homes, especially during the month of Ramadan—the month wherein is the blessed Night of Qadr, a night better than one thousand months (Q 97:3)—in which the Qurʾān was first brought down from the Well-Guarded Tablet to be gradually revealed to the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, over a period of twenty-three years, beginning when he was forty and ending a few days before his death (11/632). Linguistic barriers notwithstanding, Muslims have a general understanding of the essential message of the Qurʾān. They know that they have been created by an Omnipotent, Powerful, Wise, and Merciful Creator, that they have been allotted a certain time on earth during which they are asked to remain conscious of their Creator and live a life of piety and high morals, and that all their deeds will come to an end at death. They know, too, that there will come a day when the entire preceding order of creation will be abolished, followed by Resurrection—the rebirth and gathering together of all humanity, the Day when all deeds will be weighed—and Allah Most High will pass judgment, leading to everlasting life in Paradise or Hell.

Nevertheless, this knowledge of the essential teachings of the Qurʾān does not suffice in the modern world where most believers are confronted with immense challenges arising the non-Qurʾānic worldviews which dominate the contemporary educational philosophies, economic systems, and many other influential forces of modernity. These challenges require a deeper understanding of the message of the Qurʾān which cannot be achieved by simply reading a translation of the Qurʾān; it requires tapping into classical sources which explicate primary Qurʾānic concepts explicated in systematic ways. Even the recently expanding linguistic access to classical exegesis in translation is of little help because when one encounters a dozen different (and at times apparently mutually contradictory) opinions on a single verse in al-Ṭabarī’s (d. 310/923) monumental exegesis Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, or finds seven different sayings of the Prophet in reference to a certain topic or verse in Ibn Kathīr’s Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, only the requisite training in exegetical and ḥadīth methodology and scholarship will keep one from being confounded.

The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān has been conceived to provide a way out of this dilemma of the believers and illuminate the path back, both to the message of the Qurʾān as well as traditional works on the Qurʾān, as explained in the following pages.

The Qurʾān and Non-Muslims

If it has become difficult for many Muslims to access the Book that is so central to their lives, this is even more true for interested non-Muslims. The number of non-Muslims who have actually opened one of the many available renditions of the Qurʾān into Western languages has increased immensely in recent years. The rapid shrinking of the world in so many aspects of life has created a global neighborhood in which there is a broadening interest in the Qurʾān, especially since the early 1970s, when the Muslim world started to develop a certain postcolonial prominence. This interest has grown rapidly since the dawn of the twenty-first century. Despite these new factors, and despite the publication of numerous new translations of the Qurʾān, non-Muslim readers often experience a sense of alienation in their first encounter with it. After reading a few pages, a majority of them find it difficult to continue, for they encounter a text unlike any they have ever read. Even in the best translations, the imagery of the Qurʾān remains foreign to them, not to speak of its totum simul (simultaneous totality) that condenses every element of the Qurʾān’s overall message to any given passage.

The result can be incomprehension and confusion. This has led some non-Muslim readers to pass irreverent conclusions about the Qurʾān, while others have found its unfathomable depths deeply stirring.

Furthermore, reading a translation of the Qurʾān is intellectually and spiritually fraught because the text read is necessarily mediated and conditioned by the time, locale, and spiritual and intellectual standpoint of the translator. Moreover, the distinctively ultra-rationalist disposition of modernity has created a number of barriers to the understanding of a text that operates at the supra-rational plane and calls for the simultaneous participation of inner resources and faculties, including the heart (qalb), the intellect guided by revelation (ʿaql), and the soul (nafs).

Non-Muslim readers who attempt to know the Qurʾān by reading works about it which have been written by non- Muslim writers encounter difficulties because such writers are often more invested in establishing their own views, rather than explicating the message of the Book in which they do not believe. Most Muslim scholarship on the Qurʾān, on the other hand, remains inaccessible to non-Muslims as well as to many modern Muslims for reasons of style, basic premises, and assumptions. These contemporary realties have led to a chasm and millions of human beings pass through their earthly lives without ever truly encountering the Words of their Creator as well-preserved in the Qurʾān. It is tragic in a broader sense as well, because it reinforces a sharp division between the fourth of humanity that believes in this Book and the rest who do not.

There are, no doubt, individuals who have overcome these difficulties. Some of these exceptional men and women have left behind inspiring testaments of their spiritual journeys and their encounters with the Qurʾān; these are useful starting points for those sincerely attempting to understand a Book that refers to itself as guidance for all humanity (Q 2:185). The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān seeks to further address the needs of such interested and engaged readers, just as it does a Muslim audience and academic Qurʾānic studies.

The Qurʾān and the Academic World

Academic scholars face yet another dilemma when approaching the Qurʾān. Their professional obligations require they maintain an agnostic detachment from their object of study; yet in this case the object—a highly reflexive text—insists that one settles the fundamental issue of its authorship prior to any further engagement, by either accepting or rejecting the Qurʾānic claim to be the actual Word of God. A corollary imperative concerns the Prophetic status of Muḥammad, son of ʿAbd Allāh, upon him blessings and peace, the unlettered man from Makka whom Allah Most High chose as His final Messenger to humanity and to whom He sent His final Revelation. If such scholars reject his claim of prophethood, they find themselves in the punitive position of questioning the veracity of the Prophet, known to his contemporaries— believers and disbelievers alike—as al-Amīn, “the Trustworthy”. They also find themselves trapped in the old mold cast by the polemical writers who laid the foundation of non-Muslim works on the Qurʾān, and whose early Latin corpus established the parameters of such discourse through the European Renaissance.

This difficulty of the contemporary academic discourse on the Qurʾān is recognized by perceptive non-Muslim scholars, yielding also the admission that no conclusive solutions exist. The lineage integral to the study of Islam in the West includes centuries of accumulated and often detailed scrutiny of source material, study of valuable manuscripts, and insights of keen minds, but it 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 pre-modern Christian writers—a pioneering tradition, which yielded early missionary and Orientalist works and in time reinvented itself as the “scientific Orientalism” of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Contemporary academic scholarship has sought to excise the residual traces of the missionary approaches to the Qurʾān, but rests largely on the putatively ground-breaking work of nineteenth-century Orientalism, which imparted a veneer of objectivity to the polemical tradition without rejecting its basic premises and which shared its fundamental belief that the text of the Qurʾān is humanly composed.

From a Muslim perspective, however, such non-Muslim studies tend to lack credibility. It may be argued that one can set aside the question of the authorship of the Qurʾān—bracket it away from consideration—and yet produce critical and objective studies, but the issue between belief and disbelief is too crucial for most believers to be able to take at face value the claims to objectivity of a non-believing academic, however learned. This is not to negate the possible interest of non-Muslim works by and for those who believe the Qurʾān to be either a forgery or a historically composed text, or who remain uncommitted to its authorship. Rather, it is simply to underscore the radically different premises and critical principles that motivate and sustain two very different approaches to the Qurʾān, however internally variegated each may be. One approach takes it to be a revealed Scripture, the Criterion (al-furqān) of truth and falsehood, a transforming Book whose study is bound with spiritual benefits and rewards in this and the next world; the other may be motivated by anthropological, historical, literary, or other academic interests, but finally refuses to accept the Book on its own terms or respond to the imperatives it expresses. And He is the One Who has let free the two seas, one palatable and sweet, and the other salty and bitter; and He has set a barrier and a complete partition between them (Q 25:53).

The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ)

Sources

IEQ has been conceived as the first English-language reference work encapsulating fourteen hundred years of Muslim scholarship on the Qurʾān, as an authoritative contribution to that same tradition, and as a source introducing a contemporary readership to centuries of reflective scholarly engagement with the Qurʾān. IEQ shares with its sources a committed scholarly approach. It is spiritually informed by the awesome encounter with the very Word of the Creator, and it securely rests on well-documented scholarship extending back to the earliest primary sources.

The tradition from which IEQ draws its inspiration—as well as its source material—goes back to the time when the Qurʾān was being revealed to the “Unlettered Prophet” (al-Nabī al-ummī, cf. Q 7:157), first in the harsh valley of Makka, his place of birth, and later in and around the oasis “between the two lava hills” that became the home of the nascent Muslim community when in June 622 the Prophet migrated to Yathrib (soon to be renamed Madīnat al-Nabī, lit. “the City of the Prophet”). Given the extraordinary amount of information we have about that era, we can trace the early exegetical tradition back even to the time of Revelation, in the light of prophecy, within the community that first heard the Qurʾān from the very tongue of the Prophet himself: his Companions, Allah be well-pleased with them all. Those who first heard the Qurʾān—“the best of my community,” as described by the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace— were the keenest seekers of knowledge, wisdom, and purification, with their gaze fixed on the Divine promise of an everlasting life in His Mercy. They witnessed the descent of the Divine Word, were familiar with the occasions of its revelation, and were masters of the Arabic language. Yet their hearts quivered when asked to explain this unearthly text that had was transforming their lives. For instance, when Abū Bakr, Allah be well-pleased with him, was asked to interpret words of a certain verse (Q 80:31: wa fākihatan wa abbā). He replied: “Which sky would shade me and which earth would have space for me, were I to say something from the Book of Allah of which I had no knowledge?”

This reverential attitude toward the Book was typical not only of the Companions, whose lives had been dramatically transformed by the Book, but also of subsequent generations—men and women who built a monumental tradition of scholarship that while steadily advancing returned always to the primary sources. To be sure, this tradition was directed toward the production and transmission of knowledge, and was located within the social, political, and historical conditions and idioms of its various contexts; but at the same time it was sustained by an abiding concern with self-purification (tazkiya) in the very process of learning. Students flocked to scholars, often traveling for weeks and months to arrive at centers of learning where they found masters of exegesis and Hadith sitting in mosques, in madrasas, and even in the shade of trees, relating and expounding what they had learned from their own teachers.

During its formative period, the Islamic exegetical tradition not only produced the earliest exegetical reflections we still have, but also developed its critical apparatus. Keenly aware of the limitations and possibilities inherent in the emerging epistemological and methodological framework, the scholars of the first three centuries developed robust methods of authenticating and hierarchically ordering the knowledge which was being transmitted. Guided by uncompromising fidelity to critical standards, they recognized that it might not be possible to determine all the meanings of a certain verse or the intent of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, when speaking to a certain Companion. This was understood as a condition of the human encounter with the Divine or Prophetic speech, rather than being a sign of its futility. The techniques of assessment and evaluation informed a broader matrix of interpretive procedures used to reconcile, contextualize, and specify or restrict variant reports or opinions.

These early scholars lived and worked in a social milieu that was in rapid flux; even the geographical boundaries were quickly changing. One year after the death of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, southern Iraq had become part of the Muslim state (633); two years later, Damascus was in Muslim control; the following year, the Byzantines were defeated at the River Yarmuk; in 638, Jerusalem was conquered; and in 639, Egypt, then part of the Byzantine Empire with its capital at Constantinople, fell to an army led by the Companion ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ (30bh-63/592-682). By 640, the whole of Persia had been conquered. In 710, a small battalion of four hundred landed at the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula, and the next year Ṭāriq b. Ziyād’s 7,000 soldiers routed almost 28,000 warriors of the Visigoth King Roderic. Two years later, all Spain was conquered but for a strip of territory to the northwest of the Iberian peninsula. By 712, Muslims had established permanent states in Sind and around Samarkand. Within a century of the Hijra, Muslims had extended their empire from China to France. By the end of the third Islamic century, the Muslim polity stretched westward from Madina to Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan) and Kashgar, eastward to Toledo (Spain), and southward to Aden (Yemen). This rapid expansion of the Caliphate brought this tradition of scholarship not only material resources but also ardent seekers of learning.

It was the passionate desire of these seekers and scholars to preserve every word of the Prophet and their deep resolve to emulate his life, upon him blessings and peace, which sustained the arduous journeys of men like Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Mughīra b. Bardizbah al-Bukhārī (194-256/810-870). Al-Bukhārī, let us recall, had gone to Makka in 210/825 from his native Bukhara at the age of sixteen, together with his brother and widowed mother. When he embarked upon his journey for knowledge (al-riḥla fī ṭalab al-ʿilm), he had already studied with the Hadith masters of Mā warāʾ al-nahr (Transoxania), the region between the rivers Jayḥūn and Sayḥūn (Amu Darya and Syr Darya respectively), corresponding approximately to contemporary Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, southern Kyrgyzstan, and southwest Kazakhstan. His teachers included ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Musnadī (d. 229/843), whose cognomen indicates his diligence in scrutiny of chains of hadith narrations, as well as the well-travelled Muḥammad b. Salām al-Bīkandī (d. 225 or 227/839 or 841). The latter had heard hadiths from Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (107-198/725-814), who had in turn received hadiths from Mālik b. Anas (93-179/712-795), whose Hadith collection al-Muwaṭṭaʾ (“The Well-Trodden Path”)—“the soundest book on earth after the Qurʾān,” as described by al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820)—contains eighty Prophetic traditions through the short chain of narrators that al-Bukhārī would classify as “the soundest of all chains” (aṣaḥḥ al-asānīd): “Mālik from [the Follower] Nāfiʿ, from [the Companion] Ibn ʿUmar” (Ibn Ḥajar, al-Nukat ʿalā Kitāb Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ 1:62; al-Zarkashī, al-Nukat ʿalā muqaddima Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ 1:140; al-Suyūṭī, Tadrīb al-rāwī 1:79, 96).

During the course of his travels, al-Bukhārī would hear more than 700,000 traditions, from which he selected approximately 7,500 for his Ṣaḥīḥ collection, amounting to 2,513 distinct hadiths narrated by 1,744 narrators, the former being the count of Ibn Ḥajar (773-852/1371-1449), as mentioned by al-Suyūṭī (849-911/1445-1505) in his Tadrīb al-rāwī, and the latter that of Abū Walīd al-Bājī (d. 474/1081) in his al-Taʿdīl wal-tajrīḥ li-man kharraj ʿanh al-Bukhārī fī-l-Ṣaḥīḥ. It was in Makka that he heard from ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr al-Ḥumaydī (d. 219/834), his teacher in the blessed city, the opening hadith of his collection. Al-Ḥumaydī would narrate hadiths to a gathering of scholars and students in a quiet section of the Ḥaram Mosque, and that is most likely where al-Bukhārī heard him say: “Sufyān narrated to us, saying: Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd al-Anṣārī narrated to us, saying: Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Taymī told me that he heard ʿAlqama b. Waqqāṣ al-Laythī say: I heard ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Allah be pleased with him, say while he was on the pulpit: I heard the Messenger of Allah say: ‘Truly deeds are [judged] by intentions, and each man shall receive according to his intention; so, whoever migrates for the sake of this world or to wed a woman, his migration is for that unto which he migrated.’”

Two things immediately became obligatory for such a seeker of knowledge: to know with certainty that the report he or she received was, in fact, true; and, if so, to examine his or her own actions and intentions to gauge whether they conformed to the ethical and spiritual substrate of this knowledge. The former rested, among other factors, on the veracity and moral standing of the narrators in its chain of transmission; the latter depended on the correct perception and interpretation of the report as well as on the requisite spiritual and intellectual resources needed to conduct such selfexamination. The former imperative was a communal obligation (farḍ kifāya), meaning that the verifying labor of some in this regard sufficed for all (in time giving rise to the science of ʿilm al-rijāl, a uniquely Islamic discipline that insisted on the epistemological relevance of ethical character). The second imperative was more immediate to the individual, for it pertained to the Day when secrets shall be put on trial (Q 86:9), when no bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another (Q 6:164), and when each will be recompensed for what he or she intended. The historical shape and quality of Islamic scholarly tradition emerged from the interaction of these two imperatives, as evident in the famous case of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (450-505/1058-1111), who fled his prestigious post at the Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Baghdad when he realized his work there was eroding certain of his moral qualities.

Al-Bukhārī personally ascertained that the hadith concerning intentions he heard from al-Ḥumaydī was based on an unbroken chain of transmitters between him and ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Allah be well-pleased with him. In this quest, al-Bukhārī and others before and after him were following the footsteps of the Companions, whose own concern for verification of the Prophetic sayings is exemplified by the report of a trip Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh (d. ca.77/696), Allah be wellpleased with him, specifically made to verify one Prophetic hadith. Jābir had been about eighteen when he first met the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace. He had gone with his father and seventy-one or seventy-two other residents of Yathrib to the second Pledge of ʿAqaba (621 CE)—one year before the Hijra of the Prophet to Jābir’s city of birth, where his grandfather ʿAmr and his father (one of the martyrs of Uḥud) were chiefs of the clan of Banū Ḥarām. His passion for preserving each and every saying of the Prophet was such that he could not rest knowing that the Companion ʿAbd Allāh b. Unays (d. 54/673), then living in Syria, narrated a hadith which he had not heard. “I bought a camel,” related Jābir, Allah be well-pleased with him,

and rode it hard for a month until I reached Syria and went to [the house of] ʿAbd Allāh b. Unays. I told the doorman to tell [ʿAbd Allāh] that Jābir was at the door. The doorman returned and asked, “Jābir b. ʿAbd Allāh?” “Yes,” I replied. He went back and told him, and ʿAbd Allāh came out and embraced me. I said, “A hadith about requital (qiṣāṣ) reached me, narrated on your authority, which I had not heard from the Messenger of Allah, upon him blessings and peace—and I feared lest one of us might die before I heard it [from you].” So, he said: “I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say: ‘Allah will gather His slaves’—or he said ‘mankind’—‘naked (ʿurātan), uncircumcised (ghurlan), and buhman.’ We asked, ‘What is [meant by] buhman?’ He replied: ‘Having nothing with them. They will be called by a voice that is heard from afar just as it is heard from close at hand, saying, “I am the King. I recompense. None of the people of Paradise will enter Paradise, and none of the people of Hell will enter Hell, if anyone is seeking them for an injustice committed, until I have taken requital from him—even if it be [only] a slap on the face.”’ We said, ‘How can this be, while we will come to Allah naked, uncircumcised, without any possessions [with which to pay recompense]?’ He replied, ‘[It will be taken] from the good and evil deeds [acquired by each].’”

While the description of this scholarly tradition on which IEQ is based, may seem to some an idealization of a distant past, a nostalgic fabulation, or at best a futile recall of something long expired, it is, in fact, a living tradition that continues to nurture hearts and minds in centers of learning often not found on academic maps and is the bedrock of the faith community (umma) now suffering one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Nor is this to say that the Islamic disciplines from which IEQ draws its source material are monolithic or homogeneous—far from it! They rest on a uniquely configured discursive dynamic that filters, corrects, discards, authenticates, preserves, and transmits such knowledge to subsequent generations. This tradition has produced tens of thousands of works of importance and lasting value, some of which now survive only in the form of remnants embedded, quoted, or cited in later texts. IEQ taps into this vast body of traditional knowledge, encyclopedically integrates this material, and presents it to the reader in a lucid contemporary language and style.

Authenticity and authoritativeness are central concerns of the Islamic sciences, which engage various citational practices to gather and sift a profusion of texts. For instance, drawing on Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim’s (d. 224/838) Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān written in Baghdad some five hundred years earlier, the master-exegete Ibn Kathīr—born in Basra in 700/1300 and taken to Damascus at the age of six after his father’s death, where he lived and wrote until he died in 774/1373— recorded that the chain of narrators of the above-mentioned saying of Abū Bakr was “broken”. He decided to include it in his exegesis, nonetheless, because it was also reported, with a slightly different word order, through another chain of transmission. Such methodological rigor is neither incidental nor unique to Ibn Kathīr. Rather, it is a key element in Islamic scholarly tradition, for its practitioners recognize how their work carries a dual responsibility, affecting subsequent generations as well as their own otherworldly fate, for the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, said: “Do not attribute falsely to me; whoever does so shall take his seat in the Fire.”

Raison d’être

The men and women who built and continue to nurture the scholarly tradition upon which IEQ is based—and, we sincerely hope, to which it will itself belong—have, as the ultimate raison d’être of their toiling, a sublime goal: Divine pleasure. They considered their work a continuation of their prayer, in much the same way as a spiritually mature merchant, leaving the mosque to sell vegetables in the bazaar, would consider it a continuation of his remembrance of the Provider of provisions. Many of them were professional scholars, and were of course not immune from financial need or (in some cases) personal ambition. But the tradition they helped shape insists on the immediacy of ultimate concerns: O Man, what has beguiled you from your Gracious Lord, Who created you, then fashioned, then proportioned you? (Q 82:6-7). Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (d. 185/801) declaimed: “My Lord, I love this world only that I might remember You in it, and I love the Hereafter only because I may see You there. Every moment that passes by while my tongue is not quickened with Your remembrance is accursed. My Lord, do not bring upon me these two things for I will not be able to bear them: burning in Hell and separation from You.” Knowledge and its existential realization in nobility of character are thus equally vital to the Islamic tradition of learning. The Qurʾān warns against betraying or profaning the trust of sacred knowledge, likening those given knowledge but not acting upon it to asses bearing tomes (Q 62:5). The Prophet, upon him blessings and peace, sought refuge from useless knowledge: “O Allah, I seek refuge in You from knowledge which does not benefit, from a supplication that is not answered, from a heart without awe [of You], and from a soul that is not content.”

Only recently has this tradition of “engaged scholarship” begun to enter Western languages. This phenomenon is borne out of a certain historic imperative. Several years ago, a former student of the distinguished Canadian orientalist Wilfred Cantwell Smith related the advice he had received from his teacher on presenting the first draft of his dissertation: “It is very good,” Smith commented, “but take a generous supply of ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’, ‘probably’, and other qualifiers, and sprinkle them across the manuscript.” The young Muslim men and women from former colonies arriving in Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Boston, Montreal, and other centers of Western academia dutifully submitted: the weight of the past few centuries had made it impossible for them to stand on the strength of their own tradition, which developed no such agnosticism—especially in works dealing with the Qurʾān, which proclaims, This is the Book wherein there is no doubt, a guidance for the Godwary (Q 2:2). They were not in a position to argue that this type of committed scholarship is not necessarily inferior to the putative objectivity being taught, or cite as proof works borne out of that tradition which had not lost their quality or luster over the centuries.

That generation of aspiring Muslim academics from former colonies bearing the unshakable weight of history has almost passed away. Most of them served at Western academic institutions without, as a rule, making a dent in the methodological and ideological framework upon which the academic study of religion in general and Islam in particular is based. Today, however, the academic discourse on the Qurʾān in Western languages is no longer monopolized by those who do not affirm its Divine origin. Those burdened by the weight of colonial history are increasingly being replaced by a new generation of Muslim academics discovering the wondrous fountains of fresh water in their own tradition. In addition, for the first time in history, a significant number of learned and eloquent Westerners—who have found in Islam the answer to their spiritual quest—are contributing original works on Islam and the Qurʾān in their own languages. Such texts are playing a very significant role in the formation of a new body of works which seems destined to supplant the often apologetic Muslim writings of the early to mid-twentieth century.

IEQ seeks to shape and contribute to this emergent tradition, to open up new vistas of academic studies of the Qurʾān in Western languages through a paradigmatic reconfiguration, and (as was mentioned earlier) to serve the needs of three definable audiences. These are: Muslims interested in a deeper, source-based understanding of the Book which is the ultimate foundation of their beliefs and practices; non-Muslims seriously seeking to understand the message of the Qurʾān; and academic scholars interested in Muslim understandings of their Scripture. Specialists in Qurʾānic studies will find in IEQ a much-needed representative reference work; those working in the general field of Islamic studies will find bibliographic references to hundreds of classical works that are otherwise scattered over a vast body of sometimes inaccessible texts; and general researchers without the requisite linguistic skills will find a unique window to the formidable corpus of classical sources upon which IEQ is based.

The word Integrated in the title of the present work indicates a conceptual strategy as well as elements of its encyclopedic method. Although its approximately six hundred entries are presented alphabetically, the overall structure of this seven-volume encyclopedia is based on an integration of all themes, persons, things, places, and events mentioned in the Qurʾān. This selection highlights the internal coherence of the message of the Qurʾān, which, as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (543-606/1148-1209) observed in his voluminous exegesis Mafātīḥ al-ghayb (“Keys of the Unseen”), revolves around three axial themes: the Unicity of Allah Most High (tawḥīd), Messengership or Prophethood (risāla, nubuwwa), and Resurrection (maʿād). Each entry is comprised of material integrated from various Islamic disciplines (Qurʾān exegesis, Hadith sciences, linguistic sciences, historiography). Finally, references to other lemmata at the end of each entry as well as in-line cross-references signal various levels of thematic integration. Selectivity Faced with the immense volume of source material and the practical limitations of producing a manageable encyclopedic text, IEQ needed to restrict its own scope to certain domains of Islamic tradition in order to be generally representative of one of its well-definable strands. This restriction is especially necessary given that IEQ seeks to locate itself within—not outside or above—its subject matter. Considering the differing hermeneutical principles of Sunni and Shīʿī exegetical traditions, the editors decided to base IEQ entirely on the former. W here credal or legal questions variegate Sunni commentary traditions, various schools are considered, although the Ashʿarī-Māturīdī and four extant legal schools respectively have greater representation. For previously mentioned reasons, IEQ does not draw on non-Muslim works on the Qurʾān or Islam. Every effort has been made to employ the earliest sources available, and to trace material and ideas back to their first appearance.

Spiritual Etiquettes

As The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān conforms to certain established generic encyclopedic conventions (presenting individual entries with concision and breadth, lemmata organized in encyclopedic fashion) yet without stepping outside the academic norms of the tradition it surveys, some reflections on method are in order. IEQ draws on the conventions and textual forms both of Western and classical Islamic encyclopedias. The Western encyclopedia, as a genre developed from older dictionary forms and inaugurated (for instance) by Diderot and D’Alembert’s 1751-1772 Encyclopédie and the 1768-1771 Britannica, proceeded under an Enlightenment mandate to systematically analyze all human knowledge as a bequest to future generations. In the process, such encyclopedias subjected their entries to a single, universal rationality inflected in their authors’ authoritative voices as “specialists”. Corresponding encyclopedic works in the Islamic tradition, on the other hand, while relying on the authors’ voices to mediate between the source material and the reader, made comprehensive use of sources from several different genres, included representative multiple variant narrations, and let the sources speak louder than the author. One perceives this spiritual humility in the works of such masters as al-Ṭabarī, who subtly employed the word qīla (“it is said”) for a report which in his estimation was not as sound as one he had reported a few lines before with qāla (“he said”).

While adopting certain aspects of the Western encyclopedic tradition, IEQ seeks to maintain a distinct tone and orientation regarding the nature of the content as well as its presentation. One facet of this is reflected in the authors’ intention to let the source material speak on its own terms. In presenting a broad spectrum of representative scholarship with full documentation, the aim is to give a sense of the “texture” of traditional commentary on the topic of the entry. The authors’ roles have been to conceive each topic in an encyclopedic manner, organize, summarize sources, and present them in an accessible manner. This approach may not avoid all the pitfalls of subjectivity inherent in such works, but it allows classical voices to speak for themselves and with each other. It seeks to avoid arrogating interpretive authority for itself, instead respecting the dynamic of an ongoing interpretive tradition.

IEQ maintains the etiquettes of Islamic tradition, including the conventional formulas of glorification and salutation when mentioning the names of Allah Most High, the Prophets, the Companions, and scholars. All proper names are transliterated from the Arabic forms in which they appear in the Qurʾān, Hadith, and Islamic sources. IEQ generally follows the way Islamic scholarship normatively proceeds in order of priority: first recording material collated from the Qurʾān, then from Prophetic traditions, then from the Companions, and then from later authorities. Finally, following practices of respect and priority normative to the Islamic scholarly tradition, the first volume of IEQ begins with the entry on the Supreme Name, “Allah,” followed by “Aḥmad,” the second of the Prophet’s two proper names in the Qurʾān, and proceeds thereafter in alphabetical order.

While IEQ is firmly anchored in traditional Islamic scholarship and belongs to the emerging body of Muslim works on the Qurʾān originally composed in Western languages, we hope that it will also contribute to broader academic discourse on Islam as it brings to the forefront new source material, rare bibliographic references, and resources for further research. Instead of polemically engaging the centuries-old biases and missionary or colonial heritage of non-Muslim works, IEQ has sought to offer a positive contribution for future discourse between the two distinct traditions of learned works on the Qurʾān—a contribution that may help bring some light to a world suffering from spiritual darkness of an unprecedented order. We sincerely hope IEQ will contribute to a better understanding of the message of the luminous Qurʾān—a Book which, as described by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, Allah be well-pleased with him, “is a light whose radiance cannot be extinguished, a lamp whose flame does not die, an ocean whose depth cannot be fathomed, a path that does not lead astray, a blaze whose brilliance does not darken, a criterion whose evidence cannot be suppressed, an elucidation whose cornerstones cannot be demolished... Allah has made it the quencher of the thirst of the learned, a springtime for the hearts of jurists, a destination for the path of the righteous, a cure after which there is no malady, a light not followed by darkness, and a rope whose knots are firm” (Ibn Abī Shayba, Musnad 1:251 §8376; Ḥākim, Mustadrak 1:741 §2040; al-Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān 3:333 §1786).

Wa-Llāh al-Mustaʿān, wa mā tawfīqī illā bi-Llāh.

Muzaffar Iqbal, Center for Islamic Sciences

Wuddistān, Dhūl-ḥijja 26, 1433/November 11, 2012

IEQ: Raison d'être and Project Summary / MUZAFFAR IQBAL

Conceived as a reference work based on fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship, The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an (IEQ) strives to bring to the English-speaking world a unique blend of classical and contemporary Islamic scholarship on the Qur'an in an accessible and reader-friendly format. It is meant for both Muslim and non-Muslim general readers who are looking for an authentic source of in-depth and scholarly knowledge on the Qur'an and its message, as well as academic scholars, whether specializing in the field of Qur'anic studies or working more generally in other disciplines related to Islam.

The Qur'an, Muslims and IEQ

Today only about 20 percent of all Muslims understand the language of the Qur'an. This inability to directly access the multi-layered linguistic richness of the original text of the Qur'an is often combined with a lack of sufficient training in reading the Qur'an — even in translation — especially for those who are schooled through a modern Western-style educational system. Since the Qur'an remains a fundamental part of their lives at so many levels of existence, millions of Muslims look for different translations, exegeses, dictionaries, and translations of classical texts on the Qur'an in order to engage with it at a deeper level. These sources are useful to some extent, but since classical texts were not intended to be used without guidance, those readers who lack training in reading these texts are more likely to be confused than enlightened. For instance, when one encounters thirteen different (and sometimes mutually conflicting) opinions on one verse in Jamic al-Bayan 'an Ta'wll Ayy al-Qur'an> Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari's (d. 310/923) monu mental tafslr, or when one finds seven different sayings of the Prophet H in reference to one verse in Isma'il b. 'Umar Ibn Kathlr's (d. 774/1373) Tafslr al Qur'an al-Azlm, one needs to have the requisite training in tafslr and hadlth methodology and scholarship to understand this wealth of material. Thus, The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an will be an invaluable source as a concise and authentic reference work which presents this vast repository of classical Islamic literature on the Qur'an in a language and manner that is accessible to modern readers. The Qur'an, non-Muslims and IEQ If the paths to the Qur'an have become restricted for Muslims due to barriers of language and education, they are almost completely blocked for a vast majority of non-Muslims. This exclusion is a dual calamity: countless men and women are never really able to come to encounter the Words of the Creator, and also, as a result, a fundamental divide separates those who believe in the Qur'an and those who do not. In a way, this divide has existed ever since the Qur'an was first revealed some fourteen centuries ago, but the contemporary situation is unlike the past; the rapid shrinking of the globe in so many realms of human existence — geographical, intellectual, political, social, economic — has made it impossible for any community to live in isolation. Thus those who believe in the final revelation of the Creator and those who do not now live in close proximity to one another in so many dimensions of space and time. This has generated a great deal of friction and simultaneously a rapid growth of interest in the Qur'an by non-Muslims. As a result, the number of non Muslims who have actually opened one of the many available translations of the Qur'an has increased exponentially in recent years. After reading the first few pages, however, a great many of these readers find it difficult to continue, for they encounter a text unlike any they have ever read.

They find neither coherence nor logical connections of the kind most familiar to them. Moreover, the imagery of the Qur'an remains utterly foreign to them even in the best of translations, not to speak of its miraculous totum simul — the simultaneous totality (al-wahdat al-mawdii'iyyah)--that creates the whole in every part. In the multi-layered coherence of the Qur'an, all its themes emerge in short passages, creating an inimitable interplay between its imagery, oaths, parables, chronicles, warnings, and glad tidings. With so many elements of text coalescing, separating, reuniting, and reemphasizing each other at numerous levels, the result can be a total incomprehensibility and confusion.

Often all that a sincere non-Muslim reader gains out of his or her first encounter with the Qur'an is an overall sense of alienation. Those who attempt to understand its message through other books find few representative works in Western languages. Books by non-Muslim scholars are rarely of help, for they often serve only to enlarge the canon of Orientalist writing. Neither has the burgeoning field of contemporary academic studies made a significant positive contribution in this regard. Most Muslim scholarship on the Qur'an, on the other hand, remains inaccessible to non-Muslims as well as to Westernized Muslims for reasons of language, style, basic premises, format, and content. The paucity of genuine resources available to such seekers looking for an authentic source to understand the message of the Qur'an will be somewhat alleviated by The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, which will provide scholarly material in a manner and format familiar to them.

The Qur'an, the Academy and IEQ

Non-Muslim academic scholars have yet another dilemma when approaching the Qur'an. They cannot commit themselves to any position about the Divine origin of the Qur'an; their professional obligation is to maintain a certain detachment from the object of their study. Yet, in this case, the object itself makes it impossible to maintain such neutrality, for the Qur'an demands that one must settle the fundamental issue of its authorship before any further interaction can occur: one must either accept or reject the Qur'anic claim that it is a Divine Revelation. A corollary of whatever choice they make is their position regarding the Prophet ^. Acceptance of the Qur'an as a Divine Revelation simultaneously entails the acceptance of the Prophet Muhammad M as the final Messenger of Allah and the seal of prophecy. If they reject the Qur'anic 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. Such scholars, thus, find themselve in an irresolvable dilemma: if they commit to a position on the Qur'an, they sacrifice their 'impartiality'; if they do not, they cannot legitimately interact with the text they are studying. This dilemma has been recognized by a number of academic scholars, who further admit that no resolution is available.

Against this historical background, IEQ brings to the academic world a unique reference work, sharing with its sources the premise that the Qur'an is a revealed text while simultaneously maintaining scholarly norms and standards. Academic scholars will, therefore, welcome a reference work on the Qur'an that presents, in concise form, fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship, even though they might not fully agree with its basic premises. Those who work in the specialized field of Qur'anic studies and have the linguistic ability to directly access the vast corpus of Muslim scholarship produced over the last fourteen hundred years will also find IEQ appealing, for it makes available in one work materials and resources that are scattered over a vast body of sometimes inaccessible texts.

IEQ will serve as a useful starting point for new dimensions of intensive research, for it brings to the academic world hundreds of well-referenced sources from the reservoir of Islamic scholarship on the Qur'an. Researchers in disciplines other than Qur'anic studies, especially those without the linguistic skills to directly access the formidable corpus of Qur'anic sciences in the original, will also appreciate IEQ because it fulfils one of their essential needs.

Key Features of IEQ

• The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an draws its entries from the thematic structure of the Qur'an itself. The editors have striven to cover all themes of the Qur'an and have assigned proportionate space to articles in relation to their relative importance in the Qur'an. This feature of IEQ becomes apparent from the "Thematic List of Articles" (to be included in Volume 7), which presents an index of articles under Qur'anic themes such as Faith (al-Iman) and its various dimensions; Deeds (al-a'mal); Calling toward Allah (al-da'wah ila 'Hah); Jihad (al-Jihad); Economic Relations [aUaldqat al-maliyyah); Juridical Relations (al-'alaqat al qada'iyyah); Chronicles and History (alqasas wa 'l-ta'rikh); the Qur'an itself as a theme of the Qur'an (al-Qur'an); Other Religions (al-diyanat al ukhra); Sciences and Arts (al-'uliim wa %funuri)\ and the like. Muslim scholars have built a tradition of exacting scholarship over the past fourteen centuries which explicates each theme in detail, keeping in view its precise relationship with the overall message of the Qur'an. This internal thematic unity of the Qur'an, often overlooked in works produced by non-Muslim scholars, also provides a coherent schema for cross-references; it thereby facilitates a broader understanding of the message of the Qur'an.
• IEQ assumes serious engagement, but no prior knowledge of Arabic or of the Qur'an. It employs English-language lemmata with certain modifications and its intensive cross-referencing makes article location easy.
• IEQ integrates a large body of classical scholarship on the Qur'an and makes it available to contemporary readers. This integration takes place at several levels — from the conception of the overall framework to the individual entries — and results in a scholarly work that is simultaneously contemporary and classical.
• The editors have identified approximately 650 entries and several hundred cross-references covering all concepts, places, and persons mentioned in the Qur'an. Entries have been divided into five categories: special, major, medium, minor, and short according to their word count and assigned to Muslim scholars specializing in various fields of Qur'anic studies.
• IEQ will bring to the English-speaking world a breadth of knowledge on the Qur'an seldom found in any single work in a Western language. It draws its scholarly acumen from fourteen centuries of Qur'anic scholarship. It embraces a variety of perspectives present in the Islamic exegetical literature, and provides a much-needed alternative to works on the Qur'an by Orientalists as well as by contemporary non-Muslim academic scholars. Muslim and non-Muslim specialists focusing on Qur'anic studies, scholars and students in all disciplines in academic institutions, and serious readers will discover an illuminating breadth of knowledge in The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an.
• Potential readership includes academic specialists in the field of Qur'anic studies, faculty in religious studies departments, researchers engaged with any aspect of Islam, graduate students, Muslims interested in an in-depth study of the Qur'an, and non-Muslims seeking specialized knowledge on concepts, places, and person mentioned in the Qur'an.

Editorial and Organizational Structure

• The Project has a two-tiered editorial structure: (i) an International Advisory Board, consisting of senior scholars who are consulted and relied upon for general guidance and expertise; and (ii) an editorial board consisting of a General Editor, five Associate Editors, three Assistant Editors, and one Language Editor. Please see the project website for biographical notes < www.iequran.com >.
• Originally conceived as a project of the Center for Islam and Science (CIS), Canada, IEQ now enjoys the support of many universities, academic and research institutions from around the world. This growing support is indicative of a broadly felt need for such a work. Please see the worldwide list of supporting institutions on the project website.
• Established in 2000, Center for Islam and Science (CIS) is an independent research center dedicated to the promotion of research and diffusion of knowledge on all aspects of Islam. CIS operates under an international advisory board and a local executive committee. It is a registered not-for profit organization in the province of Alberta and a registered charity with revenue Canada (Charity no. 86447 2899 RR0001). For more details on the work of the Center, please visit < www.cis-ca.org>.
• In 2008, the Society for Qur'anic Studies (SQS), Pakistan, was especially formed for collaborating with CIS on this project. Registered under the Societies Act XXI of 1860 (Registration no. KAR-0277 of 2008-09), SQS functions as an independent research organization with its own board of trustees.

Competing Works

IEQ will directly compete with Brill's Encyclopedia of the Qur'an (EQ), which is by far the only other extensive reference work on the Qur'an in English. IEQ, however, differs substantially from EQ in its conception, organization of material, as well as sources. As noted above, IEQ will bring to the English speaking world a substantial amount of source material that is currently unavailable to non-specialists, much of which was not used in EQ. Since IEQ will be written from the perspective of Muslim scholars who affirm the divine origin of the Qur'an, it will provide a much-needed counterbalance to the existing non-Muslim scholarship on the Qur'an. From a non-Muslim perspective, IEQ will be valuable because it will provide unique and valuable insights into Muslim understandings of the Qur'an as well as a richness of source material largely inaccessible to people who do not know Arabic and other languages spoken in the Muslim world.

Various Editions of IEQ and Translations

Initially published by Al-Qalam Publishing <www.alqalam.org>, Canada, in English, IEQ will also be printed and distributed in various parts of the Muslim world in partnership with local publishers; this will ensure its easy and affordable availability throughout the Muslim world. Each of its seven volumes will be approximately 550 pages each. We hope to have German, French, Spanish, and Italian translations as well. We are already exploring ways to produce its Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, FarsI, Malay, and Bahasa Indonesian versions. IEQ will also be launched as an online work.

Islamic Studies , Winter 2008, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter 2008), pp. 537-543

Andrew Rippin / Reviewed Work(s): IEQ, vol. 1 by Muzaffar Iqbal

This sumptuous and carefully produced first volume of Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ) is an impressive beginning to an anticipated seven-tome compendium. The work is a considerable contribution to the study of the Quran, but it raises various issues regarding the way in which scholarship within the academy is defined. By no means can this work simply be dismissed as unscholarly although it does not participate in all the norms of academic work; establishing a clear sense of what those norms are—which is not always as obvious as many of us like to pretend—is a useful byproduct of reviewing this work.

The first distinctive element is the word “integrated” in the title, which signifies IEQ’s aim to integrate its entries conceptually by basing them all on the Quran and the “internal coherence of its message” (p. xviii). Diversity within the Muslim community hampers this goal somewhat and the solution promoted by IEQ is to produce a work that will not emphasize or aggravate inner-Muslim divisions. Thus, the project is defined by the suggestion that in “producing a manageable encyclopedic text, IEQ needed to restrict its own scope to certain domains of Islamic tradition in order to be generally representative of one of its well-defined strands” (p. xviii). As a result, the encyclopedia is solidly Sunni: Ashʿarī-Māturīdī theology and the four legal schools monopolize the sources employed. Only very occasionally are Shiʿi sources, for example, mentioned. This construction of the Islamic tradition is central to IEQ’s aim of presenting the classical sources and their discussions. The contents of the encyclopedia rarely reflect any sense of historical development within the understanding of a unified “Islamic tradition”; an exception to this “integrated” sense of Muslim intellectual heritage is to be noted where the intrusion of modernity demands attention. For the most part, however, the Islamic tradition is presented as an undifferentiated, singular entity; when difference of opinion does need to be acknowledged, it is slotted into intellectual categories of later construction (Ashʿarī, Ḥanafī, etc). This perspective and conception of the Islamic tradition is clearly critical to the project of providing an “integrated” encyclopedia.

IEQ’s goal is to address the needs of those who are unable to access the classical Arabic sources that are conceived to define this Islamic tradition. Particular knowledge based on the Quran and the Sunna is suggested to be needed in order to counter the sense of being confounded when confronted with the complexities of those classical sources and their sometimes mutually contradictory statements. The audience is not limited to Muslims. For non-Muslims, “most books about the Qurʾān written by non-Muslim writers” are not helpful, “for most of them are replete with an Orientalism that is often more invested in establishing its own canon than explicating the message of a Book in which the authors do not believe” (p. xiii). Works by Muslims, on the other hand, are often inaccessible to non-Muslims due to style, basic premises, language, format, and even content. Furthermore, academic works are problematic because they display an “agnostic detachment”; they fail to grapple with the central issue of the authorship of the Quran. While contemporary academic studies are acknowledged to have overcome the missionary impulse of earlier times, they are still seen to be working on the premise that the Quran is humanly produced, which perspective renders them of little use in understanding the truth of the scripture. Scholarly agnosticism is manifested in the constant expression of “perhaps” as opposed to the “strength of Muslim tradition” (p. xvii) that an integrated view conveys. Until recently, engaged scholarship has required that same agnosticism but a new Muslim academic tradition is emerging and it is within this trend that IEQ sees itself as both participating and helping to shape, all of which will be part of a “paradigmatic reconfiguration” of Quranic studies. The outcome is hoped to be an “academic discourse on the Qurʾān… no longer monopolized by those who do not affirm its divine origin” (p. xvii).

IEQ has all the formal characteristics of an academic encyclopedia. It is lavishly produced; its diction is refined (“academic”) and at times even eloquent. It employs rigorous principles of documentation and citation. The volume under review contains forty-seven entries, starting, in traditional fashion, with “Allah, Most High” followed by “Aḥmad, upon him blessings and peace.” From there, entries range alphabetically from “Ability” to “Beautiful Names of God,” with numerous blind entries directing readers to material that will appear in future volumes. Most entries are four to six pages of double-columned text; the entries “Adultery,” “al-Anṣār,” and “Agriculture” run for about ten pages, “Angels” fourteen, “Animals” twenty, and “Allah, Most High” thirty. The entries are written by a small group, most credited with an editorial role in IEQ as well: twenty-two entries are written by Muzaffar Iqbal, the general editor, sometimes as co-author with Naseer Ahmad, an associate editor (their roles in this writing combination vary); fifteen entries are by Gibril Fouad Haddad, also an associate editor. The remaining ten entries are written by seven people (sometimes writing jointly). The scholarship presented in the volume is thus fairly limited in its authorial diversity.

In terms of taxonomy, IEQ has taken the same approach as Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, recognizing that if the encyclopedia is written in English, then English keywords are likely the best way to organize the material. A few exceptions are notable and make the structure of the volume somewhat unpredictable. There is an entry for “ʿAlaqa” (defined as “a thing that clings”) and Arabic forms are used for people’s names (“Ayyūb” and “Bābil” are notable in this volume in this regard). Some common Arabic words and phrases are given blind entries: asbāb al-nuzūl is listed as a cross-reference to an entry that will be called “Occasions of Revelation,” for example.

Thus, while IEQ conforms to encyclopedic expectations, it also declares itself to be outside the Western encyclopedia tradition. As a principle, it is suggested, IEQ allows the sources to speak for themselves and to speak louder than the author of the entry. It “does not draw on non-Muslim works on the Qurʾān or Islam” (p. xviii), and there are very few citations of contemporary secondary literature from those writing in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or Bahasa (who can be presumed to be Muslim for the most part). This is perhaps the most important aspect of the encyclopedia that separates it from mainstream academic scholarship: while IEQ’s discourse is academic, it does not partake of the cumulative nature of the academic enterprise. The impoverished overview of the entry “Acquisition”—a famously complex concept—is an example of IEQ’s not gaining from (or even acknowledging) what other scholars have learned from the sources. One of the few citations of “Western” scholarship relates to the idea of Muḥammad as the Paraclete (p. 36); other occasional mentions include references to Encyclopaedia Judaica on matters of ancient history related to the Ark (p. 262) and to William Chittick on Ibn ʿArabī related to the barzakh (p. 327).

The absence of consideration of contemporary academic scholarship is noticeably detrimental to IEQ’s value even within the terms of its declared goals, because there are aspects of the Quran that could have been drawn out or reframed with the additional perspectives and insights that this scholarship provides. An example may be drawn from the extensive entry “Animals,” whose author (Haddad) did not interrogate the category “animals” (dawābb) before setting out to simply list all thirty-three animal names mentioned in the Quran. Such a treatment can be profitably compared to the work of Sarra Tlili (“The Meaning of the Qurʾanic Word ‘dābba’: ‘Animals’ or ‘Nonhuman Animals’?” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 12 [2010]: 167–87), who raises well-reasoned objections to the speciesist reading of this word, unquestioningly adopted in the above IEQ entry. While it may well be that Tlili’s essay was not yet available to the author, the categorical rejection of the relevance of contemporary scholarly work means that critical questions regarding the relationship between (and the status of) human beings and other living creatures in the world would not have been confronted regardless.

In terms of the presentation of the sources of the Muslim tradition, history is declared to be relevant only to the extent of using the earliest possible sources “to trace material and ideas back to their first appearance” (p. xviii). These sources “speak for themselves” and the encyclopedia presents them without “arrogating interpretive authority to itself” (p. xix). As a result, many of the entries consist primarily of quotations from the Quran and the Sunna. Some do include discussions based on classical sources, whether for exegetical comment (“Anonymous Mentions, mubhamāt”) or theological elaboration (e.g., “Astray, ḍāll,” “Atom, dharra,” “Avarice and Greed”). Many entries (e.g., “Ability,” “Abode”) adopt a linguistic approach by classifying Quranic senses of the Arabic words that underlie the entry’s name and then looking at related source material (especially in hadith) and relevant intellectual discussions in legal and theological texts.

This approach—whether described as “integrated” or as the result of “spiritual humility”—has significant implications. Scholarly analysis involves complexity, that creative and imaginative process that searches data for new angles and formulations; complexity involves an understanding that any description of a phenomenon will never encompass all of its possible aspects. For IEQ, however, a recognition of complexity is absent and what analysis there is results in assertions of singular meanings. The entry “Ablution,” for example, makes no attempt to explain or understand such ritual within the multi-dimensional framework of purity as employed in the discipline of Religious Studies; rather, the entry deals with it strictly as a legal imposition, its meaning simply related to transitions in life that are thereby imbued with spiritual significance. There is no consideration of why ablutionary acts are isolated or what the implications might be for attitudes toward them and toward bodies in general (other than as a symbolic act of “inner purity”). In the entry “Abū Lahab,” the theological problems of the mention of a historical person in an eternal text receives no consideration. The topic of foreign vocabulary in the Quran is acknowledged—for example in the entry “Animal” under the subsection “Lion”—but there is no attempt to discuss its merits or to investigate it through contemporary philological considerations. Likewise in the entry “Arabic,” no effort is made to provide a historical perspective or employ modern linguistic knowledge to clarify the topic. In a different vein, but still reflecting IEQ’s principles, the entry “al-Aqsa Mosque” is devoid of any modern political perspectives, providing a model of restraint if, in fact, not an ironic example of scholarly agnosticism.

Overall, it is clear that IEQ aspires to make a positive contribution. One might allow that by ignoring contemporary academic scholarship, no polemic is undertaken, to the benefit of the final product. In this way IEQ accomplishes its own aims and maintains admirable standards of integrity. The only time this approach is compromised is when descriptions of what are described as “heterodox views” are provided; in these cases, the particular perspectives of the authors tend to be apparent, especially in their critique of rational and/or scientific explanations of the Quran. Some entries employ language that is uncharacteristic of the rest of the work as they aim to debunk modern theories, which are declared to be “dubious” and as having “little or no bearing on the Qurʾān and its message” (as related to the history and identity of ʿAd, p. 98), influenced by “pseudo-Darwinian interpretations” (in the case of Ādam, p. 115), or “eager to promote Islam purely as a science-friendly rational ideology devoid of any supernatural elements” (in the discussion of Angels, p. 181). The entry “ʿAlaqa” is particularly critical of attempts to prove the Quran’s divine status by scientific means. The entry “Atom” is especially explicit (and informative) in providing an understanding of the complexities of the English term derived from Greek and its modern use as compared to the Quranic term dharra (“infinitesimal quantity”); this discussion leads to a scornful rejection of modern scientific interpretations of the latter term.

The editors suggest that failing to affirm the Quran’s divine origin necessarily leads to scholarship that is at best irrelevant to Muslims since such undertakings avoid confronting the core of Muslim belief. On the basis of the contents of this volume it is difficult to see that this is always necessarily true. While the constraint of “letting the sources speak for themselves” certainly does result in a lack of analysis and critical, historical insights, there are entries that, to the extent they bring valuable data together and classify them, could easily appear in a work such as Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (EI3); this is especially true when the topic is one on which a Muslim consensus is not readily determined. The entry “Abrogation,” which I have chosen partially because I wrote the entry for EI3, provides a suitable example. Clearly, the IEQ author (again Haddad) was not on a mission to determine the “truth” of this often highly contentious issue, contrary to what one reads in many sophomoric essays. Rather, we are presented with an informative summary of classical discussions and analytic categories of the phenomenon as Muslims have understood it (granted, there is little sense of history here except when speaking of modern times). Particularly noticeable, however, is that the author’s voice, when it does appear, is not one of scholarly distance (or “agnosticism”)—it speaks to and within the Muslim community. For example, Haddad states, “Naskh is mostly (though not necessarily…) about ease and can be exemplified by the gradual lessening of the Divinely-imposed duty of 50 daily prayers to five in the account of the Prophet’s Heavenly Ascension…” (p. 58). Academic scholarship, it seems to me, aims for as broad an audience as possible, meaning that all readers should be able to feel addressed within the discourse. (Within the field of study there are certain presumptions about what the audience will know, but the language employed should not exclude anyone.) If one added “Most Muslims have understood that…” to the beginning of Haddad’s statement, then one would have created a statement of fact that presumably everyone can agree with because it can be substantiated through reference to sources. Academic writing is directed to a community of scholars defined by their sharing in an academic discourse, not by their membership in a religious community (or an ethnicity, or gender, or sexual orientation) which such absence of “agnosticism” conveys.

Three points emerge from these considerations to portray IEQ’s distinctiveness. First, despite IEQ’s having all the basic elements of scholarship that must be assumed and are part of the overall discourse (linguistic register, source documentation, technical transliteration, absence of plagiarism, and so forth), academic writing engages an ongoing community of scholarship, not one that represents only the cultural heritage of the subject itself; this IEQ explicitly rejects. Second, academic scholarship is frequently, although not always exclusively, grounded in history in its approach; IEQ tends to take a monolithic view of the Islamic heritage (even while holding to the premise that “older is better” in terms of sources), which reduces complexity to the detriment of subsequent analysis. Third, academic scholarship is written for an audience of academic peers—that is understood to be the audience’s common factor; the language used, therefore, speaks not to other social categorizations. Although wishing to address, by its own declaration, both Muslim and non-Muslim readers, IEQ speaks from within the religious community in the expectation that its audience will share in the values and perspectives of the authors and editors.

I offer two minor suggestions in the spirit of a constructive conclusion. The translation of the word nawʿ as “type” (e.g., p. 215) when used by al-Suyūṭī in al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān is correct technically in the sense that each “type” of ʿilm (i.e., Quranic science) is necessary to understand the Quran. But that translation is rather context-less for the average English reader, and it would be more meaningfully rendered as “topic” or even simply as “chapter,” as is frequently done elsewhere. Also, in “Animals” under the subsection “Land predators” (p. 202), sabuʿ in the Quranic verse al-Māʾida(5):3 is translated as “wild beast” and does not correspond to the text, which states “The Qurʾān mentions land predators or sabuʿ…”; this could result in some confusion for non-Arabic readers. While I did not observe this mismatch as a generalized concern, it is one that should receive careful editorial scrutiny.

Journal of the American Oriental Society , Vol. 136, No. 1 (January–March 2016), pp. 222-225

The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān-Volume 2

The Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ) is a seven-volume reference work that presents all concepts, places, persons, events, and things mentioned in the Qurʾān. Each entry of this work integrates fourteen centuries of Muslim reflection on the Qurʾān-a Book that remains central to the lives of one fourth of humanity. IEQ employs Islamic scholarship from diverse branches of knowledge including Tafsīr, Hadith, Arabic lexicons, Prophetic biographies, universal histories, specialized dictionaries, and treatises on spiritual and moral psychology to elucidate the Qurʾānic worldview through carefully chosen lemmata in language that strives to present the beauty, flavor, and certitude of the original texts. Every entry can be read as a summation of its topic, and simultaneously contributes to an integral whole that conveys the overall message of the Qurʾān.

Held to a high standard of academic rigor, IEQ integrates source material at several levels: its conceptual framework is drawn from the three axial themes of the Qurʾān-the absolute singularity of the Creator (tawḥīd), prophethood (risāla), and the final Return of all creation to the Creator (maʿād)-; its entries are based on a wide range of primary sources; and its text is crossreferenced with a full citational apparatus that makes it at once contemporary and classical. Every entry is accompanied by a rich bibliography, drawing on many works which have never before been used in any Western-language work on the Qurʾān. Conceived as an authoritative contribution to contemporary Qurʾānic studies and situated within the Islamic scholarly tradition, this landmark publication presents a trove of knowledge on the Qurʾān through the prism of its exegetical tradition and allied sciences as an indispensable tool for academic scholars as well as serious readers of the Qurʾān who are interested in an in-depth understanding of the divine text.

Comprising sixty-seven entries, Volume II begins with "Beauty" and ends with "Cushions". These entries are a typical example of how the three axial themes of the Qurʾān are condensed in each of its figures, concepts, and terms, and how they contribute to its singular quality of inimitability. Volume II also includes long entries on some of the major themes of the Qurʾān: Belief; Believer(s); Blessings, Bounties and Favors of Allah; Book(s); Christians and Christianity; Children of Isrāʾīl; Creation; Companions of the Prophet; Covenant; Contemplation; and Crucifixion.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the course of the past decade, many persons have significantly contributed to the making of this second volume of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān. Some volunteered for this project; others were employed to write its text, review and critique its entries, copyedit the text, and perform other administrative tasks. Certain entries went through a lengthy review process; all were revised multiple times. None of this would have been possible without the diligent efforts of a small team of scholars who understand the critical importance of this project. It is with a deep sense of gratitude that I mention some of these contributors, even though it is not possible to name everyone. Foremost among these efforts over the years are Gibril Fouad Haddad’s contributions to the project on multiple levels (text, conceptual framework, sources); Joseph Lumbard’s reviews, which always asked for more accessibility and clarity; text researched and written by Hasan Spiker in his special kinetic style; the expert language editing of Muhammad Isa Waley; patient copy-editing by Ilyas Ally; and the project organization and administration by Lina Saadi. I am also thankful for the thorough reading of several critical entries by Aasim Rashid; his work has enhanced clarity and precision.

The contributions made by the two contributing editors—Csaba Okváth and Naseer Ahmad—brought many sources to the text which have not been employed in any other encyclopedic work on the Qurʾān in a Western language. Their involvement with the project has been long-term and it is a source of strength and encouragement. The work of Basit Kareem on the text of this second volume has often been constrained due to his own professional and family responsibilities, but he has read, reviewed, and copy-edited nearly every entry of this volume. The text has benefitted from his precision-oriented work.

The decade between the publication of Volume 1 in 2013 and this volume witnessed many upheavals, not the least of which was a global pandemic which delayed its publication. Without the sustained presence and support of certain other individuals through changing circumstances, this volume may not have been possible: Waqas Ahmad, who witnessed the birth of the IEQ project in 2008 and who has remained one of its supportive pillars; Naeem Iqbal, whose generous contributions have made easier the printing of this Volume; Osman Kademoglu and Nadr Jomha, who remain committed to the completion of the project. Haroon Kalla in South Africa, who has been a great supporter since the first Volume was published in 2013; I am thankful for there kindness and support. To discuss various technological and electronic matters with Muhammad Osama is always a great joy; his expertise overcomes all technical difficulties. He initially developed the project website and remains a strong support for all things electronic.

Then there are those who have helped in developing institutional and community support in North America, Pakistan, Malaysia, Syria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and other places around the world. These include: Sharafe Elladin, Majid Kazi, Taha Hassan, Muhammad Jaseemuddin, Hasan Kazi, and Fakhir Baig. I am also thankful to Jasmin Flaig, who expertly typeset the text of this volume. Athar Jatoi helped to make connections with Mega Printers in Istanbul; his sustained help in various printing-related matters is greatly appreciated. There are others whose presence in the project is a source of strength at a different plane: Abdalla Idris Ali, Yahya Rhodus, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamza Yusuf, Ovamir Anjum, Faraz Rabbani, and many others whose understanding of the critical importance of this project translates into prayers and spiritual involvement which nurture the Project’s connections with the magnificent realm of Divine succor; I am deeply thankful for their prayerful watch of this project.

Even though one’s spouse is customarily mentioned at the end of acknowledgements, it is with a true sense of gratitude that I end this note by mentioning the diligent reading of the entire text, many times over, by Elma Ruth Harder, whose work often picked up finer points of articulation as well as missing references in entry bibliographies. Wa-Llāh al-Mustaʿān, wa mā tawfīqī illā bi-Llāh.

Muzaffar Iqbal

Center for Islamic Sciences