Non Sola Scriptura

William A. Graham is an influential and pioneering scholar of Islamic Studies at

Harvard University. This volume brings together 17 contributions to the study of
the Qurʾan and Islam, all influenced by his work.
Contributions to this collection, by his colleagues and students, treat many
different aspects of Islamic scripture, from textual interpretation and hermeneutics
to recitation and parallels with the Bible. Other chapters tackle in diverse ways
the question of what it means to be “Islamic” and how such an identity may
be constituted and maintained in history, thought, and learning. A final section
reflects on the career of William Graham and the relation of scholarship to the
undervalued tasks of academic administration, especially where the study of
religion is concerned.
This book will be of interest to readers of Islamic Studies, Qurʾanic Studies,
Islamic history, Religious Studies, scripture, exegesis, and history of the book.
Given Graham’s role at the Harvard Divinity School, and the discussions of how
he has shaped the study of religion, the volume should be of interest to readership
across the study of religion as a whole.

Bruce Fudge is Professor of Arabic at the University of Geneva.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is Thomas Lamb Eliot Professor of Religion and

Humanities at Reed College.

Christian Lange is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Utrecht University.

Sarah Bowen Savant is Professor of History at Aga Khan University, Institute

for the Study of Muslim Civilisations.
Routledge Studies in the Qur’ān
Former Editor:
Andrew Rippin
University of Victoria, Canada
Series Editor:
Walid A. Saleh
University of Toronto, Canada

In its examination of critical issues in the scholarly study of the Qur’ān and its
commentaries, this series targets the disciplines of archaeology, history, textual
history, anthropology, theology and literary criticism. The contemporary relevance
of the Qur’ān in the Muslim world, its role in politics and in legal debates are also
dealt with, as are debates surrounding Qur’ānic studies in the Muslim world.

Ṭanṭāwī Jawharī and the Qurʾān

Tafsīr and Social Concerns in the Twentieth Century
Majid Daneshgar

The Qurʾan between the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic
An Exegetical Tradition
Susan Gunasti

The Qur’an’s Reformation of Judaism and Christianity

Return to the Origins
Holger M. Zellentin

Structural Dividers in the Qur’an

Edited by Marianna Klar

The Qur’an in South Asia

Hermeneutics, Qur’an Projects, and Imaginings of Islamic Tradition
in British India
Kamran Bashir

Non Sola Scriptura

Essays on the Qur’an and Islam in Honour of William A. Graham
Edited by Bruce Fudge, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Christian Lange, and
Sarah Bowen Savant

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/middle

eaststudies/series/SE0482
Non Sola Scriptura
Essays on the Qur’an and Islam
in Honour of William A. Graham

Edited by Bruce Fudge, Kambiz

GhaneaBassiri, Christian Lange,
and Sarah Bowen Savant
First published 2022
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fudge, Bruce, 1967– editor. | GhaneaBassiri, Kambiz, editor. |
Lange, Christian, 1975– editor. | Savant, Sarah Bowen, editor. |
Graham, William A. (William Albert), 1943– honoree.
Title: Non sola scriptura: essays on the Qur’an and Islam in honour of
William A. Graham/edited by Bruce Fudge, Kambiz GhaneaBassiri,
Christian Lange, and Sarah Bowen Savant.
Description: New York: Routledge, 2022. | Series: Routledge studies in
the Qur’ān | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022001754 (print) | LCCN 2022001755 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032169286 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032171968 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003252221 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Qur'an-Study and teaching. | Islam-Historiography.
Classification: LCC BP130.8. N66 2022 (print) | LCC BP130.8 (ebook) |
DDC 297.1/22—dc23/eng/20220129
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001754
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022001755
ISBN: 978-1-032-16928-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-17196-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25222-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of Contributorsviii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications xiv

PART I
Textual Studies on the Qurʾan 1

1 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan in Pagan Mecca:

Towards a New Reading of Q 6:91 3
MOHSEN GOUDARZI

2 Qurʾanic Anosmia 23
CHRISTIAN LANGE

3 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality in the Qurʾan 44

BRUCE FUDGE

4 The Masjid in the Qurʾan 66

KAMBIZ GHANEABASSIRI

PART II
Qurʾan as Scripture 91

5 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan: Political Decrees or

Community Practices? 93
SHADY HEKMAT NASSER

6 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis and Qurʾanic Revelation

in “Seven Ways of Reading”: Revelation, Exegesis, the
Religious Imaginaire, and Apologetics in Islam 108
CLAUDE GILLIOT
vi Contents
7 The Word of God in the Bible and the Qurʾan 141
MAHMOUD M. AYOUB

8 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), Early Sunni Exegesis, and

Muʿtazilism: Sura 67 and the Five Principles
of Sunni Exegesis 153
WALID A. SALEH

9 The Gināns: Betwixt Satpanthī Scripture and “Ismaili”

Devotional Literature 169
ALI S. ASANI

10 The Holy Qurʾan 194

WHITNEY BODMAN

PART III
The “Islamic” in Islamic History 213

11 Does Pre-modern Islamic Thought Allow for a

Secular Realm? 215
ROY P. MOTTAHEDEH

12 The Present Absentee: The Prophet Muhammad

in Jerusalem 225
ANGELIKA NEUWIRTH

13 And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Role of Sunna

and Hadith in the Formation of Islamic Identity 248
AISHA Y. MUSA

14 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 258

CHASE F. ROBINSON

15 People Versus Books 281

SARAH BOWEN SAVANT

PART IV
William A. Graham as Colleague and Administrator 303

16 Fifty Years as Colleagues: Pilgrims’ Progress 305

DIANA ECK
 Contents vii
17 William A. Graham’s Approach to Comparative Religion as
Scholar, Teacher, and Administrator 309
RAQUEL M. UKELES

Index 323
Contributors

Ali S. Asani, Harvard University

Mahmoud M. Ayoub, Temple University, emeritus
Whitney Bodman, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, emeritus
Diana Eck, Harvard University
Bruce Fudge, Université de Genève
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, Reed College
Claude Gilliot, Université de Provence Aix-Marseille, emeritus
Mohsen Goudarzi, Harvard University
Christian Lange, Universiteit van Utrecht
Roy P. Mottahedeh, Harvard University, emeritus
Aisha Y. Musa, AYM Education and Consulting
Shady Hekmat Nasser, Harvard University
Angelika Neuwirth, Freie Universität Berlin, emerita
Chase F. Robinson, Smithsonian Institution
Walid A. Saleh, University of Toronto
Sarah Bowen Savant, Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim
Civilisations
Raquel M. Ukeles, National Library of Israel
Preface

From 1974 to 2018, William A. Graham was the Faculty Advisor to the Harvard
Mountaineering Club. None of us, four of his former doctoral students, ever went
climbing with him, but it is not difficult to imagine him scaling a formidable rock
face: we know of the physical fitness, the willingness to attack a mountainous
obstacle, whether literally or figuratively; the judicious attention to detail in find-
ing and reaching each hand and foothold, while not losing sight of the summit, be
it of learning or of rock. Academic work and climbing, after all, both have their
ups and downs; they are spectacularly solitary and nonetheless very dependent on
one’s colleagues and companions. And for those of us fortunate enough to have
studied with him, Bill Graham’s support and guidance were comparable to the
security of a seasoned climber’s belay. He always let us choose our ascent routes
but would never have allowed us, say, to get carried away by a metaphor.
He was exacting in his standards; he read everything carefully and was certainly
what is known as a stickler for correct grammar, syntax, citations, translations, and
transliterations. This meticulousness and attention to detail was fruitfully paired
with an open-mindedness and generosity of spirit that encouraged his students to
expand their intellectual horizons as they saw fit, be it by studying Sanskrit and
Russian or taking every opportunity to study abroad.
Both qualities are evident in Bill Graham’s scholarship: he combined traditional
Islamic studies, text-based and philologically rigorous, with the study of religion,
with all its theoretical depth and its comparativist adventures. He treated Islam as
a religious tradition, one of many, and posed questions that most Islamicists did
not pose. The dissertation and first monograph Divine Word and Prophetic Word
in Early Islam (1977) is a perfect example of this. The ostensible topic is the
ḥadīth qudsī, or “divine saying.” The overwhelming majority of the Hadith litera-
ture consists of short anecdotes of the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad
(and sometimes of his Companions). The ḥadīth qudsī is a report of something
God said, not the Prophet. This is, on the face of it, rather shocking: God’s word is
supposed to be the Qurʾan. Why would He be communicating by Hadith? What is
going on here? It is a small genre, with little or no judicial content, but its status as
revelation, coming directly from God, but not as part of the Qurʾan, is perplexing
and problematic. Muslim tradition has largely put these thorny issues to the side,
and modern scholars have followed suit, accepting the curious category without
x Preface
much questioning. In Bill’s hands, however, it becomes a nuanced exploration of
the concept of revelation in Islam, demonstrating that the ḥadīth qudsī reports are
early, and not a later attempt to create a quasi-mystical genre, and that Muslim
attitudes towards divine communication shifted significantly over the first centu-
ries of the new religion. Divine Word and Prophetic Word is one of the rare mono-
graphs that seems to be appreciated by everyone, regardless of their approach to
Islam, be they theorists of religion or hardcore philologists.
It is this broad appeal that led us and many others to Harvard, to the Commit-
tee on the Study of Religion, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations, and the Divinity School, in order to benefit from the best of both
worlds: close philological readings of ancient texts in the original languages, and
investigations into the concepts and categories that Islam shares with other reli-
gious traditions.
It is somewhat less the case today, but for decades Islamicists with religious
studies training would wring the hands, clutch their pearls, and generally lament
how the study of Islam lags behind that of other religions, how theoretical
advances go unnoticed, leaving the field understudied and underanalysed. The
more philologically oriented Islam specialists would in turn deplore the criminal
neglect of proper skills of language and textual criticism as well as the superfici-
ality of applying theories or models foreign to Muslims. The intellectual output
of Bill Graham has consistently transcended this somewhat tedious pas de deux,
addressing directly the question of how to understand Islam as a religion using
both extensive Muslim sources and the tools developed and refined in modern
academe.
Seminal articles such as “Islam in the Mirror of Ritual” (1983) and “Traditio­
nalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation” (1993), get at a fundamental ques-
tion that is also a recurrent sub-theme of Bill Graham’s work: what exactly is
“Islamic” about Islam or Muslims? Today the diversity of the Muslim world is
taken for granted, and even decades ago, scholars such as Clifford Geertz empha-
sized the need to acknowledge that all Islams are “local.” What then, is universal?
What connects and unites the community of Muslims beyond the belief in the one
God and the prophethood of Muhammad? Graham’s scholarly oeuvre never loses
sight of these fundamental questions and why we might be studying Islam in the
first place.
The back cover of the paperback edition of Beyond the Written Word: Oral
Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religions (1987) contains a masterpiece of
understatement. The blurb reads: “This book contains a lot of material that would
have been beyond the ability of ordinary students of the history of religion to
assemble.” Well, yes. This is, after all, a man whose undergraduate thesis topic
was the idea of the daemonic in the works of Euripides and Thomas Mann, and
it is easy to see his work on Islam not as a rupture with these early interests but
as a logical (and ambitious) extension of them. Graham treats religion as a mul-
tifaceted aspect of human history, a subject interesting in its own right but also
one that opens a window onto human behaviour, past and present, east and west,
high and low. The real appeal is less a refined religious studies approach to Islam
 Preface xi
than a humanistic, world-historical vision, not limited by chronology, geography,
or language. The object of study is less Islam in itself than Islam as one aspect
of human history. Bill Graham does not see the study of religion as a discipline
with its own methodologies and its own regime of guild-formation for its prac-
titioners. Since the beginning of his academic career, he has argued against the
increasing “disciplinization” of the university at large, a position he holds all the
more emphatically when it comes to the study of religion and of Islam. In his own
words:

Indeed, one of the great virtues of engaging in religious studies is that doing so
requires one to make use of virtually all other scholarly fields and disciplines
of study in the academy at one point or another. I know that this position is
not a fashionable one among those scholars who consider themselves part of
a growing wave of “religionists” in modern academia whose unique “disci-
pline” is finally coming of age and taking its rightful place in the university fir-
mament alongside the established academic “disciplines.” Nonetheless, I am
convinced that first-rate scholarship on topics in the study of the religion not
only does not need, but in fact cannot progress through a recourse to a discipli-
nary/methodological approach that is somehow special or peculiar to religious
studies. Religious studies are, or should be, relentlessly interdisciplinary by
their very nature, because if they are not automatically so, they can never do
justice to their highly variegated subject matter.1

His work on scripture, for which he is probably best known, is a logical and
felicitous result of his intellectual orientation. The study of the Muslim scripture
has largely focused on two areas: the origins of the Qurʾan and its contents, that
is, where did the Qurʾan come from and what does it say? Bill has in fact treated
such topics, in his articles on signs in the Qurʾan and, most notably, “The Earli-
est Meaning of ‘Qurʾān’ ” (1984), but the majority of his work takes a different
tack. Graham’s theme tends to be the role of scripture in Muslim life, a topic
that encompasses the rarefied intellectual traditions as well as the more popular
echelons.
The focus on scripture as a category is wonderfully broad, allowing the study
of recitation of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu sacred texts, or the cultural role of
scriptures as well as classics, so that one may discuss the influence of the Bible
or the Qurʾan, of the Odyssey or the Aeneid, on the communities that read them.
These broad, human, and global interests produced the courses on “Scripture and
Classics,” and “Literature of Journey and Quest,” as well as Beyond the Written
Word. We have already alluded to the latter’s display of vast linguistic and theore­
tical expertise; let us note also its pleasantly clear and jargon-free prose. Moreover,
Beyond the Written Word sheds light (a cliché that we nonetheless use advisedly)

1 From the “Introduction” to his Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies: Selected Writings (Burl-
ington, VT, and Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 2.
xii Preface
on elements of religious life that our hyper-literate world has difficulty perceiving.
Here and elsewhere, Graham’s conclusions are certainly not radical. They are,
however, unexpected in that they reveal things we really ought, it seems, to have
noticed already.
It is customary in this kind of volume to emphasize the scholarship and teach-
ing of the honouree, but in this case there is another aspect that we must highlight.
In soliciting contributions from friends, colleagues, and former students, we asked
especially for articles on the Qurʾan, scripture, and what it means to be Islamic, as
befits Bill’s output and his influence. To this we added, tongues largely in cheek:
“In view of Bill’s career, we will also accept articles dealing with the virtues of
academic administrative duties, but we don’t anticipate many of those.” As it hap-
pens, we did receive such a piece. Raquel M. Ukeles, now head of collections at
the National Library of Israel, wished to contribute an article about Bill’s admi­
nistrative skills, especially at the Harvard Divinity School, and how his example
has influenced her own work. This contribution eventually became an interview
with Bill and a discussion of how his administrative duties related to his scho­
larly interests and concerns. Obviously, it is something of a bidʿa in the sunna of
academic Festschriften to include something with a major contribution from the
honouree. In this case, though, we thought the deviation from standard custom
to be perfectly justified and that it would draw further attention to the (too often
unrecognized) tasks of university administration and to the importance of having
people in administrative positions who are equally implicated in scholarship and
the intellectual life of the institution.
There is more that could be said in praise of Bill’s scholarship, but we think
more needs to be said also in praise of what he did for other peoples’ scholar-
ship. Our gratitude, and that of many more colleagues and students, extends well
beyond his advising the dissertation and writing letters of recommendation. As
both mentor and administrator, Bill made our corner of Harvard a better and richer
place to work and study, and for this we are all immensely grateful.
We offer this volume in appreciation of Bill Graham’s contributions as a
scholar, a teacher and mentor, and last but definitely not least, as an administra-
tor, to show our gratitude for the thankless and invisible tasks that made a great
difference in the lives and careers of many students and scholars. His friends and
colleagues hope that retirement will allow him to continue to pursue his many
interests, intellectual and otherwise, and afford him some of the rest and relaxa-
tion he has earned.
—-The Editors
Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank Zina Maleh for her invaluable assistance in the
preparation of this volume and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Reed Col-
lege and its Stillman Drake Fund for financial support.
William A. Graham:
Vita and list of publications

Murray A. Albertson Research Professor of Middle Eastern Studies,

Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
and University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus
Harvard University

Education:
Ph.D. (1973) Harvard University, Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences, A.M. (1970) 1966–1973:
Comparative History of Religion/Islamic
Studies
B.A. summa cum laude (1966) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1961–1964, 1965–1966: Comparative Litera-
ture (Classics, German, French)
Non-degree studies Universities of London (Institute for Histori-
cal Research) and Tübingen (Orientalisches
Seminar), 1971–1972: diss. research
Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies (British
Foreign Office), Shemlan, Lebanon, 1967–1968:
intensive Arabic language
University of Göttingen, 1964–1965: German
Literature

Academic Appointments (Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and

Sciences):
Research Professor Emeritus, 2018–; Professor, 1985–2018; Sr. Lecturer, 1981–
1985; Associate Professor, 1979–1981; Asst. Professor, 1974–1979; Lecturer,
1973–1974
(For a list of administrative positions, please refer to the chapter by Raquel M.
Ukeles in the present volume.)
 William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications xv
Publications
1976 [film review] “Islam: The Prophet and the People,” Film Library Quar-
terly 9, no. 3: 55–56
1977 Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam: A Reconsideration of
the Sources, with Special Reference to the Divine Saying, or So-called
“Hadîth Qudsî”. Religion and Society, vol. 7. The Hague: Mouton and
Co. (American Council of Learned Societies. History of Religions Book
Prize, 1979)
Condensation of Academic Paper: “The Study of the Hadith in Modern
Academics: Past, Present, and Future,” in The Place of Hadith in Islam
(Proceedings of the International Seminar on Hadith in Honor of the
1200th Anniversary of Al-Bukhârî). [n.p.: Muslim Students’ Association
of North America], 29–31
1978 “Rethinking General Education at Harvard: A Humanistic Perspective,” in
The Humanities: A New Role for a New Era (Santa Barbara, CA: Educa-
tional Futures International), 58–72
1980 [book review] John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, in Journal of the
American Oriental Society 100: 137–141
[film review] “Mideast-Islam: The Unifying Force,” Film Library
Quarterly 13, no. 1: 45–46
1981 [book review] Merlin Swartz, ed. and trans., Studies on Islam, Muslim
World 71: 257–258
articles “Hadith,” “Qur’an,” “ ‘Ulama’ ” (co-authored with A.K. Rein-
hart), “Shari‘a,” “Ijma‘,” “Shafa‘a,” “al-Bukhari,” “Muslim b. al-Hajjaj,”
“Burda,” “Mawlid,” Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions, ed. Keith
Crim et al. (Nashville: Abingdon Press)
1982 “Transcendence in Islam,” in Ways of Transcendence: Insights from Major
Religions and Modern Thought, ed. Edwin Dowdy. Australian Association
for the Study of Religions, Selected Papers Series (Ed. Victor C. Hayes),
vol. 4. (Bedford Park, Australia), 7–23
“Devotional Movements and Subsequent Crystallization of Religious
Communities in Mughal India,” The Journal of Religious Studies (Patiala,
India) 10: 32–45. [1968 seminar paper printed without author’s consent]
1983 Islamfiche: Readings from Islamic Primary Sources. Ed. William A. Graham
and Marilyn R. Waldman Series I, II [microfiche text selections, with
introductions and indices]. Zug, Switzerland: Inter Documentation Com-
pany [1983–1987]
“Islam in the Mirror of Ritual,” in Islam’s Understanding of Itself, ed.
Richard G. Hovannisian and Speros Vryonis, Jr. Eighth Biennial Georgio
Levi della Vida Medal Conference Volume (Malibu, Calif.: Undena
xvi William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications
Publications), 53–71. Repr. in Gerald Hawting, ed., The Development
of Islamic Ritual (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2006),
349–367
“ ‘Those Who Study and Teach the Qur’an,’ ” in International Congress
for the Study of the Qur’an. Ser. I, ed. Anthony H. Johns (Canberra: Aus-
tralian National University), 9–28
[book review] Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’ân, in Journal of
the American Oriental Society 103: 445–447
[book review] Michael Cook, Early Muslim Dogma: A Source-Critical
Study, in Middle East Studies Association. Bulletin 17, no. 1 (July): 92–94
[Obituary review article] “In Memoriam Rudi Paret (1901–1983),”
Muslim World 73: 133–141
1984 “The Earliest Meaning of ‘Qur’ân,’ ” Die Welt des Islams 23/24: 361–377.
Reprinted in Andrew Rippin, ed., The Qur’an: Style and Contents (Brook-
field, VT and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate/Variorum, 2001) and (with correc-
tions) W.A. Graham, Islamic and Comparative Studies: Selected Writings
(2010)
1985 “Qur’ân as Spoken Word: An Islamic Contribution to the Understanding
of Scripture,” in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. Richard C.
Martin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press), 23–40, 206–215
1987 Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Reli-
gion. Cambridge (UK), New York, Melbourne, Sidney: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press (2nd edition, 1993)
1987 “Scripture,” in Mircea Eliade et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of Religion
(16 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1987), 13: 133–145; ibid., 2nd, rev. ed.,
2005
1988 [short article] “Religion in the Liberal Arts at Harvard: Profile, Committee
on the Study of Religion,” Harvard Graduate Society Newsletter (Spring),
8–10
[book review] Michael Mildenberger and Hans Vöcking, eds., Islamische
und christliche Feste, and M. Lelong, ed., L’église nous parle de l’Islam,
in Journal of Ecumenical Studies 25:2 (1988): 274–275
1990 [book review] Klaus Hock, Der Islam im Spiegel westlicher Theologie,
Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27:1: 144–145
1989 “Scripture and the History of Religion,” Bulletin of the Center for the
Study of World Religions, Harvard University 16:1 (Fall–Winter, 1989–
1990): 2–15
1990 “Koran und Hadît”, Chapter 2 of Orientalisches Mittelalter, ed. Wolfhart
Heinrichs. Vol. 5 of Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Klaus
von See, 25 vols. Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 166–185
 William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications xvii
[book review] Klaus Hock, Der Islam im Spiegel westlicher Theologie,
Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27:1: 144–145
1991 “Scriptures and Classics: An Introductory Course in Religion,” in John
B. Carman and Steven P. Hopkins, eds., Tracing Common Themes: Com-
parative Courses in the Study of Religions (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press),
179–198
1992 [book review] Gordon Newby, The Making of the Last Prophet, in History
of Religions 32.1 (August): 93–95.
1993 “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,” Journal of Com-
parative History 23 (1993): 495–522
Foreword to Kendall W. Folkert, Scripture and Community: Collected
Essays on the Jains. Ed. John E. Cort. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press/
Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, ix–xi
1994 “Das Schriftprinzip in vergleichender Sicht,” in Alma Giese and J. Chris-
toph Bürgel, eds., Gott ist Schön und Er Liebt die Schönheit/God is Beau-
tiful and He Loves Beauty, Festschrift für Annemarie Schimmel (Bern,
Berlin, etc.: Peter Lang), 209–226
[commentary] “ ‘Go in Peace?’, One Perspective on the Israel-PLO
Accord,” in “Religion & Values in Public Life: A Forum from Harvard
Divinity School”
[book review] Daniel Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam, in JES 31:1/2:
178–179
1995 “ ‘The Winds to Herald His Mercy’: Nature as Token of God’s Sover-
eignty and Grace in the Qur’an,” in Albert Blackwell, Sang Hyun Lee,
and Wayne Proudfoot, eds., Faithful Imagining [Richard R. Niebuhr Fest-
schrift] (Atlanta: Scholars Press), 19–38
1996 “Politics and Religion in Islam in Historical Perspective: Some Reflec-
tions,” in Gudrun M. Grabher, ed., Islam: Future Dimensions (International
Symposium of the Harvard Club of Austria, Vienna, 3 February 1994).
[Innsbruck], 22–33
1997 “Sharîf” [expansion and revision of 1926 EI article by C. van Arendonk],
in C. E. Bosworth et al., eds., The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition,
9: 329–337
[book review] Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam, in Journal of
Ecumenical Studies [JES] 34:2: 256–257
1998 “Andrae, Tor,” in Hans Dieter Betz et al., eds., Religion in Geschichte und
Gegenwart. Vierte Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), Vol. 1, s.v.
1999 Preface to Susan Gilson Miller, ed., In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture,
Power, and Politics in Morocco. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs,
xviii William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications
XXXI. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies and
Harvard University Press, vii–viii.
[book review] Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad, in The
Muslim World [MW] 89 (1999): p. 106
2000 Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an (associate editor, with Claude Gilliot, Wadad
Kadi, Andrew Rippin, and Jane McAuliffe, general editor). 6 vols. Leiden:
E. J. Brill [2000–2006]
“A Scholar’s Scholar: Wilfred Cantwell Smith and a Collegial Life of the
Mind,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 29, no. 2 (Summer 2000), 6–7.
“Heilige Schriften: Islam,” in Hans Dieter Betz et al., eds., Religion in
Geschichte und Gegenwart. vierte Auflage (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck),
vol. 3, s.v.
[book review] Navid Kermani, Gott ist Schön. Das ästhetische Erleben
des Koran, in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 24 (2000): 529–534
Introduction to Al-Ghazali’s Path to Sufism: His Deliverance from Error,
al-Munqidh min al-Dalal, trans. R.J. McCarthy. Louisville, KY: Fons
Vitae, 15–16
2001 “Basmalah,” in J. McAuliffe et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
(Leiden: E.J. Brill), 1:207–211
“Kanon: Islam,” in Hans Dieter Betz et al., eds., Religion in Geschichte
und Gegenwart. 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck) vol. 4, s.v.
2002 Three Faiths, One God (co-authored with Jacob Neusner and Bruce
Chilton). Leiden: E.J. Brill
“Fâtihah,” in J. McAuliffe et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
(Leiden: Brill), 2:187–192
2003 “Orality”, in J. McAuliffe et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
(Leiden: E.J. Brill), 3:584–587
2004 “Reflections on Comparative Study in Religion: ‘Scripture’ as a Case in
Point,” Tenri Journal of Religion (2004, n. 23): 49–67; Japanese trans.:
“Hikaku-shukyogaku-saiko”, Shukyo Kenkyu (Journal of Religious Stud-
ies, Japanese Association of Religious Studies) 339 (2004): 16–40
“Scripture and the Qur’an,” in J. McAuliffe et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of
the Qur’an (Leiden: Brill), 4:558–569
2006 “Recitation and Aesthetic Reception of the Qur’an” (co-authored with
Navid Kermani), in Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an, ed. Jane
McAuliffe (Cambridge, UK), 114–141
2008 [book review] Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period, in
American Historical Review, June 2008, 788–789
 William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications xix
2010 Islamic and Comparative Studies: Selected Writings, Ashgate Contempo-
rary Thinkers on Religion, gen. ed. John Hinnells. Aldershot, Hampshire,
UK: Ashgate Publishing.
“Basmalah,” in Gudrun Krämer et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam Three
(Leiden: Brill, 2007–), 156–161
“Summation” [Rice Univ. Conference on Orality and Literacy, April 2008],
in Oral Tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, special issue of Oral
Tradition, 25/1 (2010): 231–238.
2011 “Reading the Book of Nature: Reflections on ‘Natural Revelations’, an
Exhibit of Paintings by Susan Swartz,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 39.3–4:
71–74
2012 “ ‘Winged Words’: Scriptures and Classics as Iconic Texts,” in Post-
scripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, ed. E.
Castelli. Special Issue: Iconic Books and Texts, ed. James W. Watts (Shef-
field, UK: Equinox): 7–22. Print version of previous publication in Post-
scripts 6 (2010): 7–22; (online) doi: 10.1558/post.v6.7
[book review] Anne Gade, The Qur’an: An Introduction, in Journal of
Near Eastern Studies 71.2 (Oct.): 401–403
2014 “The Qur’ān as a Discourse of Signs,” in No Tapping around Philology:
A Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th Birthday.
Ed. Alireza Korangy and Daniel J. Scheffield (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz),
263–275
2015 “Light as Image and Concept in the Qur’ān and Other Early Islamic
Sources,” in Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, eds., God Is the Light of
the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art and Culture (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press), 45–59
2016 Albert M. Craig, William A. Graham, Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment,
and Frank M. Turner. The Heritage of World Civilizations. 10th rev. ed.
Prentice Hall. (sections on Middle East, Africa, Iran, India, S.E. Asia and
Central Asia by W. A. G.). [1st ed., Macmillan, 1986].
[book review] Andrew Rippin and Roberto Tottoli, eds., Books and Writ-
ten Culture of the Islamic World: Studies Presented to Claude Gilliot on
the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, in American Journal of Islamic Social
Sciences 33.2 (Spring 2016)
2017 “ ‘A Wandering Aramean was My Father:’ An Abrahamic Theme in
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scripture and Interpretation,” in Georges
Tamer, Regina Grundman, Assaad Elias Kattan, and Karl Pinggéra, eds.,
Exegetical Crossroads: Understanding Scripture in Judaism, Christianity
and Islam in the Pre-Modern Orient (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter), 9–25
xx William A. Graham: Vita and list of publications
“Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Orientalism,” in Ellen Bradshaw Aitken and
Arvind Sharma, eds., The Legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press), 85–97
“Ḥadīth Qudsī,” Gudrun Krämer et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam Three,
Part 2017–4 (Leiden: Brill, 2007-): 91–97
“ ‘Judicial Procedure and Practice during the Founding Period of Islamic
Law’, Part I Section Introduction,” in Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner
Balbale, eds., Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (Cambridge,
MA: Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School), 1–2
2018 “’Ein Gott, der sich selbst zur Barmherzigkeit verpflichtet’: Sura 6 Vers
12” in “Koran erklärt,” radio podcast, Deutschlandfunk, 3 March 2018
2019 [book review] Alexander Bevilacqua. The Republic of Arabic Letters:
Islam and the European Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2018), in The European Legacy, Journal of
ISSEI, Tel Aviv; online publication, Aug. 2019: The European
Legacy, DOI: 10.1080/10848770.2019.1653721
2020 “Revelation,” ch. 3 of Daniel W. Brown, ed., The Wiley-Blackwell Con-
cise Companion to the Hadith (Hoboken, NJ, and Chichester, W. Sussex,
UK: John Wiley & Sons), 59–74
Part I

Textual Studies on the

Qurʾan
1 The Written Torah and the
Oral Qurʾan in Pagan Mecca
Towards a New Reading
of Q 6:91
Mohsen Goudarzi

When European scholars of the early modern period were laying the foundations
for in-depth study of the Qurʾan in European languages, they drew heavily on
Muslim scholarship on the holy text. For example, Ludovico Marracci’s (1612–
1700) pioneering edition and translation of the Qurʾan featured copious references
to, and excerpts from, several works of Islamic learning, including the commen-
taries of Ibn Abī Zamanayn (d. 1008), al-Thaʿlabī (d. 1035), al-Zamakhsharī
(d. 1144), al-Bayḍāwī (d. ca. 1300), and the popular Jalālayn authored by Jalāl
al-Dīn al-Maḥallī (d. 1459) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505).1 However, over
the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western scholars gradu-
ally ceased viewing the commentaries as essential companions to the Qurʾanic
text. This development may be attributed to a variety of factors. For one, Euro-
pean scholars had increasing access to the sources on which the commentators
had drawn—such as grammatical and lexicographic texts, collections of ḥadīth
and poetry, or historiographic writings—and could thereby utilize these sources
directly instead of relying on the commentaries.2 For another, the development of
Semitic philology and the publication of myriad para-biblical and post-biblical
sources meant that the Qurʾan could be studied using new methods and sources
that had been largely unavailable to the mufassirūn. The emergence of a criti-
cal mass of Western scholarship on the Qurʾan in the nineteenth century further
sidelined the commentaries, as the former body of scholarship constituted a new
and expanding canon that came to serve as a point of departure for subsequent

1 Reinhold F. Glei and Roberto Tottoli, Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of his Latin
Translation of the Qurʾān in the Light of his Newly Discovered Manuscripts, with an Edition and
a Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Sura 18 (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2016), 32. For the sig-
nificance of Marracci’s work, see Alastair Hamilton, “After Marracci: The Reception of Ludovico
Marracci’s Edition of the Qur’an in Northern Europe from the Late Seventeenth to the Early Nine-
teenth Centuries,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20/3 (2018): 175–192.
2 This new dynamic is evident in the pioneering works of Theodore Nöldeke (Geschichte des Qorâns
[Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1860]) and Aloys Sprenger (Das Leben
und die Lehre des Moḥammad: nach bisher grösstentheils unbenutzten Quellen, 3 vols. [Berlin:
Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1861–65]).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-2
4 Mohsen Goudarzi
scholarship on the Qurʾan in the modern academy.3 As a result, historical and liter-
ary investigations of the Qurʾanic text in European languages often do not engage
the vast corpus of Muslim writings on the Qurʾan in a detailed and substantive
manner.4 Works of tafsīr and qirāʾāt (and other genres of ʿulūm al-Qurʾān) are
studied primarily to chart the history of Islamic exegesis and thought, and only
to a limited extent as conversation partners to explore the meaning of the Qurʾan.
These writings may have served as a first-stage booster for launching modern
academic scholarship on the Qurʾan, but there has not been much room for them
in the next stage of this enterprise.
Yet the imposing edifice of the Qurʾanic Sciences (ʿulūm al-Qurʾān), and in par-
ticular the many commentaries and super-commentaries on the Qurʾan as well as
works on variant readings (qirāʾāt), have much to offer the practitioners of modern
academic Qurʾanic Studies. The scholars who constructed that edifice were con-
noisseurs of Arabic literature, immersed in the Qurʾan, and sensitive readers who
spent years reflecting on the Islamic scripture. The result of their collective labour
is a vast storehouse of analysis where each individual Qurʾanic verse is consid-
ered from myriad perspectives. Through a case study, this chapter shows that deep
engagement with traditional Islamic learning can considerably enrich modern aca-
demic study of the Qurʾan and alert us to new solutions for problems that arise in
the course of understanding this text. Therefore, and as a matter of methodologi-
cal principle, any detailed study of the Qurʾanic text should remain in systematic
conversation with traditional Islamic scholarship—not simply by perusing a few
famous commentaries but by considering a broad range of works that capture some-
thing of the historical, methodological, and confessional diversity of this tradition.

The puzzle
According to an early report, a Medinan Jewish rabbi named Mālik b. al-Ṣayf
once came to Mecca to challenge the Prophet Muhammad by asking him certain
questions.5 Knowing Mālik’s polemical intention, the Prophet turned the tables
on him and asked, “I adjure you by God, do you find [written] in the Torah that
God despises fat scholars (al-ḥabr al-samīn)?”6 Mālik, himself a corpulent man,
responded in the affirmative.7 The Prophet then brought home his point: “You

3 Joseph Horovitz’s Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter & Co., 1926) already
exemplifies this trend.
4 Studies that do examine the commentaries often limit their consultation to a few celebrities (such
as al-Ṭabarī, al-Zamakhsharī, al-Rāzī, or the Jalālayn) who hardly represent the breadth and rich-
ness of Muslim engagement with the Qurʾan.
5 In different sources, Mālik’s patronymic appears both with and without the definite article and is
sometimes given as Ḍayf instead of Ṣayf (as noted by Ibn Hishām in Sīra, ed. Muṣṭaf ā al-Saqqā
et al., 2 vols., 2nd ed. [Cairo: Muṣṭaf ā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1955], 1:514).
6 The phrase “I adjure you by God” (anshuduka llāha) appears in other stories in which the Prophet
confronts the Jews of Yathrib. See, for example, Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 1:543, 1:545–546, and 1:565.
7 The alleged quotation from the Torah is reminiscent of Psalm 78:27–31, which relates how God
fed the Israelites in the desert and then, because of their ingratitude, became angry and killed those
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 5
are a fat scholar! You have grown fat on the religious dues you consume (fa-qad
saminta min maʾkalatika).”8 The Prophet’s pungent remark caused the bystanders
to burst into laughter, much to Mālik’s chagrin. Then, attempting to neutralize the
Torah passage used against him, the incensed Mālik declared that “God has sent
down nothing to a human being!” When Medina’s Jewish community heard about
Mālik’s shocking repudiation of the Torah, they removed him from his position of
leadership (riʾāsa) and appointed another man—Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf—in his place.9
Nothing would seem more perplexing than a Jewish rabbi renouncing the Torah,
but this story serves to resolve a similarly perplexing Qurʾanic passage, namely,
the 91st verse of Sūrat al-Anʿām. The text of this verse, in the now-dominant read-
ing of Ḥafṣ from ʿᾹṣim, runs as follows:

A. They did not regard God with the regard due to Him when they said, “God
has sent down nothing to a human being.”
B. Say, “Who sent down the book that Moses brought as a light and guidance for
people?
C. You make it into documents (qarāṭīs) that you display, while you conceal
much [of it].
D. And you were taught what you and your fathers did not know.”
E. Say, “God!” Then leave them to play at their vain discourse.10

The verse opens by criticizing those who claim that “God has sent down nothing
to a human being,” a claim that seems to fit the Prophet’s pagan opponents. How-
ever, to rebut this claim, the verse adduces the precedent of the Torah (“the book

of them who were fat (mishmannēhem). See also Deuteronomy 32:15, which criticizes the Israel-
ites in the following terms: “Jacob ate his fill; Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You grew fat, bloated,
and gorged! He abandoned God who made him, and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation” (NRSV
translation). The theme of obesity also appears in the Talmud, in particular with reference to Rabbi
Elʿazar, son of Rabbi Shimʿon, and Rabbi Ishmael, son of Rabbi Yose, who were so fat that, when
they stood face to face, “an ox could walk between them [presumably under their bellies] and
not touch them” (b. Bava Metsia 84a). Both rabbis collaborated with the Roman authorities by
handing over Jewish tax evaders, an activity for which they were criticized. For the ambivalent
estimation of both figures and the significance of their bodies, see Daniel Boyarin, “Literary Fat
Rabbis: On the Historical Origins of the Grotesque Body,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 1/4
(1991): 551–584, which contains a translation of Bava Metsia 83a–85a (579–584). I thank Shari
Lowin for this reference.
8 According to an exegetical account, Medina’s Jewish leaders collected a religious tax called
maʾkala from their flock, and they opposed the Prophet because they were not willing to give
up this privilege. For an analysis of this account, see Morteza Karimi-Nia, “The Jews’ Annual
Maʾkala: Analysis of an Exegetical Report in Ancient Shīʿī and Sunnī Sources” (Persian),
Pazhūhesh-hā-ye Qurʾān va Hadīs 44/2 (2011–12): 119–140. On the meaning of maʾkala, see in
particular ibid., 121–122 n. 2.
9 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr al-Samarqandī al-musammā Baḥr al-ʿulūm, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad
Muʿawwaḍ et al., 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1993), 1: 500–501.
10 My rendition takes into account a number of translations, including those of Ali Quli Qarai and
The Study Quran.
6 Mohsen Goudarzi
that Moses brought”) and reminds its addressees that “you make it [the Torah]
into documents that you display, while you conceal much.” Given that the written
Torah had a prominent role in Jewish learning and piety, the verse’s rebuttal sug-
gests that it addresses the Jews. But how could the Torah’s adherents have denied
the possibility of divine revelation? The tale of Mālik’s confrontation with the
Prophet provides a concrete answer to this question: it was one Jewish person who
made this denial, in a fit of rage, and he was duly rebuked both by the Qurʾan and
his compatriots for such a blasphemous assertion.
In fact, the commentaries provide different versions of this tale, or different
stories altogether, to explain the revelation of Q 6:91. According to one account,
it was not the Prophet but rather ʿUmar who confronted Mālik, the exchange hap-
pened in Medina rather than Mecca, and the issue was not the Torah’s condemna-
tion of gluttonous scholars but its alleged references to the Prophet Muhammad.
When ʿUmar insisted on the existence of such references, Mālik became angry—
presumably on the assumption that he knew ʿUmar was right—and thus declared
that “God has sent down nothing to a human being.”11 Another report claims that
the Jewish opponent was one Finḥāṣ (b. ʿᾹzūrāʾ), who had claimed that “God has
sent down nothing to Muhammad.”12 Other authorities attributed such a denial to
the Jews in general, or to both Jews and Christians.13
Colourful as they may be, the various stories associated with Q 6:91 seem to
be exegetical inventions rather than historical incidents. In fact, one wonders
if Mālik is merely a literary figure rather than a historical character, as there is
no agreement in the sources about the basic facts of his life.14 We are thus still
left with the puzzling character of Q 6:91, which seems addressed partly to the
pagans and partly to the Jews. Some scholars do not discuss this puzzle but simply
declare that the verse addresses the Jews, presumably judging that the indications

11 For this version, see Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān, ed. ʿAbdallāh Maḥmūd
Shiḥāta, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 2002), 1: 574–575. According to this ver-
sion also, Mālik’s blasphemous statement cost him his position of leadership.
12 Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin
al-Turkī, 26 vols. (Giza: Dār Hijr, 2001), 9:394. For another polemical exchange involving Finḥāṣ,
see Ibn Hishām, al-Sīra, 1:558–559.
13 al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 9:395–396.
14 For example, Ibn Isḥāq counts Mālik as a member of the Banū Qaynuqāʿ (Sīra, 1:514), a tradi-
tion of ʿIkrima in al-Ṭabarī’s commentary holds that Mālik was from the Banū Qurayẓa (Jāmiʿ
al-bayān, 9:394), while another tradition of ʿIkrima in al-Samarqandī’s commentary implies that
Mālik belonged to the Banū al-Naḍīr (Baḥr al-ʿulūm, 1:440, ad Q 5:45). Moreover, in the exegeti-
cal literature Mālik’s role is that of the prototypical Jewish adversary, whose stubborn resistance to
the Prophet occasions a number of Qurʾanic revelations. According to Ibn Isḥāq, Q 2:100, Q 5:68,
and Q 9:30 were sent down about Mālik or a group of Jews to which he belonged (see Ibn Hishām,
Sīra, 1:547–548, 1:568, and 1:570, respectively). Muqātil mentions Mālik in relation to a greater
number of verses: Q 2:1–5 (Tafsīr, 1:84), Q 2:76 (1:118), Q 2:100–101 (1:126), Q 2:135 (1:141),
Q 3:23 (1:268), Q 3:72 (1:284), Q 3:78 (1:286), Q 3:110 (1:295), Q 4:46 (1:377), Q 5:18 (1:464),
Q 5:41–48 (1:475–483), Q 8:55 (2:122), Q 12:7 (2:319), Q 59:11 (4:280), and Q 76:1 (4:522).
Other verses connected to Mālik in the commentaries are Q 3:183 (Baḥr al-ʿulūm, 1:270) and 5:51
(al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān, 4:75).
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 7
to this effect are stronger than the countervailing cues. In particular, the propo-
nents of this reading highlight the verse’s reference to the production and use of
the Torah in written form, which seems to rule out the possibility of pagans as its
addressees.15 Consequently, because critical discourse with the Jews seems to fit
the Medinan context rather than the Meccan one, these scholars consider Q 6:91
to be a later insertion into an originally Meccan sura.16 This solution thus involves
“chopping up” the sura, to quote a memorable phrase from Charles Torrey.17
Others have opted for a more surgical chopping, suggesting that only a specific
part of this verse—the phrase that seems to address the Jews—is a later addition.
For example, in Richard Bell’s view, the phrase “you make it into documents that
you display, while you conceal much [of it]” was not part of the original verse but
was inserted after the “complete break with the Jews.”18 Régis Blachère takes a
similar position, noting that the phrase “say, ‘who sent down the book that Moses
brought as a light and guidance for the people?’ ” must have been originally fol-
lowed immediately by its answer, namely, “say, ‘God!’ ”19 In this view, the verse
initially addressed the Meccan pagans and their denial of revelation but was later
updated to reflect the Prophet’s displeasure with Medinan Jews’ handling of the
Torah.20
Another option is to argue that the entire verse addresses the Prophet’s pagan
opponents. The late Patricia Crone defended this possibility in one of her last
articles, which to my knowledge offers the most extensive analysis of this verse in

15 See Nӧldeke Theodor and Friedrich Schwally, Geschichte des Qorāns (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1909),
1:161, whose remarks are echoed by Tilman Nagel, Medinensiche Einschübe in mekkanischen
Suren, 24 and Nicolai Sinai, Fortschreibung und Auslegung, 113. Cf. Parvaneh Karimzadeh,
Tafsīr-e Ravān-e Sūra-ye Anʿām (Tehran & Qom: Dār al-Fikr, 2004), 106–108.
16 See the three references in the previous footnote.
17 “The Koran is a true corpus vile, no one cares how much it is chopped up. The Arabs themselves
have been the worst choppers” (Charles Cutler Torrey, The Jewish Foundation of Islam [New
York: Jewish Institute of Religion, 1933], 92). Needless to say, Torrey was not fond of committing
such textual violence.
18 A Commentary on the Qur’ān, ed. C. E. Bosworth and M. E. J. Richardson, 2 vols. (Manchester:
The Victoria University of Manchester, 1991), 1:197.
19 Le Coran (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1966), 162 n. 91. Similarly, Muḥammad al-Bahī
suggests that the phrase that comes between the question and its answer addresses the Jews (Tafsīr
Sūrat al-Anʿām [n.p.: Dār al-Fikr, 1974], 83–86). However, he does not claim that this phrase was
added later. Rather, al-Bahī considers it to be a parenthetical statement (jumla muʿtariḍa), i.e., a
case of the Qurʾan turning to the Jews in the midst of a conversation with the pagans (ibid., 86).
As for the phrase “you were taught what you and your fathers did not know,” Bahī believes that it
refers to the Torah, Bell seems to consider it as a reference to the revelations received by Jewish
prophets, and Blachère suggests that it may refer to Talmudic teachings.
20 Against this choice, Rudi Paret maintains that the verse displays “a general cohesion—albeit not
a strictly logical one—in such a way that it can hardly be considered a mere combination of dis-
parate pieces” (Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993], 147).
Paret acknowledges that it is difficult to discern the verse’s addressees but does not declare a final
verdict.
8 Mohsen Goudarzi
secondary scholarship.21 To Crone, the apparent contradiction of this verse stems
from misconstruing the pagans’ religious beliefs. Instead of being idol worship-
pers who denied the world to come, in Crone’s view the Prophet’s opponents (the
mushrikūn) were biblically informed monotheists, many of whom also believed
in resurrection and final judgement. Indeed, Q 6:91 serves as a crucial witness
for Crone’s theory because it shows that the mushrikūn “were in the habit of cop-
ying [Mosaic revelations] on papyrus sheets.”22 According to Crone, the verse
accuses the mushrikūn of being inconsistent or hypocritical because they reject
the Prophet by claiming that “God has sent down nothing to a human being,”
even though they believe in the revelations of Moses. Crone concludes, therefore,
that “there can be no doubt that the polytheists were, or at least included, fol-
lowers of Moses.”23 Though drastically different from the common conception of
the mushrikūn, Crone’s conclusions and her analysis of this verse are referenced
sympathetically or adopted wholesale in some important recent publications.24

21 Another scholar who considers the verse as addressing the pagans is Ṭāhā Jābir al-ʿAlwānī (Tafsīr
Sūrat al-Anʿām [Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2012], 96–98. Arthur Jeffery seems to have the same opinion
(The Qur’ān as Scripture [New York: R. F. Moore, 1952], 28). However, neither al-ʿAlwānī nor Jeffery
explains how the verse could accuse Meccan pagans of writing and concealing Mosaic revelations.
22 “Angels versus Humans as Messengers of God: The View of the Qurʾānic Pagans,” in The Qurʾānic
Pagans and Related Matters: Collected Studies in Three Volumes, ed. Patricia Crone (Leiden &
Boston: Brill, 2016), vol. 1, 111. Crone surmises that these revelations may have been “some apoc-
alyptic book of Moses,” much of which the mushrikūn would have tried to hide “on the grounds that
it was esoteric knowledge” (ibid., 114). She bases this claim on a suggestion of Haggai Ben-Sham-
mai (“Ṣuḥuf in the Qurʾān—a Loan Translation for ‘Apocalypses’,” in Exchange and Transmission
across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism and Science in the Mediterranean, ed. H. Ben-
Shammai et al. [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2013], 1–15). However,
Ben Shammai’s proposal is specifically about the ṣuḥuf attributed to Moses (and Abraham), not his
kitāb (which appears in Q 6:91). It seems more likely that the verse has the Torah in mind.
23 “Angels versus Humans,” 114 In a later publication, Crone suggested that “both [the Prophet] and
the pagans who opposed him had grown up as God-fearers” because, according to Crone, they both
accepted the biblical God and respected the authority of His previous adherents, particularly the
Jews (“Pagan Arabs as God-Fearers,” in Hanna Siurua (ed.), The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related
Matters, 3 vols. [Leiden: Brill, 2016], 315–339, quotation at 338.). In my view, a more suitable
candidate for identification as God-fearers would be the enigmatic Ṣābiʾūn (mentioned in Q 2:62,
5:69, and 22:17), whose name may reflect the Greek term sébas (fear, awe) or constructs such as
theosebeís or sebómenoi (God-fearers). It is worth noting that, by the evidence of inscriptions,
the term sébas seems to have entered the religious vocabulary of South Arabia in Late Antiquity
(Christian Robin, “The Judaism of the Ancient Kingdom of Ḥimyar in Arabia,” in Gavin McDowell
et al. (eds), Diversity and Rabbinization: Jewish Texts and Societies Between 400 and 1,000 CE
[Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2001], 224–5).
24 For example, Nicolai Sinai offers the following remarks in discussing the mushrikūn: “As Patri-
cia Crone has highlighted, certain Quranic verses even seem to presuppose that the Associators
acknowledged the existence of divinely sent ‘messengers’ (rusul) and of a scripture associated
with Moses (see Q 6:91 and 6:124)” (The Qur’an: A Historical-critical Introduction [Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2017], 69). Similarly, in his discussion of Q 6:91, Gabriel Reynolds
summarizes the crux of Crone’s analysis and adds the following statement: “The reference to
the Qurʾān’s opponents’ display of ‘parchments’ with Moses’s scripture implies that they are not
pagans but likely Jews” (The Qurʾān and the Bible: Text and Commentary [New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2018], 235). Still, following Rudi Paret, Reynolds notes that this explanation
seems inconsistent with the verse’s beginning, “which seems to address not Jews but those who
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 9
The solution
We thus seem to have three problematic options when it comes to Q 6:91: 1) it
addresses the Jews but paints them, with excessive polemical licence, as deniers
of divine revelation; 2) it addresses the pagans, except for one phrase (“you make
it into documents. . .”) that concerns the Jews and was added later with little
regard to the coherence of the text; and 3) it addresses the pagans and thereby
shows that they were connoisseurs of biblical writings. There is, however, a fourth
and better option, and it is to a discussion of this option that I now turn.
The main reason for deeming the verse either entirely or partly addressed to
the Jews is the phrase “you make it into documents that you display, while you
conceal much [of it],” for which the Jews appear to be the most likely audience.
However, it is crucial to recognize that an alternative reading of this phrase is
possible: its three imperfect verbs can be read in the third person instead of the
second person, yielding “they make it into documents that they display, while they
conceal much [of it]” (yajʿalūnahu qarāṭīsa yubdūnahā wa-yukhfūna kathīran).
In fact, this reading is attested in the qirāʾāt literature for a number of authori-
ties, including two of the seven canonical readers, namely, the Meccan Ibn Kathīr
(d. 120/738) and the Basran Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/770).25 This reading
eliminates the apparent shift in the target audience of this verse, and makes it
possible to read the verse as addressing the pagans in its entirety. Hence, the fol-
lowing logical structure emerges for the verse: it criticizes the pagans for denying
divine–human communication, adduces the Mosaic kitāb as a well-known exam-
ple of such communication, and notes that the Torah’s guardians write it down in
separate documents. The purpose of this latter statement may be to note that, at
least in its present form and for practical purposes, the Torah is fragmented (into
separate scrolls?) and of limited availability to outsiders, and thus hardly superior
to the Prophet’s piecemeal and oral revelations.
The character of Sūrat al-Anʿām as a whole corroborates the pagan hypoth-
esis. As noted earlier, this sura is generally considered Meccan because it largely
focuses on criticizing the pagans’ beliefs, customs, and conduct towards the
Prophet. For example, the sura notes with disapproval the fact that the pagans
associate partners with God (v. 19), describe the Prophet’s teaching as “fables of

reject entirely the possibility of revelation” (ibid.). Cf. Reynold’s discussion of this verse in Le
Coran des historiens, ed. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and Guillaume Dye, 3 vols. (Paris: Les
éditions de Cerf, 2019), 2:253.
25 ʿAbdallaṭīf Muḥammad al-Khaṭīb, Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt, 11 vols. (Damascus: Dār Saʿd al-Dīn, A.H.
1422), 2:484. Because this reading is attested for readers who have attained canonical status, it
does not need to be characterized as an emendation per se. However, whether one’s preferred
reading represents a significant departure from tradition or not, the basic process of choosing one
reading over another (or others) remains the same. On emendations to the Qurʾanic text, see Devin
J. Stewart, “Notes on Medieval and Modern Emendations of the Qur’ān,” in The Qur’ān in Its
Historical Context, ed. Gabriel S. Reynolds (London & New York: Routledge, 2008), 225–248;
Behnam Sadeghi, “Criteria for Emending the Text of the Qurʾān,” in Law and Tradition in Classi-
cal Islamic Thought: Studies in Honor of Professor Hossein Modarressi, ed. Michael Cook et al.
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 21–41.
10 Mohsen Goudarzi
the ancients” (v. 25), reject the resurrection (v. 29), demand that the Prophet bring
miracles (v. 37), mock those of their community who have joined the Prophet’s
movement (v. 53), and of course reject the Prophet’s revelations.26 By contrast, the
sura favourably compares the ahl al-kitāb with the pagans, portraying the former
as a positive counterweight to the latter. For example, it notes that “those who
were given the kitāb recognize it [i.e. the Qurʾan] as they recognize their sons”
(v. 20), assures the Prophet that “those to whom We gave the kitāb know that
it [i.e. the Qurʾan] is truly sent down from your Lord” (v. 114), and urges the
Prophet to follow the guidance that has been previously given to the ahl al-kitāb
(vv. 89–90).27 The sura contains only one negative hint about the ahl al-kitāb,
when it notes that God imposed extensive dietary restrictions on the Jews because
of their transgression (v. 146). However, even here the criticism is not directed at
the Jews but serves the purpose of rejecting the pagans’ similarly restrictive food
taboos. The general tenor of the sura thus creates a presumption that the polemic
of verse 91 should concern the pagans.28

“Say: who sent down the scripture that Moses brought?”

The main outstanding issue is the fact that Q 6:91 mentions the Torah to prove
the possibility of divine communication with humans, even though the pagans
did not accept the Qurʾanic view of the Torah in the first place. However, this
problem is not difficult to surmount. First, in appealing to the Torah the verse
may have responded to some of the pagans’ prior criticisms of the Prophet. The
beginning of the sūra seems to allude to such a criticism, for it notes that “had
We sent down to you a scripture in a document (kitāban fī qirṭāsin) so that they
would have touched it with their own hands, the unbelievers would have said:
‘this is nothing but manifest sorcery!’ ” (v. 7) (emphasis added).29 From this verse,
it appears that the pagans had sought to undermine the Prophet by noting that his
prophetic modus operandi diverged from the pattern that he himself had claimed
for previous messengers: his revelations were oral and piecemeal, whereas previ-
ous scriptures, most notably the Torah, were sent down in writing and wholesale
by the Qurʾan’s own account (Q 7:145). Indeed, as the Qurʾan relates elsewhere,
the unbelievers had asked, “why has not the Quran been sent down to him all at
once?” (Q 25:32). In an apparent rebuttal to such a criticism, Q 6:7 notes that even

26 For an analysis of the structure of the sūra, see Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanis-
chen Suren (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 290f.
27 I have argued elsewhere that this verse concerns the Children of Israel as a whole, not their proph-
ets alone (“The Second Coming of the Book: A Reconsideration of Qur’anic Scripturology and
Prophetology” [PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2018], 181–182).
28 It is also worth noting that the statement “they did not regard God with the regard due to Him”
appears only two other times in the Qurʾan (22:74, 39:67), both of which concern the pagans’ asso-
ciation of other deities with God. As for categorical denial of revelation to humans, it is attributed
elsewhere to a rebellious nation of the past (Q 36:15).
29 Similarly, verse 124 criticizes the pagans in the following manner: “when a sign comes to them,
they say, ‘We will not believe until we are given the like of what was given to God’s messengers.’ ”
See also verses 109 and 111.
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 11
if the Prophet had brought the pagans a complete heavenly revelation in palpable
physical form, they still would have rejected it as malevolent magic. Such an
exchange may stand behind Q 6:91, which condemns the pagans’ denial of divine
revelation to humans by noting that the very Torah they had previously used to
deride the Qurʾan was sent down by God to a human being.
That the pagans could have used the Torah in such a utilitarian manner, i.e.,
without believing in it and for the express purpose of denigrating the Qurʾan, finds
corroboration in Q 28:48. According to this verse, some of those who rejected the
Prophet said: “why has he not been given the like of what Moses was given?”
Perhaps they meant that Moses received physical tablets from God, whereas the
Prophet claimed to receive merely verbal messages.30 The verse responds: “did
they not disbelieve also in what Moses was given before? They said: ‘A pair
of sorceries supporting each other.’ And they said: ‘we disbelieve in all.’ ” The
pagans wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They would argue that they can-
not accept the Prophet as a divine messenger unless he performs miracles and
brings an inscribed book from heaven, like “what Moses was given before.” Yet,
the pagans also rejected the Torah and termed the Qurʾan and the Torah as “a pair
of sorceries supporting each other.”31 Their real problem, therefore, was with the
contents of these revelations, not their form or mode of delivery.
It might still be objected that even if the pagans had compared the Torah and the
Qurʾan to paint the latter as deficient, they had no genuine respect for the Torah,
so Q 6:91 could not have cited it as a precedent that establishes the possibility
of divine revelation. This objection misses the character of polemical discourse,
which is generally meant not to offer airtight logical arguments but to provide
effective ripostes. If the pagans could weaponize the Torah without believing in
it, the Prophet could certainly turn that weapon against them. Moreover, Q 6:91
may be drawing attention to the Torah not because the pagans believed in it but
because it had social capital and prestige by virtue of the groups of Jews and
Christians who revered the Torah as divine revelation. In this case, adducing the
Torah shows that the Prophet is not making a novel or outlandish claim. By claim-
ing to receive revelations, he is asking his community to accept a phenomenon
that is acknowledged by multitudes of other peoples. If the pagans reject the Torah

30 The pagans thus seem to have engaged in a form of argument that Muslim theologians later knew
under the rubric of ilzām (lit. compulsion or necessary admission), through which an opponent was
shown how some of his/her own premises or claims undermine the untenability of his/her posi-
tion. For the topic at hand, the Prophet’s relevant claim would be the similarity of his mission and
revelation to those of Moses, while the purportedly untenable position would be the fragmentary
and oral character of his Qurʾanic revelations.
31 Crone claims that this phrase should be attributed not to the Prophet’s contemporaries but to the
Egyptians who rejected Moses (“Angels versus Humans,” 112). However, several factors under-
mine this claim. The strongest one is the verse that immediately follows (which is absent from
Crone’s discussion): “say: ‘then bring a scripture from God that gives better guidance than these
two [i.e. the Torah and the Qurʾan], if you are truthful” (28:49). Clearly, this is a response to the
preceding description of the Torah and the Qurʾan as two sorceries. Therefore, it must have been
the Prophet’s opponents who used this description (Q 28:48). It follows that they did not believe
in the Torah.
12 Mohsen Goudarzi
and the possibility of God communicating with humans, they are the odd ones out,
not the Prophet and his followers.32
In fact, it is abundantly clear from the Qurʾan that both the Prophet and the
pagans positioned themselves as representing the well-trodden path and portrayed
the other as abnormal and deviant. In rejecting the Prophet’s advocacy for strict
monotheism, for example, the pagans claimed that “we have not heard of this in
the last creed” (Q 38:7), a likely reference to Christianity and its dominant Trini-
tarian theology. The pagans did not have to be Christians to make this point. The
Qurʾan, in turn, often notes that the Prophet’s mission is nothing out of the ordi-
nary, particularly by relating the stories of previous messengers and their strug-
gles against rebellious communities. As one Qurʾanic verse puts it, “say: I am not
a novelty among the messengers” (Q 46:9). That the pagans did not believe in
Qurʾanic accounts of the past, or that they did not think that God had destroyed
previous nations for rejecting their warners, did not render the Qurʾan’s recount-
ing of these stories pointless. What mattered was that a critical mass of people,
arguably the majority of the Near East’s population, accepted biblical stories and
revered their heroes, a fact that could validate the Prophet’s mission and scripture.

“They make it into documents”

Having discussed the utility of invoking the Torah in an argument with the pagans,
it is worth probing the verse’s description of the Torah’s material form as “docu-
ments that they [i.e. its guardians] display, while they conceal much.” This state-
ment seems to complement the assertion, made earlier in the sura (in v. 7), that
the pagans would persist in their unbelief even if God sent down a heavenly docu-
ment to the Prophet. By making this assertion, the sura might be responding to the
pagans’ unfavourable comparison of the Prophet’s Qurʾanic revelations with the
Torah, as the former was being delivered gradually and orally while the latter was
given to Moses in complete and written form. If so, then verse 91 can be seen as
providing a further response to the pagans’ comparison by noting that although
the entire Torah was given to Moses at once, it is now practically fragmented and
only partially available to its non-adherents. It is not a single document (qirṭās,
mentioned in v. 7) but divided into a multiplicity of documents (qarāṭīs, the plu-
ral of qirṭās), and it is furthermore not fully accessible, because its guardians
“display [some of these documents] while they conceal much.” Use the Torah as
they might for their polemical purposes, the Prophet’s people have no meaningful
access to it. However, God has offered them access to the same divine knowledge

32 There are other Qurʾanic passages that pose a question to the Prophet’s opponents (and sometimes
answer it), without necessarily indicating that the opponents agree with the answer (e.g. Q 7:32,
34:24). The point of these passages seems to be to corner the opponents into two equally unpleas-
ant positions: either they agree with the Qurʾanic answer, in which case they must admit that their
prior statements or actions are glaringly inconsistent with their own admission; or they disagree
with the Qurʾanic answer, in which case they are denying an evident or widely recognized reality.
In Q 6:91, that reality is the Torah’s status as divine revelation to Moses.
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 13
through the Prophet’s revelations: “you were taught what you and your fathers
did not know.”33
That verses 7 and 91 of Sūrat al-Anʿām are the only Qurʾanic texts to use the
term qirṭās and its plural form strengthens the case for their connection and com-
plementarity. These texts may be seen as a one-two polemical punch against the
pagans, the first verse declaring that a heavenly writing like the Mosaic tablets
would have been wasted on the pagans as a result of their obstinacy, and the sec-
ond verse asserting that the vaunted character of the original Torah as an acces-
sible heavenly document has been diminished due to its fragmentary mode of
storage and its limited availability to outsiders such as the pagans.34
The general thrust of verse 91’s comment about the Torah may be easy to grasp,
but its precise meaning is less evident. What does Q 6:91 mean by speaking of the
production of the Torah in the form of qarāṭīs? And what is the import of claim-
ing that the Torah’s guardians show these qarāṭīs and yet also conceal much?
The term qirṭās, which so far I have translated as “document,” seems to derive
ultimately from the Greek χάρτης (perhaps through Aramaic or Syriac intermedi-
aries), which can denote a sheet of papyrus or parchment, or refer more generally
to a document or textual record as a material object.35 Of course, the etymology
of qirṭās does not establish what the term meant in the Qurʾan’s Arabic idiom.
Did it refer to a specific material (parchment or papyrus) or form (sheet, scroll, or
codex), or could it signify documents regardless of their particular physical prop-
erties? Informed speculation is the best we can do at this stage, and for this pur-
pose we need to take into account the material form of the Bible in Late Antiquity.
Scrolls of parchment were the preferred form for the production of biblical
books in ancient Jewish communities. As for the Torah proper (the Pentateuch),
it appears that in earlier times its contents were divided into five, or at least more
than one, scrolls.36 For example, partial scrolls of the Torah seem to have been the

33 Cf. Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses addresses the Israelites about the blessing of Manna, “with
which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted” (NRSV).
34 Such an estimation of the present conditions of the Torah would be somewhat reminiscent of John
Chrysostom’s critique of the arks used in synagogues: “what sort of ark [kibotos] is it that the Jews
now have, where we find no propitiatory, no tables of the law, no holy of holies, no veil, no high
priest, no incense, no holocaust, no sacrifice, none of the other things that made the ark of old
solemn and august?” (Against the Jews 6.7.2 = Patrologia Graeca 48.914; cited and discussed in
Shaye J.D. Cohen, “Pagan and Christian Evidence on the Ancient Synagogue,” in The Synagogue
in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine [Philadelphia: American School of Oriental Research, 1987],
159–181, at 164).
35 See Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938),
235–236. See also G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961),
1519 (column b); Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine
Period (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990), 269 (s.v. karṭīs/qarṭīs); idem, A Diction-
ary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan
University Press, 2002), 1039 (s.v. qarṭāsā); J. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary:
Founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), 519
(s.v. qarṭīsā).
36 Indeed, the Greek noun teuchos (the second part of pentateuchos, “Pentateuch”) “first designates
the box or cylinder containing the scroll, and second, by extension, its contents—that is, the
14 Mohsen Goudarzi
norm at Qumran.37 There is little documentary evidence about the Jewish bible
from Late Antiquity. However, the scroll found in the En-Gedi Synagogue, which
seems to date from the third or fourth century C.E., begins with the opening verses
of Leviticus. Whether or not it included Numbers and Deuteronomy, therefore, it
did not contain Genesis or Exodus, and was thus not a complete Torah scroll.38
Such partial scrolls, which could remain in circulation for centuries, were prob-
ably available in the Qurʾanic milieu.39 Thus, if we understand qirṭās as a scroll,
Q 6:91 may refer to the practice of writing the Torah in separate scrolls. Because
each scroll contained only part of the Torah, it was incomplete; therefore, when it
was opened up for reading, it did not provide access to the entire Torah, some of
which was stored away in other scrolls and thus remained unavailable. That may
explain why the verse describes the Torah’s guardians as “mak[ing] it into docu-
ments [or scrolls] that they display, while they conceal much.”40
Another possibility is for qarāṭīs to signify sheets of papyrus or parchment. In
that case, “they make [the Torah] into documents [or sheets]” may have one of
the following three significations. First, this phrase may refer to the multiplicity
inherent in large scrolls (whether of the entire Torah or a part of it), namely, the
fact that they comprise a number of separate sheets that are sewn or otherwise
connected together. In this scenario, “they make it into documents [or sheets]”
may not be a criticism but a factual statement that highlights the underlying frag-
mentation of the apparently whole and uninterrupted scroll. If so, then “they dis-
play [these sheets] while they conceal much” might refer to the fact that reading
from a Torah scroll in the synagogue did not involve opening up the scroll com-
pletely. Rather, most of the scroll remained rolled up, with only a small portion
being visible—often a few columns of text, corresponding to one or at most a few
sheets.41 Moreover, apart from occasions that required reading from the scrolls,

‘scroll.’ So, Pentateuch means ‘five books’ or, more specifically, ‘five scrolls’ ” (Jean Louis Ska,
Introduction to Reading the Pentateuch [University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2006], 1).
37 Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts from the Judean Desert
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 75ff.
38 Michael Segal et al., “An Early Leviticus Scroll from En-Gedi: Preliminary Publication,” Textus
26/1 (2016): 29–58, esp. 33–34.
39 Menahem Haran, “Torah and Bible Scrolls in the First Centuries of the Christian Era” (Hebrew),
Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 10 (1990): 93–106. According
to this article’s English abstract, “most of the Torah scrolls in the Talmudic period were of small
size, comprising as they did only one book of the Pentateuch.” Haran argues that “it was only after
the Babylonian Talmud was completed that the reading in the synagogue service from big scrolls
of Torah became the norm.” Scrolls containing the entire Torah are preferred in b. Bava Batra,
13b–14a and Gittin 60a, as well as in the post-Talmudic tractate Soferim, esp. chapter 3.
40 The Babylonian Talmud (Gittin 60a) poses the question of whether the Torah’s proper material
form should reflect its original delivery, about which it mentions two theories: 1) that the Torah
was given, presumably from Moses to the Israelites, “scroll by scroll” (megillāh megillāh), sug-
gesting that he would write down each new book of the Torah after teaching the previous one, or
2) that the Torah was given at once in its entirety (ḥtūmāh). The discussion considers various pos-
sibilities but does not deliver a final verdict.
41 According to Tractate Sefer Torah, 3:7, “Not more than four columns of the Torah scroll may
be unrolled [at one time during the reading of the lection]” (The Minor Tractates of the Talmud,
translated into English with notes, glossary, and indices under the editorship of A. Cohen, 2 vols.
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 15
they had layers of protection—often wrapped in a cloth mantle (mitpaḥat), placed
inside an ark, and nestled in a Torah shrine.42 Perhaps the Qurʾanic phrase under
consideration hints at such measures and thereby casts Jewish communities as
overly protective or secretive guardians of their scriptural heritage.
Second, Q 6:91 may contain a veiled criticism of the codex form as fragmented
and unreliable, presumably in contrast to the unitary scroll. That is, “they make it
into documents [or sheets/folios]” may refer to the production of the Torah in the
form of a codex, which comprises a number of originally separate quires (gather-
ings of folios). While codices tend to be easier to navigate than scrolls, they can
also be seen as more fragmented and prone to modification, especially if their
individual quires are not permanently bound together. Therefore, when this verse
declares that “they display [the sheets] while they conceal much,” it might be
claiming that what is presented as the complete Torah is in fact incomplete, with
many of its leaves missing.43 Third and finally, the verse might concern the practice
of writing down Rabbinic teachings in private codices. Even though the Rabbis
conceptualized their learning as the Oral Torah, they did commit this learning to
writing. However, it appears that they preferred to use the codex form for that
purpose, precisely to maintain its distinction from the Written Torah, which was
associated with the scroll.44 The general preference of the Rabbis not to share the
Oral Torah, then, may lie behind the verse’s reference to their concealment of the
Torah’s contents.45

[London: Soncino, 1965], 2:638)”. On Jewish liturgical practices in Late Antiquity, see Daniel
Picus, “Reading Regularly: The Liturgical Reading of Torah in its Late Antique Material World,”
in Material Aspects of Reading in Ancient and Medieval Cultures: Materiality, Presence and Per-
formance, ed. Anna Krauß et al. (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), 217–232.
42 For some architectural aspects of ancient synagogues, see Rachel Hachlili, “Torah Shrine and
Ark in Ancient Synagogues: A Re-evaluation,” Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins 116/2
(2000): 146–183. According to Mishnah (Megillah 3:1), the most sacred object of a synagogue is
the Torah scroll (torah), followed by [other?] scriptural books (sefarim), the mantles (miṭpaḥot),
and the ark (tēbah), which is in turn more sacred than the synagogue building itself.
43 While the scroll was (and remains to this day) the dominant form of using the Torah as liturgical
object in the synagogue, at some point Jews also began to produce Torah codices, some lavish
examples of which survive from the early Middle Ages (e.g. the Aleppo Codex). David Stern
places the origins of this tradition of codex production in “the late seventh or early eighth cen-
tury” (The Jewish Bible: A Material History [Seattle and London: University of Washington Press,
2017], 65), although this professional tradition may have been preceded by an earlier practice of
writing down the Torah (or parts of it) for personal study and prayer. Moreover, the verse does not
specify the Torah’s guardians as Jewish. Therefore, it might conceivably have a community of
Christians in mind, who had adopted the codex form early on.
44 See Saul Lieberman, Judaism in Hellenistic Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission,
Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.—IV Century C.E. (New York: The Jew-
ish Theological Seminary of America, 1962), 203–208, esp. 204–205.
45 According to Lieberman, “The Jewish Oral law remained recorded in secret (private) scrolls and
in private codices. It constituted the mysteries of the Lord which were published orally only for
Israel. Its circulation in the form of private codices made it something like the secret hermetic
logos concerning the regeneration and the rule of silence, which was not to be published” (Judaism
in Hellenistic Palestine, 208; original emphasis).
16 Mohsen Goudarzi
The commentaries
I have argued that the apparent puzzle of Q 6:91 can be resolved if we read the
three imperfect verbs in the middle of this verse in the third-person plural, a read-
ing that is attested in the qirāʾāt literature. However, as the preceding discus-
sion shows, modern academic scholarship takes the second-person reading of
these three verbs for granted. Indeed, most scholars seem unaware of the third-
person reading, even though due consideration of this reading is vital for judg-
ing the audience and meaning of Q 6:91. Of the scholars surveyed earlier, only
Blachère and Crone note that the three verbs in the middle are read in the third
person as well. However, both of them summarily dismiss this reading. Blachère
declares, without offering any analysis, that “it is incontestable that this variant
[reading] is a harmonization due to the beginning of the verse.”46 Crone, on the
other hand, claims that the third-person reading would not make sense, for “[h]
ow could Moses have probative value to the polytheists?”47 In other words, if the
verse is arguing with the polytheists, why would it have recourse to the Torah?
(I have previously addressed this objection at length.) The only exception is The
Study Quran, which by its nature considers exegetical discussions into account,
and in brief remarks prefers the pagan hypothesis and its associated third-person
reading.48 As far as I know, this is the extent of engagement with the third-person
plural reading in modern academic scholarship.
The common lack of awareness concerning the third-person reading, and the
dismissive references to it in the works of Blachère and Crone, reveal the gen-
eral disconnect between modern academic scholarship and traditional Muslim
scholarship on the Qurʾan. For, in contrast to the academic works surveyed here,
Muslim commentaries of the Qurʾan routinely refer to the third-person reading.
Indeed, several commentaries analyse the respective merits and drawbacks of the
second- and third-person readings and explore other aspects of the verse from a
variety of perspectives—grammatical, literary, historical, legal, theological, and
philosophical. The commentators’ many insightful discussions can enrich aca-
demic analyses of this verse and move the conversation forward on a number of
fronts. It is thus to a survey of the commentaries that I now turn.
The commentaries fall into four groups on the question of the verse’s address-
ees. Some claim that Q 6:91 concerns a Jewish person or group, others hold that
it addresses the pagans, a third group suggest that it is directed at both the Jews
and the pagans, and a fourth group withhold judgement on this question. Beyond
taking a particular position, many commentators offer probing remarks on various
aspects of the verse.

46 Le Coran, 162 n. 91. Blachère thus insists that “here we have an addition made after the emigration
to Medina” (ibid.).
47 “Angels versus Humans,” 111.
48 Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al., eds., The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New
York: HarperOne, 2015), s.v. For a detailed review of this monumental achievement, see Bruce
Fudge, “Study the Quran or The Study Quran?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 138/3
(2018): 575–588.
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 17
One such aspect is the precise meaning of the claim that “God has sent down
nothing to a human being.” As noted earlier, several early reports attribute this
statement to a Jewish individual (often named as Mālik b. al-Ṣayf) or a group
of Jews opposed to the Prophet. However, some commentators do not seem to
find these transmitted reports compelling. For instance, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.
606/1209) doubts that God would have dignified Mālik’s putative outburst with
a response in His eternally abiding scripture. If indeed there was an altercation
involving Mālik, al-Rāzī envisages a different polemical dynamic: perhaps Mālik
had rejected Muhammad’s prophecy insistently, saying that “God has certainly
sent down nothing to you.” What the Qurʾan was criticizing, then, was Mālik’s
unreasonable insistence: how could he believe that Moses, a human, had received
the Torah, but at the same time maintain that God could not have possibly sent
down revelations to another human, namely, Muhammad? In this reading, the
verse merely notes that Muhammad’s prophetic claims are not impossible (laysa
min qabīl al-mumtaniʿāt).49
Jār Allāh al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) offers another explanation. The Jews
took issue only with the Prophet Muhammad’s revelations, but their zeal for
opposition made them frame their rejection in exaggerated, categorical terms,
leading them to declare that “God has sent down nothing to a human being.” The
Qurʾan then censored the Jews for this blanket rejection and reminded them that
they are adherents of the Torah, a divine revelation sent down to a human being.50
For al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981), it is not difficult to attribute a categorical denial to
the Jews, because although revelation is integral to Judaism, some of the Jews
may have uttered such a denial out of fanatic opposition to Islam, to provoke the
pagans against the Muslims, or perhaps as a misleading response to a question that
the pagans might have asked about the Prophet. Would it be really surprising for
the Jews to have dismissed the possibility of revelation, al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī asks, when
elsewhere (in Q 4:51) the Qurʾan accuses them to have favoured polytheism over
Islam and to have thus declared the Prophet’s pagan opponents to be more guided
(ahdā) than his followers?51
Overall, the “Jewish hypothesis,” i.e., the idea that the verse addresses a Jewish
individual or group, seems the most common position in the commentaries.52 (In

49 Tafsīr, 13: 80. Al-Rāzī’s assessment may be indebted to al-Ghazālī’s reading of this verse as
an example of conjunctive syllogism, for which see Al-Qisṭās al-mustaqīm, ed. Maḥmūd Bījū
(Damascus: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿIlmiyya, 1993), 32–33.
50 Al-Qurʾān maʿa tafsīrih al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl, ed. William Nassau Lees et al., 2 vols.
(Calcutta: Maṭbaʿat al-Laysī, 1856–59), 1: 414.
51 Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn al-Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, 20 vols. (Qom: Daftar-e
Intishārāt-e Islāmī-e Jāmiʿa-e Mudarrisīn-e Ḥawza-ye ʿIlmiyya-ye Qumm, A.H. 1417), 7: 271.
52 The proponents of this view include Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767): Tafsīr Muqātil b. Sulaymān,
1: 574–575; Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī (d. ca. 373/983): Tafsīr al-Samarqandī l-musammā Baḥr
al-ʿulūm, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ et al., 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1993),
1: 500–501; Abū Isḥāq al-Zajjāj (d. ca. 311/923), who claims that the verse concerns a group of
Jewish scholars who were hypocrites as well as gluttons (jamāʿa min al-yahūd min munāfiqīhim
. . . wa-kāna simatuhum simat al-aḥbār . . . wa-kānū yatanaʿʿamūna wa-lā yataʿabbadūn):
Maʿānī l-Qurʾān wa-iʿrābuhu, ed. ʿAbd al-Jalīl ʿAbduh Shalbī, 5 vols. (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub,
18 Mohsen Goudarzi
a similar vein, the second-person reading of this verse’s imperfect verbs is com-
mon in early manuscripts of the Qurʾan.)53 However, those who favour this inter-
pretation generally mention the pagan hypothesis and its associated third-person
reading as well, often without dismissing or criticizing this alternative view of the
verse.54 Moreover, several commentators describe both the Jewish and the pagan
hypotheses without choosing one over the other. Those who suspend judgement
include al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035),55 al-Ḥākim al-Jishumī (d. 494/1101),56 Ibn

1988), 2: 270; al-Māturīdī (d. ca. 333/944), who suggests that the verse addresses some of the
ahl al-kitāb who had no genuine belief in divine revelation because of their hypocrisy (kānū ahla
nifāq): Taʾwīlāt ahl al-Qurʾān, ed. Ahmet Vanliğlu et al., 18 vols. (Istanbul: Mızan Yayınevi,
2005–11), 5: 138–142. This hypothesis was also adopted by al-Zamakhsharī: Al-Qurʾān maʿa
tafsīrih al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl, 1: 414. Al-Zamakhsharī’s outsized influence on the
later exegetical tradition probably further entrenched this view. His comments are echoed and/
or elaborated in many later commentaries, including those of al-Bayḍāwī (d. 691/1292), Abū
l-Suʿūd (d. 982/1574), and al-Shawkānī (d. 1250/1834). See, for example, Abū l-Suʿūd al-ʿImādī
l-Ḥanafī, Irshād al-ʿaql al-salīm ilā mazāyā l-kitāb al-karīm, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭāʾ,
5 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Riyaḍ al-Ḥadītha, 1971), 2: 247–250. On new evidence that estab-
lishes al-Bayḍāwī’s time of death as the Shawwāl of A. H. 691, see Morteza Karimi-Nia’s note at
https://kariminia.kateban.com/post/4806 (accessed June 12, 2021).
53 Based on images available on the Corpus Coranicum website (at https://corpuscoranicum.de/hand-
schriften/index/sure/6/vers/91 [accessed June 5, 2021]), which show the presence of consonant-
distinguishing marks (iʿjām) for the second-person reading in several early manuscripts, including
the following: Wetzstein II 1913 (featuring marks for tubdūnahā, though it is not clear if the other
two imperfect verbs are marked as second person), University of Birmingham’s Islamic Arabic
1572 (which seems to have tajʿalūnahu and tukhfūna, but possibly yubdūnahā), Topkapı Sarayı
Medina 1a (with all three verbs in the second person), BNF Arabe 334 (j) = 334 (2) (which origi-
nally had second-person iʿjām marks for all three verbs in the second person, though a later hand
has added two other sets of such marks, one set for the second person in dark green and another set
for the third person in red). On the other hand, several manuscripts are devoid of marks that would
clarify the person of the imperfect verbs. For example, Codex Parisino-Petropolitanus = BNF
Arabe 328 (a) has no iʿjām marks for the first two verbs (the third one is not clear), while BNF
Arabe 328 (e) and Arabe 367 (b) have no second-person iʿjām marks for the three verbs in question.
54 Interestingly, a few commentators suggest that the third-person reading could still be understood
as addressing the Jews. In this view, the use of the third person would be an instance of iltifāt,
a shift in grammatical form that serves to emphasize the importance or gravity of the subject at
hand. For Q 6:91, the shift from addressing the Jews directly to speaking about them in the third
person may signal God’s intense anger (shiddat al-ghaḍab) at their blasphemous denial of the
Qurʾan. See Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480), Naẓm al-durar fī tanāsub al-āyāt wa-l-suwar,
22 vols. (Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿat Majlis Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1969–84), 7: 186 as well
as Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭībī’s (d. 1342) commentary on al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshāf, namely, Futūḥ
al-ghayb fī l-kashf ʿan qināʿ al-rayb wa-huwa ḥāshiyat al-Ṭībī ʿalā l-Kashshāf, ed. Muḥammad
ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Sulṭān al-ʿUlamāʾ et al., 17 vols. (Dubai: Jāʾizat Dubayy al-Duwaliyya li-l-Qurʾān
al-karīm, 2013), 6: 158.
55 Al-Kashf wa-l-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed. Abū Muḥammad b. ʿᾹshūr, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār
Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 2002), 4: 167–169.
56 Abū Saʿd al-Muḥsin b. Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī al-Jishumī, Al-Tahdhīb fī al-Tafsīr, ed. ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān b. Sulaymān al-Sālimī, 10 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Miṣrī—Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb
al-Lubnānī, 2018–19), 3: 2316–2320.
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 19
ʿAṭiyya (d. 541/1147),57 al-Ṭabrisī (d. 548/1153–1154),58 al-Rāzī,59 and al-Qurṭubī
(d. 671/1272).60 A smaller group of commentators maintain that the verse, or at
least the denial mentioned at its beginning, concerns both the pagans and the Jews
on account of their collaboration against the Prophet.61
Finally, a number of commentators maintain that the verse addresses the pagans.
This position and the related third-person reading of the three imperfect verbs are
attributed to the Meccan Successor Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. ca. 102/720). In adopting
the third-person reading, therefore, the Meccan reader Ibn Kathīr (d. 120/737)
was following Mujāhid’s interpretation of this verse.62 Among the commentators,
Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī favours the pagan hypothesis and thus chooses the third-
person reading of the three imperfect verbs over their second-person reading.63
According to the Imāmī scholar al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067), the Muʿtazilī teacher Abū
ʿAlī l-Jubbāʾī (d. 915) also favoured the pagan hypothesis.64 Al-Ṭūsī himself con-
curs with the two contemporaries, al-Ṭabarī and al-Jubbāʾī.65 Other proponents of
this idea include the Syrian scholar Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373), as well as Sayyid
Quṭb (d. 1966), both of whom acknowledge their debt to al-Ṭabarī.66
Al-Ṭabarī mentions the following facts in support of the pagan hypothesis: the
sura in general and the immediately preceding verses in particular concern the
pagans rather than the Jews; a categorical denial of revelation is inconsistent with

57 Ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Andalusī, Al-Muḥarrar al-wajīz fī tafsīr al-kitāb al-ʿazīz, ed. al-Raḥālī Fārūq et al.,
8 vols., 2nd ed. (Damascus: Dār al-Khayr, 2007), 3: 415–417. Ibn ʿAṭiyya seems to prefer the sec-
ond-person reading of the three imperfect verbs over their third-person reading, even if the verse’s
opening concerns a denial of revelation uttered by the pagans. In such a case, the verse would
be condemning the pagans at the beginning and then turning to the Jews to also criticize them
for their mishandling of the Torah (ibid., 3: 416). This would be similar to Muḥammad al-Bahī’s
understanding of this (see n. 22).
58 al-Ṭabrisī, Majmaʿ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-ʿUlūm, 2005–06), 4:
82–83. For an illuminating study of this commentary, see Bruce Fudge, Qurʾānic Hermeneutics:
Al-Ṭabrisī and the Craft of Commentary (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).
59 In his extensive discussion, al-Rāzī suggests that both the Jewish and the pagan hypotheses are
viable and that it is difficult to choose one over the other. To this end, he enumerates common
or potential objections to each interpretation and proceeds to explain how each objection can be
answered. See Tafsīr al-Fakhr al-Rāzī: al-Mushtahir bi-l-Tafsīr al-kabīr wa-Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, 32
vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1981), 13: 78–81.
60 Al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad ʿAbd al-ʿAlīm al-Bardūnī et al., 20 vols., 2nd ed. (Cairo:
Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1964), 7: 36–38.
61 Thus the early Shiʿi exegete, ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī (d. ca. 330/941), in Tafsīr al-Qummī, ed.
al-Sayyid Ṭayyib al-Mūsawī l-Jazāʾirī, 2 vols., 3rd ed. (Qom: Dār al-Kitāb li-l-Ṭibāʿa wa-l-Nashr,
A.H. 1404), 1: 210. See also al-Biqāʿī, Naẓm al-durar fī tanāsub al-āyāt wa-l-suwar, 7: 184.
62 al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 9: 396–397.
63 Ibid., 9: 397.
64 Al-Tibyān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad Ḥabīb Qaṣīr al-ʿᾹmilī, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ
al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 4: 198–200.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibn Kathīr: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad Salāma, 8 vols. (Riyadh: Dār Ṭība,
1999), 3: 300–301; Sayyid Quṭb (1386/1966), Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān, 6 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq,
2003), 2: 1145–1147.
20 Mohsen Goudarzi
Judaism; there is no report with a sound, uninterrupted chain of authorities (ṣaḥīḥ
muttaṣil al-sanad) to show that the verse was revealed in relation to the Jews; and
there is no consensus among the early exegetes in favour of the Jewish hypothesis
either. Al-Ṭabarī concludes, therefore, that the verse must concern the pagans.
Consequently, al-Ṭabarī also favours the third-person readings of the three verbs
to their second-person reading.67 Ibn Kathīr adds two more observations in favour
of the pagan hypothesis: this verse is Meccan,68 and the categorical denial men-
tioned at its beginning is a pagan belief that is related elsewhere in the Qurʾan
(ad 10:2, 17:94).
To end this last section, it is worth mentioning the creative interpretation of
the modernist reformer, Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935). In his commentary,
al-Manār, Riḍā suggests that the verse originally addressed the Meccan pagans
and thus featured the third-person reading of the imperfect verbs in question,
but in Medina the verse came to be recited with their second-person reading
as well in order to address recent developments involving the Jews. As for the
Meccan version, Riḍā notes that the Quraysh had sent a delegation to Medina to
enquire of its Jewish authorities about the Prophet and his claims.69 This shows
that the Quraysh understood the Torah as a book sent down by God specifically
for the Jews (kitāban min ʿind Allāh li-l-yahūd khāṣṣa), as a result of which the
Qurʾan used the example of the Torah to reject the Quraysh’s denial of revela-
tion. However, after the Prophet’s followers migrated to Medina, the following
circumstances gave renewed urgency to this verse: opposing the Prophet, the Jews
claimed that the Torah does not endorse stoning or mention the Prophet Muham-
mad as a divinely sent messenger. Some of them might have also rejected revela-
tion categorically, as suggested by certain reported incidents associated with Q
6:91. In such circumstances, perhaps God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad
that he should read Q 6:91 as an address to the Jews (ʿalā masmaʿ al-yahūd) and
thus render the verse’s three imperfect verbs in the second person, without abro-
gating the earlier Meccan reading of this verse.70 Effectively, therefore, the verse
became a textual palimpsest operating on two levels to respond simultaneously to
the Prophet’s pagan and Jewish opponents.

Conclusion
In his groundbreaking Beyond the Written Word, William Graham underscored the
importance of orality to various scriptural traditions. With regard to the Islamic
context, Graham perceptively noted that “the qur’anic revelations were origi-
nally wholly oral texts intended to be rehearsed and recited, first by Muhammad,

67 Ibid.
68 Of course, this is a contested claim, as indicated from the version of Mālik’s story that unfolds in
Medina (see earlier).
69 For the full account, see Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 1: 300–302.
70 Al-Manār, 7: 616–618.
 The Written Torah and the Oral Qurʾan 21
then by the faithful; they were not sent as ‘a writing on parchment’ (S. 6.7).”71
Referencing the beginning of Sūrat al-Anʿām, Graham thus underlined the ten-
sion between the Prophet and his opponents over the process and format of the
Qurʾan’s delivery. In this chapter, I have probed the parameters of this tension
through a close analysis of Q 6:91. As I have argued, this verse is connected
with Q 6:7 and its defence of the modality of Qurʾanic revelations. Just as Q 6:7
(and indeed Sūrat al-Anʿām as a whole) addresses the pagans, so is Q 6:91 simi-
larly directed at the pagans in its entirety. Consequently, the three imperfect verbs
that appear in this verse should be seen not as second-person verbs that speak
to the Jews, but rather as third-person verbs that speak about the Torah’s adher-
ents (“they make it into documents that they display, while they conceal much [of
it]”). What supports this suggestion further is the utility of describing the Torah
as “documents that [its adherents] display, while they conceal much” in polemic
against the pagans. For the latter seem to have disparaged the Qurʾan as piecemeal
and oral—and thus as inferior to the Torah—to which Q 6:91 responds by noting
that at present the Torah is practically fragmented and inaccessible to outsiders.
Indeed, by underlining the materiality of the Torah and its attendant limitations,
the sura may be implying that the Qurʾan’s orality is a virtue. As spoken words,
Qurʾanic revelations were immediately published for all to hear; they were acces-
sible through the collective soundscape and thereby less susceptible to conceal-
ment or manipulation. Considering this analysis, the verse’s reference to the Torah
should not be seen as an incidental or parenthetical jab at the Jews, but rather as
an integral component of the surah’s arguments with the pagans in defence of the
Prophet and his Qurʾanic revelations.
While several influential commentators and readers of the Qurʾan similarly con-
sidered the verse as addressing the pagans, more scholars seem to have preferred
the Jewish hypothesis and the associated reading of the three imperfect verbs in
the second person—as attested in the commentaries, works of qirāʾāt, and early
Qurʾan manuscripts. What explains the popularity of this (in my view, weaker)
reading and interpretation of Q 6:91? For one, the three imperfect verbs are sand-
wiched between two phrases—“Say, ‘Who sent down the book that Moses brought
as a light and guidance for the people?’ ” and “you were taught what you and your
fathers did not know”—that directly address the Prophet’s opponents. As a result,
it may have appeared more straightforward to read the three imperfect verbs also
in the second person, notwithstanding the conceptual difficulties that arise from
this reading. A second factor that may have boosted the Jewish hypothesis (and
thus also the second-person reading of the imperfect verbs) is the existence of a
concrete setting for the revelation of Q 6:91, that is to say, an alleged confronta-
tion between a prominent Jewish person and the Prophet (or ʿUmar). Had an early
storyteller created another narrative involving the Prophet’s pagan foes, the pagan
hypothesis and thus the third-person reading of the verbs could have been more

71 William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 88.
22 Mohsen Goudarzi
compelling and popular. Needless to say, neither of these factors (i.e. the produc-
tion of a syntactically smoother text or the creation of a Sitz im Leben involving
the Jews) undermines the arguments made in this chapter in favour of the pagan
hypothesis and the third-person reading of the verse’s imperfect verbs.
This chapter has also shown that traditional Muslim scholarship contains dis-
cussions of great depth about Q 6:91—its alleged circumstances of revelation,
its audience, its morphological, syntactical, and rhetorical features, the precise
connotation of each of its phrases, and its variant readings. These in-depth discus-
sions have much to offer modern academic scholarship. In particular, previous
studies of Q 6:91 would have benefited from serious consideration of the third-
person reading of the three imperfect verbs in the middle of this verse, a reading
that is mentioned and examined in many of the commentaries. Of course, ear-
nest exploration of the commentaries does not require accepting their premises,
claims, or conclusions. Nor does it entail accepting that the commentators had
“privileged information on what the Qurʾān originally meant.”72 For instance, in
this chapter I have expressed scepticism about the historical circumstances associ-
ated with this verse in some of the commentaries. Yet such disagreements do not
detract from the fundamental utility of the works of Qurʾanic Sciences (ʿulūm
al-Qurʾān): they are treasure troves of considered reflection on various aspects of
the Qurʾanic text by those who dedicated their lives to it.73 As modern academic
scholars of the Qurʾan, we may be inclined to assert our independence from tra-
ditional learning, but we still have much to gain from systematic study of this
literature and tapping its vast resources.

72 A notion that is criticized by Gabriel Reynolds in The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext (London
and New York: Routledge, 2010), 12. Reynolds argues against “reading the Qurʾan through tafsīr”
(ibid., 17). However, the main object of his criticism is the practice of connecting specific Qurʾanic
passages to episodes from the Prophet’s traditional biography. While the commentaries certainly
do posit such connections, their discussions go far beyond an attempt to connect the Qurʾan with
the sīra—as I hope to have shown in this chapter.
73 A similar point is made by Islam Dayeh in “Al-Ḥawāmīm: Intertextuality and Coherence
in ­Meccan Surahs,” in The Qurʾan in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the
Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 461–498, at 494.
2 Qurʾanic Anosmia
Christian Lange

Introduction
Drawing on such early pioneers as sociologists Georg Simmel and Norbert Elias
and historians Michel Foucault and Alain Corbin,1 over the last 30 years sensory
studies have developed into a robust field of research in the humanities.2 Not long
ago, the efforts of sensory scholarship culminated in the towering, six-volume
A Cultural History of the Senses (2014),3 a work that brings together many of
the leading sensory historians from antiquity to the modern age. Strikingly, in
the thorough index of A Cultural History of the Senses, the terms “Islam” and
“Muslim/s” refer the reader to a mere two chapters (out of a total of 42), and in
both these chapters the Muslim sensorium receives no more than a passing nod.
Similarly, Islam figures marginally in the impressive Sensational Religion: Sen-
sory Cultures in Material Practice (2014), only 4 of whose 37 chapters touch on
Muslim phenomena.4
As Mark Smith has observed, the decades around the turn of the millennium
have witnessed “an outpouring of historical work on the senses,” but there is
“much more work” on the history of the senses in the West than in non-Western
contexts.5 Today, this situation remains largely unchanged, certainly in regard to

1 Georg Simmel, “Soziologie der Sinne,” Die Neue Rundschau 18/9 (September 1907): 1025–1036;
Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Unter-
suchungen (Basel: Haus zum Falken, 1939); Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de
la prison (Paris: Édition Gallimard, 1975); Alain Corbin, Le miasme et la jonquille. L’odorat et
l’imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècle (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1982); idem, Les cloches de la
terre. Paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au XIXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel,
1994).
2 I gratefully acknowledge the support of the ERC Consolidator Grant “The senses of Islam” (2017–
2022, project no. 724951) in the research for, and writing of, this chapter.
3 Constance Classen, gen. ed., A Cultural History of the Senses, 6 vols. (London: Bloomsbury,
2014).
4 Sally M. Promey, ed., Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2014). See especially the chapter by Finbarr Barry Flood, “Bodies and
Becoming: Mimesis, Mediation, and the Ingestion of the Sacred in Christianity and Islam,”
459–493.
5 Mark M. Smith, Sensory History (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 1.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-3
24 Christian Lange
the sensory history of the Islamic world. While in other fields of the humanities
and social sciences a “sensorial revolution” seems well underway,6 scholars of
Islam are only beginning to sketch the contours of a sensory history of Muslim
societies. William Graham is one of the few Islamicists to have written about the
sensory dimensions of Muslim piety in historical perspective. To celebrate his
pioneering achievement, this chapter explores not the oral/aural dimension of the
Qurʾan, as Graham did,7 but another of the Qurʾan’s senses: olfaction.8
Smell, in more than one respect, is “the first of our senses.”9 It connects us
to the distant past of the human race, to a time when our self-preservation was
ensured first and foremost by our olfactory organ.10 Smells are of great importance

6 David Howes, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 2003), 39.
7 William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Reli-
gion (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). This line of research has
been continued by Navid Kermani (Gott ist schön: Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran [Munich:
C.H. Beck, 1999]) and several other textually trained scholars, such as Michael Sells (Approch-
ing the Qurʾān: The Early Revelations [Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 1999]). There are also
important studies of the Qurʾan’s sonic dimensions by anthropologists and musicologists, see e.g.,
Kristina Nelson, The Art of Reciting the Qurʾan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1085); Anna
Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the Recited Qurʾān in Indonesia (Hon-
olulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004); Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette
Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); Lauren E.
Osborne, “Textual and Paratextual Meaning in the Recited Qur’an: Analysis of a Performance of
Surat al-Furqan by Sheikh Mishary bin Rashid al-Afasy,” in Qurʾanic Studies Today, ed. Angelika
Neuwirth and Michael Sells (New York: Routledge, 2016), 228–246. Recently, Ziad Fahmy has
called upon scholars to extend this interest in sound to the historical study of the Islamic world
more broadly speaking, highlighting “the importance of uncovering . . . soundscapes of the past.”
See Fahmy, “Coming to Our Senses: Historicizing Sound and Noise in the Middle East,” History
Compass 11/4 (2013): 305–315, at 306.
8 In addition to the sonic dimensions of the Qurʾan (for which see the previous footnote), Qurʾanic
modes of seeing, and looking at images in particular, have been the object of noteworthy studies. To
name a couple of the most relevant contributions, Alfred Guillaume, in “The Pictorial Background
of the Qurʾān,” Annual of Leeds University Oriental Society 3 (1963): 39–59, explores Qurʾanic
visuality in relation to reports about the images inside the Kaʿba, as transmitted by al-Azraqī (d.
ca. 251/865) in his Kitāb akhbār Makkah. Mathias Radscheit, “The Iconography of the Qurʾān,”
in Crossings and Passages in Genre and Culture, ed. Christian Szyska and Friederike Pannewick
(Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003), 167–184, argues for caution in drawing inferences about Qurʾanic
intermediality (image–text relation), a position elaborated by Hannelies Koloska, “Spätantikes
Bildwissen im Koran: Die Relevanz ikonographischer Darstellungen für das Verständnis des
Koran,” in Episteme in Bewegung: Beiträge zu einer transdisziplinären Wissensgeschichte, ed.
Gyburg Uhlmann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 432–444. However, there are very few studies
in any of the Western languages, at least to my knowledge, of the proximal senses in the Qurʾan.
See, however, Thomas Hoffmann, “Taste My Punishment and My Warnings (Q. 54:39): Torments
of Tantalus and Other Painful Metaphors of Taste in the Qur’an,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies
21/1 (2019): 1–20; Kathryn Kueny, “Tasting Fire: Affective Turn in Qur’anic Depictions of Divine
Punishment,” Body and Religion 3/1 (2020): 5–26.
9 Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 20.
10 See Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odour and the Social Imagination (first publ. 1982,
London: MacMillan, 1996), 7: “[T]he sense of smell is an animal sense―and at the same time, and
precisely because of this, the sense of self-preservation.”
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 25
for our emotional life and play a crucial role in the organization and stratification
of human society.11 However, olfaction remains one of the least-studied of the
five senses. As many scholars of the senses have noted, Western modern culture
is deeply suspicious of smell; it associates it with primitive stages of human evo-
lution, with madness, lust, and savagery. As Constance Classen, David Howes,
and Anthony Synnott point out in Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (1994),
“[w]hile the high status of sight in the West makes it possible for studies of vision
and visuality . . . to be taken seriously, any attempt to examine smell runs the risk
of being brushed off as frivolous and irrelevant.”12 In Islamic and Middle East
Studies, to the exception of a number of works relating to the history of perfume
in the Islamic world, smell has been almost completely ignored.13 Smell may be
an ephemeral thing, but that does not mean it should be marginalized in scholar-
ship. At the risk of sounding frivolous, I would politely like to submit that it is
time to put smell right under the nose of Islamic and Middle East scholars.
When we begin to study the history of smell in Islam by turning our attention to
the Qurʾan, immediately we are in for a surprise. Smell is virtually absent from the
Qurʾan,14 in contrast to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.15 The Qurʾan
celebrates God’s giving human beings hearing and sight, but not olfaction: “We
made him hearing, seeing” (Q 76:2: fa-jaʿalnāhu samīʿan baṣīrā). The most com-
mon Arabic triliteral root for smelling (sh-m-m) is not found in a single instance
in the Qurʾan. The nose (anf) only appears once, in the context of lex talionis (Q
5:45: al-anf bi-l-anf). Only once in its 29 occurrences is the word rīḥ (pl. riyāḥ)
used in the sense of “scent;” the other instances all refer to (scentless) “winds.”
Common terms indicating fragrance (rāʾiḥa, ʿarf) or good smell (ṭīb, ʿiṭr, etc.)
are nowhere to be detected,16 and the same holds true for bad smells (natn, ʿaṭin,

11 Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: A Cultural History of Smell (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, 1994), 3.
12 Ibid., 5.
13 A remarkable exception to this “odor-blindness” of Middle East historians is Khaled Fahmy’s arti-
cle, “An Olfactory Tale of Two Cities: Cairo in the Nineteenth Century,” in Historians in Cairo:
Essays in Honor of George Scanlon, ed. Jill Edwards (Cairo and New York: The American Uni-
versity in Cairo Press, 2002), 155–187. See also the fine essays collected in Julie Bonnéric, ed.,
Histoire et anthropologie des odeurs en terre d’Islam à l’époque médiévale (Bulletin d’Études
Orientales 64) (2015). https://doi.org/10.4000/beo.4692.
14 I am not the first to note this. See Muḥammad Ṭālib Madlūl, al-Ḥawāss al-insāniyya fī l-Qurʾān
al-karīm (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1971), 138; EQ, s.v. Odors and smells (M. Marin), III,
573a-574a, at 573a; EQ, s.v. Smell (D. Stewart), V, 62a-63a, at 62a.
15 See Yael Avrahami, The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible (New
York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 103–106; Deborah A. Green, The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and
Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011);
Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, “Making Scents of Revelation: The Significance of Cultic Scents in
Ancient Judaism as the Backdrop of Saint Paul’s Olfactory Metaphor in 2 Cor 2:14–17” (PhD,
Catholic University Leuven, 2008).
16 As noted by Edward Lane, the author of Tāj al-ʿarūs relates that some read, in Qurʾan 77:1,
al-mursalāt ʿarfan (“by the winds that are sent forth with a fragrance”), rather than al-mursalāt
ʿurfan (“by the winds sent forth in gusts”). See Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, s.v. ʿarf. Fragrant
winds, however, do not fit the cataclysmic tone of this apocalyptic passage.
26 Christian Lange
Table 2.1 The five senses in the Qurʾan: finite verbs and names of sensory organs

Seeing Hearing Tasting Touching Smelling

Finite verbal r-ʾ-y: 315x s-m-ʿ: 198x dh-w-q: 58x m-s-s: 27x sh-m-m: 0x
forms
Names of ʿayn udhun lisān jild anf
sensory ‘eye’: 39x ‘ear’: 18x ‘tongue’: 25x ‘skin’: 11x ‘nose’: 2x
organs

etc.). Translators sometimes choose to include adjectives like “fetid,” “foul,” or

“putrid” in their translations of the terms ṣadīd (“fetid water,” Q 14:16), ghislīn
(“foul pus,” Q 69:36), and ḥamīm (“putrid water,” Q 56:42), but it deserves to be
emphasized that none of these hellish substances, whatever their exact nature, are
ascribed a smell in the Qurʾan. Ṣadīd, ghislīn, and ḥamīm are not smell words.
Not even zaqqūm, a plant that grows at the bottom of hell, sprouting fruit “like
the heads of demons” (Q 37:62, 37:64, 44:43, 56:52), is attributed a smell in the
Qurʾan.17
The point is easily brought home when comparing the Qurʾanic terminology of
sensation across the five sensory organs. Table 2.1, in row one, shows instances
of finite verbal forms (that is, not including participles or maṣdars) of the triliteral
roots most commonly used to indicate the five types of sensory perception. Row
two shows the number of times the most common names of the sensory organs (in
their singular, dual, and plural forms) occur in the Qurʾan.18
The table invites discussion on several levels, as it provides only a rough
impression of the Qurʾanic sensorium, which awaits further study. However, the
table demonstrates in a sufficiently clear way what concerns us here, namely, that
the Qurʾan is a curiously odourless text.

Smelling backwards, smelling forwards

Before delving into the reasons for this strange case of anosmia, let us note two
exceptions to the Qurʾan’s disinterest in olfaction. While these two exceptions
are noteworthy, they cannot cast doubt on the fundamental fact that the Qurʾan is
deeply indifferent to the mundane operation of smell. For when the Qurʾan does
speak of olfaction, it is not interested in people’s noses or in smelly substances,
but in something else entirely. From the perspective of the Qurʾan, as I shall argue,
smells belong to the mythical past and the eschatological future, not to life in the
here and now. Fragrances, in the Qurʾan, are treated in an analogical fashion to

17 This is notwithstanding the fact the commentators usually declare it to be evil smelling. See EI2,
s.v. Zaḳḳūm (C.E. Bosworth), XI, 425b-426a, at 425b; EQ, s.v. Zaqqūm (Salwa M. S. El-Awa), V,
571a-572b, at 571a.
18 The table is based on Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, al-Muʿjam al-mufahras li-alfāẓ al-Qurʾān al-karīm.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 27
wine: they are purged from this world (al-dunyā), though they are tolerated, and
to a certain degree embraced, in the otherworld (al-ākhira).
The first Qurʾanic instance of olfaction is that of the prophet Jacob smelling the
shirt of Joseph. The Qurʾanic Joseph story is well known and has often been stud-
ied, although not many scholars have focused on the incident involving Joseph’s
wonderfully fragrant shirt.19 Jacob, in grief over the supposed death of his beloved
son, turns blind. Having risen to wealth and fame in Egypt, Joseph instructs his
visiting brothers to return with their caravan to Canaan and drape Joseph’s shirt
over their father’s face to make him regain his sight. When the caravan approaches,
Jacob catches of whiff of the son he had thought lost. “Call me demented,” he
says, “but I smell the scent of Joseph” (Q 12:94: la-ajidu rīḥa Yūsuf law-lā an
tufannidūnī).20 When the caravan finally arrives and when Joseph’s shirt is cast on
Jacob’s face, Jacob becomes seeing again (fa-rtadda baṣīran, Q 12:96).
The commentators usually underline the miraculous character of the story,
explaining that Jacob’s nose was no ordinary nose. Al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868) states that
“none of that which is related about the acuity of smell (ṣidq al-ḥiss fī l-shamm)
of certain people, ostriches, beasts of prey, mice, small ants, and certain insects is
of the order of what the glorious Qurʾan relates about Jacob and Joseph.” Jacob,
al-Jāḥiẓ continues, was given

a sign that appeared especially to him (ʿalāma ẓaharat lahu khāṣṣatan), for
usually humans do not smell the smell of their offspring when they are far
away from their noses. It is beyond the power of stallions to smell the mare
over a distance of more than two or three bowshots. So how could someone
who is in Syria sense the smell of his son by way of his shirt, at the moment

19 See, e.g., F. V. Greifenhagen, “Clothes Encounters: Yūsuf’s Shirt in Qurʾān 12,” Studies in Reli-
gion 39/1 (2010): 47–56; Stephen D. Ricks, “The Garment of Adam in Jewish, Muslim, and Chris-
tian Tradition,” in Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication, and Interaction, ed. Benjamin
H. Hary, John L. Hayes, and Fred Astren (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 204–224.
20 It is beyond the purview of the present investigation to inquire into the origin of this Qurʾanic
motif. In Genesis 45, the biblical passage in which Joseph makes himself known to his brothers
and his father, there is no mention of a garment playing a role in the delivery of the good news
to Jacob. Abraham Geiger stated that the motif of Joseph’s shirt making Jacob see again was
“probably derived from a legend unknown to me.” See Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem
Judenthume aufgenommen? (Leipzig: M. W. Kaufmann, 1902), 150. More recently, Joseph Wit-
ztum has suggested that Syriac sources provide the background to the Qurʾanic version, noting
that a Syriac liturgical poem has Joseph send Benjamin to Jacob with his scented shirt so that his
father may smell the scent of “the one who died but came back to life.” See Witztum, “The Syriac
Milieu of the Quran: The Recasting of Biblical Narratives” (PhD, Princeton University, 2011), 235
n173. For the poem, see Sebastian Brock, Soghyatha Mgabbyatha (Glane: St. Ephrem Monastery,
1982), 16 (stanzas 19–20). Louis Ginzberg relates that Joseph’s “body emitted a pleasant smell,
so agreeable and pervasive that the road along which he travelled was redolent thereof,” with-
out, however, mentioning Jacob in this context. See Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews. Vol. 2: Bible
Times and Characters from Joseph to the Exodus (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1910), 19.
28 Christian Lange
when it is carried out of Egypt? This is why he [Jacob] says [Q 12:96]: “Did
I not tell you that, by God, I know what you do not know?”21

Also emphasizing the miraculous nature of the event, al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) and
later commentators relate that Jacob smelled Joseph’s scent over a distance of 80
parasangs, after having been separated from Joseph for 30 or more years.22 They
also report that the wind asked for God’s permission to carry the scent of Joseph
to Jacob.23 Only Jacob smelled the scent, not the people who were with him, and
“this was one of God’s signs (āya min āyāt Allāh).”24
In other words, in the eyes the commentators, Jacob’s nose was very special
indeed, not one that others could possibly aspire to. Also, Joseph’s shirt was any-
thing but a mundane piece of clothing. As al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) relates, “some
exegetes say that the shirt was woven from the Kiswa in paradise.”25 Najm al-Dīn
Kubrā (d. 617/1220) explains that the shirt was woven in paradise “with the light
of God’s beauty.”26 Abraham received this heavenly shirt from Gabriel (together
with a ṭinfisa, a small rug) when Nimrod was about to cast him into fire. Gabriel
sat down with Abraham on the rug, in the middle of the fire, and talked to him.
Abraham later passed the shirt on to Isaac, from where it reached Jacob and,
finally, Joseph. Joseph kept it in a silver tube that hung from his neck. He had it
with him when his brothers threw him into the pit.27 Although the Qurʾan speaks
of the “scent of Joseph” (rīḥ Yūsuf), commentators occasionally stress that it was
the scent of paradise, not that of Joseph, that stuck to the shirt.28 The two notions,
however, could be combined: like the shirt, Joseph himself smelled of paradise.
Joseph’s beauty, so glowingly praised in Islamic literature, was not only a func-
tion of his looks, but also of his scent. Or at least that is how it appeared to Jacob,
as it tends to appear to other parents as well. “The scent of a child is from para-
dise” (rīḥ al-walad min al-janna), it is stated in a hadith.29

21 Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, K. al-Ḥayawān, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,
1998), III, 469–470 (# 1227).
22 Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. Muḥammad Shākir
Ḥaristānī and ʿAlī ʿĀshūr (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī [2011?]), XIII, 72; Abū Manṣūr
Muḥammad al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, ed. Ahmet Vanlioğlu et al. (Istanbul: Mizan Yayınevi,
2005–11), VII, 358; Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed.
Sayyid Kisrawī Ḥasan (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1425/2004), III, 409; Fakhr al-Dīn
al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1429/2008), VI, 507.
23 Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, XIII, 70; Thaʿlabī, Kashf, III, 409; Ismāʿīl Ḥaqqī al-Burūsawī, Rūḥ
al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub
al-ʿIlmiyya, 2009), IV, 333.
24 Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, VII, 358.
25 Ibid.
26 Burūsawī, Rūḥ al-bayān, IV, 332.
27 Rāzī, Tafsīr, VI, 507; Burūsawī, Rūḥ al-bayān, IV, 332.
28 Burūsawī, Ruḥ al-bayān, IV, 334.
29 ʿAbd al-Ghanī b. Ismāʿīl al-Nābulusī, Ahl al-janna wa-ahl al-nār (Cairo: Maktabat al-Turāth
al-Islāmī, 2002), 51.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 29
The heavenly connotations of the story of Joseph’s shirt bring us to the sec-
ond Qurʾanic context in which olfaction plays a role: paradise. According to the
Qurʾan, the blessed enjoy the scent of musk-topped wine (khitāmuhu misk, 83:26),
camphor (kāfūr, 76:5), and fragrant herbs (rayḥān, 56:89).30 It is noteworthy that
the commentators debate whether the word rayḥān refers to something that is
smelled (mā yushammu) or to something else. Opinions are divided. Interpreta-
tions of rayḥān as “fragrant herb” occur most prominently in the notion that the
souls of “those who are brought near” (al-muqarrabūn, see Q 56:88), when they
leave their bodies at death, are surrounded by the smell of rayḥān. This rayḥān is
brought to them from paradise31 in the form of two twigs (ghuṣnayn) with which
the souls are picked up and lifted heavenwards.32 Less aromatic interpretations
include the view, supported by al-Ṭabarī, that rayḥān means nourishment (rizq),
“that is, the grains (ḥabb) from which we eat.”33 Ibn ʿAbbās (d. ca. 68/687–688)
is reported to have taught that “all rayḥān in the Qurʾan refers to nourishment.”34
Further, there are many suggestions for a metaphorical meaning of rayḥān:
“respite,”35 “honour and high rank,”36 “divine mercy,”37 “divine satisfaction,”38
“eternity,”39 or simply “paradise.”40 Commentators also seek to eliminate traces
of earthly smells in paradise in other Qurʾanic contexts. For example, Ibn Kathīr
(d. 774/1373) states that the wine in paradise does not have the loathsome smell
of earthly wine because it is not made “from grape trodden upon by the feet of
man.”41
Notwithstanding the exegetes’ occasional attempts to expunge smell from para-
dise, the Qurʾan speaks quite plainly, though not in an extravagant way, of the

30 The many studies of the Qurʾanic paradise include Joseph Horovitz, “Das koranische Paradies,”
Scripta Universitatis atque Bibliothecae Hierosolymitanarum 6 (1923): 1–16, reprinted in Der
Koran, ed. Rudi Paret (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975), 53–75; Thomas
J. O’Shaughnessy, Eschatological Themes in the Qurʾān (Manila: Cardinal Bea Institute, Loyola
School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, 1986); Soubhi El-Saleh, La vie future selon
le Coran (Paris: J. Vrin, 1971), esp. 15–27; Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “Paradise and Nature in
the Qurʾān and in Pre-Islamic Poetry,” in Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the
Hereafter in Islam, ed. Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016),
136–161; Angelika Neuwirth, “Paradise as Quranic Discourse: Late Antique Foundations and
Early Qur’anic Developments,” in Günther and Lawson, eds., Roads to Paradise, 67–92; Christian
Lange, Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016),
37–70 and passim. None of these studies focuses on the issue of smell in particular.
31 Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, XXVIII, 248.
32 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, VI, 100.
33 Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, XXVIII, 143.
34 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, VI, 51.
35 Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, XXVIII, 247.
36 Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, XIV, 328.
37 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, VI, 100.
38 Rāzī, Tafsīr, X, 438. See also Burūsawī, Rūḥ al-bayān, IX, 340.
39 Rāzī, Tafsīr, X, 438.
40 Thaʿlabī, Kashf, VI, 100.
41 Quoted in EQ, s.v. Food and drink (D. Waines), II, 216b-223b, at 218a, without page number.
30 Christian Lange
existence of heavenly aromas. However, just like in the case of Joseph’s shirt,
these heavenly smells serve a function that has little to do with olfactory events
in ordinary human life. As regards the shirt of Joseph, it might be suggested that
Jacob’s olfaction, just like the vision that follows (fa-rtadda baṣīran), is a cog-
nitive metaphor. As Andrew Rippin notes, “the metaphor of sight as ‘insight’ is
well-entrenched in Arabic and the Qurʾan,”42 al-baṣīr being one of the common
epithets of God. Similarly, we should reckon with a metaphorical meaning of
olfaction as “recollection.” One of the Arabic words for scent, ʿarf, derives from
the same root (ʿ-r-f) that denotes the semantic field of “experiential knowing,
understanding.” Indeed, “nothing is more memorable than a smell.”43 When Jacob
smells, he remembers his son. When, as a consequence, he becomes baṣīr, or
“seeing,” it is by way of visualizing, of bringing back to his inner eye, the image
of his son. Both olfaction and vision are part of the same mnemonic process of
reaching back in time and eliding the past into the present.
In the case of heavenly aromas, the process works the other way round, towards
the future. Smell provides a proleptic whiff of eschatological bliss. Both the scent
of Joseph’s shirt and the scent of paradise divert attention away from the here and
now, cutting through time in two directions: Jacob smells back, recalling an ideal
past and thereby re-enacting his beloved son’s presence; the paradise passages
smell forward, gesturing towards eschatological bliss in the perfumed garden of
paradise. Smell is invoked in both instances, not to draw attention to the scent of
the present but to exploit smell’s ability to cross boundaries, to transcend space
and time, and to effect transition in the scenting subject.44 In sum, the point of
the story of Joseph’s shirt and the presence of heavenly aromas in the Qurʾan is
not to “add religious prestige” or to “give a heightened status” to certain earthly
fragrances,45 but rather to remove smell to a safe distance, by anchoring it in the
mythical past and projecting it to the sacred time of the afterlife.

De-odorization
Arguably, thus, the Qurʾan de-odorizes the world of the here and now. This trig-
gers the question to what extent the world into which the Qurʾan was born was in
fact odorized. More generally speaking, we may ask to what extent it is possible to
inscribe the Qurʾan’s attitude towards smell in the history of the Qurʾan’s coming-
about, and in that of the budding Muslim community. This history, as decades of
research on the question of Islamic origins have shown, is elusive, just like smell.
In what follows, I therefore do not pretend to present a clear-cut chronology of

42 EQ, s.v. Seeing and hearing (Andrew Rippin), IV, 573b-576a, at 574b.
43 Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, 5. Trygg Engen, one of the founders of the psycho-
logical study of olfaction, speaks of “the Proustian hypothesis of odor memory.” See Engen, The
Perception of Odors (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 98.
44 See David Howes, “Olfaction and Transition: An Essay on the Ritual Uses of Smell,” Canadian
Review of Sociology 24/3 (1987): 398–416.
45 Pace EQ, s.v. Odor and smells (M. Marin), III, 573b.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 31
aromatic events in and around the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad. Sniffing
around the olfactory history of early Islam, I attempt to disentangle a multiplicity
of overlapping, and often admittedly faint, traces of smell and to insert them into
a tentative diachronic framework.
Important clues about ancient Arabic olfactory culture are provided in poetry.
Imruʾ al-Qays (d. ca. 540 CE), in what is “surely the most famous Arabic poem
of all times,”46 evokes the memory of lovers by noting that “when they stood up
[from their beds], the scent of musk wafted from them like breath of the east wind
bearing the fragrance of cloves.”47 In another poem, he associates rich, beautiful
women with aloeswood, ben oil, camphor, and incense. As noted by Anya King,
the preeminent historian of perfume in the Islamic world, Imruʾ al-Qays uses per-
fume, and musk imagery in particular, in a habitual, “formulaic” way.48 Likewise,
Imruʾ al-Qays’ rival ʿAlqama b. ʿAbada, a poet chronicling the court culture of the
Ghassanids and Lakhmids, speaks of the ʿabīr perfume used by women.49 ʿAntara
(sixth c. CE), the warrior-poet of central Arabia, mentions “a merchant’s musk in
a perfume box.”50
Later pre-Islamic and mukhaḍram poets who weave olfactory references into
their poetry include ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ (fl. first half sixth c. CE), al-ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa al-
Muhalhil (fl. middle sixth c. CE), al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī (fl. 570–600 CE), Qays
b. al-Khaṭīm (early seventh c. CE), Shammākh b. Ḍirār (d. ca. 30/650), Ḥassān b.
Thābit (d. ca. 40/659), and al-Marrār b. Munqidh (late first/seventh c.). They men-
tion perfumes such as ūqūq (al-Muhalhil), ʿabīr (ʿAbīd, Ḥassān b. Thābit) and
nadd (ʿAbīd), next to aromatic substances such as musk (ʿAbīd, al-Nābigha, Qays
b. al-Khaṭīm, Ḥassān b. Thābit, al-Marrār), ambergris (al-Nābigha, al-Marrār,
al-Shammākh), saffron (al-Shammākh, al-Marrār), and aloeswood.51 The verses
of the blind Christian poet al-Aʿshā b. Qays (d. ca. 625 CE), a contemporary of
the Prophet, are scented particularly lavishly, with musk, saffron, and aromatic
flowers (jasmine, narcissus, lily, rose), but also with essential oils (zanbaq) and
different kinds of perfumed wine (qindīd, ṭīlāʾ).52

46 Geert J. H. van Gelder, “Four Perfumes of Arabia: A Translation of al-Suyūṭī’s Al-Maqāma al-
Miskiyya,” in Parfums d’Orient, ed. Rika Gyselen (Bures-sur-Yvette: Groupe pour l’étude de la
civilisation du moyen-orient, 1998), 203.
47 Trans. Alan Jones, Early Arabic Poetry. II: Select Odes (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1996), 59.
48 Anya King, “The Importance of Imported Aromatics in Arabic Culture: Illustrations from Pre-
Islamic and Early Islamic Poetry,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 67/3 (2008): 184.
49 Ibid., 186.
50 Ibid.
51 For all these poets to the exception of al-Marrār, see the verses compiled in ʿAlī Shalaq, ed.,
Al-shamm fī l-shiʿr al-ʿarabī (Beirut: Dār al-Andalus, 1404/1984), 5–15. For al-Marrār, see Van
Gelder, “Four Perfumes,” 203. For aloeswood, attested in pre-Islamic poetry under the names
of yalanjūj and kibāʾ, see Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1987), 75, quoting Georg Jacob, Altarabisches Beduinenleben (Berlin:
Maier & Müller, 1897), 12.
52 See Shalaq, ed., Al-shamm, 12–14; Rudolf Geyer, Zwei Gedichte von al-Aʿšā, 2 vols. (Vienna
1905/1919), I, 70, II, 1, 84, 131, 215. See also Jacob, Beduinenleben, 11–12: “Arabien ist . . . reich
32 Christian Lange
The “preeminent aromatics of the Arabic poet,” states King, are musk and
ambergris.53 A latecomer to the aromascape of Late Antiquity, musk, imported
from eastern Asia, was traded in the Sassanian and Byzantine Empire,54 and from
there, into Arabian lands. Ambergris, a residue of the digestive system of the sperm
whale, was found on the southern shore of Arabia and of other lands abutting the
Indian ocean.55 In addition to the more expensive, and therefore prized, imports of
musk, ambergris, camphor, aloeswood, and saffron, Arab merchants also dealt in
indigenous aromatics, such as South Arabian frankincense and myrrh.56
However, did they do so in Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad?
It seems so. Quraysh, after all, were successful dealers in aromatics.57 As noted
by Patricia Crone,

ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib sold Yemeni perfume at Minā and elsewhere in

the pilgrim season. . . . Abū Ṭālib is also said to have traded in ʿiṭr, presum-
ably Yemeni. Of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ we are told that he used to sell leather goods
and perfume in Egypt. . . . Ḥakam b. Abī l-ʿĀṣ once went to Ḥīra for the sale
of perfume; and after the conquests, ṭīb was among the gifts sent by ʿUmar’s
wife to the wife of Heraclius. Perfume was thus a commodity for which the
Meccans had a market not only in the Ḥijāz, but also outside Arabia.58

Crone qualifies this picture by stating that the Arab trade in perfume remained
largely confined to the southern, Arab regions of the Byzantine realm. Quraysh
cannot be said to have been “large-scale suppliers of perfume to the Byzantine
and Persian empires.”59 However, it seems certain that perfumes, though a luxury,
were not rare in the context in which the Qurʾan was first declaimed.60 Why, then,
the Qurʾan’s indifference to olfaction?
Muḥammad Ṭālib Madlūl, the author of one of the few studies of the Qurʾanic
sensorium, suggests that the Qurʾan pays little attention to smell because olfaction

an würzig duftenden Pflanzen, namentlich Südarabien . . . ein Strom von Wohlgerüchen entstieg
den aromatischen Kräutern des Thals und erfüllte die gereinigte Atmosphäre.”
53 King, “Importance of Imported Aromatics,” 188.
54 See Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History, trans. J. Ward (Leiden: Brill, 2005),
43–54.
55 Anya King, Scent from the Garden of Paradise (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 61–62. On
medieval Arab attitudes towards ambergris, see Thierry Buquet, “De la pestilence à la fragrance.
L’origine de l’ambre gris selon les auteurs arabes,” in Histoire et anthropologie des odeurs en
terre d’Islam à l’époque médiévale, ed. Julie Bonnéric (Bulletin d’Études Orientales 64) (2015),
113–133, https://doi.org/10.4000/beo.4692
56 See EQ, s.v. South Arabia, Religions in pre-Islamic (Ch. Robin), V, 84b-94a, at 90a.
57 Crone, Meccan Trade, 95–97. On perfumes in pre-Islamic Arabia, see also the articles in Alessan-
dra Avanzini, ed., Profumi di Arabia: Atti del Convegno (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1997).
58 Crone, Meccan Trade, 96.
59 Ibid.
60 Pace Ailin Qian, “Delight in Paradise: A Comparative Survey of Heavenly Food and Drink in the
Quran,” in Günther and Lawson, eds., Roads to Paradise, 257.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 33
is an inconsequential human sense, much less important than the other senses. He
further states that attention to smell is something the Qurʾan can do without, see-
ing that in the revealed law, there are so few commands and prohibitions regard-
ing the nose.61 Madlūl’s first argument jars with current scholarly assessments of
the importance of smell, as well as the other “lower” senses, in the study of human
culture and society.62 His second argument is based on the normative assumption
that the Qurʾan coincides with the Sharia. Here, I wish to present other, more fully
embodied and more strictly historical reasons for Qurʾanic anosmia.
There are three avenues for thinking about the Qurʾan’s attitude to smell and
olfaction. The first concerns the intimate connection between perfume and pre-
Islamic kingship. In the centuries before the rise of Islam, the combination of
musk and ambergris, in particular, was associated with rulers. Kings like the Per-
sian vassal Sayf b. Dhī Yazan of Yemen (r. second half seventh c. CE) and the
Ghassanid king Jabala (early seventh c. CE) are described in the sources as hav-
ing been daubed in musk and ambergris, in an ostentatious show of the “languid
luxury” they enjoyed.63 Also in pre-Islamic Mecca local chiefs put on perfume,
or dipped their hands in it, to proclaim bonds of authority and loyalty. The most
famous case concerns the leaders of five Meccan clans, including the Prophet’s
own clan of the Banū Hāshim, who swore allegiance to each other in a ritual, sup-
posedly witnessed by a teenaged Muhammad, that involved the use of fragrant
substances.64 “In order to make binding the oath, a vessel full of perfume was
brought into the Kaʿba, and the participants dipped their hands in it and then dried
them on the walls of the shrine.”65 Accordingly, the members of this confedera-
tion became known as the muṭayyabūn, the “Perfumed Ones,” as opposed to the
rival faction of the aḥlāf, the “Confederates.” The Perfumed Ones overlapped, to
a significant degree, with Quraysh al-Biṭāḥ, the clans who inhabited the central
areas of Mecca and dominated trade in valuable goods and substances such as
perfumes.66 It is not far-fetched, therefore, to see in the Qurʾan’s disinterest in
olfaction a sign of Muhammad’s break with the Perfumed Ones, the powerful and

61 Madlūl, al-Ḥawāss al-insāniyya, 138.

62 Classen et al., Aroma. See also the literature mentioned earlier, in the introduction to this chapter.
For a recent overview, see Candau, “L’anthropologie des odeurs: un état des lieux,” in Julie Bon-
néric (éd.), Histoire et anthropologie des odeurs en terre d’Islam à l’époque médiévale (Bulletin
d’Études Orientales 64) (2015), 43–61. https://doi.org/10.4000/beo.4692. See also Susan Ash-
brook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2006), 4: “For the study of antiquity, an exploration of the ‘lesser’
senses is required if we are to grasp more fully how the ancients understood the body as a whole
body, and bodily experience as a necessary component of religion, and indeed, of human life.”
63 See King, “Importance of Imported Aromatics,” 180, 183.
64 Van Gelder, “Four Perfumes,” 203.
65 EI2, “Laʿaḳat al-dam” (Ch. Pellat), V, 581a-581b, at 581a.
66 For a recent, insightful analysis of the relationship between the muṭayyabūn and the aḥlāf, see
Marije Coster, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Alliance and Authority in the Poetical Discourse
of Muḥammad’s Lifetime” (PhD, Groningen, 2019), at 59, 110, 181, 244.
34 Christian Lange
rich Meccan traders who persecuted him and his followers and drove them away
from their home town.
In general, as noted by Devin Stewart, the “moral tenor” of the Qurʾan is
opposed to the culture of the Perfumed Ones. Not only does the Qurʾan eschew
“references to women and their perfume which occur frequently in pre-Islamic
poetry,”67 it also promotes sensory deprivation in a more general sense, celebrat-
ing the pious practice of holding night vigils, that is, praying to God in those
quiet nocturnal moments when all sense impressions, whether visual, aural, or
olfactory, fade away.68 “By the night when it covers” (Q 92:1; see also 91:4), the
Qurʾanic oath formula goes, and “By the night when it grows quiet” (Q 93:2).69
The Perfumed Ones, as noted, had wiped their hands off the walls of the Kaʿba.
This directs our attention to a possible second cause underlying Qurʾanic anosmia:
the pre-Islamic custom of perfuming the Kaʿba. In Late Antique South Arabia, the
burning of incense (often a mixture of frankincense and myrrh) was a common
ritual,70 and there is good reason to believe that incense was ritually used in pre-
Islamic times in and around the Kaʿba, too. In fact, the aloeswood called mijmar
is said to have caused one of the conflagrations of the Kaʿba during the Prophet’s
youth.71 To quote Stewart again,

[m]issing [from the Qurʾan] are passages reminiscent of Biblical references

to the pleasant odor of burnt offerings, presumably because it would not be in
keeping with the Qurʾanic portrayal of God to suggest that he was delighted
by sacrifices and felt hunger or need for them.72

Indeed, as the Qurʾan states, “only your religious devotion (taqwā minkum)
will reach God,” but not “the flesh or the blood” of sacrificial animals (Q 22:37).
A fortiori, the odour of burnt sacrifices will not reach Him, either. God needs
neither food nor fragrance. In two Qurʾanic verses (22:26 and 2:125), God is said
to have instructed Abraham to “purify My house” (ṭahhir baytī). This injunction
has mostly been understood to refer to the removal of images and idols from the
Kaʿba. However, perhaps we should also contemplate the possibility that these

67 EQ, s.v. Smell (D. Stewart), V, 62b-63a.

68 I borrow the notion of the Qurʾan’s “sensory deprivation” from Nora Schmid, “The Word Inner-
most: Late Antique Ascetic Knowledge and its Poetics in the Qurʾan and Kharijite Thought” (PhD,
Berlin, 2017), 133.
69 Schmid puts it aptly when stating that “[t]he Qur’an may not be an ascetic text per se, but ascetic
knowledge pervades it.” See ibid., 46.
70 See EQ, s.v. South Arabia, Religions in pre-Islamic (Ch. Robin), V, 90a.
71 See Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Azraqī, K. Akhbār Makka wa-mā jāʾa fīhā min al-āthār, ed. Fer-
dinand Wüstenfeld (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1859), 176. Further on this conflagration, see Maurice
Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Le pèlerinage à la Mekke. Étude d’histoire religieuse (Paris: Geuthner,
1923), 33. The use of a mijmara in the Kaʿba sanctuary is also attested around the time of the hijra.
See ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Hishām, K. Sīrat rasūl Allāh, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, 2 vols. (Göttingen:
Dieterichsche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1858–59), 430.
72 EQ, s.v. Smell (D. Stewart), V, 62b-63a.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 35
two verses are a call to eliminate smells from the Kaʿba, in a reversal of the old
practice of wiping hands dripping with perfume against it or dousing it in incense.
Scenting sacred spaces was a custom not only of the pagan Arabs but also of
other religious communities, in particular the Christians. This brings us to the
third possible reason why the Qurʾan sniffs at olfaction. Late Antique Christi-
anity, as Susan Ashbrook Harvey has shown, bestowed central importance to
smell. From the fourth century onwards, the use of incense was gradually incor-
porated into Christian ritual, such that “[b]y the late fifth century, incense was a
staple of Christian prayer practice, public and private, wherever the church was
found.”73 Churches in the Near East continued to be filled with incense also after
the Islamic conquest. Interpretations of sacred scent were nuanced and multilay-
ered. Incense—sweet-smelling, effusive, and rising heavenwards—served both as
a sensorial substrate of Christian liturgy and as a powerful metaphor for Christian
devotion. While Augustine of Hippo (d. 430 CE) described the Lord’s Prayer as
“the daily incense . . . offered to God on the altar of the heart,”74 Ephrem of Nisibis
(d. 373 CE) imagined “the death of Christ as the true sacrificial incense offering,
which Christians were called to imitate.”75
Scholars have studied Ephrem’s relationship with the Qurʾan first and foremost
in terms of his Hymns of Paradise, which, as many believe, resonate deeply with
the many Qurʾanic paradise passages.76 According to Harvey, Ephrem’s Hymns
of Paradise are an “olfactory tour de force,”77 in fact, as she asserts, “[o]lfactory
sensation is the most prevalent image by which Ephrem characterizes paradise in
this cycle of hymns.”78 It should be noted, however, that despite the “enhanced
olfactory piety” of Ephrem’s Christian surroundings,79 Ephrem mentions few
specific scents in his hymns, and no perfumes at all.80 In certain corners, in fact,
there was strong Christian prejudice against perfumes. For example, John Chrys-
ostom (d. 407 CE) denounced perfume as being typical of prostitutes, actors, and
dancers. “Who will expect anything noble and good from one who smells of per-
fume? . . . Let your soul breathe a spiritual fragrance,” he warned.81
Here we encounter a difference with the Qurʾan’s description of paradise, which
is filled with musk, camphor, and fragrant herbs, next to other luxury items, such

73 Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 77. See also Classen et al., Aroma, 52.
74 Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 82.
75 Ibid., 79.
76 For a state of the art of the question, see Sidney Griffith, “St. Ephrem the Syrian, the Quran, and the
Grapevines of Paradise,” in Günther and Lawson, eds., Roads to Paradise, 781–805.
77 Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 235.
78 Ibid., 309 n169.
79 Ibid., 81.
80 Cf. P. J. Botha, “The Significance of the Senses in St. Ephrem’s Description of Paradise,” Acta
Patristica et Byzantina 5/1 (1994): 28–37.
81 Quoted in Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 206. See also Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 CE),
quoted in Classen et al., Aroma, 51: “Attention to sweet scents is a bait which draws us into sensual
lusts.”
36 Christian Lange
as precious textiles and furniture.82 The Qurʾan appears to invert the Christian
paradigm, by de-odorizing rituals of worship on earth but allowing for the exist-
ence of perfume and other Eastern and “pagan” luxuries in paradise. However, it
is unclear whether the Qurʾan can be said to have come about in the vicinity of
incense-filled Christian churches and thus should be understood to react against
Christian odorizing practices. It is not my aim, anyway, to derive the Qurʾan’s dis-
interest in smell from a single source. The Christian and Rabbinic aromascape of
Late Antiquity no doubt contributed to the Qurʾan’s attitude towards olfaction.83
But we should also, primarily even, see Qurʾanic anosmia as a symptom of the
break with the Perfumed Ones of Mecca and with the pagan olfactory rites centred
in and around the Kaʿba.
Whatever the reasons, under the new Qurʾanic sensory regime, the Kaʿba
became “purified” (muṭahhar), like the muṭahharūn in heaven, the odourless
angels. (The devil, by contrast, stinks, and is responsible for foul smells. In one
particularly graphic hadith he is said to blow into the backsides of people, thus
causing flatulence.84 “Garlic, onions, and leek,” one reads in another, seemingly
late tradition, “are the devil’s perfume.”)85 If we are willing to accept the tradi-
tional account that has the Prophet, after his return to Mecca, go to the Kaʿba to
empty it of images and statues,86 we should also countenance that this prophetic
reduction of visual stimuli in the Kaʿba was accompanied by prophetic osmo-
clasm, that is, ridding the Kaʿba of smells. Odoriferous rituals at the Kaʿba, at
any rate, appear to have been abandoned. No instances of perfuming the Kaʿba
are known from the time of the Prophet and the rightly guided first four caliphs,
the rāshidūn.87
Moreover, scenting oneself when in the vicinity of the Kaʿba was placed
under restrictions. According to a report related by the Meccan pilgrimage expert
ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 115/733), the Prophet was once approached by a man
with khalūq perfume sprinkled all over himself. The man asked what he was to
do before embarking on the minor pilgrimage, the ʿumra. “Wash off all traces
of your perfume,” the Prophet reportedly answered, after thinking for a while,

82 See Neuwirth, “Paradise as Quranic Discourse,” 83.

83 See note 15.
84 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Al-Muṣannaf fī l-ḥadīth, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī, 11 vols.
(Beirut: Al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1970), I, 141.
85 Al-Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-kabīr, ed. Ḥamdī b. ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Salafī, 20 vols. (Mosul: Maktabat
al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam, 1983/1404), VIII, 282; al-Suyūṭi, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr,
n.d.), II, 54. See the commentary by al-Munāwī, Fayḍ al-qadīr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,
1415/1994), no. 3570.
86 Suliman Bashear, rather conclusively to my mind, has disputed the historicity of the accounts of
the Prophet’s iconoclastic intervention at the Kaʿba, presenting them as the result of a second-
century controversy about images in Islam. See Bashear, “The Images of Mecca: A Case-Study in
Early Muslim Iconography,” Le Muséon: Revue d’Études Orientales 105/1–2 (1992): 361–377.
87 Julie Bonnéric, “Réflexions sur l’usage des produits odoriférants dans les mosquées de l’époque
classique au Proche-Orient,” in Julie Bonnéric (éd.), Histoire et anthropologie des odeurs en terre
d’Islam à l’époque médiévale (Bulletin d’Études Orientales 64) (2015), 293–317, at 304. https://
doi.org/10.4000/beo.4692.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 37
“and then proceed in your ʿumra as you would have done embarking on a ḥajj.”88
According to another tradition, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–644) rebuked
Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān (r. 41–80/661–680) for wearing perfume during the ḥajj
and ordered him to wash it off.89 In the later fiqh tradition, perfuming while in
a state of consecration during the pilgrimage came to be categorically forbid-
den.90 A number of hadiths, which I deem particularly revealing, indicate that the
Prophet was indifferent towards body odours, especially when resulting from an
ascetic lifestyle, in which case they could even acquire a positive connotation.
Thus, the Prophet is alleged to have declared that the breath of a person who fasts
smells better than musk, the perfume of paradise.91 In another report, a companion
of the Prophet recalls that all the companions of the Prophet used to smell of sheep
because they were dressed in simple garments of wool.92

Re-odorization
At the same time, the Prophet is said in more than one tradition to have disap-
proved of strong body smells. In contrast to his supposed approval of the foul
breath of those fasting, Muslim scholars relate that “the thing that most troubled
the messenger of God was that a [bad] smell should come from him (an yūjada
minhu rīḥ shayʾin).”93 In particular, the Prophet is reported to have loathed halito-
sis.94 Conversely, he is said to have loved perfume. “Musk is a delicious perfume,”

88 See G.H.A. Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 139b.
89 Mālik b. Anas, K. al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, ed. Muḥammad Muṣtaf ā al-Aʿẓamī, 8 vols. (Abu Dhabi:
Muʾassasat Zāyid b. Sulṭān Āl Nahyān, 1425/2004), III, 475.
90 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jazīrī, K. al-Fiqh ʿalā l-madhāhib al-arbaʿa, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr,
1422/2002), 545–546. The schools of law, to different degrees, see no harm if pilgrims smell of
perfume because they visited a perfumery or bought perfume, or even because they put on perfume
before entering the state of consecration. See Nadā Muḥammad ʿAlī Ṣawwān, Aḥkām al-ḥawāss
al-khams, dirāsa fiqhiyya muqārana muʿāṣira (Damascus-Beirut: Dār al-Nawādir, 1433/2012),
244–245.
91 Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, Al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir, Muḥammad
Fuʾād ʿAbd al Bāqī, and Ibrāhīm ʿAṭwa ʿIwaḍ, 5 vols. (Cairo: Muṣṭaf ā al Bābī al Ḥalabī, 1356–
95/1937–75), k. al-īmān 8 (b. mā jāʾa fī faḍl al-ṣawm), III, 136 (# 764). See Juynboll, Encyclope-
dia, 117, 366, 371.
92 Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Al-Sunan, ed. Muḥammad Muḥy al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, 4 vols. (Beirut:
al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, n.d.), IV, 44.
93 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 6 vols. (Cairo: Muʾassasat Qurṭuba, n.d.), VI, 59; Ibn Ḥajar
al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-bārī fī sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), XXVI, 208.
94 According to a story related by Ibn Saʿd, the Prophet was greatly alarmed when told by two of his
wives, albeit incorrectly, that his breath smelled of the ill-smelling maghfūr gum. See Ibn Saʿd,
Ṭabaqāt, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968), VIII, 170. As for garlic, there are
plenty of prophetic traditions condemning it, although a number of “dispensations” (rukhaṣ) are
also given. See, for the locus classicus (“Those who eat garlic and onions, whether out of hunger
or not, must not approach our place of worship”), al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Muṣṭaf ā Dīb al-Bughā, 6
vols. (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1407/1987), I, 291. On halitosis and garlic, see also Juynboll, Ency-
clopedia, 155 n1, 213, 501, 620, 663.
38 Christian Lange
he is alleged to have commented in describing a certain Jewish woman.95 And,
most famously, it was related that he had declared that “it is women and perfume
that have become especially dear to me, but my solace lies in prayer.”96 According
to several traditions, the Prophet even used perfume while in a state of consecra-
tion during the pilgrimage. This is most strikingly recorded in a first-person nar-
rative related from his wife ʿĀʾisha. When a companion exclaimed that “I would
rather cover myself in tar (qaṭrān) than use perfume while in the state of iḥrām,”
ʿĀʾisha told him that “I used to perfume the Prophet and then he would pass by his
wives, and then he would wake up in the morning, still in a state of consecration,
with perfume sprinkled all over himself.”97
Is it conceivable that, against the anosmic attitude of the Qurʾan, the genera-
tions following the Prophet posthumously re-odorized him and thereby refitted
Islamic culture with temporarily lost layers of scent? Such a dynamic seems cap-
tured with remarkable precision in the following anecdote. In a memorable scene,
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 35–40/656–661), when washing the corpse of the Prophet, is
said to have exclaimed: “How sweet is your smell, alive and dead!”98 In fact, the
corpse of the Prophet seems to have been made sweet smelling not only in ʿAlī’s
imagination but in actual practice. As is recorded in al-Ḥassān b. Thābit’s verse:

a-lā dafantum rasūla llāhi fī safaṭin

/ min al-uluwwati wa-l-kāfūri manḍūdi
Did you not bury the Messenger of God in a basket
/ of layered [palm-leaves smelling of] aloeswood and camphor?99

The fumigation of the dead with fragrant substances was common in pre-Islamic
Medina, but it appears that, against what al-Ḥassān b. Thābit related about the
Prophet’s burial, in early Islamic times the practice was condemned. The Prophet
himself condoned putting no more than “a little camphor” (shayʾ min kāfūr) on
the washed corpse of his daughter, presumably for sanitary reasons.100 Several

95 Ibid., 509. This is in contrast to the hadith that women should only wear perfume that is not
noticeable in public (see note 130). Shīʿite jurists, as Juynboll notes, referring to al-Nawawī’s
commentary on Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ, declared musk forbidden altogether.
96 Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad al-Nasāʾī, al-Sunan al-kubrā, ed. ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-Bundārī and
Sayyid Kisrawī Ḥasan, 6 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, n.d.), V, 280 (ḥubbiba ilayya
l-nisāʾ wa-l-ṭīb wa-juʿilat qurratu ʿaynī fī l-ṣalāt).
97 Al-Nasāʾī, Sunan, II, 340; Ibn Khuzayma, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4 vols. (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1390/1970),
IV, 157. See Juynboll, Encyclopedia, 562, 389.
98 Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 1019. Hela Ouardi has argued that we should see in this and similar traditions
the “awkward attempt” of later authors to dissimulate the “embarrassing” fact that the Prophet
was left unburied for several days after his death. See Ouardi, Les derniers jours de Muhammad
(Paris: Albin Michel, 2016), ch. 17, at n20–25.
99 Dīwān Ḥassān b. Thābit, ed. ʿAbd A. Muhannā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, n.d.), 67.
The verse is not included in the elegies on the Prophet’s death quoted in Ibn Hishām’s Sīra,
1022–1026. Elsewhere in Ḥassān’s corpus, a censer is mentioned. See Shalaq, ed., al-Shamm, 15.
100 Mālik, Muwaṭṭaʾ, II, 311. The tradition does not specify which daughter’s burial is meant.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 39
testaments by early Muslims, which we find quoted in Ibn Saʿd’s (d. 230/845)
Ṭabaqāt, prohibit the perfuming of corpses altogether.101
However, qualms to apply perfume, whether to the living or the dead, did not
survive long, and only in certain quarters. Perhaps, as the case of the Prophet’s
scented burial indicates, they were already on the wane during Muhammad’s life-
time. Ignaz Goldziher stated that “we simply have to accept the steadily increas-
ing sensualism of Muhammad as a fact.”102 It is clear, at any rate, that the members
of the political and religious elite did not hesitate, even a generation after the
Prophet, to douse themselves in perfume. Goldziher considered it “telling” that
the biographies contained in Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt give us plenty of information
about “how these holy people used to perfume themselves, how they dyed their
beards and hair, how they decorated themselves in their clothes.” Perfumery in
particular, “against which the prayer devotees (Betbrüder), as sworn enemies
of the cosmetic arts, agitate, is given a salient role.”103 ʿUthmān b. ʿUbaydallāh
remembered how, as a child, he was struck by the strong perfume that Abū Hurayra
(d. ca. 58/678) and his friends exuded.104 ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar (d. 74/693), ʿUmar
b. ʿAbd al-Khaṭṭāb’s son, is said to have been concerned greatly with matters of
fashion and to have lavishly oiled and perfumed himself before going to prayer.105
Ibn ʿAbbās (d. ca. 68/687–688) allegedly put on so much ghāliya perfume when
entering iḥrām that his bald head looked as if it was covered in rashes.106 “Did Ibn
ʿAbbās just pass by,” people wondered, “or [a cloud of] musk?”107
An analogous process of re-odorization appears to have unfolded in and around
the sacred spaces of early Islam, such as the two mosques in Mecca and Medina.
The companion ʿUthmān b. Maẓʿūn (d. 3/625), in the early years of the Prophet’s
sojourn in Medina, is said to have been the first person to apply khalūq to the qibla
of the Prophet’s mosque.108 The Prophet himself, according to a report transmitted
in Ibn Abī Shayba’s (d. 235/849) Muṣannaf, wiped away mucus from the qibla
of his mosque and covered the spot with khalūq.109 There are also reports about a

101 Jean-Charles Ducène, “Des parfums et des fumées. Les parfums à brûler en Islam médiéval,”
in Histoire et anthropologie des odeurs en terre d’Islam à l’époque médiévale, ed. Julie Bonné-
ric (Bulletin d’Études Orientales 64) (2015), 160, https://doi.org/10.4000/beo.4692, referring to
Michael Jan De Goeje, “L’encensement des morts chez les anciens Arabes,” Actes XIVe congrès
international d’orientalisme (Algiers 1905): 3–7. In later fiqh, opinions on this issue were divided.
102 Ignaz Goldziher, “Asketismus und Ṣūfismus,” in Vorlesungen über den Islam (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1910), 139–200, at 146–147.
103 Ibid., 147–148.
104 Ibid., 148, quoting Ibn Saʿd, K. al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, ed. Eduard Sachau (Leiden: Brill, 1904–
1940), III, part 2, 103.
105 Juynboll, Encyclopedia, 11. Also Ibn Masʿūd went to prayer strongly perfumed. See Ibn Qutayba,
ʿUyūn al-akhbār, ed. Carl Brockelmann (Strassburg: Trübner, 1906), III, 353 (b. al-ṭīb).
106 Ibid., 353–354.
107 Ibid., 354.
108 Ducène, “Des parfums et des fumées,” 160.
109 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥamad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Jumʿa and Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm
al-Laḥīdān (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1425/2004), III, 693. I owe this reference to Adam
Bursi.
40 Christian Lange
figurative censer in the Medina mosque in the first/seventh century,110 allegedly
brought there from Syria by a client of the caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, a man
called ʿAbdallāh the Fumigator (al-mujmir).111 As Henri Lammens wrote, “a little
more and tajmīr [fumigation] would have become a function of Islamic liturgy,
like the use of incense among Christians.”112
Medina, at one time, was known for the stench of its wells. The foul-smelling
well of Buḍāʿa, in particular, was a cause of concern among the emigrants to the
oasis because they were unsure whether its water was fit for ritual ablution.113
At first, the Prophet reportedly declared, in line with his indifference towards
smell, that the stench of Buḍāʿa was no impediment to using its water for ritual
ablution.114 Then, however, the Prophet saw “a black woman moving her head
in agitation and leaving Medina, to settle in Mahayʿa,” a vision he interpreted
to mean that “the infestation of Medina (wabāʾ al-Madīna) had been moved to
Mahayʿa.”115 In another report, the Prophet is supposed to have spat into the well
of Buḍāʿa, thereby eliminating its foul odour.116 Medina came to be known as “the
Sweet-Smelling One” (al-Ṭayba).117 From this new, fragrant Medina, blessed with
sacred smell, the practice of perfuming holy sites appears to have spread back to
Mecca.
The Umayyad caliph Muʿāwiya b. Sufyān is said to have been the first to per-
fume the Kaʿba, after a hiatus of some decades. It is related that he perfumed
(ṭayyaba) the interior of the Kaʿba with khalūq and aloeswood (mijmar).118 The
ritual use of aloeswood and musk at the Kaʿba is also attested for the time of
the caliphate of Ibn al-Zubayr (r. 61–73/681–692).119 A generation later, ʿUmar II
(r. 99–101/717–720) ordered that only the qibla wall of the Prophet’s mosque in
Medina should be washed and treated with khalūq, but no other mosques.120 He
must have done so in order to rein in a proliferating practice. We are told, in fact,

110 Ibn Rusta (d. after 290/903), Kitāb al-aʿlāq al-nāfisa, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1891), repr. 1967, 66 (trans. Gaston Wiet, Les atours précieux [Cairo: Publication de la Société
de Géographie d’Égypte, 1955], 70).
111 See Henri Lammens, Études sur le règne du calife Omeyad Moʿawiya 1er (Beirut: Imprimerie
Catholique, 1906), 367 n8, quoting from a MS of Abū Bakr al-Marāghī’s (d. 816/1414), Taḥqīq
al-nuṣra ilā maʿālim dār al-hijra.
112 Lammens, Etudes, 367: “Encore un peu et le tajmīr serait devenu une function de la liturgie
Islamite, comme l’encensement chez les chrétiens.”
113 Juynboll, Encyclopedia, 61–62.
114 Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.), I, 24.
115 See al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, VI, 2580. The locality, or region, of Mahayʿa is identified by a number
of commentators with al-Juḥfa, one of the five mīqāt of the pilgrimage, a locality situated some
180 km northwest of Mecca, near the Red Sea coast.
116 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, ed. Sachau, I, part 2, 184. I owe this reference to Adam Bursi.
117 See, e.g., al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, II, 666 (= Juynboll, Encyclopedia, 506).
118 See Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Hamadhānī, Mukhtaṣar kitāb al-buldān, ed. M. J. de Goeje ­(Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1885), 20 (from Qatāda, d. 117/735).
119 See Azraqī, Makka, 179 (aloeswood); Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, III, 693 (musk).
120 ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ al-wafā bi-akhbār dār al-Muṣṭafā, ed. Qāsim al-Sāmarrāʾī,
5 vols. (London: Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2001), II, 449. See the discussion in
Bonnéric, “Réflexions,” 300.
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 41
that under the reign of ʿUmar II’s predecessor al-Walīd (r. 86–96/705–715), the
rock in the Jerusalem sanctuary was perfumed with khalūq:

Every Monday and Thursday, they had saffron crushed and made into pow-
der. Then, at dusk, they mixed it with musk, ambergris, rose water and the
jūrī spice, and let it sit during the night. In the morning . . . they took the
khalūq, carried it to the Rock, and generously rubbed it with it until it was
entirely covered. . . . Then they mounted the Rock to rub in everything that
was left.121

In sum, it seems that the old practices of using incense in houses of worship, rub-
bing scented oil on holy stones, columns, and walls, and collecting the oil that
dripped from them into small devotional jugs122 was continued in the first genera-
tions of Islam. This re-odorization not only ensured continuity with pre-Islamic
practices, it chimed with the gradual—albeit contested—edenification of Islam’s
central sanctuaries, a process by which these places became symbolically and
physically connected with paradise.123

Conclusions
Taking inspiration from the “sensory turn” in history and anthropology, I have
attempted to show in this chapter that the smellscapes of the Qurʾan and of early
Islam (and indeed of later periods of Islamic history as well) deserve serious
study. The post-Qurʾanic developments discussed in the preceding section, I has-
ten to add, are not my central concern here. They warrant separate investigation,
and in fact have already been studied in more detail by others.124 The focus of
this chapter has been the strange phenomenon of Qurʾanic anosmia. First of all,
I established that the Qurʾan is a remarkably odorless text, a fact that in the past
did not totally elude scholars but triggered little reflection. Secondly, I examined
the two Qurʾanic instances of olfaction, concluding that both these instances do
not detract from the fundamentally smell-averse character of the Qurʾan. Thirdly,
I discussed several possible reasons for Qurʾanic anosmia, arguing that it came

121 Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī, Uns al-jalīl bi-taʾrīkh al-Quds wa-l-Khalīl, trans. Henri Sauvaire, His-
toire de Jérusalem et d’Hébron depuis Abraham jusqu’à la fin du XVe siècle de J.-C. (Paris:
Ernest Leroux, 1876), 52–54 (my translation is from the French of Sauvaire).
122 On this practice, see Julian Raby, “In Vitro Veritas. Glass Pilgrim Vessels from 7th-Century Jeru-
salem,” in Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and Early Islam, ed. Jeremy Jones (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 113–190.
123 On the edenification of the sanctuaries in Mecca, Medina, and elsewhere, see Lange, Paradise
and Hell, 245–266.
124 See Adam Bursi, “Scents of Space: Early Islamic Pilgrimage, Perfume, and Paradise,” Arabica
67 (2020): 1–34. Separate studies of the group of hadiths relating to perfumes, in particular, are
a desideratum. Cf. the related case of early Muslim hair dyeing, recently studied by Ahmed El
Shamsy, “The Curious Case of Early Muslim Hair Dyeing,” in Islam at 250: Studies in Memory
of G.H.A. Juynboll, ed. Petra M. Sijpesteijn and Camilla Adang (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020),
187–206.
42 Christian Lange
about in reaction, first and foremost, to the pagan Arab aromascape in which the
Qurʾan emerged and, secondly, to Christian smell-related devotional attitudes and
practices.
Rather than suggesting, as others have done, that the importance of smell is
uninterrupted from Zoroastrian to Late Antique Christian literature and all the
way to Islamic literature,125 in this chapter I have argued that the Qurʾan attempts
to disrupt smell and introduce a new olfactory regime. The Qurʾan, I propose,
debunks the widespread understanding in Late Antique culture that olfactory
experiences “carried effective power for good and for ill in physical, social, and
political terms,” as well as “cosmological significance, ordering human life within
the cosmos.”126 Instead, the Qurʾan promotes an attitude of anosmia, dismissing
smell as physically, socially, politically, and cosmically irrelevant, by making
room for smell only in the sense of an elusive and imaginary connection with
the mythical past and the eschatological future. Some isolated reports, to which
I attach special significance, indicate that the Prophet was, on occasion, not only
indifferent towards foul odours but also critical of the alleged link between fra-
grance and piety.
Admittedly, the Qurʾan’s and the Prophet’s de-odorizing intervention was
unsuccessful. The Qurʾanic disregard for smell, I hypothesize, was covered up by
layers of later tradition. This is evident in the many reports dating to the forma-
tive period of Islam that attribute a love of perfume not only to the companions of
the Prophet but to Muhammad himself, a notion that fed into the decidedly rich
olfactory culture and perfumery of medieval Islam. The practice of perfuming
holy spaces continued from pre-Islamic to later times, to various degrees across
the centuries and territory of Islam.127 For clarity, let me restate that I do not wish
to suggest that the olfactory history of Islam progressed in a neat linear sequence,
in the sense that Qurʾanic anosmia and prophetic osmoclasm created a tempo-
rary aromatic vacuum in the budding Muslim community, and that in all other
periods of Islamic history, olfaction was paramount. The move from odorization
to de-ordorization and re-odorization is unlikely to have been as clear cut as the
previous, schematic sketch suggests. Rather, smell aversity and smell affinity vied
with each other, each claiming pre-eminence in certain historical and spatial con-
texts, and neither ever completely disappearing from the palette of Islamic sen-
sory styles.
However, Qurʾanic anosmia did not fail completely to bring about long-term
effects—at least in certain, religiously charged spaces and contexts. A theology

125 Mary Thurlkill, Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016),
1; King, Scent from the Garden of Paradise, 124; Nina Ergin, “The Fragrance of the Divine: Otto-
man Incense Burners and Their Context,” The Art Bulletin 96/1 (2014): 70–97, at 71–72.
126 Harvey, Scenting Salvation, 1.
127 For the richly scented early modern smellscape of Ottoman mosques, see Ergin, “Fragrance of
the Divine.” For scent in the poetry and horticulture of Muslim India, see Ali Akbar Husain,
Scent in the Islamic Garden: A Study of Literary Sources in Persian and Urdu (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012).
 Qurʾanic Anosmia 43
of smell, one that is as elaborate as what one encounters in certain strands of
Christian and Rabbinic thought, did not come about in Islam.128 The devotees of
renunciation (zuhd), a major undercurrent of Muslim piety over the centuries,
expressed scruples about, or even ridiculed, the enjoyment of pleasant fragranc-
es.129 Similarly, Islamic law imposes certain restrictions on the use of perfume,
particularly that of women.130 The use of perfume during the pilgrimage came
to be categorically condemned. And ritual fumigation was never fully incorpo-
rated into Muslim liturgy, such that mosques, unlike churches, remain, to this day,
largely incense-free spaces.

128 One should note, however, the role played by perfume in certain Sufi cosmologies. See, for
example, Cyrus Ali Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics: Beauty, Love, and the Human Form in the Writings of
Ibn ʿArabi and ʿIraqi (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 50–51, 67, 69–70.
129 In an anecdote, the Baghdad renunciant al-Shiblī (d. 334/946) buys an expensive perfume made
of musk and ambergris, only to rub it under the tail of a donkey standing in front of him. See
Hellmut Ritter, Das Meer der Seele, trans. John O’Kane and Berndt Radtke, The Ocean of the
Soul: Men, the World and God in the Stories of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2013), 90.
130 In the hadith it is stipulated that women should only wear discrete-smelling perfumes (mā ẓahara
lawnuhu wa-khafiya rīḥuhu). See Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad al-Nasāʾī, al-Sunan al-kubrā, ed.
al-Ghaffār al-Bundārī and Sayyid Kisrawī Ḥasan, 6 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, n.d.),
V, 428; Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 353. See, however, note 95.
3 
Mimesis and the Representation
of Reality in the Qurʾan
Bruce Fudge

The present life is merely an amusement and a diversion; the true life is in the
hereafter, if only they knew.
(Qurʾan 29:64)

Scripture is very difficult to define with any precision. It stands in marked contrast
to pornography, also difficult to define precisely, but of which a U.S. Supreme Court
judge famously said, “I know it when I see it.” Scripture is decidedly different. We
don’t know it when we see it; we must be informed of the fact. Somebody must tell
us that a work has a special, sacred status with a large group of believers. We cannot
know by virtue of the content or subject matter, which can vary wildly, comprising

the love lyrics of the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible, the talismanic prayers
against evil in the last two sūras of the Qurʾan, Krishna’s self-­revelation in
chapter 11 of the Bhagavadgītā, and the Buddha’s parable of the burning
house in chapter 3 of the Lotus Sūtra.1

When we talk of scripture, then, it is useful to recall that we are dealing with “a
parochial Western term for sacred text in order to talk about texts in non-Western
contexts that we perceive as somehow analogous.”2 The perceived analogies have
little or nothing to do with what the texts say and how they say it. The shared
qualities of scripture are better discerned via the relation between the text and

  Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the 2019 meeting of the International Quranic
Studies Association in Tangier, and in lectures at Université de Lyon II and Cambridge University,
both in February 2020. I thank the organizers and the attendees for their hospitality and their com-
ments. I am also grateful to Ken Garden, Christian Lange, David Marshall, and Louisa Shea for
their remarks on earlier drafts. The opinions expressed here are mine alone.
1 William A. Graham, “Scripture,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade et al. (New
York: Macmillan, 1987; 2nd rev. ed., 2005), reprinted in Graham, Islamic and Comparative Reli-
gious Studies: Selected Writings (Burlington, VT and Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 195.
2 William A. Graham, “Reflections on Comparative Study in Religion: ‘Scripture’ as a Case in Point,”
Tenri Journal of Religion (March 2004): n. 23, reprinted in Graham, Islamic and Comparative
Religious Studies, 293.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-4
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 45
the community or tradition that values it: its authority; use in recitation and other
ritual contexts; sacred status; its magical or talismanic uses; its influence on art,
literature, and language.3
What, then, about scriptural style and form? Is there really nothing we can
identify as a quality of scripture? If we look for commonalities across the sacred
texts of all major world religions, we are doubtless headed for disappointment.
However, we might be able to find some shared characteristics in texts that are
genetically related to one another. The present chapter takes a famous description
of Hebrew Bible style and asks how much of it could apply to the Qurʾan. The
answer is, a good deal, but there are also major divergences which tell us much
about the nature of the Qurʾan and its message.
Now, straightforward Bible–Qurʾan comparison is a field both over-grazed and
well-manured, but there remain some less-explored corners, one of which is the
relation of literary features to theological message. In recent years, we frequently
hear the word “literary” with respect to the Qurʾan: its literary inimitability, its
literary features and literary qualities and literary structures. We speak of “literary
approaches” to the Qurʾan, and often this means studies or approaches that have
little or no precedent in traditional Qurʾanic sciences, being derived instead from
European conceptions of the “literary.” Thus “Qurʾan as literature,” as well as
studies of narrative in the Qurʾan, of irony in the Qurʾan, characterization in the
Qurʾan, and, most desperately, humour in the Qurʾan.4
The present effort similarly has no traditional precedent, and it also makes a
comparison with European literatures, but in a somewhat different manner from
that of preceding studies. I do not mean it as the final word on the nature of the
Muslim scripture, but rather as one of many “words,” none of them final. It is
presented in the spirit of criticism as an ongoing process, permitting differing
solutions to the same problems, a criticism whose “partial character” is the source
of both aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction.5
My starting point is a famous essay by Erich Auerbach (1892–1957), “Odys-
seus’ Scar,” in which he delineates two literary styles, the Homeric and the bib-
lical, which he sees as starting points for subsequent European literatures. The
reader of the Qurʾan will find much that is familiar in Auerbach’s treatment of
biblical style, and the question arises, is there an analogous “Qurʾanic style,” and

3 Graham, “Scripture,” 195–216.

4 Some of the claims in these articles are explicable only if the authors have never read anything in
their lives other than the Qurʾan.
5 Let me quote, as something of a motto, a passage from the preface to Andras Hamori’s On the Art of
Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), vii:
The analysis of literary works resembles linguistic analysis in one respect that some people find
unpleasant: a single problem can often be solved in a number of ways, and some rival solutions
cannot be ranked until all solutions to all problems are in—in other words, never. The elimination
of flaws that render a piece of criticism trivial or invalid—provincial psychology, anachronistic
sociology—does not spell the end of multiple explanations. But such is the relation of criticism to
the meaning of the work, and certainly criticism is the more enjoyable for its partial character.
46 Bruce Fudge
what would a comparison of these styles reveal? Stephen Greenblatt went so far
as to say that “Odysseus’ Scar” enables us to “see features of the Bible that would
be virtually impossible to detect did we not know the Odyssey.”6 Will it do the
same for the Qurʾan? It will show us, first, a number of stylistic features shared by
both the Bible and the Qurʾan, features we might describe as a kind of “monothe-
ist style.” Second, and much more striking, it will show us how fundamentally
different is the Qurʾan—a difference that tends to get lost in discussions of Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic scriptures.
Born in Berlin, Auerbach was trained as a Romance philologist after serving in
the First World War. He taught at the University of Marburg and authored an inno-
vative study of Dante, still read today. But Auerbach was a Jew, and in 1935 this
meant he was forced to leave his post. He found refuge in Turkey, teaching at Istan-
bul University, where he remained until 1947 when he managed to emigrate to the
United States. He finished his career as a professor of Romance literatures at Yale.
“Odysseus’ Scar” is the first chapter of Auerbach’s classic work Mimesis: The
Representation of Reality in Western Literature, written in Istanbul during the
Second World War and published in 1946 in Switzerland. Mimesis is a sweeping
attempt to trace threads from ancient Greece and the Bible up through the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance to Proust, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, done, moreover,
by means of close philological readings of specific passages at every turn. Auer-
bach does not seek or employ laws and models; he deals rather in “trends and
tendencies, which cross and complement one another in the most varied ways.”7
In, “Odysseus’ Scar,” Auerbach describes two basic styles: the Homeric and the
biblical. He takes a passage from the Odyssey and another from Genesis, and after
close readings of each, posits the presence of two distinct styles of representation
that he sees as recurrent themes in subsequent European literatures.
The Homeric style is forthright and forthcoming in all external detail. In the
Odyssey, nothing is left unsaid. Each time a character is introduced, we get the full
biography, every aspect of their lives, who they are, and where they come from.
Auerbach’s chapter title comes from the episode in which the elderly housekeeper
Euryclea is washing the feet of the mysterious visitor to Ithaca, whom the reader
knows to be Odysseus himself. When she notices the telltale scar on his leg, she
almost cries out with joy, but the hero, who wants to keep his identity secret for
the time being, silences her. The moment is one of some narrative suspense, but
the story is interrupted by a long digression on how Odysseus received the scar on
a hunting trip as a youth. In typical Homeric style, even a scar must be introduced

6 Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2000), 42.
7 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R.
Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 556.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 47
and fully described. The hunting trip occurred on a visit to Autolycus, grandfather
of Odysseus. As Auerbach writes,

This first affords an opportunity to inform the reader about Autolycus, his
house, the precise degree of the kinship, his character, and no less exhaus-
tively than touchingly, his behavior after the birth of his grandson; then fol-
lows the visit of Odysseus, now grown to be a youth; the banquet with which
he is welcomed, sleep and waking, the early start for the hunt, the tracking
of the beast, the struggle, Odysseus’ being wounded by the boar’s tusk, his
recovery, his return to Ithaca, his parents’ anxious questions—all is narrated,
again with such a complete externalization of all the elements of the story and
of their interconnections as to leave nothing in obscurity. Not until then does
the narrator return to Penelope’s chamber.8

The emphasis is on external description, and the narrator insists on rendering a

full account of everyone and everything in the story.
Then Auerbach takes the story of Abraham and Isaac, beginning with Genesis
22:1, “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and
said to him, Abraham! And he said, Behold, here I am.”

Even this opening startles us when we come to it from Homer. Where are
the two speakers? We are not told. The reader, however, knows they are not
normally to be found together in one place on earth, that one of them, God,
in order to speak to Abraham, must come from somewhere, must enter the
earthly realm from some unknown heights or depths. Whence does he come,
whence does he call to Abraham? We are not told. He does not come, like
Zeus or Poseidon, from the Aethiopians, where he has been enjoying a sacri-
ficial feast. Nor are we told anything of his reasons for tempting Abraham so
terribly. He has not, like Zeus, discussed them in set speeches with other gods
gathered in council.9

Here, and in the account that follows, there is mystery. Almost nothing is explained
or clarified. The narrator leaves out all but the essential; we know, for instance,
that God has commanded Abraham to go to a certain place and to sacrifice his
son, but not much more than that. God remains mysterious, and of Abraham we
have only his response to God: “Behold me here—with which, to be sure, a most
touching gesture expressive of obedience and readiness is suggested, but it is left
to the reader to visualize it.” The journey of Abraham and Isaac “unrolls with no
episodes in a few independent sentences whose syntactical connection is of the
rudimentary sort.” There is no description of the landscape through which Abra-
ham and Isaac pass, nor do we expect any. Certain enigmatic details punctuate

8 Auerbach, Mimesis, 4.
9 Ibid., 8.
48 Bruce Fudge
the account, but these hardly contribute to the reader’s visualization of the scene,
as Homeric details would have done. They depart “early in the morning”; on the
third day Abraham “lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.” The former
indicates, in Auerbach’s view, not any temporal importance, but “the resolution,
the promptness, the punctual obedience of the sorely tried Abraham.”10 Its signifi-
cance is “ethical.” Isaac, the third character, is the only one to have any descrip-
tion beyond a name: Take Isaac, thine only son, whom thou lovest. But even this
tells nothing of the child himself, it only reflects the relation to the father.

. . . he may be handsome or ugly, intelligent or stupid, tall or short, pleasant

or unpleasant—we are not told. Only what we need to know about him as a
personage in the action, here and now, is illuminated, so that it may become
apparent how terrible Abraham’s temptation is, and that God is fully aware
of it.11

The contrast with Homer could hardly be stronger. Instead of the saturated nar-
rative tableau with its elaborate details and family histories, we have a barren
and austere image, but one that nonetheless points to hidden depths. We know
few details of the biblical players, but we see them subject to the divine will,
undergoing trials and humiliation that shape them in complex ways completely
unknown to the Homeric heroes, to whose inner thoughts and feelings we are
seldom allowed access.
I will put additional flesh on the bones of this summary in due course, but let
us note that Auerbach describes in further detail these two styles, the biblical and
the Homeric, and proceeds to list the essential, contrasting features of each type,
noting that both would come to exercise a “determining influence upon the repre-
sentation of reality in European literature.”12
The Homeric style shows “fully externalized description, uniform illumination,
uninterrupted connection, free expression, all events in the foreground, displaying
unmistakable meanings, few elements of historical development and of psycho-
logical perspectives.”
Characteristics of the Old Testament, on the other hand, are

certain parts brought into high relief, others left obscure, abruptness, sug-
gestive influence of the unexpressed, ‘background’ quality, multiplicity of
meanings and the need for interpretation [Deutungsbedürftigkeit],13 universal-
historical claims, development of the concept of historically becoming

10 Ibid., 9.
11 Ibid., 10–11.
12 Ibid., 23.
13 This is the Deutungsbedürftigkeit discussed in John Wansbrough, Qur’anic Studies: Sources and
Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 148–170.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 49
[Ausbildung der Vorstellung vom geschichtlich Werdenden], and preoccupa-
tion with the problematic.14

The Qurʾan is clearly closer to biblical style here, and not just because it treats
the same events. Its style tends to the elliptical. It emphasizes some things at the
expense of others. It assumes a great deal of knowledge on the part of its audi-
ence, and it certainly makes claims that are “universal-historical” in scope. If one
looks at the analogous passage on Abraham’s sacrifice in Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt (Q 37),
for example, one does indeed find abruptness, “suggestive influence of the unex-
pressed,” the “need for interpretation,” and so on:

and when he had reached the age of running with him, he said, ‘My son,
I see in a dream that I will sacrifice you; consider, what do you think?’ He
said, ‘My father, do as you are bidden, and God willing, you will find me
steadfast.’
When they had both submitted, and he flung him upon his brow,
We called to him, ‘Abraham,
you have fulfilled the dream; this is how We reward those who do good.
This is indeed the manifest trial.’
And We ransomed him with a mighty sacrifice,
and let him be praised by succeeding generations:
‘Peace be upon Abraham!’ (Q 37:103–109)15

We may go further, for the parallels between biblical and Qurʾanic style are deeper
than these rhetorical and stylistic similarities. The two texts have in common a
theological element, what we could label a “monotheist style.”
Auerbach points out that the Greek gods may be powerful, but they are limited in
their place and time. Homer entertains without any need to believe what he is telling
us. These gods are far from omnipotent monotheistic deities like Yahweh and Allah.
Their world is not our own, so we don’t need to accept their stories as literally true.
The monotheist God, in contrast, requires something different, and Auerbach
puts it starkly. There is, in Genesis, “an absolute claim to historical truth.”16

One can perfectly entertain doubts on the subject of the Trojan War or of
Odysseus’ wanderings, and still, when reading Homer, feel precisely the
effects he sought to produce; but without believing in Abraham’s sacrifice,
it is impossible to put the narrative of it to the use for which it was written.

14 Auerbach, Mimesis, 23. Original German terms from Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der
abendländischen Literatur (Bern: A. Francke, 1946), 29. “Development of the concept of histori-
cally becoming” is not immediately clear in either language, but given what follows, it seems to
refer to character development over time.
15 Qurʾan translations are based on those of Arthur J. Arberry and M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, with my
own modifications.
16 Auerbach, Mimesis, 14 (my italics).
50 Bruce Fudge
Indeed, we must go even further. The Bible’s claim to truth is not only far
more urgent than Homer’s, it is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims.17

Does this apply to the Qurʾan? Yes, even more so. Obviously, on a literal level,
the exclusive claim to the truth is a central element of Qurʾanic discourse. Like
the Bible according to Auerbach, “it is not satisfied with claiming to be a histori-
cally true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy.”
Everything else in “the history of mankind . . . will be subordinated to it . . . and
if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”18
These texts assume and proclaim that they represent the absolute truth. Do such
theological claims affect the writing itself? For Auerbach, there is no question:

Let no one object that this goes too far, that not the stories, but the religious
doctrine, raises the claim to absolute authority; because the stories are not,
like Homer’s, simply narrated “reality.” Doctrine and promise are incarnate
in them and inseparable from them; for that very reason they are fraught with
“background” and mysterious, containing a second, concealed meaning.
(15)

In this view, you cannot separate religious doctrine and story. This too applies to
the Qurʾan, as we will see presently.
Thus far we have a number of characteristics shared by monotheist scriptures,
and the observations are acute in that these are not observations made by the
scriptures themselves, nor do the adherents of said scriptures think of them in such
ways. That is, in enumerating the qualities of the Qurʾan, a Muslim is unlikely to
list “abruptness” or “suggestive influence of the unexpressed.” Believers would
not say their revelation is “obscure” or otherwise unclear, although they might
find ways of expressing this in positive terms. (The Qurʾan, unusually, does men-
tion that some of its own verses are “ambiguous” or “in need of interpretation,”
but this verse, Q 3:7, is itself ambiguous.)19
“Multiplicity of meanings” is championed in some circles today as a positive
quality, but one should perhaps distinguish different versions of this idea. The idea
that Qurʾanic words or verses may have different senses or meanings is very old,
and it served as a useful hermeneutical tool for exegetes, and in some cases as evi-
dence of the superiority of the Islamic revelation.20 However, one should note that

17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 15.
19 2 Peter 3:16 is a less well-known biblical example, which mentions the difficulty inherent in some
of Paul’s writings:
even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hat written
unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some
things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do
also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
20 Ignaz Goldziher, Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (Leiden: Brill, 1952), 84–85;
see also Claude Gilliot’s contribution to the present volume, at § 5.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 51
this is a quality of the text itself and not of its exegetes or the community at large.
Al-Ghazālī cites a claim of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib that he could load 70 camels with
only interpretations of the short Sūrat al-Fātiḥa (Q 1), but the point is to illustrate
depth and inexhaustibility of meaning, not the coexistence of divergent interpre-
tations.21 The celebration of divergent interpretations amongst Muslims is some-
thing different, for its object is no longer (or at least not exclusively) the revelation
itself but the communities of believers. One might also ask to what extent this
idea held popular appeal, for it is rather counter-intuitive to assume that believers
would welcome dissent in the ranks when it comes to matters of salvation.22 (If
one were able to poll a sample of Christians or Muslims throughout the centuries
on the strengths of their scriptures, I suspect that very few would respond “Well,
I really like the fact that it is open to multiple interpretations.”)
Are there ways in which the Qurʾan does not conform to Auerbach’s model of
biblical style? Here we come to the crux of the matter. Auerbach’s first chapter,
comparing Homer and the Hebrew Bible, is the best-known section of Mimesis,
but some of the themes introduced there become more apparent only in later chap-
ters. In fact, the Qurʾan diverges not just from Hebrew Bible style but from the
very characteristics that Auerbach found to be central to “the representation of
reality in Western literature,” and which he traces throughout the 500-odd pages
of Mimesis. Auerbach had a particular idea of what he meant by “reality” in his
subtitle, and it was not simply a matter of “realism.” Auerbach’s reality refers to
character and to characters’ experiences, and he found its beginnings in the Old
Testament and how its people differed from those of Homer.
This difference in character manifests itself in several ways. In the Odys-
sey, direct discourse is a verbalization of the speaker’s thoughts. Everything is
expressed directly and openly, without distinction between thought and speech.
Biblical speech, on the other hand, does not serve to externalize thoughts; it indi-
cates thoughts that remain unexpressed. Moreover, we know what those unex-
pressed thoughts are, and they are not happy ones. We follow their ordeals, and
we see them grow old and weary. Not so with “the Homeric heroes . . . who wake
every morning as if it were the first day of their lives.”23

Odysseus on his return is exactly the same as when he left Ithaca two decades
earlier. But what a road, what a fate, lie between Jacob who cheated his father
out of his blessing and the old man whose favorite son has been torn to pieces
by a wild beast!—between David the harp player, persecuted by his lord’s
jealousy, and the old king, surrounded by violent intrigues, whom Abishag
the Shunnamite warmed in his bed, and he knew her not!24

21 Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-tijāriyya al-kubrā, n.d.), I, 283.
22 On the well-known hadith, “Difference of opinion in my community is a token of divine mercy”
(ikhtilāf ummatī raḥma), and why it would not apply here, see for example, A.J. Wensick, The
Muslim Creed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 112–113.
23 Auerbach, Mimesis, 12.
24 Ibid., 17–18. He continues: “The old man, of whom we know how he has become what he is, is
more of an individual than the young man; for it is only in the course of an eventful life that men
52 Bruce Fudge
This development, of character over time, this expression of life as comprising
the good, the bad, and the ugly (and of those, primarily the latter two), would be
a major element in the development of European literature. Reality for Auerbach
is not “just an empirical fact in or about the world, but an experience one has of
the world. It is tied to moments of the sublime intensity experienced, for the most
part, in a tragic mode.”25 The biblical characters undergo extremes: divine inspira-
tion and elevation, but also humiliation. Humiliation is a constant.26
Consider again the terrible pathos of Isaac in Genesis 22:7: “And Isaac spake
unto Abraham his father and said, My father: and he said, Here I am, my son. And
he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offer-
ing?” Behind the innocent question (“where is the lamb?”) lies a horrible realiza-
tion and a fear that is all the more poignant for remaining unspoken.
Do Qurʾanic characters undergo similar trials? Consider again the same episode
in Sūrat al-Ṣāffāt (Q 37): “he said, ‘My son, I see in a dream that I will sacrifice
you; what do you think?’ He said, ‘My father, do as you are bidden, and God will-
ing, you will find me steadfast’ ” (Q 37:102). The reader anticipating the biblical
drama is quickly disappointed. The son is already exemplary; there is neither fear
nor suspicion, only divine and filial piety. This is not to say that there is nothing
of interest in this or any of the following examples; I am merely indicating the
absence of something in the Qurʾan.
Take the example of Noah from Sūrat Hūd (Q 11), when the son of Noah
declines to board the ark, saying he will be safe on a mountainside. Needless to
say, he perishes.

Noah called to his son, who was standing apart, ‘Come aboard with us, my
son, and do not stay with the unbelievers!’
But he replied, “I will take refuge on a mountain, to save me from the
water.” Said he, “Today there is no defender from God’s command but for

are differentiated into full individuality; and it is this history of a personality which the Old Testa-
ment presents to us as the formation undergone by those whom God has chosen to be examples.
Fraught with their development, sometimes even aged to the verge of dissolution, they show a
distinct stamp of individuality entirely foreign to the Homeric heroes.” Auerbach, Mimesis, 18.
25 James I. Porter, “Auerbach’s (Counter-) Philology,” Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cul-
tures 2/2 (Fall 2013): 247.
26 Auerbach continues:
For they are bearers of the divine will, and yet they are fallible, subject to misfortune and humil-
iation—and in the midst of misfortune and in their humiliation their acts and words reveal the
transcendent majesty of God. There is hardly one of them who does not, like Adam, undergo the
deepest humiliation—and hardly one who is not deemed worthy of God’s personal intervention
and personal inspiration. Humiliation and elevation . . . belong basically together. . . . The reader
clearly feels how the extent of the pendulum’s swing is connected with the intensity of the personal
history—precisely the most extreme circumstances, in which we are immeasurably forsaken and in
despair, or immeasurably joyous and exalted, give us, if we survive them, a personal stamp which
is recognized as the product of a rich existence, a rich development (18).
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 53
him on whom He has mercy.” And the waves came between them, and he was
among the drowned.
(Q 11:42–43)

Noah makes some effort to register his displeasure at this outcome, but is quickly
chastened:

And Noah called out to his Lord, and said, “O my Lord, my son is of my
family, and Your promise is surely the truth. You are the most just of those
that judge.”
Said He, “Noah, he is not of thy family; it is a deed not righteous. Do not
ask of Me that of which you have no knowledge. I warn you not to be among
the ignorant.”
He said, “My Lord, I take refuge with You, lest I should ask of You that
whereof I have no knowledge; for if You do not forgive me, and do not have
mercy on me, I shall be among the losers.”
(Q 11:45–47)

The Qurʾan is describing the loss of a son, a moment of great anguish. In the view
of some, this scene is “one of the most poignant moments of human drama in the
whole Qurʾan.”27 It seems to me, though, that it is up to the reader to provide both
the drama and the poignancy because they are not to be found in the text. Is this
passage in Sūrat Hūd really concerned with Noah’s personal tragedy? I would say
no. It presents the tragedy in a perfunctory manner, devoid of adjectives or adverbs,
followed by rebuke from God and apology from Noah in terms that are equally
perfunctory and lexically unremarkable. If Noah is thinking or feeling something
other than contrition, the Qurʾan leaves it unexpressed and un-alluded to.
It is partly a question of how one chooses to read the passage. David Marshall,
for instance, holds that the Noah episode opens up the possibility of pathos, only
to suppress it.

The use of narrative here is most effective, allowing the listener to feel with
Noah the power of compassionate human affections, and then with him to
be commanded to turn away from those feelings to a new loyalty, centred on
God and membership of a new ummah, in which ties of human kinship are
replaced by a shared faith and obedience.28

This is certainly a plausible reading, but it might be an overly generous one, given
the text’s apparent disinterest in any human emotion that does not involve God.29

27 David Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers: A Qurʾānic Study (London: Routledge,
1999), 99.
28 Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, 100–101.
29 There are, of course, verses that call for good conduct between people, or at least between belie­
vers, usually with an emphasis on being patient and merciful. The Prophet, for instance, is said to
be gentle and compassionate with the believers (Q 9:128), but again, belief in God is a prerequisite.
54 Bruce Fudge
One might also think of Abraham and Lot further along in that same sura (Q
11). Three strangers visit Abraham and tell him, among other things, that they
have been sent to the people of Lot. He begs them to have mercy on Lot’s people,
but to no avail:

Abraham was clement, compassionate, devout.

“O Abraham, cease your pleading; what your Lord ordained had surely
come, and there is coming upon them a chastisement that cannot be turned
back.”
(Q 11:75–76)

Abraham was clement, compassionate, devout: the text alludes to Abraham’s

conflicting thoughts and emotions here, his concern for others, but certainly in
a detached manner. The lesson here, as in the Noah episode, is that God’s will
trumps all, and like Noah, Abraham seems to accept this. As was the case with
Noah, Abraham shows emotion, kindness, and concern, but God (via his spokes-
men) brushes this aside.
Compare the human–divine interaction in, say, Jeremiah 31:15–16, where God
takes more of a personal interest in Rachel’s suffering and offers her reassurance.

A voice was heard in Ramah

Lamentation and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
Thus says the Lord:
Refrain your voice from weeping,
And your eyes from tears;
For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord,
And they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

Or take Jacob, Auerbach’s “old man whose favorite son has been torn to pieces by
a wild beast.” The Jacob of Genesis

tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned his son for many
days. And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he
refused to be comforted, and he said, “For I shall go down into the grave to
my son in mourning.” Thus his father wept for him.
(Genesis 37:34–36)

Contrast this with the Qurʾanic version, where Jacob’s suffering is less in evi-
dence: “And [the brothers] brought his shirt with false blood on it. He said, ‘No;
but your souls have led you astray. But sweet patience! And it is God whose help
is sought against that which you describe’ ” (Q 12:18). Mourning is limited to the
cry of But sweet patience! and noting the need to turn to God, who appears to
remain aloof.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 55
Of course, these Qurʾanic characters are not so much individuals as types,
part of a series of prophets who endured rejection and found vindication. In the
Qurʾanic telling, they are all installments in a prophetic cycle that culminates in
the seventh-century Ḥijāz. It is the similarities that count, and indeed, that is what
the Qurʾan is interested in. All that matters is one’s relationship to God, and this is
a function of belief and piety, nothing else. The “universal-historical” claims are
such that they leave no room for character.
There is no shortage of trials and tribulations in the Qurʾan. But these trials, and
here is the crucial difference with Auerbach’s characters, have no effect on their
lives or their persons. In terms of an inner life, the Qurʾan has a limited vocabu-
lary. By way of further illustration, let us look briefly at the example of tawba,
which is commonly translated as “repentance.” The Qurʾan mentions tawba a
lot, but in a general way. There are a few instances where someone repents or
regrets, but it is generally expressed in a single word and passed over quickly.
To repent implies a change of position, a change of course, an admission of past
wrong, and a desire to do right. Repentance should require some sort of narrative
framework, in that there is a before and an after, an act that, presumably, changes
one significantly.
One finds, though, little or no description of what this repentance might consist
of, or even what it might mean, other than an affirmation of God’s power. Moses
repents at Q 7:143, but it is only in reference to having wanted to lay eyes on God,
and in that case we have only “Glory to Thee! I repent to Thee [tubtu ilayka]; I am
the first of the believers.” One wonders if “repent” is really the best translation for
tubtu ilayka here.
Other examples of something like repentance are similarly vague, such as
Jonah in Q 21:87–88, where he exclaims,

And Dhū l-Nūn—when he went forth enraged and thought that We would
have no power over him; then he called out in the darkness, “There is no god
but Thou. Glory be to Thee! I have done evil.” [fa-nādā fī l-ẓulumāt an lā
ilāha illā ʾanta subḥānaka innī kuntu min al-ẓālimīn] So We answered him,
and delivered him out of grief; thus do We deliver the believers.

Again, of whatever this repentance consists, we don’t know. One could argue,
of course, that just as the prophets and messengers are types, not indivi­dual
characters, so too details of their own moral parcours are less important
than the fact of repentance.30 This “repentance” is less a matter of reform

30 There is a bit more detail in the repentance of David, in Sūrat Ṣād Q 38:17–26, with the story
of the 100 ewes, when David realizes that God has been testing him: David realized that We
had been testing him, so he asked his Lord for forgiveness, fell down on his knees and turned to
God (wa-ẓanna dāwūd annamā fatannāhu fa-staghfara rabbahu wa-kharra rākiʿan wa-anāba)
(Q 38:24).
For what exactly is David asking forgiveness? The exegetical tradition explains this, but it’s
clearly not a priority in the Qurʾan. In this case, though, the verbal assent is accompanied by the
56 Bruce Fudge
than of acquiring some new knowledge, and in that, it is straightforward and
mechanical.31
Glossing over the details has definite advantages, and this is one of the Qurʾan’s
strengths. Its overwhelming theocentrism relieves us of the need to wrestle with
the dilemmas that are more prominent in the biblical text. What kind of deity can
expect a man to sacrifice his son? How can He destroy the innocents who happen
to dwell in the cities of sin, as Abraham repeatedly asks him? The Qurʾan nimbly
skirts these issues.
It may well be, however, that the Qurʾan’s theocentric versions are not unique
to Islam. Midrashic versions of the binding of Isaac, for instance, similarly avoid
the moral dilemmas involved. Rather than the ominous query about the object of
sacrifice in Genesis 22:7, we find the son enthusiastic about the proceedings:

Father, make haste, bare thine arm, and bind my hands and feet securely, for
I am a young man, but thirty-seven years of age, and thou art an old man.
When I behold the slaughtering knife in thy hand, I may perchance begin to
tremble at the sight and push against thee, for the desire unto life is bold. Also
I may do myself an injury and make myself unfit to be sacrificed. I adjure
thee, therefore, my father, make haste, execute the will of thy Creator, delay
not. Turn up thy garment, gird thy loins, and after that thou hast slaughtered
me, burn me unto fine ashes.32

It is perhaps not only in the Qurʾan, then, that one finds a tendency to iron out
the theological wrinkles and the moral issues in favour of a more omnipotent and
omniscient deity.
All these cases are far removed from the “sublime intensity” of life’s “painful
encounters,” which for Auerbach, constitute the guiding thread of Western lite­
rary tradition. It is difficult to say if the pain and intensity is completely absent, or
if the Qurʾan alludes to them while directing attention away from human affairs
to the relation with God. One cannot overstate the degree to which this relation
overshadows everything else. The characters have one role to play, and that is to
bear God’s message, and to prefigure the prophethood of Muhammad. They are
types and they belong to a typology.
Typology is a rhetorical strategy in which earlier figures or events serve as
types that foreshadow the coming of Christ or of Muhammad. In the Qurʾan, this

image of the king dropping to his knees—wa-kharra rākiʿan—which does add a note of poig­
nancy. The image is striking because of the intrusion of the sudden physicality: the text rarely
describes people or their actions in detail, and thus when it does so, even a plain description such
as this tends to stand out. The physical act serves to accentuate the thought or emotion.
31 In other cases, the Qurʾan may call for a specific act of repentance or reform, as opposed to
recounting it, as in Q 66:4, If you two [wives] repent unto God, referring to the domestic intrigues
of Muhammad’s household.
32 Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publications Society of Amer-
ica, 1937), I, 279–281.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 57
schema is virtually explicit, as the Prophet to whom the Revelation is addressed is
expressly made part of a biblical (and Arab) genealogy of messengers from God.
Muhammad’s experience is reflected or foreshadowed in the trials of previous
prophets, recounted and alluded to in the text of the Qurʾan. His experience fol-
lows the pattern of his predecessors, all of whom had similar experiences (there
are a few partial exceptions), at least in so far as the Qurʾan presents them. God’s
message and method have not changed.
Typology is crucial to Christianity, and Auerbach argued that there is inherent
in Late Antique and medieval Christian views of reality a basic sort of typological
thinking. For him, this reached its most perfect expression in Dante:

Thus, even though the Divine Comedy describes the state of souls after death,
its subject, in the last analysis, remains earthly life in all its complexity; eve-
rything that happens below or in the heavens above relates to human drama
here on earth.33

For Auerbach, the key moment in the history of Western literary culture was
Christianity, and specifically the story of Christ himself. This moment represented
the first great shift, in which previous rules of classical writing were overturned,
to spectacular effect.
Christ and his followers were lowly folk; their stories mixed simple elements
of everyday life with a story of universal, cosmic significance. This was unusual
because up to that point the mundane details of the quotidian, and certainly of
the lower strata of society, were worthy only of representation in a “low,” usu-
ally comic, style. The likes of the disciples, unlettered fishermen and such, were
hardly a topic worthy of serious attention, and certainly not something through
which one could reach the sublime. Christianity changed that by combining the
low and the sublime. The story of Christ has a meaning that far transcends the
earthly events of first-century Palestine.34
The relation to typological thinking is clear enough: “In this conception, an
occurrence on earth signifies not only itself but at the same time another, which
it predicts or confirms, without prejudice to the power of its concrete reality here
and now.”35 Qurʾanic typology is not quite the same: there certainly are “preju-
dices to the power of concrete reality.” The mundane events, the stories of previ-
ous prophets and warners, have little substance of their own. (The story of Joseph
in Q 12 may be a partial exception to this.) In biblical typology, the facts of the

33 From Auerbach’s Dante: Poet of the Secular World, cited in Porter, “Auerbach’s (Counter-) Philol-
ogy,” 251 (italics added).
34 Auerbach, Mimesis, 24–49, esp. 40ff. Writing about the life of the Hadith scholar Aḥmad Ibn
Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), Michael Cooperson cited Auerbach and suggested that the life of the Prophet
might be “a comparable precedent” to stories of common folks’ piety in the Arabic-Islamic tradi-
tion. See Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophet in the Age of al-Maʾmūn (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 111–112.
35 Auerbach, Mimesis, 555 (italics added).
58 Bruce Fudge
Hebrew Bible are in principle as important as their Christian counterparts. The
Qurʾan, however, presents the pre-Muhammadan prophets not as individuals in
their own right but in such a manner as to emphasize only their prefigurative role.
These prefigurations of Muhammad’s prophethood and his experiences follow
a predictable pattern, in which a chosen prophet warns a people to change their
ways or face God’s wrath, and of course, in almost all cases, they end up facing
God’s wrath. (The exception is that of Jonah’s people, in Q 10:98 and 37:148.)36
These accounts are usually presented in groups using similar words and phrases,
and bookended by apparent references to Muhammad’s own experiences, which
follow the same pattern of chosen messenger warning his people to no avail.
The crucial difference is that the last element of the pattern, God’s wrath, is
absent in the Muhammadan case because it has yet to occur. When the verses of
warning are revealed, the community being addressed by the Qurʾan still has the
chance to heed the admonitions and accept the messenger. God’s punishment can
still be avoided. Should the Meccans ignore Muhammad’s warnings, they too will
face the same punishments as the ancients did. So while biblical typology reflects
“upon established past facts in the life of Jesus, his Apostles, and their first suc-
cessors and interpretatively correlate[s] them with facts from a far remoter Old
Testament past,” the Islamic version is “apocalyptic,” open-ended, and looking
not to the reality of past events but to the reality of the coming cataclysm.37 The
focus is on God, and on what He is going to do. All that matters in the mundane is
one’s attitude towards the divine, and neither God nor humans change over time.
As Fred Donner argues:

The very concept of history is fundamentally irrelevant to the Qurʾān’s con-

cerns, because all people have been, and will be, confronted with the same
eternal moral choice—the choice between good and evil, with the guidance of
the revelation and of the prophets as the criteria provided by God for choos-
ing. Since the moral choice is presented as eternal, the question of historical
change is of no importance to the Qurʾān.38

This in turn affects the nature of the divine communication. Devin Stewart puts
it well: “The prophets’ messages are essentially the same because God’s truth is
eternal, and the events of their prophetic missions are the same because neither
human nature nor God’s customary manner of dealing with humanity (sunnat
Allah) has changed.”39

36 See also Matthew 12:41.

37 Michael Zwettler, “A Mantic Manifesto: The Sūra of ‘The Poets’ and the Qurʾānic Foundations of
Prophetic Authority,” in Poetry and Prophecy: The Beginnings of a Literary Tradition, ed. James
L. Kugel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 102–103.
38 Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing
(Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1998), 80.
39 Devin J. Stewart, “Understanding the Koran in English: Notes on Translation, Form, and Prophetic
Typology,” in Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in English and Arabic Theoretical and
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 59
It is hard to overestimate the degree to which this typological vision pervades
both the content and the form of the Qurʾan. Michael J. Zwettler phrased it with
characteristic thoroughness when he spoke of his conviction that

a typological concept of divine involvements in human history—­

prefigurative and proleptic when viewed and presented as past events or
facts in time, co-occurrent and co-equivalent when viewed and presented as
timeless, incommensurable acts of God—permeates and underlies both the
Quranic vision of that history and the rhetorical mode of Quranic discourse
which presents it.40

The divine involvement in human history is the only history that counts, and this
vision pervades not just the content of the book but its manner of presentation as
well.
As we have already seen, Auerbach too insisted that the theological message is
inextricable from the style.41 To repeat:

Let no one object that this goes too far, that not the stories, but the religious
doctrine, raises the claim to absolute authority; because the stories are not,
like Homer’s, simply narrated “reality.” Doctrine and promise are incarnate
in them and inseparable from them; for that very reason they are fraught with
“background” and mysterious, containing a second, concealed meaning.
(15)

The Qurʾanic tales, too, contain the “claim to absolute authority”; they are “fraught
with background” and contain a second, hardly concealed meaning, which is the
foreshadowing and confirmation of Muhammad’s prophethood. This inseparabi­
lity of doctrine and story is even more manifest in the Qurʾan than in the Bible.
On the literal level, this is easy to see. Most of the Qurʾan is not narrative, and
even its narrative portions are fragmented and interspersed with divine commen-
tary reminding one of who is speaking and why. Any reader of the Qurʾan, regard-
less of his or her opinions on the text, will acknowledge a “claim to absolute
authority.” Whatever your opinions on its origins, you must admit that the author
the Qurʾan betrays no hint of insecurity or self-doubt.
The well-known qualities of the Qurʾan, its uncompromising monotheism, the
spectacular apocalyptic imagery, and the promises and threats, all convey the

Applied Linguistics, ed. Zeinab Ibrahim, Nagwa Kasabgy, and Sabiha Aydelott (Cairo: American
University in Cairo Press, 2000), 47.
40 Zwettler, “A Mantic Manifesto,” 100.
41 Navid Kermani makes a related argument, that the reader who believes that God is the author of the
Qurʾan can never separate the reading of the text from “authorial intention.” This means that for
the believer, the Qurʾan, even in its aesthetic qualities, will always have a “fundamental religious
meaning.” Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, trans. Tony Craw-
ford (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 130.
60 Bruce Fudge
authoritative (and authoritarian) nature of the Qurʾanic message. Equally impor-
tant is the way this message is conveyed, particularly the rhyme and rhythm of
these passages. Much of the Qurʾan’s poetic force comes from these formal ele-
ments. We know that the Qurʾan is not poetry. This is denied by the Qurʾan itself,
which makes clear that it comes from a very different source of inspiration. Even
without that disclaimer, however, it is obvious that the strict forms of metre and
rhyme demanded by Arabic poetry are not to be found in the revelation. The author
of the Qurʾan, clearly, would never settle for mono-rhyme and uniform metre. The
Qurʾan seems to delight in being unpredictable. Even its sajʿ, the rhymed and
rhythmic prose of much of Arabic letters, displays a bewildering variety of forms.
One attempt to account for these divergences lists 40 types of sajʿ in the Qurʾan.42
The frequently shifting syllabic and rhythmic patterns keep the reader attentive,
and at the same time indicate the absolute authority of the speaker. You may find
passages with no apparent sajʿ, those where the rhythm shifts dramatically, and
those in which there is rhythm but no rhyme, and rhyme with no rhythm.43 Clearly,
the speaker does as He wishes; He is subject to no rule or law.
Add to this the fact that the Qurʾan both vaunts its linguistic pre-eminence and
seems to belie it, with its various infelicities: incomplete conditional sentences,
irregular verb usages, lexical obscurities, the apparent flouting of grammatical
rules, and the forcing of exegetes to claim, with some frequency, that something
has been “elided” or must be “implied” or “implicit.” For a human orator or nar-
rator, such faults would be fatal. By setting the message and the language of the
message apart from human speech, the Qurʾan obliges its followers to turn weak-
ness into strength and make a virtue of necessity. If something is contrary to cus-
tom and usage, then there must be a perfectly good reason for it to be so.
Take the example of Q 98 al-Bayyina (“Clear Evidence”). All eight verses of
this short sura rhyme in —a. In Q 98:5 we read dhālika dīnu l-qayyima, usu-
ally translated as That is the true religion. Without going into detail, we would
have expected here, among other things, the masculine form qayyim (“true,” or
“straight”) instead of the feminine qayyima. We have a choice. The infidel reader
will say that obviously the feminine ending —a has been added in order to fit the
rhyme. For the believer, though, the God of the Qurʾan should not be constrained
by anything as mundane as poetic convention. Accordingly, Muslim commenta-
tors are obliged to come up with various explanations as to why the revelation has
qayyima here.44 One can argue, correctly, that the dogma of textual infallibility
is the creation of later generations of scholars; it is not necessarily inherent in
the revelation itself. However, reading the Qurʾan in light of Mimesis gives one

42 This is a work by Ibn al-Ṣāʾigh al-Ḥanafī (d. 776/1375), summarized by al-Suyūṭī in the Itqān
(nawʿ 59).
43 Devin J. Stewart, “Sajʿ in the Qurʾān: Prosody and Structure,” Journal of Arabic Literature 21
(1990): 101–139.
44 In the case of Q 98:5, for example, it is said that one must understand dīn al-milla al-qayyima or
dīn al-sharīʿa al-qayyima (e.g. al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān [Beirut: Dār iḥyā al-turāth
al-ʿarabī, n.d.], X, 390).
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 61
to think that the text itself may not be so innocent, that its very nature probably
contributed to the creation of the dogma.
The single-mindedness of Qurʾanic style is evident in its narratives. When the
Qurʾan does tell a story, it does so in a particular way, with a singular focus on one
element, while the rest is incidental.
Take the case of Moses and the parting of the sea in Q 26:60–68.

Pharaoh and his people pursued [the Children of Israel] at sunrise

and as soon as the two sides came within sight of one another, Moses’
followers said, ‘We shall definitely be caught.’
Moses said, ‘No, my Lord is with me: He will guide me,’
and We revealed to Moses: ‘Strike the sea with your staff.’ It parted—each
side like a mighty mountain—
and We brought the others to that place:
We saved Moses and all his companions,
and drowned the rest.
There truly is a sign in this, though most of them do not believe:
Your Lord alone is the Mighty, the Merciful.

Fear, suspense, and a spectacular divine intervention: this could have been an
exciting story. But the Qurʾan declines to make it so, simply hurrying through a
summary of events, in a manner representative of much Qurʾanic narrative. There
is a beginning and an end, but not much of a middle. A situation is introduced and
then is resolved almost immediately by a word or act of God. We do not learn
anything in the course of this telling; it serves only to confirm what we should
already know, and as Auerbach said of the Bible, without believing in the literal
truth of the story, “it is impossible to put the narrative of it to the use for which it
was written.”45 Suspense, revelation: these qualities have little or no place in the
Qurʾan’s telling of stories.46 They are over as soon as they begin, and there are no
surprises. The point is not to beguile the reader and certainly not to entertain: the
point is to make a point.47
Is there not something autocratic about the seemingly random nature of much
Qurʾanic storytelling? It is allusive, clearly assuming knowledge of the subject
on the part of its audience. It obliges the reader or listener not only to know the

45 Auerbach, Mimesis, 14.

46 As is often the case, the story of Joseph (Q 12) is more complicated. The episode of Moses and
the mysterious servant in Q 18:65–82 does include several mysteries which are then resolved.
However, the mystery is again resolved virtually immediately, and we began in any case with
an assurance that the servant received special knowledge from God, so the revelation/resolution
that God works in mysterious ways or that His justice will be vindicated, is, in the context of the
Qurʾan, not that revelatory.
47 I have developed this argument elsewhere: “al-Tanūkhī on the Recovery of Health and Wealth,” in
Terra Ridens—Terra Narrans. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Ulrich Marzolph, ed. Regina F.
Bendix and Dorothy Noyes (Dortmund: Verlag für Orientkunde, 2018), 90–106.
62 Bruce Fudge
background but to make sense of the Qurʾan’s version of things. I think in particu-
lar of the story of the People of the Cave in Q 18:9–26, and the splendid disregard
for the reader there. Islamic tradition has come more or less to a consensus as to
what is going on, but it must be admitted that the Qurʾanic account itself is at
the very least unconventional. Habit and familiarity have immunized us against
recognizing how weird the Qurʾanic story really is (e.g. We woke them so that We
could make clear which of the two parties was better able to work out how long
they had been there [Q 18:12]. Deutungsbedürftigkeit, indeed!).48
Auerbach’s description of the Hebrew Bible enabled us to discern aspects of
Qurʾanic style we might otherwise have missed. His list of features included “cer-
tain parts brought into high relief, others left obscure,” abruptness, multiplicity of
meaning, universal-historical claims, and Deutungsbedürftigkeit.49 To that list we
can now add:

1. rhyme and rhythm that are persistent but never consistent;

2. a style of narrative that proceeds directly to predictable resolution;
3. the obligation placed on the listener to provide a correct explanation, be it to
fashion a coherent narrative or justify the linguistic liberties taken; and
4. universal-historical claims of a grandeur that effaces all characters’ individual
features.

Moreover, we can understand that these formal elements of the scripture con-
tribute in no small part to the “doctrine and promise incarnate” in the text,
as ­Auerbach put it. Surely these features add both to its status as scripture or
holy writ in a generic sense and to the particular qualities that are unique to the
Qurʾan.50
Furthermore, Auerbach saw in the Hebrew Bible something that would become,
in his view, a central element in Western literatures. This was his “representation
of reality.” The tragic mode of human existence, Auerbach’s “reality,” is absent
from the Qurʾan, whose defining characteristic is a forceful if not aggressive theo-
centrism. The Qurʾan demands that the reader/auditor identify with one or the
other of the human categories it imposes: believer or unbeliever? (Or hypocrite?)
Everything in nature and in human experience goes back to God: everything natu-
ral or human is subordinate to Him and His will. We know this not only because
the Qurʾan tells us so, but also from its very style and structure, especially in its
formal elements and in its presentation of narrative.

48 I speak here only of the story-telling. Q 18 is a fascinating sura, and its structure is most intriguing.
49 Auerbach, Mimesis, 23.
50 What I am describing here is not so different from what Arab-Islamic literary critics have done
throughout the ages. The study of Qurʾanic rhetoric (balāgha) in fact addresses some of the same
qualities of the text as given here, albeit in different terms and from a different perspective, in
which the particularities of Qurʾanic style are all part of a highly effective strategy for commu-
nicating God’s message. See, most recently, Muhammad Abdel Haleem, “Rhetorical Devices
and Stylistic Features of Qur’anic Grammar,” in The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies, ed.
Muhammad Abdel Haleem and Mustafa Shah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 327–345.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 63
The comparative exercise shows how the West assumes a certain type of lit-
erary and aesthetic value in the tragic and in the frank portrayal of weakness.
The sophisticated reader takes for granted that “literature is about exposing the
self in all its discomfiting and agitating guises, laying bare its mental gymnastics
and unruly, compulsive needs and bodily appetites.”51 Tragedy is for most peo-
ple something to be avoided, yet it is extraordinary to what degree Western high
culture is imbued with the idea that the tragic is valuable and necessary for a pro-
found understanding of experience. Thus, to take a striking example, V.S. Naipaul
(speaking not of Islam, but of India in 1967) could see in poverty and corruption
signs of “a more general collapse of sensibility, of a people grown barbarous,
indifferent and self-wounding, who, out of a shallow perception of the world, have
no sense of tragedy.”52
Auerbach did not claim that all European literary production contains poignant
realism and profound observations of the human condition. But he did see these
qualities as a constant thread throughout much of European literature, and it is the
case that these ideas are very often assumed to be integral to literary or artistic merit.
The Qurʾan does not dwell on tragedy, refusing for the most part even to
acknowledge it. In the words of the British Muslim theologian Shabbir Akhtar:

Orthodox Islamic thought has always, by contrast [to Christian thought],

been characterized by its almost total freedom from the tragic instinct. . . .
It is a truly astonishing feature of the Koran that it resists root and branch,
on every occasion, at every level, the impulse to tragedy. The occasions are
plentiful; the temptation is strong. But the Muslim scripture invariably says
“No” to tragedy.53

As a corollary to this optimism, though, it can be said that the Qurʾān

conveys no sense that the tension itself [of the struggle between good and
evil impulses], being uniquely human, is of special interest. That is, there is
little appreciation of the human moral struggle in its own right; there is only
concern for its outcome.54

51 To take a random example encountered while composing this chapter, from Caroline Fraser, “The
Road Not Taken” (review of Pete Buttigieg, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a
Model for America’s Future), New York Review of Books, 18 July 2019.
52 V.S. Naipaul, “A Second Visit,” in The Writer and the World: Essays (New York: Knopf, 2002),
23–24.
53 Cited in Marshall, God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers, 202. The case of Iblīs or Satan in Islam
is sometimes proposed as a “tragedy,” but it is not so in the Western sense of the term. He is not,
for example, even human. Still, his case in an interesting one, and the question may be fruitfully
debated, as can be seen in Peter J. Awn, Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption: Iblīs in Sufi Psychology
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1983) and Ṣādiq Jalāl al-ʿAẓm, “Maʾsāt Iblīs,” in Naqd al-fikr al-dīnī (Beirut:
Dār al-Talīʿa, 1994), 55–87.
54 Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins, 76. He adds: “Viewing humanity through this lens, there
can be no ‘noble failures;’ all failures, in Qurʾānic discourse, are ignominious” (77). See also
pp. 81–82 on the story of Adam and Eve.
64 Bruce Fudge
If the defining element of “Western literature,” as seen by Auerbach and many
of our contemporaries, is absent from the Qurʾan, then surely this must influence
our views of its literary qualities?
Some will bristle at the suggestion that the Qurʾan (and perhaps subsequent
Islamic literary traditions?55) is lacking the very quality that, according to West-
ern taste and tradition, gives literature its depth and meaning. As Auerbach him-
self noted, it is the burden of a text that represents itself as absolute truth to have
to adapt to changing circumstances.56 Or, rather, for its adherents to make it adapt.
Thus we have efforts to bring both the Bible and the Qurʾan in line with, for exam-
ple, modern science or contemporary morality. The desire to see an unprecedented
range of literary qualities in the Qurʾan is part of the same tendency. If the Qurʾan
is a masterpiece, it must be so in all respects. It will not do to admit that it is in
some way deficient or inferior to its Jewish and Christian analogues.
On some level, this tendency is misguided: the Qurʾan is a very distinctive,
powerful text in its own right. There is no need to make it conform to other models
of textual merit and quality. “Literature” with reference to the Qurʾan and in the
contemporary West are two very different things. To assume that what became
known as “literature” in Europe is universal will lead either to judging the Qurʾan
in an unfairly critical manner or, at the opposite extreme, to finding in it whatever
one wishes to find.
Is there a Qurʾanic “representation of reality” comparable to that laid out by
Auerbach? It is certainly possible to discern one. Take the following description
of the Qurʾan:

Hence a direct, crushing, terrified apprehension of what seems to be divine

reality, a feeling of helplessness in the hands of an implacable master, and a
surrender to his incomprehensible will. But hence, also, an active and positive
orientation towards the realities of human existence, an earnest endeavour to
shape them to one’s liking, a refusal to be filled with anguish or despair, a
rejection of suffering and a hedonistic eagerness to enjoy life and its pleasures
to the full extent permitted by God’s will; hence too an intense but fairly brief

55 A largely unknown (or at least uncited) article by G.M. Wickens broaches this topic. Wickens does
not mention Auerbach, but his vision of Western literature is similar: it emphasizes human crises
and dilemmas of existence on the one hand, and “carefully assembled and integrated details of
daily life” on the other. Wickens does not find these “desiderata” in the Arabic and Persian tradi-
tions. The tone is excruciatingly haughty, and most readers will see the author as “the orientalist
in full colonial dress.” However, the argument is, at the very least, interesting to contemplate.
Mohammed Arkoun saw merit in Wickens’ project but noted that “serious” researchers (the scare
quotes are Arkoun’s) would reject it a priori. G.M. Wickens, “To Seek: The Human Crises and the
Trivial Round,” in Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, ed. Wael B. Hallaq and Donald
P. Little (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 255–273; Arkoun, review of aforementioned volume, in Ara-
bica, XL (1993): 259–260; Wickens as the “orientalist in full colonial dress” (though not in refer-
ence to this article) is from Michael Beard, Hedayet’s Blind Owl as a Western Novel (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 15.
56 See Auerbach, Mimesis, 15–16.
 Mimesis and the Representation of Reality 65
moral consciousness, which is, to our way of thinking, a little too readily
accessible to reason (un peu trop aisément raisonnable à notre gré), a little
too resigned to human imperfection, a little lacking in that desperate concern
in face of the impossible demands of perfection—that tragic and heroic ten-
sion which Jesus has accustomed us, perhaps wrongly, to regard as necessary
for a deeply moral life.57

The passage is from Maxime Rodinson’s 1961 biography of Muhammad. Obvi-

ously, nobody writes like this anymore, and perhaps that is a good thing. It is
nonetheless a close and appreciative reading of the revelation and how it com-
pares with one’s own expectations. What Rodinson describes is a “representation
of reality” no less valid than that put forward by Erich Auerbach.58
Rodinson’s passage complements what we have found here. The Qurʾan is a
text with a very strong character and deserves to be treated as such. That strength
of character is present on every page, and it shows in what ways the Qurʾan is
fundamentally different from its biblical sibling. There is a current tendency, in
academe and beyond, to stress commonalities and to strive for inclusion, and so
we speak of Abrahamic religions, Mediterranean cultures, and the shared heritage
of late antiquity. But my reading of Auerbach has led in a different direction, to
dwell on difference.
Do we not diminish the complexity of the Qurʾan if we refrain from speak-
ing about what makes it distinct, even if it may seem too theocentric for present
tastes? It is certainly curious that in an age and milieu in which issues of identity
are so prevalent, there is a tendency to elide difference and to see sameness and
equivalence, to proclaim the merits of diversity while promoting a kind of banal
uniformity.

57 Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 338–339; Muḥammad, trans. Anne Carter (Lon-
don: Penguin, 1971), 300 (translation modified). I should perhaps add here that Rodinson, like
Auerbach, was a secular Jew, and thus the importance each attributes to the figure of Jesus can in
no way be interpreted as any kind of Christian triumphalism.
58 Is it significant that the English translation of the biography omitted Rodinson’s qualification, “per-
haps wrongly” (peut-être à tort), with regard to the tragic and heroic tension that Western readers
would have taken for granted?
4 The Masjid in the Qurʾan
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

In the mid-1960s, Charles J. Adams (1924–2011), an Islamicist who studied the

history of religions with one of the discipline’s founding figures, Joachim Wach
(1898–1955), at the University of Chicago, expressed the frustrating dissonance
he experienced between his two areas of specialization:

[I]t has proven increasingly difficult to see a direct and fructifying relation-
ship between the activities of Islamicists and those of historians of religion.
. . . [T]he great themes which have dominated the horizon of historians of
religions in recent decades have not been such that would throw light on the
Islamic experience or speak to the problems occupying Islamics scholarship.1

His observation was shared by Isma‘il al-Faruqi (1921–1986), a Muslim intel-

lectual and scholar of comparative religions who was responsible for introducing
a venue for the study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion in 1973.2
Similar to Adams, al-Faruqi, in the mid-1960s, observed,

Even today, no historian of religions proper has had anything to say that
would catch the attention of men of knowledge in the Islamics field. At the
root of this shortcoming stands the fact that Islam was never regarded as an
integral part of the subject matter of history of religions.3

A couple of decades later, Richard Martin (1938–2019) began his landmark

edited volume on Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies by echoing Adams
and offering a similar diagnosis of the fields: “Islam should receive greater atten-
tion in religious studies” because “our understanding of Islam as religion and our

1 Charles J. Adams, “The History of Religions and the Study of Islam,” in The History of Religions:
Essays on the Problems of Understanding, ed. Joseph M. Kitagawa with the collaboration Mircea
Eliade and Charles H. Long (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 178, 180.
2 Richard C. Martin, “Islamic Studies in the American Academy: A Personal Reflection,” Journal of
the American Academy of Religion 78/4 (December 2010): 898.
3 Ismaʿil Ragi A. al Faruqi, “History of Religions: Its Nature and Significance for Christian Education
and Muslim-Christian Dialogue,” Numen 12 (1965): 40.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-5
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 67
understanding of religion in terms of Islam are issues in need of more focused dis-
cussion and clarity.”4 Despite the remarkable depth of Martin’s volume, to which
William Graham contributed a chapter,5 the fields of Islamic and religious studies
never developed the “focused discussion and clarity” that Martin sought.
Fast forward three decades and we find scholars calling the project of bringing
religious studies and Islamic studies into a “direct and fructifying relationship”
essentially futile. By the mid-2010s, the universalizing concept of religion that
underpinned history of religions had become defunct. Consequently, many saw
little point in “conceptualization of Islam . . . as ‘religion.’ ”6 This critique had
already been initiated in the early 1960s by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who showed
“religion” to be an etic category of modern European vintage that obfuscated the
complexity of non-Protestant “faiths” and “traditions” as “salient ways of being
human.”7 Yet, the effort to express Islam on its own terms as a way of being
human endures. “I am seeking,” Shahab Ahmed (1966–2015) wrote at the outset
of his 546-page study of What Is Islam?, “to say the word ‘Islam’ in a manner that
expresses the historical and human phenomenon that is Islam in its plentitude and
complexity of meaning.”8
From Adams to Ahmed, the humanistic study and expression of Islam has
been an iterative challenge. William Graham’s scholarship has been a life raft in
a tumultuous ocean of polemic and uncertainty for those of us whose careers as
Islamicists and religionists straddle Martin’s call for greater communion between
Islamic and religious studies and Ahmed’s repudiation of religion as a useful
category for conceptualizing Islam. (Is there any substance to religion? Is reli-
gious studies a discipline or a “manufactured” subject of study by the Western
academy?9 Is there such a thing as Islam given the diversity found among Mus-
lims?) As one of the star pupils of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Graham has been
a trailblazer in efforts to study Islam both on its own terms and as a religion
among the varying religions of the world. His technical work on the Qurʾan, the
Hadith, and early Islamic rituals has been driven by questions about how Muslim
religiosity constitutes a distinctive expression of human experience in history. At

4 Richard C. Martin, “Islam and Religious Studies: An Introductory Essay,” in Approaches to Islam in
Religious Studies, ed. Richard C. Martin (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001; orig. 1985), 1.
5 William A. Graham, “Qur’ān as Spoken Word: An Islamic Contribution to the Understanding of
Scripture,” in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. Richard C. Martin (Oxford: Oneworld,
2001; orig. 1985), 23–40.
6 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2016), 176.
7 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “Islamic History as a Concept,” in On Understanding Islam: Selected
Studies, ed. Wilfred Cantwell Smith (The Hague: Mouton, 1981), 12. Cited in Ahmed, What is
Islam? 176. For Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s influential study of the concept of religion see his Mean-
ing and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (New York:
Macmillan, 1963).
8 Ahmed, What Is Islam? 5, emphasis in the original.
9 Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the
Politics of Nostalgia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
68 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
a time when religious studies scholars sought to identify patterns of hierophany
and numinous experience in Islam, mainly through the study of Sufi literature,
Graham pointed to how demanding the religious study of Islam is in its fullness
and resisted the dichotomy between historians of religions and Islamicists. In his
work, he sought to overcome how “ ‘Orthoprax’ Muslim ritual and symbolism
have eluded or confounded” both generalists studying the history of religions and
“orientalists” specializing in Islamic studies.10

********
How does one explain Islam as a distinctive, living religion to an academy whose
conceptual vocabulary for understanding it has primarily described dogmas, mon-
olithic communities, and political movements? I discern a three-step process in
Graham’s scholarship and teaching through which he tackled this question. First,
identify the methods and theories that fall short of explaining Islam as it is expe-
rienced, understood, and debated by Muslims. Second, explicate the genealogy
of those methods and theories. Third, delve deeply and carefully into the Muslim
sources (including texts, objects, and practices) in order to examine how those
theories and methods need to be revised for an understanding of not just Islam but
religion more generally as a historically widespread human phenomenon.
For Graham and the generation of religious studies scholars at Harvard who
studied with Wilfred Cantwell Smith, getting religious studies to better represent
the empirical reality of religious diversity in human history meant pluralizing the
areas of study represented in the discipline. This work is clearly visible in the
way Graham transformed Harvard Divinity School (HDS); under his deanship in
2002–2012, HDS made ten appointments of specialists who focused squarely on
non-Christian religious traditions. These included four appointments in Islamic
traditions, two in Buddhist traditions, one in Jewish legal and ethical traditions,
one in non-Abrahamic South Asian religious traditions, one in Australian and
African indigenous traditions, and one in African indigenous traditions alone.
There were also appointments made in non-European Christian traditions of Latin
America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Orthodoxy.11 Inclusion through pluraliza-
tion in the academy has been a means of highlighting the instability of the themes
and concepts that have shaped the study of religion, turning what were analytical
categories into heuristic ones.12
This approach to inclusivity through pluralization, however, has not been with-
out its shortcomings. Since the category “religion” was historically employed in

10 William A. Graham, “Islam in the Mirror of Ritual,” in Islam’s Understanding of Itself, ed. Richard
G. Hovannisian and Speros Vryonis, Jr. (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1983), 58.
11 Personal communication with William A. Graham, 17 June 2020.
12 In Graham’s work, for example, we see how “scripture,” when studied through the lens of Mus-
lims’ experiences, demonstrates the paradoxical orality of divine writ and how “ritual,” when
studied through the lens of Islamic acts of worship, does not so much become an instrument of
sacramentalization of objects and places but a means of reforming individuals and societies. See
William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and Graham, “Islam in the Mirror of Ritual.”
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 69
the academy to universalize liberal Protestant concepts and assumptions (i.e. to
ideologize), the effort to pluralize the study of religion by including the study of
“other” religions alongside Protestantism has meant that, with the exception of
(liberal) Protestantism, thinking about individual religious traditions has always
been a task separate from thinking about religion generally.13 The study of non-
Protestant religions has historically been relegated to area studies departments,
and area studies specialists often faulted religionists working in their areas of spe-
cialization for imposing theories and analytical categories on their field that were
not rooted in the field’s primary sources. Heuristic categories such as scripture
and ritual may help scholars of Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity to talk with one
another about “religion,” but—as noted in the frustrated tone of the citations with
which I began this chapter—they did not help scholars of Islam to think about the
Qurʾan or ʿibādāt or dīn. The task of making scholarship on Islamic sources con-
stitutive of scholarship on religion more generally fell upon the next generation
of academics who thankfully could build on the foundations set by scholars such
as William Graham.
Given my intellectual journey with Bill, the best tribute I can offer in celebra-
tion of his work is to demonstrate how his scholarship and mentorship helped me
to make thinking and writing about Islam and thinking and writing about religion
one and the same task. Due to the aforementioned limitations of the conceptual
vocabulary of religious studies for conceptualizing Islam as a distinctive, living
religion, this task is better illustrated through a case study than explained theo-
retically. Before turning to my example, it is worth noting that this task does not
entail substituting Christian presuppositions that shaped the academic study of
religion with Muslim preconceptions. Rather, bringing scholarship on Islam and
scholarship on religion to bear on one another entails, on the one hand, the devel-
opment of conceptual categories that are polysemous and thus capacious enough
to capture the ground upon which religions occur, and on the other hand, practical
and historically rooted enough so as to usefully inform the skills a scholar needs to
understand and explain specific religions in varying contexts to a wider audience
within the academy. Put more concretely, the task I am proposing does not entail
replacing the Eucharist with the ṣalāh in ritual studies. Rather, it entails thinking
about ṣalāh (Islam) as a broadly accessible human practice (religion) and then
explaining its significance as such.

13 Such critiques are too numerous and too commonly known for me to cite them here. Prominent
examples include Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000); Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion: Myths, Knowledge,
and Ideology, trans. William Sayers (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003);
Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was
Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). With
respect to the work of William Graham specifically, see Marion Katz, “The Ḥajj and the Study of
Islamic Ritual,” Studia Islamica 98/99 (2004): 103, where she faults Graham’s categorization of
Islamic ritual as “reformational” and “nonsacramental” for its “clear Christian overtones,” which
“implicitly evokes the polemical legacy of historical Christian conflicts over the idea of ritual
efficacy.”
70 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
The masjid as a case study for thinking about religion while
thinking about Islam and vice versa
I turn to the masjid in what follows because the masjid is a particularly fruitful
site for thinking about religion while thinking about Islam. A founding problem
for the study of religion has been the problem of representation: how does the
category religion in the singular relate to the varying manifestations of religions
throughout history?14 Is a religion better represented through an insider or out-
sider lens?15 This problem is also found in Islamic studies, where finding a centre
around which the religious history of Islam can be narrated given the enormous
diversity found among Muslims has been also a persistent theoretical and meth-
odological problem. When looking at the origins of Islam in the poly-religious
context of Arabia and Late Antiquity, the study of Islam has been racked by ques-
tions of influence and originality.16 Following the Qurʾanic era, Islamic tradition
itself has understandably overemphasized the originality of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd
Allāh’s prophetic career, so much so that it has divided human history into two
epochs, one before the revelation of the Qurʾan known as jāhiliyya and the other
after.17
Although the Islamic tradition never developed a highly centralized or eccle-
siastical authority, it nonetheless maintained a more-or-less unchanging set of
obligatory rituals, and thus the question of its centralization has continued to per-
plex scholars to this day. Several strategies have been adopted to address the prob-
lem. Early philological approaches focused on Arabic texts and defined Islam and

14 For a classic articulation of this problem, see Smith, Meaning and End of Religion.
15 Russell T. McCutcheon, The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader (London
and New York: Cassell, 1999).
16 Graham used to make this point vividly in a lecture in his introductory courses on Islam by read-
ing off a list of book titles, such as: The Origin of Islam in Its Christian Environment; Judaism
and Islam; Jesus in the Qur’an; The Jewish Foundation of Islam; The Bible and the Koran; The
Jewish Influences on the Narratives of the Koran; The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud: or, Bibli-
cal Legends of the Mussulmans. For a brief survey of Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Gnostic
influences on the Qurʾan, see Tryggve Kronholm, “Dependence and Prophetic Originality in the
Koran,” Orientalia Suecana 31–32 (1982–83): 52–60.
17 The notion of jāhiliyya is present in the Qurʾan (3:154, 5:50, 33:33, and 48:26), but there it refers
not so much to a historiographical delineation of time but rather to an epistemological condition
in which people are ignorant of God and thus not guided by divine revelation. This is most clearly
seen in Qurʾan 33:33, where God commands Muhammad’s wives “not to flaunt their charms as you
flaunted them in al-jāhiliyya al-ūla (the prior stage-of-ignorance).” Here, even though a temporal
distinction is made between earlier and later jāhiliyya, God’s command takes place simultaneously
in jāhiliyya and in a time of revelation. The distinction between the two does not depend on the
passage of time, but rather on the people’s behavioural response to divine revelation. For later
Muslims, however, the distinction became primarily temporal, so much so that al-Ṭabarī reports
that “exegetes differed in their interpretation of al-jāhiliyya al-ūlā. Some say it refers to the time
between Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them). . . . Others say it refers to the time between
Adam and Noah.” Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr al-Ṭabarī: Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan
taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, v. 19 (Cairo: Markaz al-Buḥūth
wa-l-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabiyya wa-l-Islāmiyya, 2001), 97–98.
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 71
its historical development in light of classical Arabic scholarship at the expense
of the majority of Muslims who were illiterate and non-Arabic speaking.18 Later
historians traced the development of Islam through the institution of the caliphate,
reducing the religious history of Islam to the history of the political development
of the Muslim empire.19 Some anthropologists abandoned the notion of “universal
Islam”; instead, they pointed to the enormous diversity found among Muslims and
privileged local studies of “Islams” at the expense of the universalizing aspects
of the religion,20 such as its cross-regional networks of knowledge and trade and
its unifying pilgrimage routes to Mecca and varying shrines. Another school of
anthropology defined Islam as a discursive tradition and shifted the study of Islam
away from any Islamic content and towards analysis of discourse and power
dynamics.21 All of these approaches to Islam have illuminated varying aspects of
the complex tradition of Islam, but they leave us wondering what role enduring
Islamic beliefs and practices have played in shaping Muslim histories.
In what follows, I tackle this problem of understanding how Islamic beliefs and
practices have shaped Muslim histories by examining the mosque as an enduring
Islamic institution that provides a window onto how the Qurʾan spatially situated
Muhammad and his followers within the context of other religions. My approach
is thus synchronic, but insofar as the mosque is a transregional and transtemporal
Muslim institution, I hope my analysis will also shed light on how the spatial
structuring of inter-religious relations during this period may have had an endur-
ing effect on the diachronic development of Muslim beliefs and practices through-
out human history. In this effort, I rely on the Qurʾan primarily as my source and
aim to take the Qurʾan seriously on its own terms.22 When I, or other historians
of religions, say this, we do not mean that we are studying the Qurʾan to under-
stand Qurʾanic times, but rather we are examining the Qurʾan humanistically to
understand how its development in a particular historical context has dialecti-
cally structured different beliefs, world views, and practices that have come to

18 The first and second editions of Brill’s monumental Encyclopaedia of Islam are great, representa-
tive examples of this strategy. By way of example, look up the entry on “Islām: Definition and
Theories of Meaning” by Louis Gardet in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.
19 This can be seen in the periodization of Islamic history in terms of a succession of caliphates even
though the question of caliphal authority has been a source of contention throughout Islamic his-
tory, and there have been times when multiple dynasties with varying dominions have simultane-
ously claimed the mantle of divine viceregency (khilāfa).
20 See, for example, Abdul Hamid El-Zein, “Beyond Ideology and Theology: The Search for the
Anthropology of Islam,” Annual Review of Anthropology 6 (1977): 227–254; Dale F. Eickelman,
“The Study of Islam in Local Contexts,” Contributions to Asian Studies 17 (1982): 1–16.
21 See Talal Asad’s enormously influential essay The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 1986).
22 Since the publication of John Wansbrough’s Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu
(1978), there have been lively debates about the dating of the Qurʾan and the validity of its use as a
contemporary source for the early formation of Islam in the early seventh century. Today, however,
a general consensus has emerged among scholars of early Islam that the Qurʾan, if approached
critically, is the most reliable early source for the study of Muhammad’s life and the rise of Islam.
72 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
be associated with Islam more generally in human history.23 I see this effort as an
essay in thinking about religion while thinking about Islam that shifts focus away
from the common inquiry into how Islam was shaped or influenced by its poly-
religious context and instead turns towards questions about how the Qurʾan and
early followers of Muhammad made sense of and came to live with the diversity
of religions that surrounded them.24 “The mosque” is a particularly apt space,
object, and institution through which this question could be explored because, in
addition to relating Muslims to members of other religions spatially and archi-
tecturally, it is also a structure with a long duration (longue durée).25 It predates
the advent of Muhammad’s prophetic career and it has accompanied Muslims
as they have settled throughout the world over time. As such, “the mosque” is a
unique site for understanding how the early, public spatialization of Islam may
have structured Islam as a religion among religions.
To see the mosque as an institution of longue durée, however, is not tantamount
to seeing it as unchanging. That is why I put the word mosque in quotes earlier in
order to distinguish its use today as a label for Islamic places of worship from its
earlier use in the Qurʾan as a generic place of worship and divine commemoration.
In the Qurʾan, the word masjid refers to religious spaces and buildings that pre-
date Muhammad. Their specific nature is not clear. It seems that while masjid may
have referred to places of worship generally, it may have nonetheless been distin-
guished from churches and synagogues, for the Qurʾan mentions masājid (plural
of masjid) alongside ṣawāmiʿ, biyaʿ, and ṣalawāt as places where God’s name
is recalled (Q 22:40). The meanings of ṣawāmiʿ, biyaʿ, and ṣalawāt are some-
what ambiguous, but both classical commentators and modern translators of the
Qurʾan have come to understand them as being related to monastaries, churches,
and synagogues respectively.26 As Muslims came to have power over members

23 In addition to Graham’s work on the Qurʾan, for an exemplary study of this sort, see Daniel A.
Madigan, The Qur’ân’s Self Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001).
24 More recent scholarship on the Qurʾan has similarly made this shift, particularly in the scholarship
that Angelika Neuwirth’s work has helped engender. See, for example, Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai
Sinai, and Michael Marx, eds., The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into
the Qur’ānic Milieu (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010); Angelika Neuwirth, The Qur’an and Late
Antiquity: A Shared Heritage, trans. Samuel Wilder (New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2019). For her critical assessment of the field and brief articulation of ways forward, see “Orien-
talism in Oriental Studies? Qur’anic Studies as a Case in Point,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 9/2
(2007): 115–127.
25 Fernand Braudel, “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée,” trans. Immanuel Waller-
stein. Review 32/2 (2009): 178–179.
26 Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938), 86–87,
197–198 and 200–201; M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, trans., The Qur’an (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 338; The Study Quran, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al. (New York: HarperOne, 2015),
839–840; A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, Spalding Library of Religion (London and New
York: Allen & Unwin; Macmillan, 1955), 337; Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious
Koran (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1930), 138; Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Text, Transla-
tion & Commentary, new rev. 5th ed. (Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, 1987), 832.
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 73
of other religious traditions in West Asia, North Africa, and Southwest Europe,
the mosque gradually came to refer specifically to Muslim places of worship. For
the purpose of this chapter, however, I am mainly concerned with the broader
Qurʾanic use of masjid as a general place for divine worship or commemoration.

Aṣḥāb al-Kahf or the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus

The Arabic term for mosque, masjid, literally means a place to prostrate (sajada).
We do not know exactly when and how the term came to be associated exclusively
with a Muslim place of worship, but given that followers of the Prophet Muham-
mad collectively prostrated in their places of worship, it is likely that masjid came
to be associated predominantly with his followers early in Islam’s history.27 Its
use in the Qurʾan, however, is more in line with its Semitic origin as a generic
place for divine worship or commemoration.28 In Sūrat al-Kahf, for example,
masjid seems to refer to a shrine built for the Companions of the Cave (aṣḥāb al-
kahf), who are known in the Christian tradition as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.
According to this story, which likely dates to the fifth-century CE but refers to the
reign of the Roman emperor Decius (r. 249–251 CE), the emperor purportedly
visited Ephesus and ordered everyone to perform sacrifices to pagan gods. A few
young people rebelled against these orders and were condemned to physical pun-
ishment. Rather than waiting for their beating, they escaped to a cave on top of
a mountain, where they called on God to protect them. The emperor decided to
seal the youths in the cave, thinking they would die of hunger or thirst, but God
took their spirits to heaven while preserving their bodies on earth. Many decades
later, their bodies were discovered. They were awakened only to find, to their
amazement, that Ephesus had become a Christian city under the rule of emperor
Theodosius (r. 379–395 CE). Theodosius proposed to bring them to the city and
“build a shrine over their bodies,” but they refused and opted to remain in the cave
so that their dormant bodies could serve as proof that “resurrection truly exists.”29

27 This notion finds support in early Christian references to Muhammad’s followers by their place
of worship and direction of prayer in Mecca. Such references suggest that religious differences
in these areas were marked by acts of worship and the spaces and buildings dedicated to them.
For some of these references, see Sean W. Anthony, “Why Does the Qur’an Need the Meccan
Sanctuary? Response to Professor Gerald Hawting’s 2017 Presidential Address,” Journal of the
International Qur’anic Studies Association 3 (2018): 35–40.
28 As early as the fifth century BCE, the Aramaic word msgd’ appears in the Jewish Elephantine
Papyri. It also appears in Epigraphic South Arabian and in Nabataean inscriptions, denoting a tem-
ple or a place of worship. See J. Pedersen, “Masdjid,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden:
Brill) and Jeffery, Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’an, 263–264; Jeremy Johns, “The ‘House of
the Prophet’ and the Concept of the Mosque,” in Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and Early Islam, ed.
Jeremy Johns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 88–89.
29 Sebastian Brock, “Jacob of Serugh’s Poem on the Sleepers of Ephesus,” in “I Sowed Fruits into
Hearts” (Odes Sol. 17:13): Festschrift for Professor Michael Lattke, ed. Pauline Allen, Majella
Franzmann, and Rick Strelan (Strathfield, Australia: St. Pauls Publications, 2007), 30, see 14–16
for the dating of the story.
74 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
The Qurʾan also references this story in relation to the divine promise of
resurrection:

And in this way, We had them [the people of the cave] be discovered, so that
they know that God’s promise is real, and that the Hour [of resurrection and
divine judgement] is indubitable. When they were arguing among themselves
about their affair, they said, “Build a building (bunyān) over them; their Lord
knows them best.” Those who prevailed in their affair said, “We shall con-
struct a mosque over them.”
(Q 18:21)

The mosque in the Qurʾan thus does not just refer to a place dedicated to worship
of God through ritual prayer but also to buildings dedicated to commemorating
divine acts and their recipients in the world.

Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām and the paradox of God’s

House housing idols
The most prominent mosque mentioned in the Qurʾan—al-Masjid al-Ḥarām or the
Inviolable Mosque—is also a commemorative space as well as a space dedicated
to rites of worship. It includes “the House of God” (bayt allāh), which, according
to the Qurʾan God ordered Ibrāhīm/Abraham and Ismāʿīl/Ishmael to build and
dedicate to His worship. During Muhammad’s time, al-Masjid al-Ḥarām referred
to the Meccan sanctuary where Arab tribes gathered annually to pay tribute to
their gods,30 and bayt allāh housed what was likely the greatest of these gods in
pre-Islamic Arabia, Hubal.31 By referring to this Meccan sanctuary that housed
the House of God as al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, the Qurʾan seems to have followed the

30 Qurʾan 5:95 and 97. ʿAbd al-Malik Ibn Hishām, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, ed. Muṣṭaf ā al-Saqqā,
Ibrāhīm al-Ibyārī, and ʿAbd al-Hafīẓ Shalabī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1422 AH/2001
CE), 72–81. Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 35–39; Richard W. Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 105–106; Gerald R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry
and the Emergence of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 21.
31 Hishām b. Muḥammad Ibn al-Kalbī, Kitāb al-aṣnām, ed. Aḥmad Zakī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-
Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1924), 27–28; The Book of Idols: Being a Translation from the Arabic of
the Kitāb al-Aṣnām by Hishām Ibn-al-Kalbī, trans. Nabih Amin Faris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1952), 23–24. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 70. Simon O’Meara, The Kaʿba
Orientations: Readings in Islam’s Ancient House (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020),
109–111. Uri Rubin, “Ḥanīfiyya and Kaʿba: An Inquiry into the Arabian pre-Islamic Background
of dīn Ibāhīm’,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990): 103. In an earlier article, how-
ever, Uri Rubin, relying on Muḥammad b. ‘Umar al-Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī, ed. Marsden
Jones (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), vol. 2, 832, claimed that no deities were housed in
the Kaʿba and that Hubal’s idol was situated opposite its façade. (“The Ka‘ba: Aspects of Its Ritual
Function and Position in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam 8 (1986): 104–105). However, as both Rubin and O’Meara observe, al-Wāqidī (d. 207/822)
is alone among early Muslim historians in relaying that Hubal was not accommodated inside of the
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 75
common parlance of its time. This is not surprising, given that both masjid and
ḥarām are pre-Islamic concepts and entities.32 Moreover, as Josef Horovitz and
A.J. Wensinck noted nearly a century ago,33 we encounter the phrase al-Masjid
al-Ḥarām in reference to the sanctuary of Mecca in Jāhilī poetry, as in the fol-
lowing verses from the famed Yathrib (later known as Medina) poet, Qays b.
al-Khaṭīm, who likely died sometime before the Hijra34:

By God, possessor (dhī) of the Inviolable Mosque, and

by that which is draped (jullila) with embroidered Yemeni cloth,
Truly, I love you, possessing (dhī) no deceit.
I have been worn thin by a fluttering belly and a heart-wrenching love
(al-shaghaf).35

Although there is always the possibility that such survivals of pre-Islamic Arabic
poetry were redacted to reflect the outlook of later Muslim societies in which they
survived, Qays b. al-Khaṭīm’s nuanced use of language and the internal consist-
ency of his poem attest to Thomas Bauer’s contention that claims to the fabrication
of early Islamic poetry36 are “outdated” and that “the complexity of the corpus [of
pre-Islamic poetry] puts to rest any notions of falsity.”37 By mentioning the Invio-
lable Mosque, Qays b. al-Khaṭīm does not appeal to Islamic sensibilities. Rather,
the poet evokes the ḥaram to attest to the veracity of his love and to draw parallels
between himself and the Kaʿba and between the love that has overtaken his body
and the God that lords over the Kaʿba.38 This is done through the repetition of dhī

Kaʿba. F. E. Peters, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 24–25.
32 On the pre-Islamic notion of ḥaram, see Harry Munt, The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in
Early Islamic Arabia (New York: Cambridge University of New York, 2014), 24–28.
33 Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter De Gruyter & Co.,
1926), 140–141; A. J. Wensinck, “Al-Masd̲j̲id Al-Ḥarām,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.,
ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_4999
(accessed June 25, 2020).
34 T. Kowalski, “Ḳays B. Al-Khaṭīm,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al.
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_4069 (accessed June 25,
2020).
35 Qays b. al-Khaṭīm, Der Dīwān des Ḳais ibn al Ḫaṭīm, ed. and trans. Thaddäus Kowalski (Leipzig:
Otto Harrassowitz, 1914), 18 in Arabic, p. 34 in German translation.
36 David S. Margoliouth, “The Origins of Arabic Poetry,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland (3) (1925): 417–449; Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Fī l-shiʿr al-jāhilī (Cairo: Maṭba‘at
Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1926).
37 Thomas Bauer, “The Relevance of Early Arabic Poetry for Qur’anic Studies Including Observa-
tions on Kull and on Q 22:27, 26:225, and 52:31,” in The Qur’ān in Context: Historical and Liter-
ary Investigations into the Qur’ānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael
Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 702.
38 Keep in mind that while the evocation of “God, possessor of the Inviolable Mosque” appears
Islamic, al-ilāh or Allah, literally “the god” in Arabic, is believed to have been the high god of
pre-Islamic Mecca, and the Kaʿba is believed to have been his shrine. See Uri Rubin, “The Ka‘ba:
76 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
(“possessor of”) in these consecutive verses to refer to God as “the possessor of
the Inviolable Mosque” and to himself as one “possessing no deceit,” and through
the analogy drawn between the protective covering of the Kaʿba that beautifies
with embroidery and al-shaghaf, which I translate as “a heart-wrenching love,”
but it also literally refers to the membrane covering the heart (pericardium) that
emaciates the poet with unbridled love.
It seems safe to assume then that al-Masjid al-Ḥarām in the Qurʾan is employed
in accord with the common parlance of Qurʾanic times, and this usage suggests
that the inviolability of Mecca’s “place of prostration,” or masjid, was something
Muhammad and his followers held in common with the Idolators (mushrikūn)
who frequented it and managed it. We see this, for example, in Sūrat al-Tawbah, a
Medinan revelation that, though addressed to Muhammad’s followers, also aimed
to speak to non-believing Quraysh: “How can the idolaters have a treaty with God
and with His Messenger, save for those with whom you made a treaty at al-Masjid
al-Ḥarām? So long as they remain true to you, remain true to them. God loves the
God-wary” (Q 9:7). Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām here is invoked not as a notional sacred
space associated exclusively with the religion of the Qurʾan but as an actual site
of religious and sociopolitical import for both the Quraysh and Muhammad’s nas-
cent community where pacts are made binding. Significantly, the parties binding
one another with a treaty at this site held opposing religious beliefs and practices.
Nonetheless, from the way in which this verse invokes al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, it
seems that even though the followers of Muhammad and idolaters among the
Quraysh vehemently opposed one another’s understandings of what constitutes
proper means of divine worship, they both recognized the Inviolable Mosque as a
socially and politically efficacious place dedicated to divine worship. They disa-
greed about the nature of divinity and how the divine should be worshiped, but
they agreed that the divine should be worshiped at this place, which they both
regarded as inviolable and a place of prostration. In an apparent paradox, the cha-
risma of this place of worship to bind opposing parties seems unaffected by the
opposing parties’ disputes over the nature of divine charisma and worship. In the
Qurʾan, the site itself transcends the antinomies in how the two groups conceived
and worshiped the divine, which in turn allows the site to mediate between the
opposing parties so that they could hold each other accountable by their pact.
One common understanding of this paradox appeals to the longstanding dichot-
omy between functionalist and phenomenological approaches to the study of
“sacred space” in the study of religion.39 Both of these approaches have parallels
in the Qurʾan and in early Islamic sources. I will illustrate these parallels briefly
before returning to them to discuss why I think they are important for understanding

Aspects of Its Ritual Functions and Position in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times,” Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986): 97–131, 105.
39 The two studies representative of each side of this dichotomy remain respectively: Emile Dur-
kheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (New York: the Free
Press, 1965 [1915]) and Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans.
Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1959).
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 77
the lack of a “direct and fructifying relationship” between area studies approaches
to Islam and religious studies.
From a functionalist perspective, the significance of the Inviolable Mosque in
pre-Islamic times is attributed to its function in Arabian society as a shrine for
the worship and the propitiation of the gods through sacrifice. According to this
interpretation, the sacred month of truce established to allow varying Arab tribes
to make pilgrimage to the site promoted peace among rival tribes and united the
Quraysh, who, as custodians of the mosque, found themselves growing in wealth
as well as in political clout and cultural authority.40
This functionalist explanation of the importance of the Inviolable Mosque
in pre-Islamic Arabia echoes early Muslim sources. The Qurʾan acknowledges
the clout and authority that caring for the Inviolable Mosque brought upon the
Quraysh when it asks, “Do you suppose giving drink to the pilgrims and maintain-
ing the Inviolable Mosque is like those who believe in God and the Last Day and
strive in God’s path?” (Q 9:19). In his recension of Ibn Isḥāq’s (d. 150 AH/767
CE) biography of Muhammad (Sīra), Ibn Hishām (d. 218 AH/833 CE or 213
AH/828 CE) also writes that by gaining authority over “the House” (al-bayt)
Quṣayy ibn Kilāb was able to gain command over Mecca and unite the Quraysh
there under his leadership:

Quṣayy was the first of Banī Ka‘b b. Lu’ayy to assume kingship and to whom
his people submitted obediently. He was responsible for gatekeeping [the
Ka‘ba], giving pilgrims drink and food, presiding over consultative assem-
blies, and for the war standards. He attained the eminence of Mecca in its
entirety;. . . His command among his people of the Quraysh during his life-
time and after it, in his death, was like religious law (al-dīn al-muttaba‘).
Everything was done according to it. He occupied the meeting house him-
self and made its door lead to the Ka‘ba mosque (masjid al-ka‘ba); in it the
Quraysh settled their affairs.41

40 For a fuller documentation of this narrative, see F. E. Peters, Mecca: A Literary History of the Mus-
lim Holy Land (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 14–35. See also, Jonathan Porter
Berkey, The Formation of Islam Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 42; Fred M. Donner, Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986), 34–37; Muhammad Husein Haykal, The Life of Muhammad,
trans. Isma‘il Ragi A. Al Faruqi (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 1976), 18–21; Marshall G.
S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 1, The
Classical Age (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 154–156; W. Montgomery
Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 3; Henri Lammens, “La
République Marchande de la Mecque Vers L’an 600 de Notre Ère,” Bulletin de L’institut Égyptien
5ème ser. 4 (1910): 23–54, see 34; Maxine Rodinson, Mohammed, trans. Anne Carter (Middlesex,
England: Penguin Books Ltd, 1971), 38–40; M. J. Kister, “Some Reports concerning Mecca from
Jāhiliyya to Islam,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 15/1/2 (1972):
61–93, see 76–81. For a revisionist view, see Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 168–199.
41 Ibn Hisham, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, 105–106. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, 52–53.
78 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
As Harry Munt’s inquiry into the ḥaram in the pre-Islamic era has shown, early
Muslim sources corroborate modern ethnographic findings regarding “the neces-
sity in kinship-based tribal societies of the development of mechanisms through
which non-violent interaction within and between different groups can be
normalized.”42 Both the Qurʾan and the Sīra explain the significance of the pre-
Islamic sacred precinct of Mecca in terms of the ways it functioned socially and
politically to build community and establish rule.
In contrast to the pre-Islamic Inviolable Mosque, which has generally been sig-
nified through its social and political function, the Islamic Inviolable Mosque has
been explained in terms of the phenomenology of its structures and space. Both
ancient Muslim sources and modern scholars have emphasized its symbolic sig-
nificance and mythology as well as how the underlying meaning of the activities
associated with it ought to be experienced.43 Addressing the sacrifice of animals
at the Inviolable Mosque, for example, the Qurʾan states: “Their flesh and blood
will not reach God, but your God-consciousness (taqwā) reaches Him. In this
way, He made them subservient to you so that you magnify God for the guidance
He gave you. Give the good news to those who do good” (Q 22:37). The phenom-
enological significance of the Inviolable Mosque in the Qurʾan and Islam more
generally further lies in its mythological association with the House of God that
Ibrāhīm/Abraham and Ismāʿīl/Ishmael purportedly built:

Remember when we made the House a safe gathering place for people. Take
the station of Ibrāhīm/Abraham as a place of prayer. We made a covenant with
Ibrāhīm/Abraham and Ismāʿīl/Ishmael to purify My House for circumambula-
tors, retreaters, bowers, and prostrators. Then, Ibrāhīm/Abraham said, “Lord,
make this land safe and provide its people with fruitful sustenance, whomever
of them has faith in God and the Last Day.” He replied, “Whoever shall cover
the truth, I will let him enjoy himself for a bit. Then, I will compel him to pun-
ishment by the Fire. What a vile destination!” Then, remember when Ibrāhīm/
Abraham and Ismāʿīl/Ishmael raised the foundations for the House. Our Lord,
accept it from us. Indeed, You are All-Hearing and All-Knowing.
(Q 2:125–127)

From this perspective, by urging its audience to recall in the Inviolable Mosque a
material and spatial connection to the patriarchs of the Hebrew Bible and God’s

42 Munt, The Holy City of Medina, 40.

43 In addition to the Qurʾanic example given, see Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh Azraqī, Akhbār Makka
wa-mā jāʾa fihā min al-āthār, ed. Rushdī al-Ṣāliḥ Malḥas (Mecca: Maṭābiʿ Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1965).
For examples of modern scholarship, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cos-
mological Doctrines (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993) and Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammed
is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1985). Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 38; Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and
History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1959), 15; Gordon D. Newby, “Kaʿbah,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Lindsay Jones
(Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference, 2005), vol. 8, 5049–5050.
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 79
covenant with humanity in the Bible44 rather than a temporal connection with its
contemporary idolatrous custodians, the Qurʾan allowed for the acknowledge-
ment of the inviolability of al-Masjid al-Ḥarām along with idolaters while simul-
taneously rejecting the contemporary accommodation and worship of idols that
took place there: “So shun the abomination of idols and false speech, as pure wor-
shipers of God (hunafāʾ li-llāh), not ascribing partners unto Him” (Q 22:30–31).
The fact that functionalist and phenomenological approaches to the study of
religion have parallels in the Qurʾan and the Sīra that help us make sense of
the paradox of God’s House accommodating idols is significant because—if we
understand theory to be a way of seeing—early Islamic sources have given us
a way of seeing Islam’s relation to other religions that, if examined rigorously,
can be just as useful as modern theoretical approaches in the study of religion.
It is thus not surprising that serious scholars of early Islamic history have found
it more useful to burrow into early Islamic and Late Antique Jewish and Chris-
tian sources for analytical concepts, descriptions, and archeological evidence that
could help us explicate the concepts, objects, and practices associated with al-
Masjid al-Ḥarām rather than read through complex religious studies theories.45
It is also not surprising that such efforts have historically been viewed as too
parochial; pioneering historians of religions focusing on sacred space in Islam,
for example, found them of little utility in communicating with colleagues in reli-
gious studies more generally.46 For this reason, simply pluralizing the field has had
limited success in making the category of religion more robustly polysemous so
as to allow for thinking about Islam to become concomitant with thinking about
religion as a broadly human phenomenon and activity.
I contend that thinking about religious spaces through the Qurʾan in light of the
more recent “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences allows for a mutu-
ally beneficial relationship between Islamic area studies and history of religions.
Following the “spatial turn,” more recent scholarship has rejected both functional-
ist and phenomenological readings of religious spaces. Rather than viewing reli-
gious spaces as social demarcations of the sacred, hierophanies, or blank slates
to which humans ascribe meaning, the more recent scholarship views religious
spaces as resulting from dialogical processes involving territories, bodies, beliefs,

44 For a study of how material objects and ritual have been employed by Muslims in different places
and times to root the message of Prophet Muhammad in the biblical history, see Brannon Wheeler,
Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2006).
45 See, for example, Rubin, “The Ka‘ba,” 97–127; Gerald Hawting, “The Origins of the Muslim
Sanctuary at Mecca,” in Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, ed. G. H. A. Juynboll
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 23–47.
46 See, for example, Juan Eduardo Campo, “Authority, Ritual, and Spatial Order in Islam: The Pil-
grimage to Mecca, Journal of Ritual Studies 5/1 (Winter 1991): 65–91; Annemarie Schimmel,
“Sacred Geography in Islam,” in Sacred Places and Profane Spaces: Essays in the Geographies of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jamie Scott and Paul Simpson-Housley (New York: Green-
wood Press, 1991), 163–175.
80 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
material objects, sensory experiences, cognitions, and human actions.47 The para-
dox of God’s House housing idols takes on a new dimension in light of this dia-
logical understanding of space—a new dimension that is telling of how we may
think about religion while thinking about Islam.
Approached from a dialogical perspective, the Inviolable Mosque has no inher-
ent sociopolitical function or meaning that could be associated with “the sacred;”
rather, it mediates between varying identities, beliefs, traditions, and authorities
that, in seventh-century Arabia cannot be reduced to a binary of pagan idolaters
and believing Muslims. The paradox of God’s House housing idols emerges as
product of a Qurʾanic mediation between a variety of ancient Arabian and biblical
religions. That this paradox was recognized as a novel virtue of the Qurʾanic mes-
sage is attested by a story recorded in the earliest biographies of Prophet Muham-
mad. Ibn Isḥāq and other early historians report that, in pre-Islamic times, when
the conquering Ḥimyarite king Abū Karib was being enticed to visit the Inviolable
Mosque because of its wealth and religious prestige, his two Rabbi advisors from
Banū Qurayẓa admonished him and informed him that they themselves cannot
visit it. “By God,” the Rabbis swore, “it is the House of our forefather Ibrāhīm/
Abraham, but its people have obstructed us from it with the idols that they have
set up around it and the blood [of animal sacrifices] that they spill there. They are
unclean and idolatrous.”48 The insertion of this story at the outset of traditional
narratives of Muhammad’s life demonstrates that early Muslims were aware of
the contradictions involved in venerating a House of God that housed idols. They
distinguished themselves from Jews not by acknowledging this contradiction as
insurmountable, but rather by seeing it as a paradox constitutive of the nature
of the Inviolable Mosque and its Heilsgeschichte or import for the Qurʾanic
revelation and Islam more broadly. Paradoxes, far from impeding communica-
tion, express the seemingly inexpressible. “They express something astounding
because they make us wonder.”49 The Qurʾanic paradox of God’s House housing
idols begs a resolution. Any attempt to resolve the paradox requires an answer
to such discriminating questions as: What exactly should the Inviolable Mosque
house? What constitutes a House of God? These questions in turn require reflec-
tion on the nature of divinity and the divine–human relationship.
Centuries of theological debates about the essence (dhāt) and attributes (ṣifāt)
of God attest to the fact that the Qurʾan did not answer these questions conclu-
sively for Muslims. Nonetheless, the text of Muhammad’s revelations that has
survived makes it evident that there were multiple ways by which his audience
perceived and embodied a relationship with the divine, and the Qurʾan refers to
these ways often.50 For the purpose at hand, I am particularly interested in the

47 For an overview of such new approaches to space in religious studies, see Kim Knott, The Location
of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (London, England and New York: Routledge, 2014).
48 Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 37 (translation mine); Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 8–9.
49 Niklas Luhmann, A Systems Theory of Religion, trans. David A. Brenner with Adrian Hermann
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 93.
50 See, for example, Qurʾan 6:74–83.
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 81
spatialization of the divine–human relationship through the mosque. And while
I focus on the Inviolable Mosque, it is important to keep in mind that this is just
one of many mosques in the Qurʾan. At one point, the Qurʾan relativizes its impor-
tance by attributing its specialness personally to Muhammad:

Verily, We have seen you turn your face toward Heaven, and indeed We are
turning you toward a qibla that pleases you. So turn your face in the direc-
tion of the Inviolable Mosque, and wheresoever you are, turn your faces in
its direction.
(Q 2:144)

While in seeking a change in the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca,

Muhammad sought to connect his followers to one another and to God through the
Inviolable Mosque, the Qurʾan is careful to remind Muhammad and his followers
that the direction of prayer does not in and of itself effect how humans connect
with God. Rather, God is everywhere and effects this connection Himself: “The
fools among people will say, ‘What turned them away from the qiblah that they
used to follow? Say, ‘To God belongs the East and the West. He guides whom-
soever He wills to the straight path’ ” (Q 2:142). In this way, the communicative
paradox of the Inviolable Mosque structurally extends into the post-revelation,
Islamic era, as Muslims spread across the globe. The paradox here being that if
God is omnipresent, why is it necessary to face the Kaʿba as when performing the
ritual prayer?

The masjids at the origin and end of Muhammad’s Night

Journey (Isrāʾ)
That the specialness of the Inviolable Mosque is not absolute in the Qurʾan can
also be noticed in Muhammad’s Night Journey (isrā’) between the Inviolable
Mosque and “the Farthest Mosque”: “Exalted is the one who carried His servant
by night from the Inviolable Mosque (al-Masjid al-Ḥarām) to the Farthest Mosque
(al-Masjid al-Aqṣā), whose vicinity we blessed, in order to show him our signs.
He is indeed All-hearing, All-seeing” (Q 17:1). This reference to both the sacred
precinct of Mecca and the blessed vicinity of an unnamed distant place of wor-
ship as a masjid illustrates, once again, that the mosque in the Qurʾan referred to a
place of divine worship irrespective of the type of worship that took place within
it. The Qurʾanic exegetical tradition associates the Farthest Mosque with the site
of the Temple in Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis).51 The verse (Q 17:2) following the
mention of the Farthest Mosque refers to Moses, the Torah, and the Children of
Israel, which supports Muslim exegetes’ association of al-Masjid al-Aqṣā with
a prominent earthly biblical place of worship. But there was no standing temple

51 For an early example of such an association see Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, ed. ʿAbd Allāh
Maḥmūd Shiḥātah (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitāb, 1983), vol. 2, 513.
82 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
or building known as al-Masjid al-Aqṣā in Jerusalem during Muhammad’s life-
time.52 Nor was the temple described as a remote place of worship outside of this
ambiguous reference in the Qurʾan.53 Jerusalem had acquired celestial significance
and become a controversial pilgrimage site for Christians in Late Antiquity,54 but
the larger context in which the Qurʾan mentions the Farthest Mosque only refers
to the terrestrial temple as a “masjid” that was destroyed (Q 17:7). Nonetheless,
attempts to read the Qurʾan in relation to the history of Judaism and Christianity
in Late Antiquity has engendered debates about whether the Farthest Mosque in
the Qurʾan should be understood as an earthly or celestial site.55 This question
of the location of al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, however, has been more of a preoccupa-
tion for modern scholars than the Islamic tradition itself. The latter developed to
recognize the Farthest Mosque in the Qurʾan as a reference to a physical space in
Jerusalem (Temple Mount) connected to the heavens where Muhammad led other
prophets in ritual prayer before ascending to heaven (miʿrāj).56 The exegetical
tradition aside, within the context of the Qurʾan itself (with which I am preoc-
cupied in this chapter), the enigmatic formulation “the Farthest Mosque” has an
oracular quality to it that invites imaginative interpretation. Recall that prior to
praying towards the Kaʿba, Muhammad’s followers directed their prayer towards
Jerusalem, a remote place of worship, which unlike al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, was
known to most of them only through what they imagined based on the stories they
had heard. In invoking it as the Farthest Mosque, the Qurʾan appears to build on
this exercise of imagination and invite its audience to imagine the farthest place

52 Josef van Ess, “ ‘Abd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock: An Analysis of Some Texts,” in Bayt
al-Maqdis: ‘Abd al-Malik’s Jerusalem, pt. 1, ed. Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), 91. N. J. Johnson, “Aqṣā Mosque,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, ed. Jane
Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001), vol. 1, 125.
53 Angelika Neuwirth, “From the Sacred Mosque to the Remote Temple: Sūrat al-Isrā’ between Text
and Commentary,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 383.
54 F. E. Peters, Jerusalem: the Holy City in the Eyes of Chronicles, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets
from the days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1985), 152–154; Guy G. Stroumsa, “Mystical Jerusalems,” in Jerusalem, ed. L. I. Levine
(New York, NY: Continuum, 1999), 351; Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred:
the Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2005), 22–24, 78. Amikam Elad, “Pilgrims and Pilgrimage to Jerusalem During the Early Muslim
Period,” in Jerusalem, ed. L. I. Levine (New York, NY: Continuum, 1999), 304.
55 Uri Rubin, “Muhammad’s Night Journey (Isrā’) to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā: Aspects of the Earliest
Origins of the Islamic Sanctity of Jerusalem,” al-Qantara 29 (2008): 148–149. Heribert Busse,
“Jerusalem in the Story of Muḥammad’s Night Journey and Ascension” Jerusalem Studies in Ara-
bic and Islam 14 (1991): 1–40. Josef Horovitz “Muhammads Himmelfahrt,” Der Islam 9 (1919):
159–183. Bertram Schrieke, “Die Himmelsreise Muhammeds,” Der Islam 6 (1916): 1–30.
56 For a detailed study of the development of this narrative see Frederick S. Colby, Narrating
Muḥammad’s Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn ‘Abbās Ascension Discourse
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 83
they could, and reminds them that there, too, is a mosque that God has blessed
and to which they could have access through divine worship and commemoration.
Regardless of whether one interprets the Farthest Mosque as a divine sanctu-
ary in the earthly Jerusalem or as an imaginal space of divine worship between
heaven and earth, the Qurʾan’s reference to both the Inviolable Mosque and the
Farthest Mosque as a masjid makes places of worship with different ontologies,
histories, and jurisdictions commensurate with one another. The commensurabil-
ity of these places in the Qurʾan should not be confused with their equality with
one another. It is precisely because of their perceived differences that the Qurʾan is
able to communicate to its audience its understanding of what constitutes a place
of worship through the generic notion of masjid. Just as the paradox of the House
of God housing idols demands a resolution that requires reflection on the nature
of the divine–human relationship through space, so too does the association of
the Inviolable Mosque in Mecca with a faraway place of worship unfamiliar to
the Prophet and his followers. If God is the Creator of the world and omnipresent
within it, can there be any inhabited place where He has not been worshiped? Or is
it incumbent upon believers to make the whole world available for His worship?
We are once again confronted with a communicative paradox that requires a solu-
tion. What constitutes a proper place of divine worship?

What humans forget the masjid recalls

The fact that the Qurʾan acknowledges the historical reality of masājid as places
for the worship and commemoration of God prior to its own advent has given
the religion of Islam, to use Graham’s words, a “reformational spirit at a very
fundamental level.”57 When the Qurʾan refers to the Inviolable Mosque under the
control of idolaters as God’s House, it also recalls for its audience the necessity
for its purification and for the reformation of the individuals and the society that
support it. Ibrāhīm/Abraham’s establishment of the House of God, in the Qurʾan,

57 Graham, “Islam in the Mirror of Ritual,” 66. Graham’s use of the phrase “reformational spirit” has
conjured the Protestant Reformation in the mind of some readers who have alleged that it carries
“clear Christian overtones,” that “implicitly evokes the polemical legacy of historical Christian
conflicts over the idea of ritual efficacy.” (See Katz, “The Ḥajj and the Study of Islamic Ritual,”
103.) It is worth keeping in mind, however, that Graham invokes this idea in an article in which he
proposes a methodology for understanding Islam through its rituals as embodied discourse: “I pre-
suppose here that such ritual practice is a valid self-expression of Islam, a symbolic articulation of
Muslim ideals and values, a kind of ‘discourse’ in which it should be possible to ‘hear’ the ways
in which Islam as a way of living ‘speaks’ intelligibly and presumably eloquently to the Muslim”
(59). Moreover, as more recent scholarship on the Protestant Reformation has shown, the idea of
reformation was not at all new at the time of the Protestant Reformation. (See Carlos M. N. Eire,
Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650 (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 2016), 43–63. To read any mention of “reformational spirit” in discussion of religions as
carrying a Christian bias gives the Protestant reformations (and Max Weber’s understanding of
Calvinism’s significance for modernity) more of a place of pride in world history than they oth-
erwise deserve.
84 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
is concomitant with his struggle against idolatry in the larger society: “Verily,
there is a beautiful example for you in Ibrāhīm/Abraham and those who were with
him when they said to their people, ‘We indeed depart from you and what you
worship apart from God. We disavow you. Enmity and hatred has arisen between
us and you forever, till you believe in God alone” (Q 60:4). And Muhammad and
his followers are reminded:

It is not for idolaters to maintain God’s mosques, bearing witness to disbelief

against themselves. They are those whose works come to naught, and in the
Fire they shall abide. Those who believe in God and the Last Day, undertake
the ritual prayer, pay alms, and fear none other than God, only they shall
maintain God’s mosques.
(Q 9:17–18)

At first glance, this verse seems to resolve the paradox of God’s abode housing
idols by commanding Muhammad and his followers to reclaim mosques from
idolaters. But the overt message of the verse—that only those who believe in
God should maintain mosques—could not be communicated if the Qurʾan and its
audience did not paradoxically recognize a mosque used for idolatry as a place of
divine worship and commemoration and a house of their own God. The Inviolable
Mosque as the House of God that houses idols is thus better read in the Qurʾan as
communicating—through a paradox—an admonishment of humanity’s forgetful
nature. People historically neglected their duty to keep God’s House free of idols.
Because of their forgetful nature, “believers” (muʾminūn) are in constant need to
strive (jāhada) to reform their social and material worlds.
If Graham is correct—and I think he is—that as a result of its origins in a multi-
religious environment, reformation has been fundamental to how Islam has com-
municated its ethical values and Weltanschauung, then al-Masjid al-Ḥarām—a
pilgrimage site of great importance both before and after Muhammad’s prophetic
career—is a central site in the Qurʾan and the Islamic tradition more generally that
reveals how this “reformational spirit” developed to structure not only Muslims’
relationship with God and with followers of other religions but also their under-
standings of religion. The Qurʾan is clear that Muhammad’s prophetic career
follows the careers of many messengers and prophets. Muhammad’s teachings
thus do not have temporal precedence over other religions; rather, the Qurʾan
establishes the precedence of Islam in relation to other religions by defining “true
religion” (al-dīn al-ḥaqq) in terms of its reformation of people through acts of
worship (ʿibādāt) and good works (ṣāliḥāt)58 and its reformation of places through
the reclamation of the Inviolable Mosque in particular and mosques in general.

58 In the Qurʾan, belief in God, good works, and acts of worship are intrinsically tied together through
the repetition of varying forms of the phrase “those who believe and do good deeds” (alladhina
āmanū wa-ʿamilū al-ṣāliḥāt) and through repeated command to “have faith, do the ritual prayer,
fast, and pay alms.”
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 85
For the audience of the Qurʾanic revelation at the time when the House of
God was under the control of idolaters, striving to reform one’s environment in
accord with God’s will took on a unique ethical and political urgency because the
Quraysh barred Muhammad and his followers from the Inviolable Mosque:

They ask you about the inviolable month, about fighting in it. Say, “Fighting
in it is grave, but barring the path of God and denying Him, and barring the
Inviolable Mosque and expelling its people from it are graver before God.
Fitna is graver than killing.” They will not cease to fight you until they turn
you away from your religion, if they can.
(Q 2:217)

With this verse, the Qurʾan sanctioned fighting during the month of Rajab when
Arab tribes had agreed to cease all warfare in order for devotional practices, sac-
rifices, and pilgrimages to the Inviolable Mosque to take place in peace.59 The
Qurʾan’s acknowledgement of the importance of the peace maintained during this
month and its subsequent violation is yet another example of how it communi-
cates its message not by annulling existing religious practices and spaces, but
rather by reforming them. It is only by accepting that it would be commonsensical
to see the violation of peace during the inviolable month as a grave matter that
the Qurʾan communicates how much graver is the fitna of the Quraysh barring of
Muhammad and his followers from the Inviolable Mosque—“Fitna is graver than
killing.” What could be graver than killing?
Fitna is a difficult word to render into English. Most English translators of this
verse interpret it as “persecution.”60 In his Arabic-English lexicon, which is based
on classical Arabic dictionaries, Edward Lane lists a series of definitions of fitna
that, depending on context, vary from “a burning by fire . . . [or] melting . . . in
order to separate, or distinguish the bad, from the good” to “a trial, or probation”
to “affliction, distress, or hardship” to a “trial whereby the condition of a man may
be evinced” to “punishment, castigation, or chastisement” to “civil war, or con-
flict occurring among people” to “temptation” to “infidelity.” The list goes on.61
The polysemy of fitna in the Qurʾan and classical Arabic underscores the point
I wish to make. Fitna stands in for something that displeases God. Its meaning
gets determined contextually and in relation to what humans deem wrong based
on intuition or social norms. In the context of verse 2:217, the Qurʾan relies on its
audience’s socio-religious belief that killing during the inviolable month is wrong

59 See Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 412–415; Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 286–289; Peters, Mecca, 69–70.
M. J. Kister, “Rad̲j̲ab,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill,
2002), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6174 (accessed June 26, 2020).
60 Marmaduke Pickthall, A. J. Arberry, and M. Haleem translate fitna as “persecution,” Yusuf Ali
translates it as “tumult and oppression,” and The Study Qur’an translates it as “strife.” See Ali,
The Holy Qur’an, 87; Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, 29; Arberry, The Koran
Interpreted, 34; The Study Quran, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 94; Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, 24.
61 Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, Derived from the Best and Most Copious Eastern
Sources (Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1877), 2335–2336.
86 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
to communicate God’s displeasure with the Quraysh barring Muhammad and his
followers from the Inviolable Mosque. By labelling the Quraysh’s barring of the
Inviolable Mosque fitna, the Qurʾan declares their behaviour a form of sedition
against God’s will that justifies warfare. Conversely, fighting in the path of God
(jihād fī sabīl Allāh) becomes proof of belief and obedience to God: “Verily those
who believed and those who emigrated and strived in the path of God—it is they
who hope for the mercy of God. And God is Forgiving All-merciful” (Q 2:218).
The importance given to bringing the Inviolable Mosque under Muhammad’s
control in the Qurʾan and the Sīra has generally been interpreted politically as
continuing the site’s power to confer authority upon rulers from pre-Islamic times
into the Islamic era. After examining how “sacred space” is negotiated in the
Qurʾan and the Sīra, for example, Abdelkader Tayob writes, “The conquest of
Mecca is blunted by the image of the Prophet’s bowed head; but the subsequent
submission of the tribes and the challengers continues the cycle” of “submission
and domination.”62 Another scholar of Islamic ritual and spaces writes, “Ritual
action . . . provided an opportunity for believers to experience authority in one of
its purest forms—in the soul.” He then goes on to argue that the Kaʿba and the rites
pilgrimage associated with it from the time of its foundation by Ibrāhīm/Abraham
and Ismāʿīl/Ishmael to the institution of the Hajj, created “a special space and
time annually for both the display of authority and surrender to it with pervasive-
ness that mundane governmental institutions and practices failed to achieve.”63 As
we have seen, however, it was the Qurʾan and the Sīra that attributed a political
function to al-Masjid al-Ḥarām in pre-Islamic times. These sources show that
early Muslims were well aware of the political role that sacred sites can play in
society, and they used them to communicate the ethical values through which not
only sociopolitical relations but also human–divine relations ought to be struc-
tured. If the Quraysh barring of believers from the Inviolable Mosque justified
war, then it necessarily follows that no religious or political authority ought to
stand between believers and the House of God. Indeed, in Sūrat al-Ḥajj, while
warning the Quraysh of the punishment that awaits them for barring the Inviolable
Mosque, the Qurʾan declares the Inviolable Mosque a “way to God” and common
human heritage:

those who disbelieve and bar from the way of God and the Inviolable Mosque,
which we have assigned for humankind, equally for the dweller therein and
the visitor, and whoever desires in it deviation toward wrongfulness, We shall
make him taste a painful punishment.
(Q 22:25)

62 Abdelkader I. Tayob, “Negotiating a Sacred Space in the Sīrah: Finding the Masjid for the
Prophet,” in Literary Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James
A. Bellamy, ed. Mustansir Mir (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1993), 248.
63 Campo, “Authority, Ritual, and Spatial Order in Islam,” 81–82.
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 87
It is important to note that the Inviolable Mosque here is declared to be for all of
humanity, but humanity cannot do whatever it pleases within it: “whoever desires
in it deviation toward wrongfulness” is subject to divine punishment just as those
who bar the Inviolable Mosque are subject to divine punishment. It is as “a way to
God” that the Inviolable Mosque has been “assigned for humankind” in general.
Access to the space of the mosque as a way to God thus materially and spatially
communicated the absence of intermediaries between God and humanity in the
religion of the Qurʾan.
It further communicates that anyone who constructs intermediaries between
believers and God violates the Inviolable Mosque. The Qurʾan thus declares, in
the year before Muhammad’s reclamation of the Inviolable Mosque,

O those who believe! Since the idolaters are soiled (najas), let them not go
near the Inviolable Mosque after this year of theirs. If you fear impoverish-
ment, God will enrich you through His Bounty, if He wills. Indeed God is
All-knowing Wise.
(Q 9:28)

The last part of this verse suggests that at least some of Muhammad’s follow-
ers may have been hesitant and anxious about keeping idolaters away from the
mosque because it may have routed wealthy pilgrims away from Mecca and pos-
sibly hurt the region’s economy. The banning of idolaters from the Inviolable
Mosque thus may have not been an act of political triumphalism but rather a bur-
den Muhammad’s followers had to undertake to communicate a new ethical value
around which society, politics, and commerce should be governed.
A few verses later in the same Sūra, the Qurʾan explicitly criticizes followers
of other religions with revealed books for placing clerical intermediaries between
themselves and God:

They took their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah, son of Maryam/
Mary as lords apart from God, but what they were commanded to only wor-
ship a single god. There is no god except Him! Exalted is He above the
associates they ascribe. They want to extinguish the Light of God with their
mouths, but God insists on bringing His Light to fruition, even if disbelievers
may detest it. He is the one Who sent His Messenger with guidance and with
the religion of truth (dīn al-ḥaqq) in order to make it prevail over all religion,
even though idolaters may detest it. O you who believe! Verily many of the
rabbis and monks consume the wealth of people falsely, and avert from the
path of God. Those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in the path of
God, give them glad tidings of a painful punishment on a day when it will be
heated in the Fire of Hell, and their foreheads, their sides, and their backs will
be branded with it. “This is what you hoarded for yourselves; so have a taste
of what you used to hoard.”
(Q 9:31–35)
88 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
As the metaphor of light in these verses suggests, God, according to the reli-
gion of the Qurʾan, is accessible to all. Placing clergy between humans and God
“extinguish[es] the Light of God.” And when it comes to Muhammad, these verses
are quick to recall that it is God who is ultimately behind “His Messenger,” and
that God’s religion is ḥaqq, which is best understood as a reality whose rightness
and truth is manifest. When people uphold their clergy as “lords,” the clergy take
advantage of them by hoarding and wasting their wealth.
Importantly, the Qurʾan does not directly associate clergy with “the Church” or
“the Temple.” Places of worship, as we have seen, carry a message irrespective of
their custodians. Later in Sūrat al-Tawba, however, we encounter a mosque that is
condemned because of the intention with which it was established.

Those who established a mosque for harm and disbelief and for sowing divi-
sion among the believers and as an outpost for those who went into war with
God and His Messenger before, they surely swear, “We desired nothing but
goodness.” But God bears witness that they are indeed liars. Don’t stand in
it, ever! A mosque founded upon God-wariness from day one is worthier of
you standing in it. In it are men who love to purify themselves, and God loves
those who purify themselves.
(Q 9:107–108)

The explanations of the occasion for this revelation (sabab al-nuzūl) in classi-
cal exegetical sources differ in their details.64 Despite their differences, however,
they agree on a general storyline. Some of Muhammad’s followers built a mosque
at one point outside of Medina, near Qubāʾ. The Prophet, at first, did not look
unfavourably upon their effort. He even agreed to pray in it. Later, however, God
revealed to him in these verses that the mosque was to be condemned for sowing
division among Muhammad’s followers, and it was destroyed.
The early exegeses of Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. ca. 100–104 AH/718–722 CE) and
Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150 AH/767 CE) both gloss “those who established a
mosque for harm” as hypocrites (munāfiqūn) and “those who went into war with
God and His Messenger” as Abū ʿĀmir al-Rāhib (“the monk”).65 With the pas-
sage of time, Muslim exegetes amassed lengthier accounts of the occasion for
the revelation of these verses and more biographical information on Abū ʿĀmir
al-Rāhib, who came to be identified as an ascetic to whom some of the Medi-
nan elites who opposed the changes ushered by Muhammad’s migration (hijra)
looked for leadership.66 The authenticity of these varying accounts do not concern

64 For a study of these differences, see Michael Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans: Studies on Early
Islamic Medina (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 74f.
65 Mujāhid b. Jabr, Tafsīr, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Abū al-Nīl (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-Islāmī
al-Ḥadītha, 1989), 374; Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, vol. 2, 195–196. On Abu ʿĀmir al-Rāhib,
see Ghada Osman, “Pre-Islamic Arab Converts to Christianity,” The Muslim World 95/1 (Janu-
ary 2005): 71–74.
66 al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr al-Ṭabarī: Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, vol. 11, 674–680; Maḥmūd b.
‘Umar al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl wa-ʿuyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh al-taʾwīl
 The Masjid in the Qur’an 89
us here;67 what is of significance is that they generally agree that the mosque
in question was intended as a rival to an already existing mosque in Quba. The
Qurʾan makes reference to this by pointing to how the mosque was intended to
“divide the believers.” As such, this mosque has come to be known as Masjid
al-ḍirār (the mosque of harm) based on the Qurʾan’s assertion that it was built
with the intent to harm Muhammad and his followers; it is also referred to as
Masjid al-shiqāq (mosque of dissention) and Masjid al-nifāq (mosque of hypoc-
risy). That mosques could rival one another suggests that they had come to be
institutions through which followers of Muhammad could garner authority and
status. The Qurʾan’s assertion that those who built this mosque lied, and that their
true intention was not to help the weak and the poor who could presumably not
travel all the way to Medina for congregational prayers suggests that the outright
building of a religious space to bolster one’s status in society was frowned upon.
The Prophet’s acceptance of the invitation to pray at the mosque before these
verses were revealed also suggests that anyone was able to build a mosque for
congregational prayers. It seems that from very early on the mosque, while insti-
tutionalizing a direct relationship between humans and God through the act of
ritual congregational prayer, also allowed for individuals to seek social and politi-
cal capital through its construction. It is, thus, not accidental that the exegetical
tradition associates Masjid al-ḍirār with an enigmatic clerical figure to whom the
munāfiqūn looked for leadership. Through this association, Masjid al-ḍirār serves
as a reminder of how the conflating of clerical authority and places of worship
could make “lords” out of clerics and “extinguish the Light of God.”

Conclusion
In his seminal study of ritual and place making, To Take Place, Jonathan Z. Smith
argued that when myth and ritual are conjoined in space, they invite reflexivity,
which he defined as “an elaboration of memory.” Myths generate the places that
should be memorialized, and rituals extend that projection onto those places. By
seeing this process as reflexive, Smith drew a sharp distinction between his own
understanding of religion and phenomenological and functionalist understanding
of religion that approached religious spaces and the activities associated with them
as reflective of “the Sacred” and “the social” respectively. Myth and ritual, Smith
contended, do not mirror “the Sacred” and “the social”; rather, they construct
them by demanding that societies reflect on difference and act accordingly to dif-
ferentiate themselves from others. According to this theory of religion, temples or
the edifices constructed for rituals to take place and myths to be memorialized are

(Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), vol. 2, 171–172; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, vol 3 (Beirut:
Dār al-Andalus lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 1966), 451–453.
67 In addition to Lecker’s aforementioned study, see Moshe Gil, “The Creed of Abu Amir,” Israel Ori-
ental Studies 12 (1992): 9–47, see 41–44; Moshe Gil, “The Medinan Opposition to the Prophet,”
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 65–96, see 66–67 and 87–92.
90 Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
“a focusing lens, establishing the possibility of significance by directing attention,
by requiring the perception of difference.”68
Much of what I have shown through my examination of places of worship in
the Qurʾan corroborates Smith’s understanding of religious spaces. The difference
is that while Smith sees himself as producing a second-order theory of religions as
symbolic social systems that are centrally concerned with either locating a place
as home within the cosmos (“locative”) or freeing humanity from the constraints
of specific places (“utopian”),69 what I demonstrated is a first-order understanding
of religious space as a medium for communicating religious ideas in Islam that
dates back to the revelation of the Qurʾan. As we have seen, the Qurʾan acknowl-
edges that no space is more precious for worship than any other but nonetheless
it focuses on certain spaces, and particularly al-Masjid al-Ḥarām, because of the
attention it garners. While the myth of Ibrāhīm/Abraham and Ismāʿīl/Ishmael’s
construction of the Kaʿba was incongruent with the idolatrous rituals taking place
at the Kaʿba, the space of al-Masjid al-Ḥarām allowed for their coexistence dur-
ing Qurʾanic times, and insofar as the specialness of the space and the building
drew attention, it allowed the Qurʾan, through their paradoxical juxtaposition, to
communicate its own message about the nature of the God–human relationship
and the imperative for individual and social reform.
This use of places of worship in the Qurʾan reveals a broader recognition of the
value of religion in early Islam as media for negotiating differences and articu-
lating ethical and social values beyond individual or social interests as well as
beyond the binary of us and them. If I am right, thinking about Islam while think-
ing about religion through a study of the masjid in the Qurʾan shows us that the
Qurʾan and religion more generally are not simply a function of social and politi-
cal needs nor could they be reduced to material interests or some a priori concep-
tion of the divine or the sacred; rather they are generative of media through which
humans structure their relationship with one another and communicate their indi-
vidual and collective values, aspirations, similarities, and differences, across cul-
tures in different times and spaces.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Bruce Fudge, Sam Kigar, Christian Lange, and Noah Salo-
mon for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. I am grateful to
Simon O’Meara for conversations about the mosque in early Islam. Thanks also
to Delainey Myers and Hellie Smith for their research assistance.

68 Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago, IL: The University of Chi-
cago Press, 1987), see especially 96–117, citations on 112 and 104.
69 Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2004), 5; Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1993, orig. 1978), 101.
Part II

Qurʾan as Scripture
5 The Canonizations of the
Qurʾan
Political Decrees or Community
Practices?
Shady Hekmat Nasser

After ʿUthmān’s (r. 23–35/644–655) codification of the first muṣḥaf (codex),

se­veral measures were taken to limit the variant1 readings of the Qurʾan, which
kept multiplying and spreading despite the caliph’s attempt to suppress them.
I argue in this chapter that the Qurʾan passed through multiple phases of can-
onization of which ʿUthmān’s was only the first in a series of efforts over the
centuries to systematize the Qurʾanic text.2 Common to all these critical phases
was the active support of a politico-religious authority that, directly or indirectly,
enforced and propagated the canonization process, and in some cases persecuted
those who opposed it. The second phase of canonization took place at the hands
of Ibn Mujāhid (d. 324/936) through his selection of the seven eponymous Rea­
dings. The court endorsed Ibn Mujāhid’s decision and reportedly tried those who
opposed his “rigid” system. Ibn Mujāhid’s work was further polished and refined
by al-Dānī (d. 444/1053) and later al-Shāṭibī (d. 590/1193) whose didactic poem
Ḥirz al-amānī (or simply as al-Shāṭibiyya) became one of the foundational texts
of the standard Qurʾanic recitation until the present day. The fourth stage of
ca­nonization was the official endorsement of three additional eponymous Read-
ings to the system of the Seven at the hands of Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429), who
urged repercussions for anyone who denied the validity and divine nature of the
ten eponymous Readings.3 The 19234 Azhar edition of the Qurʾan marked the fifth
canonization attempt of the text, which had, and still has, a huge impact on our
perception of the Qurʾan, in particular how we interact with the text through the

1 My usage of the word “variant” does not necessarily imply the existence of an Urtext or a Proto-
type Reading from which variants emerged. I would prefer to use the Arabic qirāʾa, which does
not have the same connotation of the expression “variant reading” in English. However, it became
customary to use this expression as a technical phrase in Western scholarship, for using the word
“reading” without “variant” might be confused with the interpretation or hermeneutics of the text.
2 For a general breakdown of these phases, refer to: Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Second Canoniza-
tion of the Qurʾān (324/936): Ibn Mujāhid and the Founding of the Seven Readings (Leiden: Brill,
2020), 5–9.
3 Abū al-Khayr Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429), Munjid al-muqriʾīn wa-murshid al-ṭālibīn, ed. ʿAlī b.
Muḥammad al-ʿImrān (Mecca: Dār al-fawāʾid, 1998), 171–175.
4 I follow Blachère’s dating of 1923 rather than 1924. See footnote 64.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-7
94 Shady Hekmat Nasser
lens of the version of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim. These five phases of canonization will be
analysed within their historical framework to determine to what extent the chosen
corpus of the Readings was enforced through political and religious measures.

The problem of tawātur

Classical sources often indicate a tension that pertains to the transmission of
the Qurʾanic text. The key concept here is that of tawātur: the transmission of a
report by a large group of people whose number and diverse identity/background
preclude the possibility of agreement on error or the possibility of collusion on
forgery. On the one hand, some kind of consensus was established concerning
the tawātur5 of the text down to the minute subtleties of its recitation (tajwīd).6
This conception of tawātur ensured the integrity and absolute authority of the
Qurʾan, for by definition, tawātur deems it impossible for a large group of people
to collude on error and forgery in any generation of transmitters.7 The concept of
tawātur al-Qurʾān is fundamental in the Islamic tradition, and its absence would
cast doubts on the integrity of the foundational scripture of Islam. Simply put,
tawātur imparts necessary knowledge (ʿilm yaqīnī/ḍarūrī) unlike reports trans-
mitted through single or multiple chains of transmission (āḥād), which impart
speculative knowledge (ʿilm ẓannī).8 This ontological problem led some Muslim
jurists and theologians to deem one who does not profess the tawātur and integrity
of the Qurʾan to be an unbeliever (kāfir).9

5 A. J. Wensinck and W. F. Heinrichs, “Mutawātir,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Brill), http://
dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5664 (accessed June 4,
2020); G. H. A. Juynboll, “Tawātur,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Brill), http://dx.doi.org.
ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_7448 (accessed June 4, 2020).
6 Abū al-Khayr Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429), al-Muqaddima fī-mā yajib ʿalā qāriʾ al-Qurʾān an
yaʿlamah, ed. Ayman Rushdī Suwayd (Jeddah: Dār Nūr al-maktabāt, 2006), 3; cf. Shady Hekmat
Nasser, “(Q. 12:2) We Have Sent it Down as an Arabic Qurʾān: Praying behind the Lisper,” Islamic
Law and Society 23 (2016): 27.
7 The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of tawātur and the Emer-
gence of shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 65–78; Hüseyin Hansu, “Notes on the Term Mutawātir
and its Reception in Ḥadīth Criticism,” Islamic Law and Society 16 (2009): 283–408; Bernard
Weiss, “Knowledge of the Past: The Theory of Tawâtur According to Ghazâlî,” Studia Islamica
61 (1985): 81–105.
8 See the works mentioned in footnote 7 or any work on uṣūl al-fiqh under the chapters of mutawātir
and āḥād, e.g., Abū ʿAbd al-Muʿizz Muḥammad ʿAlī Farkūs, al-Ināra sharḥ Kitāb al-ishāra fī
maʿrifat al-uṣūl (Algeria: Dār al-mawqiʿ, 2009), 203–208. Cf. Binyamin Abrahamov, “Necessary
Knowledge in Islamic Theology,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20/1 (1993): 20–32.
9 See examples of Ḥanafī jurists in Zayn al-Dīn Ibn Nujaym al-Miṣrī (d. 970/1563), al-Baḥr al-rāʾiq
sharḥ Kanz al-Daqāʾiq, ed. Zakariyyā ʿUmayrāt, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1997),
1: 545–546; of Mālikī jurists in Abū al-Walīd Sulaymān al-Bājī (d. 494/1101), al-Muntaqā sharḥ
Muwaṭṭaʾ Mālik, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya,
1999), 2: 44–46; of Shāfiʿī jurists in Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286), Nihāyat al-sūl fī sharḥ
Minhāj al-uṣūl, ed. Muḥammad Bikhīt al-Muṭīʿī (Jamʿiyyat nashr al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya), 4 vols.
(Cairo: ʿĀlam al-kutub, 1925), 3: 232–236; for a modern, mainstream view see Muḥammad ʿAbd
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 95
Be that as it may, the concept of tawātur al-Qurʾān did not go unchallenged.
There existed historical and disciplinary problems concerning the claims that the
text of the Qurʾan was unanimously and collectively transmitted by the Muslim
community, that the Qurʾan was—and still is—an unchanged text transmitted ver-
batim as the Prophet had taught it to his Companions, and that the Qurʾan we read
today is a universal, self-evident truth that was known down to its minute particu-
lars to the majority of the Companions, Successors, and all later generations of
Muslims—a self-evident truth as clear as one is certain that the sun will rise from
the east and set in the west. Muslim scholars extensively discussed and rebutted
many problematic aspects that could threaten the theory of tawātur al-Qurʾān,
which eventually led them to devise counterarguments that became “stock argu-
ments” ubiquitously used, until today, in discussions and altercations related to
the integrity of the Qurʾanic text.10 Those who challenged the historical validity of
this conception of tawātur and/or the integrity of the Qurʾanic text were noncha-
lantly and readily called the people of innovation and misguidance (ahl al-bidaʿ
wa-l-ahwāʾ), whether Shīʿīs,11 Muʿtazilīs, or even misguided Sunnīs.12
Tawātur al-Qurʾān was challenged on different fronts, the most important
of which are summarized as follows. The fact that early Muslims greatly dis-
agreed on the recitation of the Qurʾan was reportedly the main reason behind
ʿUthmān’s initiative to collect and codify the text. That ʿUthmān destroyed all
existing codices and kept only his official copy/copies was a clear testimony that
a “universal” copy of the Qurʾan unanimously known to and agreed upon by the
Companions of the Prophet did not exist. Even after the official codification of
the text, renowned Companions such as Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy b. Kaʿb, publicly
objected to ʿUthmān’s version and withheld their own codices, which differed
from the official copy in terms of sūra and verse order, textual variants, the omis-
sion of three chapters—al-Fātiḥa, al-Falaq, al-Ikhlāṣ (Q 1, 113, 114)—from Ibn
Masʿūd’s codex, and the inclusion of two chapters—al-Khalʿ and al-Ḥafd—in
Ubayy’s codex.13

al-ʿAẓīm al-Zarqānī, Manāhil al-ʿirfān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, ed. Fawwāz Zamarlī, 2 vols. (Beirut:
Dār al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, 1995), 1: 351–367.
10 See, for example, ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Shalabī, Rasm al-muṣḥaf al-ʿuthmānī wa-awhām al-mustashriqīn
fī qirāʾāt al-Qurʾān al-karīm: dawāfiʿuhā wa-dafʿuhā (Cairo: Maktabat Wahba, 1999), 63–80;
ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Qāḍī, al-Qirāʾāt fī naẓar al-mustashriqīn wa-l-mulḥidīn (Medina: [n.p.], 1981),
111–123.
11 For Shīʿīs’ views on the integrity and falsification of the Qurʾan, see Hossein Modarressi, “Early
Debates on the Integrity of the Qur’ān: A Brief Survey,” Studia Islamica 77 (1993): 5–39.
12 Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), al-Intiṣār li-l-Qurʾān, ed. Muḥammad ʿIṣām al-Quḍāt (Bei-
rut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2001), 1: 71–96, 2: 421–427, 513–567; Ibn al-Jazarī, Munjid, 175–188.
13 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, ed. Markaz al-dirāsāt
al-qurʾāniyya, 7 vols. (Medina: Mujammaʿ al-malik Fahd li-ṭibāʿat al-muṣḥaf al-sharīf, 2005),
nawʿ no. 19 “fī ʿadad suwarihi wa-āyātihi wa-kalimātihi wa-ḥurūfihi,” 419–428; Abū Bakr Ibn
Abī Dāwūd al-Sijistānī (d. 316/928), Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif, ed. Muḥibb al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Sabḥān Wāʿiẓ,
2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-bashāʾir al-islāmiyya, 2002), 1: 179–195, 238 ff.
96 Shady Hekmat Nasser
Next was the problem of the textual abrogation in the Qurʾan (naskh al-tilāwa),
according to which a significant majority of Muslim scholars, based on soundly trans-
mitted accounts, acknowledged this type of abrogation in the tradition. In addition
to the familiar type of naskh al-ḥukm wa-baqāʾ al-tilāwa (abrogation of the content/
legal ruling without expunging the text),14 two other types were acknowledged. The
first was naskh al-ḥukm wa-l-tilāwa (abrogation of both the legal ruling/content and
expunging the text),15 and the second was naskh al-tilāwa wa baqāʾ al-ḥukm (expun­
ging the text while the legal ruling remains at work).16 The absence of a definite list
of what was abrogated and what was not—e.g. ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb not knowing that
the stoning verse was abrogated17—was another challenge to the idea that the “final
version” of the Qurʾan was universally known in all its details to all the Companions
of the Prophet. In addition to abrogation, several authenticated and widely transmit-
ted traditions addressed scribal errors in the Qurʾan, grammatical mistakes, missing
verses, and textual abnormalities, all of which reports were generally accepted but
thoroughly discussed and “re-contextualized” by Muslim scholars.18
Another problematic matter often discussed in the tradition was the formula
of the basmala as an opening verse in each chapter. Disagreement on whether
this phrase was part of the Qurʾan or not was yet another challenge to the idea
of the tawātur and integrity of the Qurʾanic text. Was the basmala an independ-
ent Qurʾanic verse, or a verse in every chapter of the Qurʾan—except sūra 9,
al-Tawba—or was it a verse in al-Fātiḥa only, or was it not part of the Qurʾan
at all?19 While the disagreement on the basmala manifested itself legally where
the four Sunnī schools adopted distinct opinions concerning its Qurʾanic status,20
the controversy was reflected as well in the seven canonical Readings of the
Qurʾan where the eponymous Readers adopted different techniques in the inclu-
sion or exclusion of the basmala as verse separator between two chapters. ʿĀṣim,
al-Kisāʾī, Ibn Kathīr, and Nāfiʿ → Qālūn recited the basmala to separate the end
of a chapter from the beginning of a new one, whereas Ḥamza dropped the bas-
mala altogether. As for Ibn ʿĀmir, Nāfiʿ → Warsh, and Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ,
nothing was recorded concerning their practice of the basmala; thus, professional
Qurʾan reciters tend to recite in both ways, namely, to include and exclude the
basmala at the beginning of each chapter.21
The variant readings of the Qurʾan have also been amongst the “stock argu-
ments” employed by the “people of innovation and heresy” in their push against

14 John Burton, The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1990), 56–80; David S. Powers, “On the Abrogation of the Bequest Verses,”
Arabica XXIX/3 (1982): 246–295.
15 The example of this type is the ten-suckling verse; Burton, Sources of Islamic Law, 43–55, 161.
16 The example of this type is the stoning verse; ibid., 122–164.
17 Al-Suyūṭī, Itqān, nawʿ no. 47 “fī nāsikhihi wa-mansūkhihi”, 1467–1469.
18 Ibn Abī Dāwūd, Maṣāḥif, 1: 227–237; Suyūṭī, Itqān, 1236–1247.
19 Nasser, Transmission, 88–97.
20 Wizārat al-awqāf wa-l-shuʾūn al-islāmiyya, al-Mawsūʿa al-fiqhiyya, 39 vols. (Kuwait: Dār
al-ṣafwa, 1995), 8: 83–85.
21 ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Qāḍī, al-Wāfī fī sharḥ al-Shāṭibiyya fī l-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ (Jedda: Maktabat
al-Sawādī li-l-tawzīʿ, 1999), 45–48.
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 97
the tawātur of the Qurʾan.22 The fact that there was/is no single, absolute, uni-
versal rendition of the Qurʾan, but rather various renditions, many of which were
deve­loped at a later stage, and several of which were rejected by Muslim authori-
ties for being “non-Quranic,” is further attestation to the unfeasibility of the con-
cept of tawātur al-Qurʾān. The Qurʾan does not and cannot exist without the
tradition of the Qirāʾāt, for it is the only means by which the Qurʾan may be read
and recited. Out of an immense corpus of variant readings of the Qurʾanic text,
ten canonical Readings23 have survived to be considered “almost” the sole repre-
sentative of the divine rendition of the Qurʾan.24 These variant readings are not
“accidental” aspects of performance in recitation, which reflect dialectal features
or recitational techniques, but they are rather an “essential” component of read-
ing the Qurʾan. The canonical Readings are the Masoretic version of the Qurʾan,
without which we have no other means of deciphering its consonantal outline
(rasm). One cannot use their opinion and ijtihād to decipher the rasm, for reading
the Qurʾan is sunna; it is a community practice, taught by the Prophet and contin-
ued to be preserved by the Muslim community until today.
The Islamic tradition maintains that the Qurʾan, as manifested in its seven and
ten canonical Readings, has always been static, unchanged, and standardized since
its inception. However, at several junctures in the history of the reception of the
Qurʾanic text, one is able to see that the state and/or religious scholars empo­wered
by the state often intervened to produce a standardized corpus of the Qurʾan,
whether at the textual level in the case of the codices, or the oral/recitational level,
as in the case of the canonical Readings. In the following pages I will examine
five major junctures in the history of the canonization of Qurʾan and show how the
official and/or religious endorsement of a standardized corpus of the Qurʾanic text
influenced the promulgation and normalization of that new standard.

The first canonization: ʿUthmān’s codification

ʿUthmān’s collection and codification of the Qurʾan was probably one of the most
momentous events in the early history of Islam. It has been discussed at length
in primary sources and secondary scholarship,25 so much so that there is no need
here to reiterate and discuss it further. However, I will only highlight some

22 See, for example, the chapter on the non-believers and Qirāʾāt in Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b. Sālim
Bāzmūl, al-Qirāʾāt wa-atharuhā fī l-tafsīr wa-l-aḥkām, 2 vols. (Riyad: Dār al-hijra, 1996), 1:
311–313.
23 The seven Readings in addition to the Readings of Abū Jaʿfar al-Madanī, Yaʿqūb al-Ḥaḍramī, and
Khalaf al-ʿĀshir. See the section on the fourth canonization.
24 I say “almost” to draw attention to several voices within the Islamic tradition who opposed the
notion of limiting the canonical Readings to seven or ten. Moreover, there are still Qurʾan reciters
today, e.g., Ḥasan Saʿīd al-Sakandarī, who are certified to recite and teach according to the system
of 14 canonical Readings.
25 John Burton, The Collection of the Qurʾān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 117–
159; Herald Motzki, “The Collection of the Qurʾān: A Reconsideration of Western Views in Light
of Recent Methodological Developments,” Der Islam 78: 1–34.
98 Shady Hekmat Nasser
important details that pertain to the discussion at hand, namely, the state’s deci-
sion to take measures towards unifying and standardizing the text of the Qurʾan.
To start, I will reiterate Nöldeke’s observation regarding the sheets of Ḥafṣa,
ʿUmar’s daughter and the Prophet’s wife. After the “first” collection of the Qurʾan
that was launched by Abū Bakr, instigated by ʿUmar, and administered by Zayd
b. Thābit, the sheets of the first collection were kept with the first two caliphs
du­ring their caliphate. After the death of ʿUmar, the sheets were bequeathed to his
daughter Ḥafṣa instead of being turned over to the head of state, the third Caliph
ʿUthmān; hence Nöldeke’s remark about this first alleged collection being a pri-
vate affair rather than a state matter.26 There is no adequate “religious” justifica-
tion as to why the most important document in the nascent Islamic state would
be entrusted to ʿUmar’s daughter instead of the head of the state, ʿUthmān, who
had to ask her to temporarily hand over those sheets so that Zayd b. Thābit could
copy and cross-reference them with the second collection he was undertaking.27
Be that as it may, it must be noted here that both Abū Bakr/ʿUmar’s first col-
lection and ʿUthmān’s second collection took place at the official level, where
the heads of state enforced and promulgated an official copy that apparently dif-
fered from the other copies Muslims possessed and memorized at that time. Not
only was the official ʿUthmānic version declared to be the only valid Qurʾanic
material, but also all the other codices were destroyed, including those owned by
Companions well known for their intimate association with the Qurʾan and its
recitation. Indeed, the individuals whom ʿUthmān assembled in the committee
under the direction of Zayd b. Thābit were of hardly any historical significance in
the life and career of the Prophet: Saʿīd b. al-ʿĀṣ (d. 53/673) was nine years old
when the Prophet died,28 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥārith b. Hishām al-Makhzūmī
(d. 43/664) seemingly never met the Prophet and was less than ten years old when
Muḥammad died.29 As for ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām (d. 73/692),
who was also around ten years old when the Prophet died, his historical impor-
tance in the formative period of Islam seems to have eclipsed any mention of the
event of his participation in Zayd’s committee, which was hardly mentioned in
biographical dictionaries.30 Not only did these three individuals have no direct
personal experience with the Qurʾanic revelation, but their personal connection
with ʿUthmān is questionable. All three were ʿUthmān’s sons-in-law: Maryam

26 Theodor Nöldeke, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and Friedrich Schwally, Geschichte des Qorâns: Die
Geschichte des Qorāntexts, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1926), 2: 19.
27 Ibn Abī Dāwūd, Maṣāḥif, 1: 195–196.
28 Shihāb al-Dīn Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449), al-Iṣāba fī tamyīz al-ṣaḥāba, ed. Abū Hājar
Zaghlūl, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1853), 3: 98–99.
29 Ibn Ḥajar put him in the second section of those whose names start with ʿayn, a section designated
to individuals who neither met the Prophet nor narrated anything from him; ibid., 5: 67–67.
30 See, for example, ibid., 4: 69–71; Abū ʿUmar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1071), al-Istīʿāb fī maʿrifat
al-aṣḥāb, ed. ʿĀdil Murshid (Amman: Dār al-iʿlām, 2002), 399–402; ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr
(d. 630/1232–3), Usd al-ghāba fī maʿrifat al-ṣaḥāba, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿAwaḍ and ʿĀdil
Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1997), 3: 241–245.
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 99
bint ʿUthmān (Maryam al-kubrā) married both ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥārith and
Saʿīd b. al-ʿĀṣ, who was also married to her sister, Umm ʿAmr bint ʿUthmān,
whereas ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr was married to ʿĀʾisha bint ʿUthmān.31
On the other hand, the senior Companions who were more closely associ-
ated with the Qurʾan, such as Ibn Masʿūd, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, Ubayy b. Kaʿb, and
se­veral others were noticeably missing from this crucial event. Whether or not the
exclusion of these individuals was a politico-religious foreshadowing of the early
internal conflicts among the Companions, the choice of Zayd b. Thābit and the
emphasis that he was someone “above suspicion” (shābb ʿāqil lā nattahimuka)32
might have been more of a conscious, political decision to codify the Qurʾan
rather than a decision motivated by piety and thoughtful consideration towards the
senior Companions of the Prophet. Even the sheets of Ḥafṣa—the first prototype
and only original copy of the Qurʾan, and the only remaining relic of the efforts of
Abū Bakr and ʿUmar—which survived ʿUthmān’s destruction of the old codices,
shared the same fate years later. According to one account, Marwān b. al-Ḥakam
(r. 64–65/684–685) attempted to take the sheets from Ḥafṣa, but she refused to
relinquish them. It was only after she died, and immediately after her funeral, that
Marwān called for the sheets to be fetched and burned, to ensure that nothing in
those sheets would ever contradict ʿUthmān’s version.33
Ibn Masʿūd’s plea that he was more senior and more worthy than Zayd to over-
see the codification committee fell on deaf ears. Furthermore, statements and
comments made by early companions, including ʿUthmān himself, to the effect
that there were scribal errors and textual anomalies (laḥn, akhṭaʾū fī l-kitāb) in the
collected text, never prompted a revision of the official text.34 Nevertheless, some
50 years later al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf (d. 95/714), governor of Iraq during the reign
of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65–86/685–705), took it upon himself to reform
some aspects of the orthography of the ʿUthmānic codices.35 Regardless of the his-
toricity of this event and the degree to which al-Ḥajjāj induced changes in the offi-
cial codices, what matters here is that despite al-Ḥajjāj’s “ungodly” character that
was often portrayed in the historical sources, as a statesperson he was empowered
to initiate and enforce changes to the ʿUthmānic codex, as well as punish Kūfans

31 Shams al-Dīn Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt al-zamān fī tawārīkh al-aʿyān, ed. ʿAmmār Rīḥāwī, 23
vols. (Damascus: al-Risāla al-ʿālamiyya, 2013), 6: 122.
32 Ibn Abī Dāwūd, Maṣāḥif, 1: 159, 66.
33 Ibid., 1: 202–203.
34 See, for example, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib’s response to a man who suggested changing (Q 56:29)
“wa-ṭalḥin” into “wa-ṭalʿin,” where ʿAlī, although favouring “wa-ṭalʿin,” stated that the Qurʾan
can no more be changed (inna l-Qurʾān lā yuhāj al-yawm wa-lā yuḥawwal); Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī
(d. 310/923), Jāmiʿ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, 26 vols.
(Cairo: Dār Hajar, 2001), 22: 309–310.
35 Omar Hamdan, “The Second Maṣāḥif Project: A Step Towards the Canonization of the Qur’anic
Text,” in The Qurʾān in Context, ed. Angelika Neuwirth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 795–835;
François Déroche, Qurʾans of the Umayyads (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 138–142.
100 Shady Hekmat Nasser
who were still publicly reciting according to the muṣḥaf of Ibn Masʿūd.36 None-
theless, despite ʿUthmān and al-Ḥajjāj’s efforts, a uniform reading of the Qurʾan
could not be reached. Variant readings kept multiplying, professional readers of
the Qurʾan began developing their own unique styles of recitation, non-ʿUthmānic
variant readings that went back to the Companions were being revived, and even
novel variants were emerging. Thus, it was necessary to limit these variations as
a further step towards unifying the rendition of the Qurʾanic text, an endeavour
undertaken by Ibn Mujāhid (d. 324/936).

The second canonization: Ibn Mujāhid and the seven

canonical readings

During the 250 years between ʿUthmān’s codification of the Qurʾan and Ibn
Mujāhid’s canonization of the seven Readings, variant readings of the Qurʾan
were widely circulating in different forms and for different purposes. They were
frequently used and discussed in works of exegesis, grammar, Hadith, and fiqh,
among other disciplines. In addition to individual variant readings transmitted
through traditions, professional Qurʾan reciters were developing their own indi-
vidual style and system Reading. It is reported that before Ibn Mujāhid, there were
compilations on 20 and 25 eponymous Readings,37 not to mention the 50 epony-
mous Readings al-Hudhalī (d. 467/1072–1073) collected in his Qirāʾāt compen-
dium.38 Many scholars objected to Ibn Mujāhid’s selection of the seven Readings,
calling it an innovation (bidʿa) that caused fitna (conflict, confusion) among Mus-
lims, for he randomly and whimsically limited the eponymous Readings to only
seven and excluded many reliable readers from his system.39 While Ibn Mujāhid
did not explicitly state his criteria for selecting those seven Readings, he believed
that a valid Qurʾanic Reading must agree with the consonantal outline of any of
the five ʿUthmānic codices, conform to the proper rules of the Arabic language,
and enjoy some kind of a consensus in the region in which it was recited. Scholars
before, after, and during Ibn Mujāhid’s time wrote similar manuals of Qirāʾāt and
included other systems of variant Readings, but none of these works gained the
authority that Ibn Mujāhid’s work achieved.

36 Abū ʿUmar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 465/1071), al-Tamhīd li-mā fī l-Muwaṭṭaʾ min al-maʿānī wa-l-
asānīd, ed. Saʿīd Aḥmad Aʿrāb, 26 vols. (Morocco: Wizārat al-awqāf wa-l-shuʾūn al-islāmiyya,
1967–81), 8: 298.
37 Nasser, Transmission, 6.
38 Abū al-Qāsim al-Hudhalī (d. 465/1072–3), al-Kāmil fī al-qirāʾāt al-ʿashr wa-l-arbaʿīn al-zāʾida
ʿalayhā, ed. Jamāl b. al-Sayyid b. Rifāʿī al-Shāyib (Cairo: Muʾassasat Samā, 2007), 9–17.
39 Refer to Nasser, Transmission, 35–64; Mustafa Shah, “The Early Arabic Grammarians’ Contribu-
tions to the Collection and Authentication of Qurʾanic Readings: the prelude to Ibn Mujāhid’s
Kitāb al-Sabʿa,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 6/1 (2004): 72–102; Christopher Melchert, “Ibn
Mujāhid and the Establishment of Seven Qurʾanic Readings,” Studia Islamica 91 (2000): 5–22;
Shady Hekmat Nasser, “Revisiting Ibn Mujāhid’s Position on the Seven Canonical Readings:
Ibn ʿĀmir’s Problematic Reading of ‘kun fa-yakūna’,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 17/1 (2015):
85–113.
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 101
Ibn Mujāhid’s cooperation with the vizier Ibn Muqla (d. 328/939) was an
important driving force in publicly promulgating his Qirāʾāt system and cri-
teria for valid variant Readings. When his two contemporaries Ibn Shanabūdh
(d. 328/939) and Ibn Miqsam (d. 354–345/965–966) were teaching and advo-
cating for other systems of variant Readings that differed from the system Ibn
Mujāhid considered as the one enjoying the consensus of the Muslim community,
the two scholars were brought to the court of the vizier Ibn Muqla. Attended by
several jurists and Ibn Mujāhid himself, the trial concluded by condemning both
men and asking them to repent. The sources documented many reports to the
effect that both men ostensibly repented but never stopped reciting and circulating
their system Readings.40 Indeed, Ibn Shanabūdh was allegedly tortured and forced
to retract his opinion concerning the anomalous readings he was advocating for.41
Be that as it may, Ibn Mujāhid’s system stood the test of time. Later compilations
of Qirāʾāt used his work as the prototype of how a Qirāʾāt manual is authored,
and his system of the variant Readings, with slight variations, continued to be the
basis of the seven canonical Readings until today.

The third canonization: al-Dānī and al-Shāṭibī

After Ibn Mujāhid, books on different systems of Readings of the Qurʾan contin-
ued to emerge. In the eastern part of the Islamic world the manuals of Qirāʾāt did
not stop at seven Readings. Works on 8, 9, 10, and up to 14 eponymous Readings
were frequently authored.42 More importantly, an eponymous system Reading
was not a unified corpus without internal discrepancies. Different transmissions
of the same eponymous Reading resulted in internal variations and discrepancies.
The more transmitters an eponymous Reading enjoyed the more internal varia-
tions and discrepancies it showcased. This “diversity” of transmissions created
many problems on the level of standardizing the oral performance of the Qurʾan,
for even though Ibn Mujāhid converged the variations into seven systems, the
variations within each system multiplied and began to rapidly diverge. Things in
the western part of the Islamic world were somehow different. As early as Abū
al-Ṭayyib ʿAbd al-Munʿim Ibn Ghalbūn (d. 389/998), who had a direct influ-
ence on the later north African and Andalusian Qirāʾāt scholars, two transmitters
were systematically selected to represent an eponymous Reading. A comparison
of manuals of Qirāʾāt between the eastern and western parts of the Islamic world
after the fourth/tenth century showed that unlike the mashriq, a majority of works
in the western parts adopted the system of the seven Readings and also systemati-
cally maintained two versions of each system (riwāya).43 What further helped this

40 Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ, 25 vols.
(Beirut: Muʾassasat al-risāla, 1985), 15: 265, 16: 106.
41 Nasser, Second Canonization, 141–143.
42 Nasser, Transmission, 64 n. 116.
43 Shady Hekmat Nasser, “The Two-Rāwī Canon before and afer ad-Dānī (d. 444/1052–3): The Role
of Abū ṭ-Ṭayyib Ibn Ghalbūn (d. 389/998) and the Qayrawān/Andalus School in Creating the Two-
Rāwī Canon,” Oriens 41/1–2 (2013): 66 ff.
102 Shady Hekmat Nasser
conformity in the west, which slowly spread to the east, was Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī’s
(d. 444/1052–1053) work, al-Taysīr fī l-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ, an abridged manual of
Qirāʾāt designed to simplify the discipline for educational purposes.
Al-Dānī was not only a Qirāʾāt scholar, he also commanded mastery over
Ḥadīth and jurisprudence, both disciplines in which he authored several distin-
guished books. The political situation of al-Andalus in the fourth–fifth/tenth–
eleventh centuries was marked by instability and chaos. The Umayyad caliphate
was disintegrating; the invading Berbers sacked Cordoba, al-Dānī’s hometown;
and the new political order of the taifa states (mulūk al-ṭawāʾif) was emerging.
Dāniya (Denia) was one of those taifa states, and it was ruled by the ʿĀmirid
Abū al-Jaysh Mujāhid, who “surrounded himself with scholars and was a distin-
guished commentator on the Ḳurʾān.”44 Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406) credited Abū
al-Jaysh Mujāhid with more than simply recruiting Qurʾan scholars to his court.
He considered him to be a turning point in the history of Qirāʾāt in al-Andalus,
a discipline to which he had great affinity to the extent of transforming Dāniya
into a centre of Qirāʾāt studies.45 Al-Dānī was then recruited to the court of Abū
al-Jaysh and ultimately became the main authority of Qirāʾāt in the west and
eventually in the east as well. Moreover, al-Dānī gained the reputation of being a
scholar of sound sunnī belief who adhered to the fundamentals and consensus of
ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa. He was described as pious, virtuous, and an exemplary
scholar of the Andalusians who adhered to traditional jurisprudence, sound Had-
ith, and good Arabic while avoiding the rational sciences.46
Al-Dānī wrote numerous books on Qirāʾāt, but his al-Taysīr, although an
abridged manual written for students, was the best known of his works. The
formula of choosing two transmitters or narrations for each eponymous Read-
ing became the common practice in Qirāʾāt works thereafter.47 In addition to
the patronage al-Dānī received from the ruler of Dāniya and his reputation as an
adherent to sunna and sound doctrinal beliefs, his work al-Taysīr received fur-
ther recognition when it was versified by al-Shāṭibī (d. 590/1193) in the didactic
poem Ḥirz al-Amānī (al-Shāṭibiyya), which became until today the cornerstone
of transmitting, teaching, and rendering the seven canonical Readings of the
Qurʾan.
Al-Shāṭibī was educated in Shāṭiba (Xàtiva), which witnessed a surge in intel-
lectual life after the fifth/eleventh century. According to Manuela Marín, “the most
illustrious son of S̲h̲ āṭiba was without doubt al-Ḳāsim b. Firruh al-S̲h̲ āṭibī” who

44 C. F. Seybold and A. Huici Miranda, “Dāniya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., http://dx.doi.org.
ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1691 (accessed June 5, 2020).
45 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406), al-Muqaddima, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Shaddādī, 5
vols. (al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: Bayt al-funūn wa-l-ʿulūm wa-l-ādāb, 2005), 5: 194–195.
46 Dhahabī, Siyar, 17: 557, 18: 77–83.
47 Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī (d. 444/1052–3), al-Taysīr fī l-qirāʾāt al-sabʿ, ed. Otto Pretzl (Beirut: Dār
al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, 1984), 2–3.
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 103
left Shāṭiba after finishing his studies and settled in Egypt for the rest of his life.48
In Egypt, he was recruited by the judge ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ibn al-Qāḍī al-Ashraf, best
known as al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (d. 596/1200), who served as a vizier for Saladin and
was very close to him and his son al-Malik al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān Ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn
(r. 589–595/1193–1198).49 Al-Shāṭibī was first stationed in the mosque of ʿAmr b.
al-ʿĀṣ, after which al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil appointed him in the madrasa he established
in Cairo, al-madrasa al-fāḍiliyya, in which he lived and worked until he died.50
Al-Shāṭibī’s biography is a hagiographical account filled with testimonies about
his genius, piety, and saint-like career. He was described as having a pheno­
menal memory to the extent that people used to correct their personal co­pies of
al-Bukhārī and Muslim based on his dictation from memory. Besides his profound
knowledge of Hadith, fiqh, and Arabic sciences, he was well versed in dream
interpretation.51 Al-Shāṭibī was said to be one of God’s signs and marvels of the
world. Numerous accounts and incidents testified to his piety and upright charac-
ter. He is credited with many karāmāt and people of his time venerated him like
the Companions venerated the Prophet.52
Al-Shāṭibī is considered the epitome of Qurʾanic recitation. His main contribu-
tion to the field of Qirāʾāt, and particularly the standardization of the variant rea­
dings, lies in his innovative style in didactic poetry through which he put in verse
three important works by al-Dānī. Nāẓimat al-zuhr, a 297-line poem on the sys-
tems of verse numbering of the Qurʾan is the versified version of al-Dānī’s Kitāb
al-bayān fī ʿadd āy al-Qurʾān. ʿAqīlat atrāb al-qaṣāʾid, a 298-line poem on the
spelling rules of the Qurʾan is based on al-Dānī’s al-Muqniʿ fī maʿrifat marsūm
maṣāḥif ahl al-amṣār. Finally, Ḥirz al-amānī wa-wajh al-tahanī (al-Shāṭibiyya),
a 1,173-line poem on the seven eponymous Readings of the Qurʾan is the adapta-
tion of al-Dānī’s Taysīr in verse form. Al-Shāṭibiyya is without doubt the most
important didactic poem in Qirāʾāt and probably the most widely used work of
Qirāʾāt since its composition. Ibn Khaldūn stated that after the publication of
al-Shāṭibiyya, people were keen on memorizing it and teaching it throughout the
lands of al-maghrib and Andalusia.53 Indeed, both Ḥirz al-amānī (al-Shāṭibiyya
major) and the ʿAqīla (al-Shāṭibiyya minor) became stable textbook manuals in
different schools and madrasas, where it is common to read in the biographies of

48 Manuela Marín, “S̲h̲ āṭiba,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., http://dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.har-

vard.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_6864 (accessed June 6, 2020).
49 Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282), Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ abnāʾ al-zamān, ed. Iḥsān
ʿAbbās, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1994), 3: 158–163.
50 Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qifṭī (d. 646/1249), Inbāh al-ruwāt ʿalā anbāh al-nuḥāt, ed. Muḥammad Abū
al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-fikr al-ʿarabī, 1986), 4: 160.
51 ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī (d. 643/1245), Fatḥ al-waṣīd fī sharḥ al-qaṣīd, ed. Muḥammad al-Idrīsī
al-Ṭāhirī, 2 vols. (Riyad: Maktabat al-rushd, 2002), 1: 117, 2: 6.
52 Jamāl al-qurrāʾ wa-kamāl al-iqrāʾ, ed. ʿAlī Ḥusayn al-Bawwāb (Mecca: Maktabat al-turāth,
1987), 119, 480–481; Abū al-Khayr Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429), Ghāyat al-nihāya fī ṭabaqāt
al-qurrāʾ, ed. Gotthelf Bergsträsser, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2006), 2: 20–21.
53 Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, 5: 195.
104 Shady Hekmat Nasser
scholars that they studied, heard, or memorized both works (al-shāṭibiyyatān) as
part of their academic training.54
Besides the poem’s originality in comprehensively summarizing the complex
differences among the variant readings and making them easier to memorize,
al-Shāṭibiyya received a lot of publicity and official/religious endorsement since
its completion and publication. Al-Shāṭibī himself declared that “anyone who
reads this poem of mine, Allah will surely reward him, for I composed it for the
sake of Allah.”55 It was reported that when al-Shāṭibī finished Ḥirz al-amānī, he
circumambulated the Kaʿba for 12,000 full cycles (84,000 times) invoking the
aforementioned supplication. It was added that al-Shāṭibī saw the Prophet in a
dream and presented him with the poem. The Prophet blessed it and said, “he who
memorizes the poem will enter paradise.” A certain al-Qurṭubī added: “rather, he
who dies while the poem is in his household will enter paradise.”56 Others went
as far as claiming that it is unfathomable that al-Shāṭibiyya could be written by
someone who was not infallible (maʿṣūm). Ibn al-Jazarī concluded that it was
unlikely during his time that any scholar or student would not own a copy of
al-Shāṭibiyya.57
The influence of both al-Taysīr and al-Shāṭibiyya was so pronounced that lay
Muslims and scholars alike stopped consulting other manuals of Qirāʾāt. Peo-
ple were gradually getting the impression that the canonical readings were only
those mentioned in these two manuals and that any other variant reading ought to
be irregular (shādhdha).58 Al-Shāṭibiyya dominated the madrasa curricula in the
Islamic world and until the present day it is one of the main textbooks of Qirāʾāt
taught in al-Azhar.59 In Fez, a special awqāf department was designated in some
madrasas solely dedicated to teaching al-Shāṭibiyya, which was one of the

54 For random examples, see Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Aḥmad
al-Arnāʾūṭ and Turkī Muṣṭaf ā, 29 vols. (Beirut: Dār iḥyāʾ al-turāth al-ʿarabī, 2000), 12: 47; Shams
al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1428), al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsiʿ, 12 vols. (Beirut: Dār
al-Jīl, 1992), 1: 10, 77, 128. Cf. ʿAbd al-Hādī ʿAbd Allāh Ḥamītū, Zaʿīm al-madrasa l-athariyya
fī l-qirāʾāt wa-shaykh qurrāʾ al-maghrib wa-l-mashriq al-imām Abū l-Qāsim al-Shāṭibī (Riyad:
Aḍwāʾ al-salaf, 2005), 63.
55 Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-waṣīd, 2: 6.
56 These accounts are added as a postscript to the end of the manuscript of al-Minaḥ al-fikriyya by
Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1014/1606) but do not belong to the manuscript. Secondary scholarship on
al-Shāṭibī often cites Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī for these statements, but so far I am not able to locate them
in earlier sources; Mullā ʿAlī b. Sulṭān Muḥammad al-Qārī al-Harawī (d. 1014/1606), al-Minaḥ al-
fikriyya sharḥ al-Muqaddima l-Jazariyya (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭaf ā l-Bābī l-Ḥalabī, 1948), 82–83;
ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Ḍabbāʿ, Mukhtaṣar bulūgh al-umniya ʿalā matn Itḥāf al-bariyya bi-taḥrīrāt
al-Shāṭibiyya, ed. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ʿAlī Samak (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya),
48–49; Ḥamītū, Abū al-Qāsim al-Shāṭibī, 92–93.
57 Ibn al-Jazarī, Ghāya, 2: 22–23.
58 Ibn al-Jazarī, Munjid, 102–108; cf. Nasser, Second Canonization, 20.
59 Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī, Maqālāt al-ʿallāma al-duktūr Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī:
ṣafaḥāt fī al-turāth wa-l-tarājim wa-l-lugha wa-l-adab (Beirut: Dār al-bashāʾir al-islāmiyya,
2002), 94–95.
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 105
prestigious professorial chairs given to scholars (kursī l-Shāṭibiyya al-kubrā).60
The fact that since its composition al-Shāṭibiyya garnered more than 130 extant
commentaries testifies to its indelible effect on the perception of the Qurʾan and its
oral performance through the seven eponymous Readings and their corresponding
14 renditions (riwāya).

The fourth canonization: Ibn al-Jazarī

The trajectory in Qirāʾāt so far tended to limit the variants into a manageable
corpus, such as restricting the many codices to only one, selecting seven sys-
tem Readings out of at least 50, and relying on only two transmitters for each
eponymous Reading, which were often transmitted by tens of transmitters fre-
quently disagreeing with one another. As noted previously, many scholars voiced
their concerns about limiting the eponymous Readings to seven, the transmitters
(Rāwīs) to two, and the corpus of the variant readings to select manuals such as
al-Taysīr and al-Shāṭibiyya. As early as the fourth/tenth century, the eponymous
Readings of al-Aʿmash (d. 148–148/765–766), Ibn Muḥayṣin (d. 123/741), Abū
Jaʿfar al-Madanī (d. 130/748), al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728), and many oth-
ers have been incorporated into manuals of Qirāʾāt, studied and transmitted by
the Qurrāʾ community. However, it was only until Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429)
that the three eponymous Readings of Abū Jaʿfar al-Madanī, Yaʿqūb al-Ḥaḍramī
(d. 205/820–821), and Khalaf al-ʿĀshir (d. 229/843–844) entered the canon of
the accepted variant readings and became widely disseminated among Muslims.
Two main reasons were behind the success of this canonization process. First,
Ibn al-Jazarī’s active political life and connections with major jurists of the time
played an important role in imposing his authority in the field, despite his corrupt
character and legal and administrative misconduct.61 He was the chief judge of the
Shāfiʿiyya in Damascus and in Shiraz, he held several high-profile teaching posi-
tions in several madrasas, and he personally approached high-ranking politicians
such as the Mamlūk prince Quṭlubak al-ʿAlāʾī Ustādār (d. 806/1403–1404), the
Ottoman sultan Bayezid (Bāyezīd) I (r. 791–804/1389–1402), and Tīmūr Lang
(Tamerlane, d. 807/1405). Ibn al-Jazarī seemed to have had a close relationship
with the chief judge of Damascus Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) with whom
he exchanged correspondences concerning the nature of the variant readings and
their legal/divine status. Ibn al-Jazarī was able to procure a fatwā from al-Subkī in
which he acknowledged the tawātur of the ten canonical Readings—not only the
seven—making them a fundamental, necessary element of religion (maʿlūm min
al-dīn bi-l-ḍarūra).62 Additionally, Ibn al-Jazarī actively “advertised” his work on

60 Such as ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā al-Rāshidī and Ibrāhīm al-Lamṭī; Ḥamītū, Abū l-Qāsim al-Shāṭibī, 137–139.
61 Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 9: 255–260; cf. Shady Hekmat Nasser, “Ibn al-Jazarī,”
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. (Brill), http://dx.doi.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1163/1573-
3912_ei3_COM_30840 (accessed October 13, 2018).
62 Ibn al-Jazarī, Munjid, 173–176; cf. Nasser, Transmission, 49.
106 Shady Hekmat Nasser
the ten eponymous Readings. He asked Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449) to
endorse al-Nashr fī al-qirāʾāt al-ʿashr and recommend it as the main textbook to
be taught in Egypt.63
The second reason behind Ibn al-Jazarī’s success in popularizing the three addi-
tional eponymous Readings was pedagogical. Al-Nashr is a remarkable work on
the variant readings of the Qurʾan, but it is complex and rich in information. To
make it more accessible, Ibn al-Jazarī followed al-Shāṭibī’s example and versified
his own works. First, he composed al-Durra al-muḍiyya fī l-qirāʾāt al-thalāth
al-marḍiyya, in which he followed the same metre and rhyme of al-Shāṭibiyya and
added the three eponymous Readings of Abū Jaʿfar, Yaʿqūb, and Khalaf. Next, he
composed Ṭayyibat al-nashr fī l-qirāʾāt al-ʿashr, a 1,014-line didactic poem on
the rajaz metre, in which he transformed his complex work al-Nashr into simpli-
fied, accessible, easy-to-memorize verse. These two didactic poems, in addition
to his 107-line poem on recitational techniques, al-Muqaddima al-Jazariyya fī
l-tajwīd, became stable textbook manuals (mutūn) taught and memorized along-
side al-Shāṭibiyya throughout the whole Muslim world. Today, the overwhel­
ming majority of Qurʾan certification in tajwīd and Qirāʾāt is conducted through
al-Shāṭibiyya, al-Durra al-muḍiyya (al-ʿashr al-ṣughrā), and Ṭayyibat al-Nashr
(al-ʿashr al-kubrā), after a 1,400-year journey of continuous and systematic sys-
tematization of the Qurʾanic text and its oral rendition.

Conclusion: the fifth canonization of al-Azhar’s edition of

1923
Several printed editions of the Qurʾan have appeared since the sixteenth cen-
tury in Europe and the Muslim world,64 but most of them did not enjoy the wide
acceptance and spread of the 1923 Egyptian edition (al-muṣḥaf al-amīrī) under
the supervision of al-Azhar and the auspices of King Fuad I. This edition was
printed based on the eponymous Reading of ʿĀṣim through his transmitter Ḥafṣ
(Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim), and since then millions of copies of this edition have circulated
throughout the Muslim world, and “it almost became” the only edition of the
Qurʾan used and distributed among Muslims.65 In March 1959, Labīb al-Saʿīd, an
Egyptian intellectual, professor at ʿAyn Shams University, and a connoisseur of
Qirāʾāt, proposed an oral codification project for the Qurʾan. He lamented the fact
that most Muslims cannot recite the Qurʾan properly and that most Qurʾan reci­
ters were only familiar with the rendition of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim. Al-Saʿīd suggested
recording the Qurʾan according to all the canonical Readings and to directly put
this project under the direction of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Despite facing some financial and logistical difficulties, the project bore fruit in

63 Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī, al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʿ, 9: 258–259.

64 Ghānim Qaddūrī al-Ḥamad, Rasm al-Muṣḥaf: dirāsa lughawiyya tārīkhiyya (Baghdād: Jāmiʿat
Baghdād, 1982), 601–609; Régis Blachère, Introduction au Coran (Paris: Besson & Chantemerle,
1959), 133–135.
65 Yūsuf al-Mirʿashlī, ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān al-karīm (Beirut: Dār al-maʿrifa, 2017), 158–159.
 The Canonizations of the Qurʾan 107
1961 when the first complete audio recording of the Qurʾan (al-muṣḥaf al-murat-
tal) was published. The recording was done by the chief Qurʾan reciter of the
time (shaykh al-maqāriʾ al-miṣriyya) Maḥmūd Khalīl al-Ḥuṣarī and, yet again,
it was according to Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim. In 1962 the project was scheduled to record
the eponymous Reading of Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ; however, al-Azhar intervened
and prohibited any recording of the Qurʾan except that of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim in order
to avoid confusion among Muslims concerning the differences between Qirāʾāt.
Despite several correspondences with al-Azhar, which in theory agreed that all the
eponymous Readings are equal in their divine status, the project stumbled again
without achieving its objectives.66
In the last few decades, complete audio recordings of other eponymous Rea­
dings are slowly becoming more available and popular. Moreover, different
printed versions of the Qurʾan based on eponymous Readings other than Ḥafṣ
are also getting easier to find and acquire. Indeed, many institutions in the Mus-
lim world are actively printing and recording the eponymous Readings of the
Qurʾan according to different systems. Mujammaʿ al-malik Fahd in Saudi Arabia
is currently distributing the Qurʾan printed according to the Readings of Shuʿba
ʿan ʿĀṣim, Qālūn and Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ, and al-Sūsī and al-Dūrī ʿan Abī ʿAmr b.
al-ʿAlāʾ. Nevertheless, Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim is still by far the most widely used rendi-
tion in the Muslim world, except for specific regions and countries that histori-
cally adopted different Readings, such as Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ in Morocco, Qālūn ʿan
Nāfiʿ in Libya, and al-Dūrī ʿan Abī ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ in Sudan and Nigeria.
Since the first codification of the Qurʾan by ʿUthmān, there have always been
many voices within the Islamic tradition criticizing the limitations and sometimes
“capricious” decisions to canonize certain Readings and reject others. Ultimately,
the power of retroactive consensus (ijmāʿ) stamped out all these objections that
did comprise at certain times a significant minority. However, as time passed,
these voices became an insignificant minority that deviated from and did not con-
form to the “imagined” consensus of the Muslim community.67 Most, if not all,
canonization processes the Qurʾan underwent in the past 1,400 years came hand
in hand with the support of the state and the religious authorities working closely
with it. Thus, it is important when we study the history of the transmission and
reception of the Qurʾan to recognize the different strata at which it was systema-
tized and draw the distinction between how the Qurʾan was/is practised and cir-
culated and how this practice and circulation change over time. The notion of the
tawātur of the Qurʾan is a great theological concept when looked at retroactively;
however, to claim that the Qurʾan, both textually and orally, has always been
“statically” mutawātir since the time of the Prophet seems to be more of an article
of faith for those “who believe in the Unseen,” rather than an argument supported
by academic and historical data.

66 Labīb al-Saʿīd, al-Jamʿ al-ṣawṭī li-l-Qurʾān al-karīm (Cairo: Dār al-kitāb al-ʿarabī, [n.d.]), 99–124.
67 On how the theory of abrogation was used to legitimize ʿUthmān’s codex that abrogated all the
other codices, and how the canonical Readings abrogated all the irregular and anomalous Read-
ings, see Bāqillānī, Intiṣār, 300ff.
6 Principles of Qurʾanic
Exegesis and Qurʾanic
Revelation in “Seven Ways
of Reading”
Revelation, Exegesis, the
Religious Imaginaire, and
Apologetics in Islam1
Claude Gilliot

1. Significations of the social and religious

Imaginaire, and competitive mimeticism
in the foundation of Islam

1.1.
No Weltanschauung or religion when it is conscious of itself can reject the divi-
sion of history into eras. Early Islamic scholars, probably already Muhammad
himself and those who helped him to become a prophet, attempted to “bring order
into the narrow picture of the historical development of humanity offered them by
their religious view by marking the critical points in history, to delimit historical
epochs and divide that development into periods.”2

1.2.
According to C. Castoriadis, every society “institutes itself” through the creation of
“social imaginary significations.”3 The same thing can be said for religious groups

1 We would like to thank Professor Haggai Ben Shammai for the discussions we had together at the
Conference Exegetical Crossroads: Understanding Scripture in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
in the Medieval Orient (20–22 February 2014, Erlangen). His remarks on the materia judaica con-
tained in our paper “Vierfacher Schriftsinn (quatuor sensus scripturae) und die sieben ‘Weisen’,
nach denen der Koran geoffenbart worden sei. Zwischen Offenbarung, Exegese und Apologetik
in Islam” were very useful for this contribution.We also thank our colleague of Aix-en-Provence
Emeritus Pierre Larcher for his linguistic expertise!
2 Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, trans. Samuel Miklos Stern, 2 vols. (London: Allen and Unwin,
1967–71), I: 201.
3 Cornelius Castoriadis, L’institution imaginaire de la société (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 204–206; Idem,
Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. K. Blamey (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 146–147.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-8
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 109
or communities. Thus, the religious representations (représentations religieuses)
or “collective imagination” (imaginaire social)4 in Islam have produced a fictional
periodization of history. The different periods must reach their “highest” point
with the coming of Islam, not only with the distinction between jāhiliyya (“time
of barbarism”5 or state of “blind and savage passion,”6 or “age of ignorance”),7
and Islam, but also with several other kinds of distinctions. Ho­wever, “it is sig-
nificant of the position of Muhammad’s teaching in relationship to the practice
current in the Jāhiliyya that he appears to have adopted the tribal terminology for
good and evil.”8 So the beliefs and conducts which are accepted as good are “the
known” (al-maʿrūf), and probably like ʿurf (custom, tradition) which pertains to
the same root, what is customarily approved; “misbelief and misconduct being al-
munkar, i.e. what is disapproved, or more literally, ‘what is regarded as unknown
and foreign.’ ”9

1.3.
In one of these pseudo-historical divisions, the sequence is expressed in the simile
of morning, noon, and evening prayer, within a parable applied to Jews, Chris-
tians, and Muslims. In Bukhārī’s Summa of sayings attributed to Muhammad:
Sālim b. ʿAbd Allāh (b.ʿUmar)/Ibn ʿUmar (ʿAbd Allāh)/Muḥammad:

The period of your stay as compared to the previous nations is like the period
equal to the time between the noon prayer and sunset. The people of the Torah
were given the Torah and they acted (upon it) till mid-day, then they were
exhausted and were given one “denarius” each (fa-ʿuṭū qīrāṭan qīrāṭan).10
And then the people of the Gospel were given the Gospel and they acted
(upon it) till the noon prayer, then they were exhausted and were given one
“denarius” each. And then we were given the Qurʾan and we acted (upon it)
till sunset and we were given two “denarii” each. On that the people of both
the Scriptures said: “O our Lord! You have given them two “denarii” and

4 Evelyne Patlagean, “L’histoire de l’imaginaire,” in La Nouvelle histoire, ed. Jacques Le Goff et al.
(Paris: Retz-C.E.P.L, 1978), 248–229; Claude Gilliot, Aspects de l’imaginaire islamique commun
commun dans le Commentaire de Tabari (Thèse pour le doctorat d’Etat, Paris: Université Paris-III,
1987), 8–19, et passim, not taken up in Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et théologie en islam. L’exégèse
coranique de Tabari (Paris: Vrin, 1990).
5 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 221: “Zeit der Barbarei,” idem, Muslim Studies, I: 202.
6 Toshihiko Izutzu, The Structure of the Ethical Terms in the Koran (Tokyo: Keio University, 1959),
27, 218.
7 William E. Shepard, “Age of Ignorance,” in EQ (Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane Dam-
men McAufliffe et al., 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001–06), 1: 37–40; Peter A. Webb, “Creating Arab
Origins: Muslim Constructions of al-Jāhiliyya and Arab History” (PhD, SOAS, 2014), 352–355.
8 Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 194.
9 Ibid.
10 Qīrāṭ: 1/16 of a dirham; W. Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, umgerechnet ins metrische
System, HDO, Abt. 1, Ergänzungsband I, Heft 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 2, 27.
110 Claude Gilliot
given us one “denarius”, though we have worked more than they.” God said:
“Have I usurped some of your recompense?” They said: “No.” God said:
“That is my favor, I bestow upon whomsoever I will.”11

The following version of this tradition is still nearer to the Parable of the
Labourers in the Vineyard, its possible source,12 following the Gospel of Saint
Matthew 20:1–16,13 because of the mention of the “man who employs.” Accor­
ding to Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī/Prophet:

The example of Muslims, Jews and Christians is like the example of a man
who employed labourers to work for him from morning till evening. They
worked till mid-day and they said: “We are not in need of your reward.” So
the man employed another batch and said to them: “Complete the rest of
the day and yours will be the wages I had fixed (wa lakumu lladhī sharaṭtu,
for the first batch).” They worked up till the time of the noon prayer and
said: “Whatever we have done is for you.” He employed another batch. They
worked for the rest of the day till sunset, and they received the wages of the
two former groups.
(wa-stakmalū ajara l-farīqayni)14

11 Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, bk. 9 (Mawāqīt), ch. 17, 2; al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ [Recueil des traditions mahomé-
tanes], ed. L. Krehl et Th. W. Juynboll (Leyde: E.J. Brill, 1862–1908), vol. I: 148, penult.-149, l.
10; Sahîh al-Bukhârî, Arabic-English, trans. M. Muhsin Khan, 9 vols. (Riyad: Darussalam, 1997),
I: 333–334, no. 557 (slightly modified by us); Ibn Ḥibbān, Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, Tartīb ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn
ʿAlī b. Balbān al-Fārisī, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 3rd ed., 18 vols. (Beirut: al-Risāla, 1418/1997),
XVI: 200–201, no 7217 (ch. 61); 201–202, no. 7218; XVI: 10, no. 6639 (ch. 60).
12 Julius Wellhausen’s review of Goldziher’s Muhammedanische Studien, in TLZ, XV (1892), col.
204 (col. 201 sqq.), who refers to Mt 20, 1–16. Goldziher, “Neutestamentliche Elemente in der
Traditionslitteratur des Islam,” Oriens Christianus (1902): 393, no. 4 and n. 1 (repr. in Gesam-
melte Schriften, IV: 318) refers to Matthew, according to Wellhausen’s review; same reference
by Alfred Guillaume, The Traditions of Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924; repr. Lahore: Uni-
versal Books, 1977), 140–141; Richard Bell, The origin of Islam in its Christian Environment
(London: Macmillan, 1926), 196–197.
13 There exists also the possibility of a common source; Hermann Leberecht Strack-Paul Biller-
beck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (6 vols. in 7, C.H. Beck’sche
Buchhandlung, Oskar Beck, 1922–61), vol. I, 830–834: “Das Gleichnis von den Arbeitern am
Weinberg.”
14 Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, bk. 9 (Mawāqīt), chap. 16, 3, vol. I, 149, l. 7–12; trans. Khan, I: 335–336, no. 558;
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-bārī bi-sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. under the direction of ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd Allāh Bāz, by Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb, text established on the basis of the ed. of
Būlāq: al-Maṭbaʿa al-kubrā al-Mīriyya, 1300–01/1883–84, numeration of the traditions according
to M. Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, 13 vol.+ Hādī l-sārī. Muqaddimat Fatḥ al-bārī (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-
salafiyya, 1379–1400/1960–70; reprint Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d., ca. 1980), II: 38, no. 558; cf.
Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 37, Ijāra, 8, al-Ijāra fī niṣf al-nahār, II: 50, l. 7–13; 60; trans. Khan, III: 257; Ibn
Ḥajar, Fatḥ, IV: 445, no. 2268; Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, bk. 60 (Anbiyāʾ), chap. 50, 7, II: 372, l. 6–15; trans.
Khan, VI: 416–417; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ, VI: 495–496, no. 3459; cf. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr [Jāmiʿ al-bayān
ʿan taʾwīl al-Qurʾān], ed. A. Saʿīd ʿAlī, Muṣṭaf ā al-Saqqā et al., 30 vols. (Cairo: Muṣṭaf ā l-Bābī
l-Ḥalabī, 1373–77/1954–57), XXVII: 246, ad Q 57, 29: the occasion of the revelation of this
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 111
Whereas in the Gospel of Matthew the workers are all paid the same amount, in
both Islamic versions there is a special blessing on the Muslim latecomers for the
work they have done. The point of the last becoming the first can be said a shared
polemic in both the Christian and Muslim versions.15 But the Muslim versions
stress the alleged superiority of Islam and the Islamic period.
In the Islamic presentation, a particular conception of the unicity of God (a
“solitary” God), the so-called superiority of the Qurʾan and of the Muḥammadan
prophecy are all “proofs” of the truth of Islam. For al-ʿIzz Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām
Sulṭān al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Dimashqī (d. 660/1262), this tradition is one of the proofs of
the superiority of Muhammad because “his community has worked less than the
two previous and received a greater remuneration!”16
Such traditions of course have also been included in almost every collection
of Islamic traditions, and in many religious and literary genres, in Qurʾanic com-
mentaries, e.g., ad Q 57 (Ḥadīd):28–29: “The People of the Scripture may know
that they control naught of the bounty of God, but that the bounty is in God’s hand
to give to whom He will. And God is of infinite bounty.”
Or ad Q 103 (ʿAṣr):1: “By the declining day” (trans. Pickthall), “By the after-
noon” (trans. Arberry), or “By the time of . . .”17 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210),
quotes freely (that is, not literally but according to the meaning [bi-l-maʿnā]) a
version of this tradition for the fourth interpretation he gives of al-ʿaṣr in Q 103
(ʿAṣr):1. In the fourth interpretation given by Rāzī, who does not mention older
authorities, he says only:

They support their interpretation with the saying of the Prophet: “You and
those who were before you can be described by the following parable: a
man hired a labourer (inammā mathalukum wa mathalu man kāna qablakum
mathalu rajulini staʾjara ajīran).”

In this interpretation al-ʿaṣr means “the time of the Messenger of God,”18 which
is considered as the best time in the Islamic imaginaire.

verse, according to Qatāda (b. Diʿāma al-Sadūsī, d. 118/736), was the envy of the “people of the
two Books,” then Qatāda said: “It has been told us that the Prophet has said: “The example of . . .”
15 Oddbjørn Leirvik, Images of Jesus Christ in Islam (Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Missionary
Research, 1999), 50 (2nd ed., London and New York: Continuum International, 2010), 43.
16 al-ʿIzz Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, Bidāyat al-sūl fī tafḍīl al-rasūl, ed. M. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (Bei-
rut and Damascus: al-Maktab al-islāmī, 1404/1983), 60–61, no. 28; cf. al-Suyūṭī, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ
al-kubrā, 2 vols. (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-niẓāmiyya, 1320–21/1902–03), II: 216/3 vols.,
ed. M. Khalīl Harrās (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-ḥadītha, 1387/1967), III: 217, who quotes al-ʿIzz Ibn
ʿAbd al-Salām, and then one of the versions of the tradition of Ibn ‘Umar.
17 Max Henning (1991), translates: “Bei dem Nachmittag (Bei der Zeit).”
18 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Tafsīr [Mafātīḥ al-ghayb], ed. M. Muḥyī l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, ʿA. I. al-Ṣāwī
et al., 32 vols. (Cairo, 1933–62), XXXI: 86; cf. Georges Tamer, Zeit und Gott. Hellenistische Zeit-
vorstellungen in der altarabischen Dichtung und im Koran (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 190.
112 Claude Gilliot
1.4.
The “superiority” of the Islamic community according to this religious imaginary
hinges also on the belief that the Qurʾan considered by Muslims as the divine word
has an inexhaustible depth, as already expressed in the Qurʾanic text itself: Q 18
(Kahf):109: “Say: Though the sea became ink for the Words of my Lord, verily the
sea would be used up before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even though We
brought the like thereof to help,” and Q 31 (Luqmān):27: “And if all the trees in the
earth were pens, and the sea, with seven more seas to help it, (were ink), the words
of Allah could not be exhausted. Lo! Allah is Mighty, Wise” (trans. Pickthall).19
These declarations recall the Gospel of St. John 21:25: “And there are also
many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one,
I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be
written. Amen” (King James Version).
But they are probably more reminiscent of the assessment of Rabban Yohanan
ben Zakkai (fl. ca. 1–80 CE):

If all the heavens were parchment, and all the trees pens, and all the oceans
ink, they would not suffice to write down the wisdom which I have learned
from my masters, and I took away from them no more than a fly takes from
the sea when it bathes,20

or that of his student Eliezer ben Hyrcanus:

If all the seas were ink, and all the reeds pens, and all men scribes they could
not write down all the Scripture and Mishnah I studied, nor what I learned
from the sages in the academy. Yet I carried away from my teachers no more
than a man who dips his finger in the sea, and I gave away to my disciples no
more than a paintbrush takes from the tube.21

1.5.
In Islamic tradition appear also many mythical narratives on the alleged superior-
ity of the Arabic language:

Interpretrations of the passages of the Qurʾan that understand the language

in a sacral and theological orientation, combined with ethnocentric Arab con-
ceptions, have contributed to the elaboration of a hierarchy of languages,
at the summit of which stands Arabic. Even if these ideas existed before,

19 Cf. Gerhardt Böwering, “The Scriptural ‘Senses’ in Medieval ṣūfī Qurʾān Exegesis,” in With
Re­verence for the Word. Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 147, and n. 8 and 9.
20 J. Neusner, A life of Yohanan ben Zakkai (ca. 1–80 C.E.) (Leiden: Brill, 1962), 46.
21 Ibid.; Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, II: 587.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 113
they were only systematically collected during the second half of the second/
eighth and the third/ninth centuries. The constitution of an empire and the
construction of a mythical conception of a common “perfect” language go
together.22

In the same way, Muhammad was “created” a Prophet by himself, or by those

who helped him as a paragon (Fr. parangon) of a group of Jewish Christians or
other groups, and by the first generations of Muslims, against his competitors:
poets, soothsayers, orators, storytellers, other prophets,23 etc. This was accom-
plished by a theological strategy, and also by a strategy of violence,24 based on the
traditional tribal category of pride (fakhr) of the ancient Arabs and their poetry.
They extended to other fields, for instance in that saying attributed to Muhammad
transmitted from the companion Anas b. Mālik: “I was made superior to people
(fuḍḍiltu ʿalā l-nāsi) with four qualities: generosity, bravery, frequency of sexual
intercourse (kathrat al-jimāʿ), and great violence (shiddat al-baṭsh).”25

1.6. Early sayings and traditions concerning the modalities of

revelation and the Scriptural senses
Among the early Islamic topoi, or themes, related to the alleged superiority of
the Muḥammadan Prophethood and the Qurʾanic revelation feature several sets
of sayings and traditions whose origins probably have their roots in Judaism and/
or in Jewish Christianity. They pertain partially to the standard topoi of Islamic
polemic26 and apologetics.
The earliest references in Arabic literature to exegetical speculations in Islam
concerning the revelation of the Qurʾan or what purport to be its constituent
themes “are closely connected with two rather elusive old technical terms”:27
wajh (face/aspect/way, pl. awjuh, wujūh) and ḥarf (side/articulation/way/mode,
pl. aḥruf, ḥurūf). In both cases, the first form of the plural is a pluralis paucitatis;
the second one, a pluralis multidinis.

22 Claude Gilliot and Pierre Larcher, “Language and Style of the Qurʾān,” EQ, 3: 118a, with many
examples, 118–119 (109–135).
23 Gilliot, “Poète ou prophète?” in Paroles, signes, mythes. Mélanges offerts à Jamal Eddine Bencheikh,
ed. Floréal Sanagustin (Damascus: IFEAD, 2001), 331–396.
24 Art. cit.: 388, 381–388.
25 Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-awsaṭ, ed. Ṭāriq b. ʿAwaḍ Allāh b. M., et al., 10 vols. (Cairo: Dār
al-Ḥaramayn, 1415/1995), VII: 49, no. 6816; TB= al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, ed.
M. Saʿīd b. Aḥmad al-ʿUrfi, et al., 14 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1349/1931), VIII: 69–70,
sub no. 4144; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh Dimashq, ed. al-ʿAmrawī, II: 69–70, 21–22; Dhahabī, Mīzān, I:
543, no. 2030; Suyūṭī, Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, VI: 11, no. 10944; al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr, II: 217, no. 5884:
Idem, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ al-kubrā, I: 70.
26 John Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu. Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History
[QS] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 40–48, et passim.
27 Yeshayahu Goldfeld, “The Development of Theory on Qurʾānic Exegesis in Islamic Scholarship,”
Stud. Isl. LXVII (1988): 14 (9–27).
114 Claude Gilliot
Firstly, we shall deal with ḥarf, essentially in the context of a dictum attri­buted
to Muhammad and to his Companions because it is connected with so-called
modalities of the reception of the Qurʾan by Muhammad. Secondly, we will dis-
cuss the issue of wajh which is more connected to Qurʾanic interpretation and con-
stituent themes of the Qurʾan, and for that reason it will be discussed afterwards.

2. The theme or topos of the seven “ways” or “modes” (?)

in which the Qurʾan is said to have been sent down

2.1.
The following well-known tradition attributed to the Prophet of Islam: “The
Qurʾan was sent down according to seven ḥarfs (sing. ḥarf, pl. aḥruf)” has been
transmitted by between circa 14 and circa 25 Companions of Muhammad or
more, according to the Islamic religious tradition. The Qurʾanic reader Abū l-Faḍl
al-Rāzī, in his Maʿānī al-Aḥruf al-sabʿa, gives a list of 14 companions;28 Ibn
al-Jazarī, 19;29 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī, 21, a list taken over by the Shaykh ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Qāriʾ al-Madanī, but in a different order;30 and the
Shaykh Ḥasan Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn ʿItr al-Ḥalabī (d. 1432/2010), ca. 24.31
The differing numbers of Companions are due to the varying degrees of reli-
ability of the chains of transmission which introduce this dictum of Muhammad,
according to the criteria of reliability established by Muslim specialists of Ha­dith,
at the end of the second/eighth and during the third/ninth century, between “sound-
ness” and “weakness” (sound, ṣaḥīḥ vs. weak, ḍaʿīf), or other later subdivisions,
because of “defects” (ʿilal, sing.ʿilla) in the chain of transmission. Be that as it
may, the dictum on the “seven ways” per se (even though it is not the case in
every transmission) has been considered a sound hadith because, according to
Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838):

All these traditions on the seven modes (aḥruf, that is for Abū ʿUbayd: “man-
ners of speaking,” lughāt) are widespread (qad tawātarat hādhihi l-ḥawādīth
kulluhā ʿalā l-aḥrufi l-sabʿati), save a tradition transmitted from the Prophet

28 Abū l-Faḍl al-Rāzī, Ibn Bundār ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. A. (d. Jūmāda I 454/inc. 13 May 1062), Maʿānī
al-aḥruf al-sabʿa, ed. Ḥ. Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn ʿItr (Qaṭar: Wizārat al-Awqāf; Kuwayt, Beirut, Damascus:
Dār al-Nawādir, 1432/2011): 169–170, then 170–272.
29 Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429), al-Nashr fī l-qirāʾāt al-ʿashr: 2 vols., ed. ʿA. M. al-Ḍabbāʿ (Cairo:
al-Maktaba al-tijāriyya al-kubrā, n.d., 1940?), I: 21.
30 Suyūtī (911/1505), al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, 4 vols. in 2, ed. M. Abū l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm, corrected
ed. (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1974–75), cap. 16, I: 163/ed. of Medina:
306–308; Suyūṭī’s list has been taken over by many scholars, e.g., the Ḥanafī Muftī of Egypt,
al-Muṭīʿī, M. Bakhīt b. Ḥusayn (d. 1354/1935), al-Kalimāt al-ḥisān fī l-ḥurūf al-sabʿa wa jamʿ
al-Qurʾān (Cairo 1323/1905): 51/(Beirut: Dār al-Rāʾid al-ʿarabī, 1982), 92.
31 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ‘Abd al-Fattāḥ al-Qārī (b. end of 1365/November 1946), Ḥadīth al-aḥruf al-sabʿa
(Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1412/1991), 9.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 115
by Samura b. Jundab (d. 59/678 or 60). . . . “The Qurʾan has been sent down
according to three modes.”32

The dictum attributed to Muhammad is sometimes translated as follows:

“The Qur’ān has been sent down according to seven ‘ways of reading’ (aḥruf)”
(Böwering).33 Given the ambiguity of the word aḥruf in such a context and in early
Islam, it has been differently translated: “éditions” (A.-I. Silvestre de Sacy),34 dia-
lecti (in Latin by G. W. Freytag),35 “Weisen” (Goldziher),36 “Lesarten” (Sprenger),37
“variantes de lecture” (Houdas) (i.e. variae lectiones),38 “lectures” (Gilliot, in
French),39 “readings” (Zamah),40 modes or manners (of reading) (Lane),41 modes
(Nasser),42 ways (M. Muhsin Khan),43 forms (Burton),44 manners, genres, and
sound-complexes (Gilliot and Larcher).45 Ḥarf in Arabic often corresponds to what
French linguists, like the Arabist Pierre Larcher, call “articulation.”46 In some con-
texts it is equivalent to the linguistic realization of a word, that is, “a manner of
speaking” within a language or a text (hādhā ḥarfun or hādhihi lughatun).

2.2.
We will not look at the matter of the seven aḥruf and relative questions again in
every detail because this has already been done by several Orientalists and Mus-
lim scholars before us. One of the first of our forerunners in Orientalism to have
dealt with it was the Baron Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, in his study on the
Parisian manuscript of K. al-Wasīla ilā kashf al-ʿAqīla (Praesidium de detectione

32 Abū ʿUbayd, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, ed. Wahbī Sul. Ghāwiǧī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿilmiyya,
1411/1991): 203. Abū ʿUbayd’s opinion is quoted by Abū Shāma, al-Murshid al-wajīz, ed. Tay-
yar Altikulaç, 87–88; Ibn al-Jazarī, Nashr, I: 21; Zarkashī, al-Burhān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān, ed. M.
Abū l-Faḍl, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya, 1957), I: 212.
33 Böwering, “Scriptural ‘Senses’,” 351.
34 See supra.
35 Georg Wilhelm Freytag, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, I: 268a.
36 Goldziher, Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung, 37.
37 Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Moḥammad, III: XXXVII, n. 1.
38 el-Bokhâri, Les Traditions islamiques, III, 525.
39 Claude Gilliot, “Les Sept ‘lectures’: corps social et écriture révélée,” first pt.: 5, 1 note *.
40 Ludmila Zamah, “Master of the Obvious: Understanding Ẓāhir Interpretations in Qurʾānic Exege-
sis,” Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th c.), ed. Karen Bauer (Lon-
don: Oxford University Press and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2013), 265.
41 Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society Trust, 1984),
I: 550b.
42 Shady Hekmat Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 16: “The translation I am going to adopt here for ḥarf is mode, although I am still not con-
vinced that ḥarf was meant to be a mode of recitation.”
43 Sahih Al-Bukhārī, Translation of the Meaning of Sahih al-Bukhari, VI, 428, no. 4992.
44 John Burton, The Collection of the Qurʾān (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 151.
45 Gilliot and Larcher, “Language and Style,” 118a, l. 2: “sound-complex,” according to the expres-
sion of Chaim Rabin, Ancient West-Arabian (London: Taylor’s Foreign Press, 1951), 9.
46 Claude Gilliot, “Traditional disciplines of Qurʾānic studies,” EQ 5: 319 (318–339).
116 Claude Gilliot
margaritae),47 a commentary by ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī (d. 643/1245) on
al-Qāsim b. Firroh al-Shāṭībī’s (d. 590/1194) ʿAqīlat atrāb al-qaṣāʾid ilā asnā
l-maqāṣid (Margarita pretiosa carminum de summo argumentorum), that is a
didactic poem in rāʾ, for this also called: al-Rāʾiyya al-Shāṭibiyya, summarizing
Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī’s (d. 444/1053) K. al-Muqniʿ fī rasm maṣāḥif al-amṣār (Liber
sufficiens de doctrina quo charactere Coranus sit exarandus).48 Indeed the second
hemistich of al-Rāʾiyya al-shāṭibiyya’s 28th verse is: bi-l-aḥrufi l-sabʿati l-ʿulyā
kamā shtaharā, which has been translated by the great French scholar the “sept
éditions vénérables,”49 [following the Arabic commentator for whom they are dis-
tinct from the seven aḥruf (here qirāʾāt)] “which are current nowadays.”50
Silvestre de Sacy translated into French one of the versions of the tradition
of the seven aḥruf quoted by ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī, according to ʿUmar b.
al-Khaṭṭāb, who said:

I heard Hishām b. Ḥakīm51 reciting surat al-Furqān in a way different from

recitation (ʿalā khilāfi aqraʾuhā), and the Messenger of God had recited it to
me. I allowed him (i.e. Hishām) time to finish the prayer (fa-ahmaltuhu ḥatta
nṣarafa ʿani l-ṣalati), then I seized him by his collar and went with him to
the Messenger of God, and said: “O Messenger of God, I have heard this one
reciting surah al-Furqān in a way different from the way you taught to me.”
The Messenger of God said to him: “Recite.” He recited in the same way as
I heard him reciting. The Messenger of God said: “It has been sent down in
this way.” Then he said to me: “recite.” I recited and he said: “It has been sent
down in this way. This Qurʾan has been sent down in seven ways. So recite of
it whichever (way) is easier for you (fa-qraʾū mā tayassara minhu).”52

Ignaz Goldziher dealt in several pages with the seven aḥruf and the different
aspects (wujūh) of the Qurʾan as seen in the Hadith literature and by Muslim
exegetes.53 For him the origin of the hadith of the seven aḥruf might stem from
the talmudic representation of the revelation of the Torah in several languages

47 Sakhāwī, ʿAlam al-Dīn, al-Wasīla ilā kashf al-ʿAqīla, ed. Mawlāy M. al-Idrīsī al-Ṭāhirī (Riyadh:
Maktabat al-Rushd, 1424/2003).
48 For the genesis of these last two works, v. Gilliot, “Textes arabes anciens édités en Égypte,”
MIDEO, 29 (2012): 234, no. 42.
49 Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy, “Mémoire sur l’origine et les anciens monumens (sic: ancient
writing for monuments) de la littérature parmi les Arabes,” Mémoires de littérature tirés des regis-
tres de l’Académie royale des inscriptions et belles lettres L (1808): 247–441, here 334, translates
so: “cet Alcoran a été révélé suivant sept édition (tradition of Hishām b. Ḥakīm),” and understand
it as: “seven different ways in which God revealed it.”
50 Sakhāwī, ʿAlam al-Dīn, al-Wasīla ilā kashf al-ʿAqīla, 62 (p. 59, for the verse).
51 Hishām b. Ḥakīm b. Ḥizām b. Khuwaylid b. Asad al-Qurashī al-Asadī.
52 This tradition quoted by Sakhāwī, as is often the case, is transmitted according the meaning
(bi-maʿnā). It is a “short” version of ʿUmar and Hishām b. Ḥakim. His wording is near to that of
Mālik, Muwaṭṭaʾ, 15 (K. al-Qurʾān), 3 (Bāb mā jāʾa fī taḥzīb al-Qurʾān), I, 201, or that of Muslim,
6 (Ṣalāt al-musāfirīn wa qaṣruhā), Bāb bayān anna l-Qurʾān ʿalā sabʿat aḥruf, I: 560, no. 818.
53 Goldziher, Richtungen: 36–41, 84–85, 214–215, 257–258.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 117
together.54 In the same way, he thought that the Islamic exegetical traditions on
the “ambiguity” of the Qurʾan, that is, the Qurʾan having “several faces” (dhū
wujūhin), could correspond to the numerous pānīm:55 pānīm shel ha-tōrah, “faces
pertaining to the Torah” in the Tannaitic tradition.56 This idea of amphibology
seems already contained in the Qurʾan itself, for instance, mutashābih (ambigu-
ous) vs. muḥkam (unambiguous).57
More recently, several scholars have broached the topic. In his pioneering study
on “The development of theory on qurʾānic exegesis in Islamic scholarship,” Y.
Goldfeld of the Bar-Ilan University: “tried to organize a scattered and unknown
source material of scholarly opinion and pseudo-Prophetic uterrances concerning
the methodology of commentary of the Qurʾān.”58 We have also written an article
in two parts whose title could be translated into English as “The Seven ‘Lectures’:
Social Body and Revealed Scripture.”59 G. Böwering has focused his contribution
on the Scriptural “senses” in medieval ṣūfī exegesis.60

2.3.
In the introduction of his Qurʾanic commentary Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī has a special
section entitled “On the Arabs’ manner of speaking in which the Qurʾan was sent
down” (al-qawlu fī l-lughati llatī nazala bihā l-qurʾānu min lughāt al-ʿarab).61 Of
the 51 traditions transmitted by him in relation to the theme of the seven “modes,”
14 do not contain the expression “seven modes;” of the 37 remaining, 6 have only
a chain of authorities without text and a reference to a previous tradition with its
text (matn): e.g. “similar to it” (mithlahu, naḥwahu, bi-naḥwihi), which does not
mean an absolute similitude in the wording of the text because the transmission
of hadith according to the meaning (in paraphrasing) is accepted with certain con-
ditions.62 The 31 traditions containing the wording on the “seven modes” can be

54 Ibid., 37.
55 Ibid., 37, 85.
56 Wilhelm Bacher, Die exegetische Terminonolgie der jüdichen Literatur (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905),
157: “Arten der Textauslegung;” Wansbrough, QS: 155.
57 Q 3:7; Neuwirth, “The House of Abraham and the House of Amram,” in The Qurʾān in Context.
Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. A. Neuwirth et al. (Leiden:
Brill, 2010), 516 (499–531): Greek: amphibolos vs. pithanos.
58 Goldfeld, “Development,” art. cit., 27. He has consulted Muḥammad ʿAṭāʾ al-Sīd, “The Herme-
neutical Problem of the Qur’ān in Islamic History” (PhD, Temple University, 1975).
59 Claude Gilliot, “Les sept ʻlectures:’ corps social et Ecriture révélée,” Stud. Isl. LXI (1985): 5–25,
LXIII (1986): 49–62.
60 Böwering, “Scriptural ‘Senses’,” 345–365.
61 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr [Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān], 16 vols. (till 14, Ibrāhīm, 27), ed. Shākir
(Cairo, Dār al-Maʿārif, 1373/1954–68), 21–67, traditions nos. 7–65; in fact, 21–59, traditions nos.
7–58, because the rest of this section has to do with the collection of the Qurʾan.
62 Nawawī-Marçais, Taqrīb= Le Taqrìb de en-Nawawi traduit et annoté (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale,
MDCCCCII), chap. 26, Remarque V: 163–165; Ibn Ṣalāḥ, Introduction, in Eerik Dickinson, An
Introduction to the Science of the Ḥadīth. Kitāb Maʿrifat anwāʿ ʿilm al-ḥadīth of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ
al-Shahrazūrī, rev. by Muneer Fareed (Reading: Garnet, 2005), 151–152.
118 Claude Gilliot
divided into two main kinds: those which have no narrative framework and those
which do.

2.3.1. The traditions on the seven aḥruf without narrative framework

The traditions without narrative framework can be divided into two categories:
those which are not followed by an explanation and those which are followed by
an explanation or by alleged examples.

2.3.1.1. THE TRADITIONS ON THE SEVEN AḤRUF WITHOUT NARRATIVE

FRAMEWORK AND WITHOUT EXPLANATIONS OR ALLEGED EXAMPLES

These hadiths are reduced to the following wording: “The Qurʾan has been sent
down according to seven ‘ways of reading’ ” (or seven modes, or manners of
speaking). The corpus of Ṭabarī has only one tradition of this kind, in a “symme-
trical transmission,” that is, with “transmission by peers” (riwāyat al-aqrān),63 in
this case three Companions: Anas b. Mālik/Ubāda b. al-Ṣāmiṭ/Ubayy b. Kaʿb: The
Messenger of God has said: “The Qurʾan has been sent down.”64 The same tradi-
tion with the same chain of authorities features also in collections of hadiths or
other traditions among which Ibn Ḥanbal’s (d. 241/865) Musnad, Ibn Ḥībbān’s (d.
354/965) Ṣaḥīḥ, or Abū l-Faḍl al-Rāzī’s (d. 454/1032) Maʿānī al-aḥruf al-sabʿa.65
The same short version of this tradition is also transmitted by other Compan-
ions in other works, for instance, from Samura b. Jundab, from Abū Ḥudhayfa.66

2.3.1.2. THE TRADITIONS ON THE SEVEN AḤRUF WITHOUT NARRATIVE

FRAMEWORK AND WITH EXPLANATIONS OR ALLEGED EXAMPLES

They can be divided into two subcategories. In the first subcategory, the conative
function (Fr: fonction injonctive) of language is primordial in the declarations.

63 Al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995) was probably one of the first to call this kind of transmission between
peers (riwāyat al-aqrān): al-mudabbaj; Ibn Ṣalāḥ-Dickinson, cap. 42, p. 225; Nawawī-Marçais,
Taqrîb, cap. 42: “la symétrie et les associés” (al-mudabbaj wa riwāyat al-qarīn). Dāraquṭnī’ work,
al-Mudabbaj fī iṣṭilāh al-muḥaddithīn, is lost; al-Raḥīlī, ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḍayf Allāh, al-Imām Abū
l-Ḥasan al-Dāraquṭnī wa āthāruhu al-ilmiyya (Jeddah: Dār al-Andalus, 1421/2000): 224–225,
no. 18.
64 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Šhākir, I, 24–25, no. 28.
65 Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad, ed. M. al-Zuhrī al-Ghamrāwī, 6 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya,
1313/1895), V: 114/20 vols., ed. A. M. Shākir, Ḥamza A. al-Zayn et al. (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth,
1416/1995), XV: 404, no. 20990; Ibn Ḥibbān, Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, III: 17–18, no. 742; Abū l-Faḍl
al-Rāzī, Maʿānī al-aḥruf al-sabʿa: 210, no. 14; 219, no. 19, nearly similar, but transmitted by
Ubayy alone: “Nazala l-Qurʾānu ʿalā sabʿatin.”
66 Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, V: 291/XVI: 591, no. 23219
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 119
This category is well illustrated by the following hadith transmitted by Abū
Hurayra: The Messenger of God has said:

The Qurʾan has been sent down according to seven modes. Thus disputing
on the Qurʾan is blasphemy (fa-l-mirāʾu fī l-Qurʾāni kufrun)—he said it three
times—, what you know of it, practice it; as for what you do not know, refer
it to someone who knows.67

Or in the transmission of Abū Qays mawlā of ʿAmr b al-ʿĀṣ/ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ/the

Messenger of God: “The Qurʾan went down according to seven modes, which-
ever you recite, you are correct (aṣabtum); but do not dispute on the Qurʾan (fa-
lā tamāraw fī l-Qurʾāni), because disputing on the Qurʾan is blasphemy.”68 Or
according to69 Abū Hurayra/Muhammad: “This Qurʾan has been sent down in
seven modes; recite, there will be no harm, but do not conclude the mention of
mercy by that of punishment and vice versa.”70
Such pseudo examples are given in some traditions in which the formula on
the seven modes does not feature: al-Aʿmash (148/765)71/Abū Wāʾil (ob. post
82/701)72/Ibn Masʿūd:

I have given ear to the Qurʾan’s reciters (tasammaʿtu l-qurrāʾ, leg. prob.:
l-qaraʾa) and they were similar to each other, according to what I heard
(fa-samiʿtuhum mutaqāribīna), so recite as you learned it. Take care not
to hold forth and to dispute, as you might say “let’s go,” or “let’s be off”
(fa-innamā huwa ka-qawli aḥadikum: halumma wa taʿāla).

Then Ibn Masʿūd recited hīta laka (“Now, come thou,” as the wife of Pharaoh to
the young Josef at Q 12:23; the reading of the reciters of Kūfa and Baṣra being
hayta laka).73 Abū Wāʾil said” “ʻO Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (i.e. Ibn Masʿūd), people

67 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I, 21–22, no. 7; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, II 300/VIII: 107, no. 7976; TB,
XI: 26, l. 4–9. Sometimes this tradition from Abū Hurayra is limited to: “Dispute on the Qurʾān is
blaspheny;” ʿUbayd, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, 212, no. 54 (8).
68 Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, IV: 204/XIII: 509–510, no. 17747.
69 Saʿīd b. a. Saʿīd Kaysān, d. 123; Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-kamāl fī asmāʾ al-rijāl, reviewed by Suhayl
Zakkār (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 1414/1994), VII: 210–214, no. 2266.
70 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I, 45–46, no. 45; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Tamhīd li-mā fī l-Muwaṭtaʾ min
al-maʿānī wa-l-asānīd, ed. Muṣṭaf ā A. al-ʿAlawī et al., 25 vols. (Rabat: Dār al-Bayān al-ʿarabī,
1982–95), VIII: 288; Zarkashī, Burhān, cap. 11, 212, taken over from the Muṣannaf of Qāsim b.
Aṣbaʿ al-Qurṭubī (d. Jum. I 340).
71 al-Aʿmash Sulaymān b. Mihrān al-Asadī al-Kāhilī al-Kūfī.
72 Abū Wāʾil Shaqīq b. Salama al-Asadī al-Kūfī; TB, IX: 268–270, no. 4834; Dhahbī, Siyar aʿlām
al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ et al., 25 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1981–88), IV:
161–166.
73 Translation of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Translation and Commentary (Lahore,
1934–37).
120 Claude Gilliot
say hayta laka.’ Ibn Masʿūd answered: ‘I prefer (aḥabbu ilayya) to recite it as
I have been taught.’ ”74
The referential function, which corresponds to the factor of context and
describes a situation, an object, or a mental state, features sometimes in the form
of an explanation or pseudo-illustration of the hadith of the seven modes: accor-
ding to M. b. ʿAmr (b. ʿAlqama)/Abū Salama75/Abū Hurayra: the Messenger of
God said: “The Qurʾan thas been sent down in seven modes: omniscient, wise
much-forgiving, compassionate (ʿalīm, ḥakīm, ghafūr, raḥīm).”76

2.3.2. The traditions on the seven aḥruf with narrative framework

The tradition on the seven aḥruf can feature within a more or less long and sty-
lized narrative framework, without explanations or alleged examples.

2.3.2.1. THE TRADITIONS ON THE SEVEN AḤRUF WITH NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK

WITHOUT EXPLANATIONS

For instance, the tradition of the seven modes features within a narrative frame-
work resulting from Muhammad’s haggling with the angel Gabriel, according to
al-Zuhrī (Ibn Shihāb)/ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUtba (b. Masʿūd al-Hudhalī
al-Madanī al-Aʿmā)/Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 69/688)/Messenger of God:

Gabriel bid me recite (the Qurʾan) in one mode, but I debated with him and
I kept asking for more, and he did it, till he reached seven modes (aqraʾanī
Jibrīl ʿalā ḥarfin, fa-rājaʿtuhu, fa-lam azal astazīduhu, wa-yuzīdunī, ḥattā
ntahā ilā sabʿati aḥrufin).

At the end of this tradition an explanation is given, not by Muhammad but by

al-Zuhrī: “These modes relate to one statement only (wa-innamā hādhihi l-aḥrufu
fī l-amri l-wāḥidi) in which there is neither [a question of] lawful nor [a question
of] prohibited (laysa fīhi ḥalālun wa-lā ḥarāmun).”77

74 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq, ed. Maḥmūd M. ʿAbduh, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub
al-ʿilmiyya, 1419/1999), II: 210–211, no. 1293 (long version); Saʿīd b. Manṣūr, Sunan, ed. Saʿd
b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd-al-ʿAzīz Āl Ḥumayyid (Riyadh: Dār al-Sumayʿī 1414/1993), I: 160, no. 34
(short version); Abū ʿUbayd, Faḍāil al-Qurʾān, 217–218, no. 55 (12), cf. 213–214, no. 54 (16)
(both, short version): Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I, 50, no. 48.
75 Abū Salama b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf al-Qurashī al-Zuhrī al-Madanī, d. 94 or 104; Mizzī, XXI,
269–273, no. 8003.
76 Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, II: 332/VIII, 299, no. 8372; II, 440/IX: 280, no. 9641; Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed.
Shākir, I: 22, no. 8.
77 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, al-Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī, 11 vols. (Johannesburg, Karachi:
al-Majlis al-ʿilmī, 1390/1970), XI: 219, no. 20370; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. M. Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī, 5
vols. (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1955–57), 6, K. Salāt al-musāfir wa qaṣruhā, 47, I:
561, no. 819; Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, I: 29, no. 19: with two chains of authorities, here one of the categories
of “interpolated hadith” (mudraj); Gilliot, “Les sept lectures I”: 15; cf. Goldfeld, “Development,”
22: translation here modified by us.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 121
2.3.2.2. THE TRADITIONS ON THE SEVEN AḤRUF WITH NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK
AND WITH EXPLANATIONS OR ALLEGED EXAMPLES

One of the longest narratives with the topos of quarelling about a different recita-
tion and with an explanation is transmitted by ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb:

I passed by (the Companion) Hishām b. Ḥakīm,78 while he recited surat

al-Furqān during the lifetime of the Messenger of God. I listened to his reci-
tation and he recited it in several different modes which the Messenger of
God had not taught me (huwa yaqraʾu ʿalā ḥurūfin kathīratin lam yuqriʾnīhā
rasūlu Llāhi). I was about to jump over him during his prayer, but I looked at
him (fa-naẓartuhu; apud Bukhārī: fa-taṣabbartu, I controled my temper). . . .
So, I dragged him to the Messenger of God . . . [the Messenger of God said]:
“recite O Hishām.” Then he recited in the same way as I heard him reciting.
Then the Messenger of God said: “It has been sent down in this way,” and he
said: “Recite O ʿUmar!” I recited it as he had taught me. The Messenger of
God said: “It has been sent down in this way. This Qurʾān has been sent down
in seven modes, so recite as much of it as may be easy for you (fa-qraʾū mā
tayassara minhu).”79

For instance, in this hadith transmitted by Abū Juhaym al-Anṣārī:

Two men disagreed upon one verse of the Qur’an. Both claimed that they had
learned it (kilāhumā yazʿumu innahu talaqqāhu) from the Messenger of God.
They went together to the Messenger of God. Abū Juhaym said that the Mes-
senger of God told: “This Koran has been sent down in seven modes, thus do
not have a dispute on the Qur’an; disputing on it is blasphemy.”80

Or according to ʿAbd al-Razzāq/Maʿmar/Qatāda/Ubayy: “I disagreed with a

Companion of the Messenger of God on a verse (of the Qurʾan), and we took our
case before the Messenger of God.” Muhammad let each of them recite the verse
and said to them: “each of you (has recited) good and well (kilākumā muḥsinun
mujmalun).” Ubayy is very surprised by this answer. When the Qurʾan was sent
down to Muhammad it was proposed to him that it could be in one mode or two,
then in two or three, and so until he reached seven modes. Then he said:

All of them are comprehensive and satisfactory (valid)81 (kulluhā shāfin

kāfin), so long as you do not confound a verse of mercy with a verse of

78 Hishām b. Ḥakīm b. Ḥizām b. Ḫuwaylid b. Asad al-Qurašī al-Asadī.

79 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, XI: 218–219, no. 20369; Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 66, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, 5, in
Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ, IX: 23, no. 4992, trans. Khan, VI: 428, slightly modified by us.
80 Abū ʿUbayd, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān: 202, no. 52 (8); Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, I: 43–44, no. 41.
81 “Comprehensive and satisfactory (valid),” trans. of Nasser, Transmission, 22, n. 80.
122 Claude Gilliot
punishment, or vice versa. If it is mighty, wise (ʿazīz ḥakīm), and you say all-
hearing, omniscient (samīʿ ʿalīm), indeed God is all-hearing, omniscient.82

2.3.2.3.

In direct relation with the theme of the seven (or other numbers) modes of the
Qurʾan is the topos of Muhammad’s bargaining with Gabriel. It features in several
versions followed by an explanation or illustration attributed to Muhammad, e.g.,
in a tradition transmitted by the Companion Abū Bakr/Muhammad:

Gabriel said: “Recite (iqraʾū or iqraʾ) the Qurʾan in one mode.” But the
Archangel Michael said: “Ask him for more (istazidhu).” Muḥammad said:
“in two modes.” Until he reached six or seven modes. Muḥammad said: “All
of them are comprehensive and satisfactory (valid), so long as you do not
confound a verse of mercy with a verse of punishment, or vice versa, as you
might say, ‘let’s go,’ or ‘let’s be off’ (ka-qawlika: halumma wa taʿāla).”83

Several traditions with the same topos of the bargaining with the angel are also
transmitted from several Companions, such as Ibn ʿAbbās and84 Ubayy b. Kaʿb.85

2.3.2.4.

Another tradition in relation with the topos of the seven modes (aḥruf) contained
an apologetic comparison between the revelation of “the first book” (or “the first
books,” in some reports) and that of the Qurʾan: Salama b. a. Salama b. ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf/his father (Abū Salama)/Ibn Masʿūd:

The first book came down from one gate according to one mode, but the
Qurʾān came down from seven gates according to seven modes: prohibiting
and commanding (zājir wa-āmir), lawful and unlawful, univocal (or clear)
and ambiguous, and parables.86 Therefore consider lawful what is lawful
(fa-aḥillū ḥalālahu), refrain from what is prohibited, practice what you have
been ordered to do, refrain from what has been forbidden to you (wa-ntahaū
ʿammā nuhitum bihi), learn from its parables, act in accordance with what is

82 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, XI, 219–220, no. 20371.

83 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, I: 42, no. 40, and 50, no. 47. Some expressions of this translation are borrowed from
Burton, Collection, 149.
84 Ṭabarī, I: 29, no. 19; Gilliot, “Les sept ‘lectures’ I,” 61; cf. Goldfeld, “Development,” 22; Mus-
lim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 6, Ṣalāt al-musāfirīn wa-qaṣrihā, cap. 47, I: 561, no. 819 (272); al-Qāḍī, ʿIyāḍ, Ikmāl
al-Muʿlim bi-fawāʾid Muslim, ed. Yaḥyā Ismāʿīl, 9 vols. (Mansourah: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1419/1998),
III: 187.
85 Ṭabarī, I: 40, no. 35; Gilliot, “Les Sept ‘lectures II’,” 62; cf. Ibn Ḥibbān, Ṣaḥīḥ, III: 11–12, no. 737;
13, no. 738; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, V: 122/XV: 423, no. 21301.
86 Till here apud Gilliot, “Traditional Disciplines of Qurʾānic Studies,” 321a.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 123
clear and definitve, have faith in what is ambiguous, and say: “We believe
therein; the whole is from our Lord.”
(Q 3:7)87

According to Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933), in the opinion of the scholars
specialized in the science of the chains of authorities this tradition is not well
established because Abū Salama88 never encountered Ibn Masʿūd.89 Ṭaḥāwī is
followed in that by Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463/1071).90 But such was not the opinion
of al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (d. 405/1014), who, contrary to Ṭaḥāwī, considered it a
sound prophetical tradition.91 But be that as it may, the apologetic function of this
kind of report is evident. The ancient Muslims wanted to persuade themselves and
the others that their Qurʾan was richer, more complete, more perfect than the pre-
vious revelations. But in doing so they showed that this Qurʾan borrowed many
elements from the “ancient books.”

3. Possible non-Islamic origins or sources for the topos of the

seven modes or ways (ḥarf-s) of the Qurʾan
The number seven played a very important role in antiquity. It was sacred to
Semitic and other peoples. Like the Sumerians, the biblical writers used it to indi-
cate a very large figure. It also has an innate mystic power.92 The symbolic and
mystic value of this figure continued to be used in the syncretism of Late Antiq-
uity, as well as in Jewish Christianity, Christianity, and Manichaeism, which con-
stitute the soil of nascent Islam and the “the Arabic lectionary” called al-Qurʾan
(borrowed from Syriac qeryane).

3.1.
A possible origin for the topos of the seven modes or ways (ḥarfs) according to
which the Qurʾan “has been sent down” in the Islamic theological representation
could be the seven exegetical precepts (middot) of Pharisaic Judaism ascribed
to Hillel (fl. 10 BCE–10 CE) which “express contemporary Greek methods in

87 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I: 68, no. 67; Ibn Ḥibbān, Ṣaḥīḥ, III: 20–21, no. 745; cf. Goldfeld,
“Development,” 20–21.
88 Abū Salama b. ʿAbd Raḥmān b. ʿAwf al-Qurashī al-Zuhrī al-Madanī, d. 94 ou 104.
89 Ṭaḥāwī, Mushkil al-āthār (Hyderabad, 1333/1904, uncomplete edition, less than half the work),
IV, 184–85/Sharḥ mushkil al-āthār [or Bayān mushkil ḥadīth rasūl Allāh, the same author and the
same work as the previous, but in a complete and better edition], ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ (Beirut:
Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1415/1994), VIII: 115, no. 3102.
90 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Tamhīd, VIII, 274–276.
91 Ḥākim Nīsābūrī, al-Mustadrak ʿalā l-Ṣaḥīḥayn fī l-ḥadīth, M. ʿArab b. M. Ḥusayn et al.
(Hyderabad, 1334–42/1915–23), I: 553.
92 Israel Abraham, “Numbers, Typical and Important,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Fred
Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, 22 vols. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), vol. 15,
333–337, five 335a, seven 335a-b.
124 Claude Gilliot
rhetoric and Roman rules in Jurisprudence.”93 But the relationship between both
seems flimsy and difficult to accept because the precepts of Hillel dealt originally
more with interpretation than with revelation.

3.2. Seven voices, seventy tongues, and the Islamic topos of the seven
modes
In the Midrash Tanḥuma (ca. 380) 26c, we find the following statement:

the ten commandments were promulgated with a single sound, and yet it
says: “All the people perceived the voices (wə-ḵāl hā-’ām rō’îm ‘eṯ- haq-
qōlōṯ)” (Ex 20, 18); this shows that when the voice went forth it was divided
into seven voices and then went into seventy tongues, and people received the
law in their own language.94

Because the biblical God speaks with a human voice: “When the voice of the
trumpet (qōl haš-šōp̄ ār) sounded long (hōlêḵ) and became louder (wə-ḥāzêq),
greatly Moses spoke (mə’ōḏ mōšeh yəḏabbêr) and God answered him by a voice
(wə-hā-’ĕlōhîm ya’ănen-nū ḇə-qōl)” (Ex 19:19), that is heard by people according
to their ability, God’s revelatory voice had an inexhaustible fullness of meanings
and messages,95 a fecunditas sensus. This idea is clearly and classically formu-
lated in the tractate Shabbat in the Babylonian Talmud (B. Shabbat 88b):

R. Yohanan (bar Nappaha, or bar Nafcha, “son of the blacksmith,” d. in 3rd

century C.E., or in 279)96 said: What does it mean when it is written, “The
Lord sends forth his word, great is the multitudes of messengers” (Ps 68:12)?
Each individual word that came forth from the mouth of the Power (God)
separated into seventy tonges. In the school of Rabbi Ishmael (ben Elisha)97
it is taught: “(Is not my word like fire, says the Lord) and like a hammer
that breaks a rock in pieces?” (Jer 23: 29).98 As (a rock) is shattered into so

93 Goldfeld, “Development,” 9. On these middot, see Hermann Leberecht Strack and Günter Stem-
berger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2nd printing, 1996), 16–20; Gilliot, Exégèse, langue et théologie en islam, 124–125.
94 Gerald Hovenden, Speaking in Tongues, The New Testament evidence (London, Sheffield Aca-
demic Press, 2002), 85.
95 Erich Zenger, “ ‘If you listen to my voice . . .’ (Exodus 19:5). The mystery of revelation,” in The
Bible as Human Witness of Divine Revelation. Hearing the Word of God through Historically Dis-
similar Traditions, ed. Randall Heskett and Brian Irwin (New York: T. and T. Clark. A Continuum
Imprint, 2010), 25.
96 Wilhelm, Bacher, Die Agada de palestinensischen Amoräer, I, Vom Abschluß der Mischna bis
zum Tode Jochanans (220 bis 279, nach der gew. Zeitrechnung) (Straßburg i. E.: Karl J. Trübner,
1892), 205–339, no. X.
97 He was a Tanna of the second or third generation, ca. 90–135, CE. See Wilhelm Bacher, Die
Agada der Tannaiten, I, Von Hillel bis Akiba. Von 30 bis 135 . . ., zweite verbesserte und vermehrte
Auflage (Straßburg, Verlag von Karl J. Trübner, 1903), 232–263, no. XI.
98 Hălōw ḵōh ḏəḇārî kā’êš? nə’um- Yahweh.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 125
many fragments (by the) hammer, so also every word that came forth from
the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be he, separated into seventy tongues
(leshonot).99

According to Shemoth Rabbah XXVIII: Rabbi Yohanan said: “Each voice was
divided into seven voices, and they were divided into seventy tongues.”100 The
words of Rabbi Yohanan are frequently quoted in various forms, v.g.: “The (one)
voice (at Sinai) divided into (seven voices and these into) seventy languages (so
that all the nations hear in their own language).” However, the link between Pen-
tecost and Sinai is not documented before the second century and Rabbi Yohannan
(who died in 279).101 Or according to somebody else: “All Ten Words [Command-
ments] were spoken superhumanly with a single utterance. It is said that all the
words in the Torah were spoken with a single word (dibbur) (i.e. each one by
itself).”102
For Azzan Yadin:

The phonetic similarity of ʾelim (gods) and ʾilmim (mute ones) generates
the comparison between the mutenes of the idols and God’s speech. The
Me­khilta contrasts the silent “gods” (or idols) that stand below humanity
in speech capacity, and the superabundant speech of God, who “speaks two
statements (devarim) in a single saying (dibbur), which is impossible for
human beings.”103

In the Mekhilta to Exodus 15:11:

“Who is like you, O Lord, among the Gods” (mi kamoka ba-elim, Ex 15:
11): Who like you among those whom others call gods, in whom there is no
substance, and of whom it is said: “They have mouths and cannot speak (Ps
115: 5: peh la-hem we-lo yedabberu).” They have mouths and cannot speak,
but he who spoke and created the world is not thus, rather the Holy One
blessed be He speaks two statements (devarim) in a single saying (dibbur),

99 Zenger, art. cit., 25; cf. Nikolaus Adler, Das erste christliche Pfingstfest. Sinn und Bedeutung des
Pfingstsberichtes Apg 2, 1–13 (Münster, 1938), 50–51 (German translation from Hebrew); Paul
Fiebig, Rabbinische Wundergeschichten des Neutestamentichen Zeitalters (Bonn, 1911), 21, no.
15 (Hebrew text).
100 Charles Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Cambridge, 1877), 123/Second ed. with additional
notes (Cambridge, 1897), 109.
101 James D. G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making, II, Beginning from Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans Publishing, 2009), 161.
102 According to Yalqut, in Taylor, ibid. Reinhard Neudecker, The Voice of God on Mount Sinai. Rab-
binic Commentaries on Exodus 20: 1 in the Light of Sufi and Zen-Buddhist Texts, 4th revised ed.
(Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2012), 55.
103 Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos. Rabbi Ishmael and the origin of Midrash (Philadelphia: Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, 2004), 72; cf. Jacob Zallel Lauterbach, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael.
A Critical Edition, Based on the Manuscripts and Early Editions, 2 vols., 1933 (Philadelphia:
JPS Classic reissue, 2004), Tractate Shirata chap. VIII, 208, on Exodus 15: 11.
126 Claude Gilliot
which is impossible for human beings, as it is written: “One thing God has
spoken, two things have I heard (Ps 62: 12: ahath dibber elohim shetayim
zu shamaʿeti),” “Behold, my word is like fire (Jer 23: 29: halow koh debari
ka-ʾesh),” and it is further written: “and a sound come out of his mouth (Jb
37: 2: we he-ḡeh mip-piw yêṣê).”104

3.3. The seven voices in the Psalms, and the Islamic topos of the
seven modes
It will come as no surprise that the Psalms are mentioned on this matter because
Muhammad and the group who helped him to become a prophet focused their
attention particularly on the Psalms. Not only did they place them on the same
level as the Torah in the Qurʾan, but many passages of the Qurʾan recall the
Psalms in their style, movement, and content.105 Hartwig Hirschfeld (1854–1934)
has rightly written: “After the Pentateuch [. . .] Muḥammmad had focused above
all his attention on the Psalms. His acquaintance with them is just as old as that
with the Pentateuch.”106
The first Psalm which has been related to our subject is Psalm 29 (Vulgata 28:
Afferte Domino filii Dei). In Sefer ha-Bahir, also called the Midrash of Rabbi
Neḥunya ben Ha-Ķana, also named Neḥunya ha-Gadol, a tanna (repeater, reciter,
sage) of the first and second centuries,107 we find it in “The Seven Voices of the
Sefiroth.” Rabbi Amorai (perhaps Neḥunya ha-Gadol himself) said:

What is the meaning of the verse (Exodus 20:15): “And all the people saw
the voices.” These are the voices regarding which King David spoke. It is
thus written (Psalm 29:3), “The voice of God is upon the waters, the God of
glory thunders” [This is the first voice.] [The second voice is] (Psalm 29:4),
“The voice of God comes in strength.” Regarding this it is written (Isaiah
10:13), “By the strength of my hand have I done it.” It is likewise written
(Isaiah 48:13), “Also My Hand has founded the earth.” [The third voice is]
(Psalm 29:4), “The voice of God is with majesty.” It is also written (Psalm
111:3), “Splendor and majesty are His works, His righteousness stands for-
ever.” [The fourth voice is] (Psalm 29:5), “God’s voice breaks the cedars.”
This is the bow that breaks the cypress and cedar trees. [The fifth voice is]
(Psalm 29:7), “God’s voice draws out flames of fire.” This is what makes

104  Yadin, Scripture as Logos, 72.

105 See Gilliot, “Rétrospectives et perspectives. De quelques sources possibles du Coran mecquois,”
in Perspectives on Islamic Culture. Essays in honour of Emilio G. Platti, ed. Bert Brockaert et al.
(Louvain and Paris: Peeters, 2013), 33–35, references to Hartwig Neuwirth.
106 Hirschfeld, Beiträge zur Erklärung des Korân (Leipzig: O. Schulze, 1886), 27; Walid A. Saleh,
“The Psalms in the Qurʾān and the Islamic Religious Imagination,” in The Oxford Handbook of
the Psalms, ed. William O. Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 281–296.
107 Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten, I, 54–56, no. 5, sub Nechunja b. Hakana.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 127
peace between water and fire. It draws out the power of the fire and prevents
it from evaporating the water. It also prevents [the water] from extinguishing
it. [The sixth voice is] (Psalm 29:8), “God’s voice shakes the desert.” It is
thus written (Psalm 18:51) “He does kindness to his Messiah, to David and
his descendants until eternity” more than [when Israel was] in the desert.
[The seventh voice is] (Psalm 29:9), “God’s voice makes hinds to calf, strips
the forests bare, and in His Temple, all say Glory.” It is thus written (Song of
Songs 2:7) “I bind you with an oath, O daughters of Jerusalem, with the hosts,
or with the hinds of the field.” This teaches us that the Torah was given with
seven voices. In each of them the Master of the Universe revealed Himself
to them, and they saw Him. It is thus written, “And all the people saw the
voices.”108

The Zohar also mentions the seven voices in Psalm 29, and Rabbi Jose explained
them in the following way:

“The voice of the Lord is on the waters”; this is Abraham. “The voice of the
Lord is in strength”; this is Isaac. “The voice of the Lord is in beauty”; this is
Jacob. “The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars”; this is Netzah (Victory).
“The voice of the Lord heweth flames of fire”; this is Hod (Majesty). “The
voice of the Lord causeth the wilderness to tremble”; this is Zaddik (Righ­
teous One). And all bring blessings on to the world from the replenishment,
which they themselves receive. On all other days of the year these Seven are
roused to activity by the prayer of men’s mouth, but on this day it depends
on action, and we require action, because at this season the whole year is
blessed.109

A second psalm got the attention of ancient Jewish scholars. They pointed out
the parallelism of Psalm 150 (Vulgata: Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus) with a
quote preserved in the last mishnah of Seder Kodashim. This psalm praises God
in “seven voices” (Ps. 150:3–9):

Praise Him with blasts of the shofar. Praise Him with harp and lyre. Praise
Him with drum and dance. Praise Him with flutes and pipe. Praise Him with
wailing cymbals. Praise Him with wailing cymbals. The entire soul shall
praise God.

108 Sefer ha-Bahir: Bahir. The Illumination, attributed to Nehunia ben haKana, master of the first-
century esoteric school, Translation, Introduction and Commentary by Aryeh Kaplan (York
Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1989), 15–16, no. 45.
109 Zohar 3:31b, The Zohar, trans. Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon (London: The Soncino Press,
1978), IV, 386.
128 Claude Gilliot
Rabbi Yehoshua (ben Hananya, leading tanna of the first half-century)110 said:

This is what they [the sages] referred to when they said, “When it [the ram]
is alive it has one voice. And when it is dead it has seven. How is it that it
has seven voices? Its two horns are two trumpets [shofars]; its two thighs,
two flutes; its skin, for a drum; its intestine, for harps; its small intestines for
lyres”. And some say: “Even its wool is for tekhelet.”111

4. The Imāmī Shīʿa and the tradition of the seven “modes”

The Imāmī Shīʿa, especially the “rationalists” (uṣūliyya), also discuss the Sunnī
way of interpreting these traditions, but early Shīʿism and the group of those who
were called later “traditionists/traditionalists” (akhbāriyya)112 reject the theme of
the seven aḥruf, in accordance with their doctrine of the falsification of the Qurʾan
by the Companions.113 They use as their authority a declaration attributed to Jaʿfar
al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765):

I (al-Fuḍayl b. Yasār) said to Abū ʿAbd Allāh (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq) “People say
that the Qurʾan was revealed according to seven variants (aḥruf)” He said:
“[No! These] enemies of God lied, for [it is revealed] by God according to
one version (lākinnahu nazala ʿalā ḥarfin wāḥidin min ʿindi l-wāḥidi).”114

In another tradition of Abū Jaʿfar (Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Bāqir, d. 115/733 or

119/737): “The Qurʾan is one (al-Qurʾānu wāḥidun), it has been revealed by
one God, the origin of the difference [between the versions] goes back to the
transmitters.”115

110 Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten, I, 155–187, no. VIII; Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to
the Talmud and Midrash, 70.
111 Mishnah, Kinnim 3:6. Tekhelet was the wildly popular and precious sky-blue dye derived from a
most unlikely source, the digestive gland of a tiny sea-snail (chilazon)! It is mandated that in each
corner of the prayer shawl (tallit) there be a thread of blue, which was made from an expansive
dye extracted from a sea-snail (Menachot, 42 b); Ronald L. Eisenberg, What the Rabbis Said
(Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 241; Rabbi Chaim E. Twerski, “Identifying the Chila-
zon,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 34 (Fall 1997): 77–102: the chilazon was
perhaps the murex trunculus.
112 Mohammed-Ali Amir-Moezzi et Christian Jambet, Qu’est-ce que le shī’isme? (Paris: Fayard,
2004), 222–223.
113 Nasser, Transmission, 31–33; Sayyārī, K. al-Qirāʾāt, ed. Etan Kohlberg and M. Ali Amir-Moezzi,
Revelation and falsification (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 56, n. 2.
114 Kulaynī, M. b. Yaʿqūb, al-Uṣūl min al-Kāfī, ed. Alī Akbar al-Ġaffārī, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1381/1961),
II: 636 no. 13; Meir Mkha’el Bar-Asher, “Variants readings and additions of the Imāmī-Šīʿa to the
Qurʾān,” IOS XIII (1993): 48 (39–74).
115 Ibid., no. 12.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 129
5. From the “faces” or “aspects” (Wajh, pl. Ahwjuh, Wujūh)
of the Qurʾan to the apologetics on the “theophany of
meaning”116

5.1. Examining some sources concerning the wujūh al-Qurʾān and

the ambiguity of that notion
The Muslim theologians, philologists, and Muslim scholars in general, consider
that the so-called “variety of explanatory possibilities”117 of a word or a verse of
the Qurʾan is a proof of the superiority of this book. This theological point of view
is well expressed by the geographer, traveller, and man of letters (adīb) Shams al-
Din al-Muqaddasī (ob. ca. 380/990): “The more we give multiple meanings to the
[words of the] Qurʾan, the better it is (kullamā ḥamalnā l-Qurʾāna ‘alā fawāʾida
kathīratin kāna aḥsana).”118
Ignaz Goldziher has pointed out a relatively early locution applied to the Qurʾan
and its exegesis: The Qurʾan is dhū wujūhin, that is, “the Qurʾān has (se­veral
or many) faces,” it has “many facets,” it is ambiguous (vieldeutig).119 The same
author called attention to the proximity of wujūh in this context to the Tannaitic
panim (faces, interpretations, Auffasungsarten). Concerning panim, Wilhelm
Bacher remarks that it has been also used later “to denote the ambiguity of the
Bible text,”120 which has been also the case for wajh and wujūh, but early in Islam,
as we will see.
The alleged richness of interpretation of the Qurʾan is seen has having its ori-
gins in “superiority” of the Qurʾanic text itself. Thus, according to ʿAbd al-Razzāq
(b. Hammām al-Ṣanʿānī, d. 197/812)/Maʿmar121/Ayyūb122/Abū Qilāba (d. between
104/722 and 107/725)/Abū al-Dardāʾ (d. 32/652): “You will not be fully versed

116 Mohyddin Yahia, Šāfiʿī et les deux sources de la loi islamique (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 350,
with reference to Wansbrough, QS: 6.
117 Goldziher, Richtungen: 84.
118 Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm [Descriptio imperii moslemici . . .], ed. M. J.
de Goeje (Lugduni Batavorum: E.J. Brill, 1906), 187, l. 14. We do not agree with André Miquel,
La Meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces (Damascus: IFEAD, 1963): “plus on
tire d’enseignements du Coran, et mieux cela vaut.” Fawāʾid in the context has not this significa-
tion, but has to do with the “richness” of each word, in this religious imaginaire on the Qurʾan.
See Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society Trust, 1984), II: 2470c:
“Hence, Utility as expressive of a meaning, or as contributing to the expression thereof, or as
adding to a meaning previously expressed, of a word or phrase. And hence, A meaning, or an
import, of a word or phrase.”
119 Goldziher, Richtungen, 84–85.
120 Bacher, Exegetische Terminologie, I: 151, and n. 2: “um die Vieldeutigkeit des Bibeltextes zu
bezeichnen,” II; 157–158.
121 Maʿmar b. Rāshid, d. Ramaḍān 153/inc. 28 August 770.
122 al-Sakhtiyānī b. a. Taymiyya Kaysān al-Baṣrī, d. 131/748.
130 Claude Gilliot
in theology and law until you realize that the Qurʾan has many aspects/meanings
(facets) (lan tafqaha kulla l-fiqhi ḥattā tarā li-l-Qurʾāni wujūhan kathīratan).”123
According to Zarkashī, followed by Suyūṭī, an equivalent statement is attri­
buted to Muhammad by the exegete Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) in a “raised
ḥadīth” (ḥadīth marfūʿ),124 that is (given as) going back to the Prophet, but inter-
rupted (munqaṭiʿ) because there is no Companion in the chain of authorities
between Muqātil and the Prophet.
Indeed, Ḥātim Ṣālih al-Ḍāmin’s valuable edition of Muqātil’s al-Wujūh wa-l-
naẓāʾir fī l-Qurʾān begins with the following tradition (from MS 2018 of the
ʿUnayza National Library, dated 546 AH, first page, after the title page). (The
other ms. used for this edition is: MS Tokapi Sarayi, Emanet Hazinesi 2050):125

Ḥaddatha Abū Ṣāliḥ Hudhayl b. Ḥabīb126 ʿan Muqātil b. Sulaymān, and

ʿAmmār b. a. ʿĀmir (?)/his father/Muqātil, and Abū Nuṣayr/Ismāʿīl b.
‘Ayyāsh127/Muqātil, who raised it (i.e. the hadith) to the Prophet, who said:
“Nobody is fully versed in theology and law, until (lā yakūnu l-rajulu faqīhan
ḥattā) he realizes that the Qurʾan has many aspects/meanings.”

Excursus on the identification of Abū Nus.ayr

(or Abū Nas.r):128

He could be 1) Abū Nuṣayr Saʿdān b. Saʿīd al-Balkhī. He was during 13 years

Muqātil’s pupil.129 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, or perhaps his editor, have: Abū Naṣr.130
2) Or he could be Abū Naṣr Manṣūr b. ʿAbd al-Ḥāmid al-Bāwardī, also Muqātil’s

123 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, XI: 255, no. 20473; Ibn Saʿd, Biographien Muhammeds, seiner
Gefährten . . . [Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr], ed. E. Sachau et al., ii, 9 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1905–
40), II 2: 114/ al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār ṣādir, 1957–59), II: 357: innaka lan
tafqaha . . .; al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, al-Muttafiq wa l-muftariq, ed. M. Ṣādiq Āydin al-Ḥāmidī
(1417/1997), 1053, no. 648: lā yaqahu l-ʿabdu kulla l-fiqhi . . .; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Jāmiʿ bayān
al-ʿilm wa faḍlih, ed. Abū l-Ashbāl al-Zuhrī, 2 vols. (Dammam: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1414/1994),
812–814, nos. 1515–1518.
124 Zarkashī, Burhān, cap. 4, I: 103: “At the beginning of his book Muqātil quotes a raised ḥadīth:
‘Nobody is fully versed in theology and law, until (lā yakūnu l-rajulu faqīhan ḥattā) he realizes
that the Qurʾān has many aspects/meanings;’ ” Suyūṭī, Itqān, chap. 39, II: 144.
125 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, al-Wuğūh wa al-naẓāʾir, ed. Ḥātim Ṣālih al-Ḍāmin (Dubai: Markaz Jumʿa
al-Mājid, 1427/2006), 19.
126 Al-Dandānī, d. 190/805, in Baghdad; TB, XIV: 78–79, n. 7431.
127 Abū ʿUtba Ismāʿīl b. ʿAyyāsh al-ʿAnsī al-Ḥimṣī al-Azraq, d. 181/797; Mizzī, II: 207–218, no.
466; TT, I: 321–326.
128 See, Nabia Abbott, Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, II (Qur’ānic Commentary and Tradition)
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 95–97.
129 Dhahabī, al-Muqtanā fī sard al-kunā, ed. M. Ṣāliḥ ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Murād, 2 vols. (Medina:
Islamic University, 1408/1987), II: 112, no. 2601; Mizzī, XVIII: 340, l. 5 and 18–19 (notice on
Muqātil).
130 TB, XIII, 162, l. 19–20 (notice on Muqātīl) Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān, VI: 97, no. 338 (notice on Saʿdān).
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 131
pupil, known for having transmitted the tafsīr from him (ʿurifa bi-riwāyatihi
l-tafsīr ʿan Muqātil, according to Ibn ʿAdī (d. 365/967).131
In the margin of the MS. Umumi 561 used by Shiḥāta (who has erroneously
Umumi 516) for his edition Muqātil’s al-Wujūh wa-l-naẓāʾir fī l-Qurʾān (called
erroneously in some manuscripts al-Ashbāh wa-l-naẓāʾir fī l-Qurʾān), the follo­
wing information is given: “This is what Abū Naṣr has composed (i.e. edited)
from the Wujūh al-Qurʾān extracted by Muqātil b. Sulaymān (mimmā allafa Abū
Naṣr min wujūh al-Qurʾān ʿan Muqātil b. Sulaymān mimmā stakhraja).132
Perhaps we could consider that 1) Abū Nusayr (or Abū Naṣr) in the above chan-
nel of transmission of the hadith concerning the many meanings of the Qurʾan,
and the editor of the Wujūh al-Qurʾān or Wujūh ḥarf al-Qurʾān could be Abū
Nuṣayr (or Abū Naṣr) Saʿdān b. Saʿīd al-Balkhī, whereas 2) Abū Naṣr (or Abū
Nuṣāyr) Manṣūr b. ʿAbd al-Ḥāmid al-Bāwardī (from Abīward in northern Kho-
rasan; Abīvard) could be considered as one of the transmitters of Muqātil’s Tafsīr,
in the eastern (Khorasanian/Iranian) lost version (the extant, edited version being
that of Baghdad).133 [end of excursus]
The ambiguity which can result from the alleged fecunditas sensus of the
Qurʾanic words and phrases, or the Qurʾanic text per se, appears particularly in
the disputes between the different “religious and political groups of opposition”
(firaq) in early Islam, as in the following narrative:

Dāwūd b. al-Ḥuṣayn134/ʿIkrima: “I heard Ibn ʿAbbās speaking to ʿAbd

Allāh b. Ṣafwān135 about the Khawārij who rejected the arbitration (ankarū
l-ḥukāmata), and they separated themselves from ʿAlī b. A. Ṭālib, they were
12 000. ʿAlī appealed to me: ʻGo to them, fight them and call them to the
Book and the Sunna (idhhab ilayhim, fa-khaṣimhum wa dʿuhum ilā l-kitābi
wa-l-sunnati), do not dispute with them with the Book because it has dif-
ferent aspects (or meanings) (wa-lā tuḥājjahum bi-l-Qurʾāni, fa-innahu
dhū wujūhin); but dispute with them with the Sunna (wa-lākin khāṣimhum
bi-l-sunnati).”136

131 Mizzī, XVIII: 340, l. 9–10 (notice on Muqātil): Abū Naṣr; Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, VIII, 130 no. 1880,
on Bāwardī, but in the edition: Abū Nuṣayr.
132 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, al-Ashbāh wa-l-naẓāʾir fī l-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAl. Maḥmūd Shiḥāta (Cairo:
al-Hayʾa al-miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1395/1975), 89.
133 On Baghdadian and Iranian version, see. Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3.
Jahrhundert Hidschra, 6 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991–97), II: 519–522.
134 ʿĪsā b. ʿAlqama Abū Sulaymān al-Umawī, mawlāhum, al-Madanī; Dhahabī, Siyar, VI: 106.
135 ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṣafwān b. Umayya b. Khalaf al-Qurashī al-Jumaḥī Mizzī, X, 234–236, no. 3325,
killed with ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr in 73/692.
136 Ibn Saʿd, K. al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, ed. ʿAbd Allāh M. ʿUmar, 11 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī,
1421/2001), VI: 339, (notice on Ibn ʿAbbās) with other versions; Suyūṭī, Miftāḥ al-janna fī
l-iḥtijāj bi-l-sunna (Cairo: Idārat al-ṭibāʿa al-munīriyya, 1347/1928), 41–42; cf. Goldziher, Intro-
duction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. Andreas and Ruth Hamori (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981), 38.
132 Claude Gilliot
In the same context, in another tradition, the remark of ʿAlī is attributed to Ibn
ʿAbbās with some important variants in the wording: Yaḥyā b. ʿAl. al-Bābluttī (d.
218/833)137/al-Awzāʿī (d. 157/774) said:

A group of “people of passions” (ahl al-ahwāʾ) disputed with (khāṣama

nafarun min ahli l-ahwāʾi) ʿAlī b. a. Ṭālib, and Ibn ʿAbbās told him: “O
Abū l-Ḥasan the Qurʾan is easy (dhalūl subservient, submissive);138 it
can be interpreted in various ways and has different aspects (meanings)
(ḥamūlun dhū wujūhin); dispute with them the sunna; they cannot lie on the
sunna.”139

Our translation of dhalūl as “easy” is based on the understanding of Muslim

scholars like al-Zarkashī for whom this adjective can be explained in two ways.

Firstly, the Qurʾan is easy (docile, obedient) for those who know it by heart
(annahu muṭīʿun li-ḥamilīhi), it is pronounced by their tongues (yunṭaqu bi-
alsinatihim). Secondly, it explains its significations (innahu muwaḍḍiḥun
li-maʿānīhi), so that the brains of those who make efforts are not unable to
understand it (ḥattā lā taqṣura ʿanhu afhām al-mujtahidīn).140

Such statements became a kind of topos, probably introduced later in favour of

those who have been called the “people of the sunna” or “people of the hadith,”
as a reaction against the Muʿtazilī, or other groups, for instance, in the following
dictum, here a vaticinium ex eventu, attributed to ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb: ʿUmar b.
ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ashajj/ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb said:

People will come who will dispute with you—I think he said: “with ambigu-
ous (words passages) of the Qurʾan” (aḥsabuhu qāla: bi-l-mushtabih mina
l-Qurʾāni)—dispute with them with traditions (of the Prophet and his Com-
panions) (fa-jādilūhum bi-l-sunani), because people of the traditions (aṣḥāb
al-sunan) are more learned in the book of God (aʿlamu bi-kitābi Llāh).141

137 Abū Saʿīd Yaḥyā b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḍaḥḥāk al-Ḥarrānī al-Bābluttī; Samʿānī, Ansāb, I, 243–244;
Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, IX, 118–119, no. 2151; Dhahabī, Mīzān, IV, 390–391, no. 9563.
138 Cf. Q 67: 15: huwa lladhī jaʿala lakumu l-arḍa dhalūlan (“he is Who hath made the earth sub-
servient,” trans. Pickthall).
139 Khaṭīb Baghdādī, K. al-Faqīh wa-l-mutafaqqih, ed. Abū ʿAr. ʿĀdil b. Yūsuf al-ʿAzzāzī, 2nd ed.,
2 vols. (al-Dammān: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1421/2001), I: 560, no. 609.
140 Zarkashī, Burhān, chap. 41, II: 163; Suyūṭī, Itqān, chap. 78, IV: 211.
141 Baghdādī, K. al-Faqīh wa-l-mutafaqqih, I, 559–60, no. 608; ʿAbd al-Barr, Jāmiʿ bayān al-ʿilm
wa faḍlih, II: 123, l. 18–22/ed. al-Zuhrī, 1010, no. 1927: which has: fa-khudhūhum bi-l-sunan
(admonish them with the traditions); Baghawī, Sharḥ al-sunna, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ and M.
Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh, 16 vols. (Damascus: al-Maktab al-islāmī, 1390–1401/1971–80), I: 202: [. . .]:
yaʾkhudūnakum bi-shubuhāti (the dubious issues) l-Qurʾāni, fa-khudhūhum bi-l-sunani; Goldzi-
her, Richtungen, 84–85, 257–258.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 133
We could deduce from such narratives, and from many others, that the semantic
“richness” (leg.: Vieldeutigkeit, ambiguity)142 of the Qurʾanic vocabulary can be
in certain cases a disadvantage, diminishing rather than increasing precision in
meaning. Let us come back to dhalūl, which, when applied to the Qurʾan, poses
some problems for Muslim scholars. This adjective features in another tradition:

Muḥammad b. Makhlad b. Ḥafṣ,143 by way of dictation from his book . . ./

ʿAmr b. Dīnār (al-Makkī, d. beginning 126)144/Ibn ʿAbbās/Messenger of
God: “I have been given the concise comprehensive speech145 and the hadith
has been much condensed for me (uʿṭītu jawāmiʿa al-kalim wa khtuṣira lī
l-ḥadīthu khtiṣāran).”146 At the end of this tradition, al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dāraquṭnī
continues in the following way: “And with his chain of authorities, he said:
The Messenger of God has said: ‘the Qurʾan is submissive (dhalūl), it has dif-
ferent aspects (meanings, dhū wujūhin), give it the best meanings (fa-ḥmilūhu
ʿalā aḥsani wujūhihi).’ ”

This hadith is considered weak by the Muslim scholars.147 Nevertheless, its

apologetic character does make it of interest, as the “good qualities,” the shamāʾil
of Muhammad, are here again connected to dhalūl.
The Arabic adjective dhalūl in this context seems an old evidence of the great
period of Midrashic interpretation. The “inquiring” (darash) into the text is nec-
essary. If the text is not explicit enough, it has to be made so. “If a verse did not,
on the ‘face’ of it deal with a certain problem or subject, these matters had to be
searched for and ‘found,’ i.e. ‘uncovered’ from under the surface of the words’
phrasing.”148 In the Old Testament “inquiring” and “researching” (darash) are
often put in connection with “finding:” Gn. 11:2: māṣā, “he found;” Deut. 4:29:
ū-māṣāṯā ki ṯiḏrəšennū: “and you shall find if you seek him.”149

142 Goldziher, Richtungen, 84–85, 257–258.

143 Muḥammad b. Makhlad b. Ḥafṣ al-Baghdādī Aṭṭar al-Khaḍīb, m. jum. II 331; Dhahabī, Siyar
aʾlām al-nubalāʾ, XV, 256–257; TB, III: 310–311.
144 Mizzī, XIV, 211–215, no. 4944.
145 Considered in general by the commentators as the Qurʾan and its language; Zabīdī, Tāj, XX:
461b, s.r. k-l-m; Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, I: 458b, s.r. j-m-ʿ.
146 Dāraquṭnī, Sunan al-Dāraquṭnī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Hāšim al-Yamāni al-Madanī, 4 vols. in 2 (Medina
and Caire: Dār al-Maḥāsin li-l-ṭibāʿa, 1386/1966), IV: 144–145/ (3 vols., ed. Ādil A. ʿAbd
al-Mawğūd and ʿAlī M. Muʿawwaḍ, Beyrouth, Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1422/2001), III: 378, no. 4199.
147 Albānī, M. Nāṣir al-Dīn, Silsilat al-aḥādīth al-ḍaʿīfa al-mawḍūʿa wa-atharuhā l-sayyiʾ fī l-umma,
14 vols. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1412–25/1992–2012), III: 127, no. 1036.
148 Meir Gertner, “Terms of Scriptural Interpretation. A Study in Hebrew Semantics,” BSOAS 25
(1962): 5 (1–27).
149 Numerous examples apud Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament
Scriptures, trans. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1857), CCC-
CXCIX-D/Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch . . . (in Verbindung mit Prof. Dr. H.
Zimmern et al., bearbeitet von Dr. Frants Buhl, unveränderter Neudruck der 1915 erschienenen
14. Auflage [Berlin, etc.: Springer-Verlag, 1949], 450–451).
134 Claude Gilliot
For Rabbi Yehuda (bar Ilai) the words of scripture can be enriched by look-
ing at their different contexts. In this way we can understand a very important
hermeneutic dictum from the Palestinian Talmud: “Words of Torah are poor (lit.
in their place) and rich in another context.”150 They are poor, i.e., unclear, in their
place, and rich, i.e., elucidating, explicatory, in another place. By means of “text-
blending,” one text is enriched by another.151
The Arabic adjective dhalūl recalls the Hebrew “poor” that we have just
encountered in Midrashi literature. If we examine the root d-l-l (doll in Hebrew)
in Semitic languages, we find that it has two main meanings. One is to hang down,
to be pendulous, to swing, to wave. The second sense is more important for us.
In Assyrian dalâlu means “submissive” (German: unterwürfig), the equivalent in
Syriac means facilis, i.e., “easy.” We can distinguish between three subsenses
within this second main meaning: 1) To be languid, feeble, weak, for instance, of
aqua languida: “The rivers of Egypt languish (dālălū) [i.e. shall be emptied] and
are dried up” (Is. 19:6); 2) used for men as being in feeble condition: “The Lord
preserves the simple; I was brought low (dallōṯî) and he helped”; and 3) of the
eyes as being languishing with desire.152
Arabic dhull or dhill (lowness, humiliation, submissiveness) is in semantic rela-
tion with the Hebrew doll. It is used in Islamic law to qualify the dhimmīs’s status
of inferiority in the so-called territory of peace (dār al-salām), i.e., the countries
submitted to the yoke of Islam. One of the reasons for imposing this status of
humiliation is to encourage them to “submit,” i.e., become Muslims.
Coming back to the dictum attributed to the Arabian Prophet and to others,
with several variants: al-Qurʾānu dhalūlun dhū wujūhin, fa-ḥmilūhu ʿalā aḥsani
wujūhihi, which means: “The Qurʾan is supple,153 it has different meanings,154 so
give it its best meanings.”

5.2. Wajh, between meaning and principles of exegesis

Fourfold, less often fivefold, patterns of Qurʾan genres or Qurʾan interpretation
were transmitted in early Islam during the second half of the first/seventh cen-
tury, and even before. These exegetical precepts are not always easy to interpret
because of their conciseness and their at times crude and ambiguous terminology

150 Palestinian Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi), Rosh Hashanah, 3:5, 58d; Michel Graves, The Inspira-
tion and Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 161, n. 64; Gertner,
“Terms of Scriptural Interpretation,” 5, n. 2; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient
Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1st ed. 1985, here 2nd ed. 1988), 221.
151 Gertner, “Terms of Scriptural Interpretation,” 5.
152 Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon: CC, sub rad. d-l-l. Idem, Hebräisches und aramäisches
Handwörterbuch, 163.
153 French: souple, meaning now “yielding”. It comes from Latin supplex. But in Old Fr. it meant:
humble, worn out, exhausted, prostrate; Oscar Bloch et Walther von Wartburg, Dictionnaire éty-
mologique de la langue française, 4ème éd. (Paris: PUF, 1964), 603; Charles Talbut Onions, et al.,
The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 888.
154 Lit. “faces,” with influence of Hebrew: panim, or “aspects.”
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 135
(like ḥarf, wajh, etc.), which is an indication that some of these ideas were bor-
rowed from Judaism, Jewish Christianity, Christianity, etc., perhaps already
before or during the different paths of preparation of the Qurʾan, Manichaeism,
etc. within the syncretism of Late Antiquity.
We shall begin with the translation of several traditions, not necessarily ḥadīths
stricto sensu, preceded by parts of their chains of transmission, in order to situate
them in their time and milieu. It will appear that some of them have to be put in
relation with the topos of the seven (of other numbers) modes (al-aḥruf al-sabʿa)
discussed earlier.

5.2.1. [. . .] al-Kalbī155/Abū Ṣāliḥ156/Ibn ʿAbbās/Messenger of God

The Qurʾan has been sent down according to four modes (unzila l-Qurʾānu
ʿalā arbaʿati aḥrufin): [1] what is lawful (permitted) and what is prohibited,
of which nobody can be ignorant (lā yuʿdharu aḥadun bi-jahālatihi); [2] that
whose exegesis the Arabs can expound; [3] that whose exegesis the learned
can expound; that which is ambiguous (mutashābihun) and known only to
God. Whoever claims knowledge [of this last mode], apart from God, is a
liar.157

5.2.2. [. . .] Sufyān (al-Ṯawrī, d. Shaʿbān 161/inc. 4 mai 778)/Abū

l-Zinād/Ibn ʿAbbās

Tafsīr has four aspects; an aspect known by the Arabs through their language,
tafsīr of which nobody can be ignorant, tafsīr which the learned know, tafsīr
which only God knows.158

5.2.3.
A slightly different list is attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās within Muqātil’s Commentary.
It is not transmitted by him but by one of the transmitters of his Commentary,

155 Abū l-Naḍr Muḥammad b. al-Sāʾib b. Kūfī, d. 146/763; GAS, I, 34–35; Gilliot, “Kontinuität und
Wandel in der ‘klassischen’ islamischen Koranauslegung (II./VIII.-XII./XIX. Jh.),” Der Islam 85
(2010): 12–13 (1–155).
156 Bādhām al-Kūfī, sometimes Bādhan, Durwuzan, or al-Durūzan; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, V: 302; VI;
296; Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, II: 255–258, no. 300; Fasawī, Maʿrifa, II; 144, 557–558: Mizzī, II: 3–4,
no. 625.
157 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I: 76, no. 72; The Commentary on the Qurʾān by [. . .] al-Ṭabarī,
abrigded translation by J. Cooper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), I: 34, modified by us.
158 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I: 75, no. 71; The Commentary on the Qurʾān, modified by us.
136 Claude Gilliot
through the channel of al-Kalbī: Huḏayl/Ibn al-Musayyib (ʿAbd Allāh, d.
170/786)/al-Kalbī/Abū Ṣālīḥ/Ibn ʿAbbās:

“The Qurʾan consists in four aspects (al-Qurʾānu ʿalā arbaʿati wujūhin):

tafsīr [the literal meaning?] which the learned know; Arabic understood by
the Arabs; lawful and prohibited, of which it is not permissible for people
to be unaware; [and] al-taʾwīl [the deeper meaning?], that which only God
knows.” I [probably Abū Ṣāliḥ or another in the channel] said: “What is the
taʾwīl?” He answered: “What will be (mā huwa kāʾin).”159

5.2.4.
According to Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad al-Sādiq (d. 148/765):

The Book of God consists in four things: the literal expression (al-ʿibāra), the
allegorical allusion (al-ishāra), the mystical subtleties (al-laṭāʾif)160 and the
spiritual realities (al-ḥaqāʾiq). The literal expression is for the common men
(al-ʿawwām), the allegorical allusion for the educated men (al-ḫawāṣṣ; here
the mystical men), the mystical subtleties for the “saints” (awliyāʾ), and the
spiritual realities for the prophets.161

The frame of these traditions is the same; their contents are similar but phrased
differently. Their goal is identical: to express the main “qualities” of the Qurʾan
and exegetical precepts.

5.2.5.
The following tradition, considered by Muslim a “weak” hadith, will indicate, if
necessary, the close relation between fivefold patterns of Qurʾan genres or Qurʾan
interpretation, and the sevenfold patterns of the modes of its revelation:
According to Sahl al-Tustarī: Abū l-Aḥwaṣ (ʿAwf b. Mālik b. Naḍla al-Ashjaʿī
al-Jushamī al-Kūfī)/ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd/Messenger of God:

The Qurʾan was sent down according to seven modes (or articulations) (inna
l-Qurʾāna unzila ʿalā sabʿati aḥrufin); each of its verses has an outer mean-
ing and an inner meaning (li-kulli āyatin minhā ẓahrun wa baṭnun, lit. a back
and a belly), and each word (ḥarf) has a horizon (lit. a boundary, a norm of its
intended meaning) and an anagogical sense (lit. a dawn, a point of ascending

159 Muqātil, Tafsīr, I: 27, l. 6–10.

160 Paul Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1970), 167: “les
touches de la grâce” is better in the context!
161 Paul Nwyia, “Le Tafsīr mystique attribué à Ğaʿfar Ṣādiq,” MUSJ XLIII/4 (1963): 189; Sulamī,
Ḥaqāʾiq al-tafsīr, ed. Sayyid ʿImrān, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2001), I: 22; cf.
Böwering, The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), 141.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 137
from the horizon of the intended meaning to a higher understanding) (wa-li-
kulli ḥarfin ḥaddun wa-muṭṭalaʿun or maṭlaʿun).162

G. Böwering has noticed that Tustarī has blurred “the distinction between āya and
ḥarf,” but we must say that āya does not feature in Ṭabarī’s and Ṭabarānī’s ver-
sions of this ḥadiṭh transmitted from Ibn Masʿūd.163

5.2.6.
Let us quote a last tradition, with no mention of an āya, in which the knowledge
of ʿAlī is pointed out: ʿUbayda (leg. ʿAbda b. a. Lulāba al-Kūfī, ob. post 123/740)/
Shaqīq (b. Salama al-Kūfī, ob. ca. 100/670, sive post 82/701)/Ibn Masʿūd: “The
Qurʾan was sent down according to seven modes (or articulations); none of them
is without outer meaning and inner meaning, and ʿAlī b. a. Ṭālib is the one who
has the knowledge of outer meaning and inner meaning.”164

5.2.7.
As it has been noticed: “These fourfold rules of investigation echo in form and in
contents the fourfold Jewish precepts of the PaRDeS method of exegesis linked
to the name of Rabbi ʿAqiva (ben Joseph).”165 An analogy between these fourfold
rules and the classical adage of Latin Christianity could be tempting: Thus the
Quadriga as it features in the Rotulus pugillaris of Augustine of Dacia, o.p., d.
1285: Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas
anagogia: “The literal reading teaches what happened, the allegorical what you
ought to believe, the moral what you should do, and the anagogical what you
should hope for.”166 But this cannot be “seen as directly and historically linking

162 Sulamī, Tafsīr, I: 21; Böwering, “Scriptural ‘Sense’,” 351; Abū ʿUbayd, al-Qāsim b. Sallām,
Gharīb al-ḥadīt, ed. Ḥusayn M. M. Sharaf, et al., 5 vols. (Cairo: Majmaʿ al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya,
1404–15/1984–94), II: 238–240. Cf an assertion of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī: “Do not neglect the Koran
(lā tatawassadū l-Qurʾana) . . . it is more apt to escape [from the breast of men] than tethered
camels . . . there is no verse (āya) in it which has not an outer (ẓahr) and an inner meaning (baṭn);
there is no articulation (ḥarf) in it which has not a norm, and every norm has an anagogical sense
(muṭṭalaʿ);” ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, III: 358–359.
163 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I: 22, no. 10; Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-kabīr, X: 105–106; Suyūṭī,
al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1401/1981), I: 418, no. 2727.
164 Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ wa ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ Saʿd ʿAṭiyya
et al., 10 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1351–57/1932–38), I, 65, l. 9–12.
165 Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten, I, Von Hillel bis Akiba, I: 263–342; Goldfeld, “Development,”
11, 16.
166 François Châtillon, o.p. “Vocabulaire et prosodie du distique attribué à Augustin de Dacie sur les
quatre sens de l’Ecriture,” in L’homme devant Dieu. Mélanges de Lubac (Paris: Aubier, 1964),
II: 17–28.
138 Claude Gilliot
Islamic hermeneutics with the principles of biblical exegesis developed in the
Jewish tradition and in Christian exegesis.”167

6. Exegetical precepts and Islamic apologetics

Muqātil b. Sulaymān played an important role in the early foundations or Qurʾanic
exegesis. He has summarized in two lists, a shorter and a longer, the various
aspects or genres contained in the Qurʾan. He does not refer to the prophetic tradi-
tions on the aḥruf of the Qurʾan, but his lists clearly relate to that subject. They are
also an attempt to establish some exegetical or hermeneutical principles. He does
not speak of “science” (ʿilm), but we can see in these lists an indication of what
will become the “sciences of the Qurʾan.”

6.1.
In the first list, he says: “The Qurʾan was sent down according to five aspects/
modes/genres (awjuh): command (amruhu), prohibition, promise, threat (waʿīd),
and the accounts of the ancients (khabar al-awwalīn).”168 This declaration should
be compared with that attributed to the Companion Ibn ʿAbbās and transmitted
by al-Kalbī, since both al-Kalbī and Muqātil have numerous exegetical interpreta-
tions in common and are both considered the heirs of the exegesis of the Compan-
ion Ibn ʿAbbās.169

6.2.
Muqātil’s second list is a considerable expansion of his first one: al-Hudhayl/
Muqātil:

The Qurʾan contains references that are: (1) particular and (2) general (khāṣṣun
wa ʿāmmun); (3) particular to Muslims; (4) particular to certain idolaters, par-
ticular to one idolater; (5) general to all people; (6) ambiguous (mutashābih)
and (7) well-established (muḥkam, or clear, univocal); (8) explained (mufas-
sar) and (9) obscure (or unexplained, mubham); (10) implicit (iḍmār) and
(11) explicit (tamām); (12) connections in the discourse (ṣilāt fī l-kalāmi).
It also contains (13) abrogating and (14) abrogated [verses]; (15) antepo-
sition (taqdīm) and (16) postposition (taʾkhīr; Gk. hysteron vs. proteron);
(17) sy­nonyms/analogues (ashbāh), with many (18) polysems/homonyms
(wujūh), and with apodosis (jawāb) in another sura. [It contains also] (19) par-
ables (amthāl) by which God refers: to himself, (20) to unbelievers and idols,
(21) to this world, (22) to resurrection, and to the world to come (al-baḥth wa

167 Böwering, “Scriptural ‘Sense’,” 352–353.

168 Muqātil, Tafsīr, I: 26, l. 4–10; Nwyia, Exégèse, 167; Gilliot, Exégèse, 118.
169 Supra sub 4.2.3.
 Principles of Qurʾanic Exegesis 139
l-ākhira); (23) report (or history) about the ancients, (24) about paradise and
hell; (25) particular to one idolater (khāṣṣ li-mushrikin wāḥidin); (26) duties
(farāʾiḍ, or perhaps here: inheritance?): (27) legal rules (aḥkām) and (28)
punishments (ḥudūd); (29) accounts of what is in the hearts of the believers,
(30) or in the hearts of the unbelievers; (31) polemics (khuṣūma) against the
Arab idolaters; then (32) interpretation (tafsīr), and (33) the interpretation
which has in turn its own interpretation.170

This list could be compared to the list of 30 aspects attributed to “ancient”

scholars by al-Suyūṭī.171
The so-called specific features (33 and more) of the Qurʾan and its exegesis
according to Muqātil recall the mnemonic name of the 32 precepts (middot) of a
pupil of Rabbi ʿAqiva, Rabbi Eliezer ben Yose HaGelili (IInd century), evolved
out of the previous groups of precepts.172

6.3.
A Qurʾanic verse has played a great role in the Islamic imaginaire concerning
the Arabic language and the Qurʾan: “And we reveal the scripture unto you as
an exposition of all things” (Q 16:89). It played a role comparable to the tradi-
tions of the “seven aḥruf” in preparing the way for the establishment or creation
of “Quranic sciences.” For one of the first theorists of the methodology of law,
al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820):

God has revealed the scripture as an exposition of all things, and this clari-
fication (tabyīn) has several forms: Either he has clearly stated duties (mā
bayyana farḍahu fīhi), or he has given general revelations (mā anzala jumla-
tan), and in this case he has elucidated how it should be, through the tongue
of his prophet, or he has given a ruling on duties in a general way (jumlatan)
and ordered to investigate it, but giving indications which he has created.173

It is not by chance that Shāfiʿī evokes the long list of Muqātil b. Sulaymān.
It is well known that he held Muqātil’s exegesis in high esteem. He reportedly
declared that: “All people are dependent on (ʿiyāl) three men: on Muqātil b.
Sulaymān for exegesis.”174 Asked by Hārūn al-Rashīd about his own “knowledge

170 Muqātil, Tafsīr, I: 27; Gilliot, “Traditional Disciplines,” 322a; Id, Exégèse 118–119; Kees Ver-
steegh, Arabic Grammar and Qurʾanic Exegesis in Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 104–105.
171 Suyūṭī, Itqān, chap. 51, III: 117–118.
172 Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 22–30; Goldfeld, “Develop-
ment,” 10–11.
173 Shāfiʿī, K. Jimāʿ al-ʿilm, in al-Umm, 3rd ed., 8 vols. in 5 (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1403/1983), VII,
277; al-Umm, ed. Rifʿat Fawzī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, 11 vols. (Mansourah: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1422/2001),
IX: 1; Gilliot, “Traditional Disciplines,” 322a.
174 Abbott, Studies, II: 100; Gilliot, “Traditional Disciplines,” 323b.
140 Claude Gilliot
of the book of God,” Shāfiʿī answered 10 questions containing 21 of these “sci-
ences:” “About what science do you ask, Commander of the Faithful? Is it the
science of its descent (revelation, tanzīl) or of its interpretation (taʾwīl)? etc.”175

7.
We leave the Shāfiʿī exegete, traditionist, jurist, and historiographer Ibn Jarīr
al-Ṭabarī to express the apologetic intentions of the topoi concerning the seven
modes or the fourfold faces of the Qurʾan, per modum conclusionis:

By the first Book coming down from one gate176 he [Muhammad] meant
the Books of God which came down on his prophets to whom they were
sent down, in which there were no divine ordinances and judgments, or pro-
nouncements about what was lawful and what was unlawful, such as the
Psalms of David, which are invocations and exhortations, and the Evangel
of Jesus, which is glorification, praise and encouragement to pardon and be
charitable, but no legal ordinances and judgments besides this, and scriptures
like these which came down with one or seven meanings, all of which are
contained in our Book which God conferred on our Prophet, Muhammad and
his community.177

175 Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī, éd. al-Sayyid A. Ṣaqr, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Turāth,
1391/1971), I: 132; Gilliot, “Traditional Disciplines,” 323a.
176  V. supra 2.3.2.4.
177 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, ed. Shākir, I: 71; The Commentary on the Qurʾān by al-Ṭabarī: 30–31; Gilliot,
“Traditional Disciplines,” 320.
7 The Word of God in the Bible
and the Qurʾan
Mahmoud M. Ayoub

This chapter examines the concept of the word of God in the Jewish and Christian
scriptures and the Qurʾan. Historically and spiritually speaking, Islam is continu-
ous with the biblical religions of Judaism and Christianity. The faith communities
of these two traditions are called in the Qurʾan ahl al-kitāb, that is, the People
of the Scripture. Together with Muslims, they form what may be termed as “the
family of the Scriptures.”1 In fact, the Qurʾan sees itself as a revealed book con-
firming the scriptures that came before it.2 The Qurʾan enjoins its Muslim read-
ers who may be in doubt of the message revealed to the Prophet Muhammad to
“inquire of those who read the Scriptures before them” (Q 10:94, 16:43, 21:7).3
Thus essentially, the three monotheistic religious traditions share a common faith
in the revealed word of God, which is their guide to the good in this world and
the hereafter.
The God of the Abrahamic religions is a speaking God. The YHWH4 of ancient
Israel, the God of the Christian Church, and Allah of the Muslim umma are one
and the same God who spoke to humanity in various ways and at various times.
For Christians and Muslims, He spoke His last word through Christ and through
the Qurʾan respectively. The Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament states,

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by
the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom
he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
(Heb. 1:1–2)

1 See Mahmoud M. Ayoub, A Muslim View of Christianity, ed. Irfan A. Omar (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 2007), 32–40.
2 See Mahmoud M. Ayoub, The Qur’an and Its Interpreters (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1992), vol. II, The House of ‘Imrān, 9–15.
3 All English renderings of Qur’anic verses used in this chapter are author’s own.
4 YHWH are the four consonants which form the name of the Lord who appeared to Moses in the
“burning bush.” Neither the ancient Children of Israel nor Rabbinic Jews have uttered the divine
name. Therefore, no one knows how these four sacred letters are pronounced. See Exodus 3:14–15,
and 20:7.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-9
142 Mahmoud M. Ayoub
Addressing the People of the Scripture, the Qurʾan says, “our God and your God
is one” (Q 29:46). Yet neither of the two communities is ready to accord the privi-
lege of being directly spoken to by God to the other. This exclusivism is typical
of our monotheistic religions because we are dealing with only one deity who
belongs exclusively to us. Therefore, we exclude the other, whomever they may
be.
The challenge for interfaith dialogue is to acknowledge God to be “the Lord
of all beings.”5 It is to include all human beings in the family of God. “All crea-
tures,” we are told in a well-known prophetic hadith tradition, “are the dependent
children of God (al-khalq kulluhum ʿiyāl-ullāh). The hadith concludes, “the most
beloved of them to God is he who is most beneficial to His children.”6 It must be
observed that the word ʿiyāl, when applied to human beings, means children, but
when applied to God, it means “dependent creatures.” In either case, it is a rela-
tionship of dependence and love between God, the one and only sovereign lord
and creator, and God’s human creations.
Having laid the grounds for our discussion of the subject at hand, I shall now
briefly reflect on some aspects of the word of God in the Qurʾan. First it must be
observed that in the Qurʾan the word of God participates in both divine imma-
nence and divine transcendence. Therefore, the written Qurʾan, which is a bound
book (muṣḥaf) “between two covers” (bayn al-daffatayn) and which often deals
with mundane day-to-day affairs of the community, is nonetheless the word of
God. God says in the Qurʾan, “Were We to send down this Qurʾan upon a moun-
tain, you would see it humbled and torn asunder from awe of God” (Q 59:21).
Hence, the Qurʾan is both a book of guidance and a powerful manifestation of
God’s word.
The Qurʾan describes itself as “a glorious Qurʾan” preserved by God, “in a well
guarded tablet” (Q 85:21–22). In essence, therefore, the word of God, as the heav-
enly Qurʾan transcends the earthly Qurʾan in important respects. The word of God,
as manifested in the written and recited Qurʾan, is reduced to human sounds and
letters and to a timeframe, namely, the period of the messengership of the prophet
Muhammad which lasted about 23 years (610–632 CE). Throughout this period,
the Qurʾan was revealed in portions of unequal length. These scattered, and often
unrelated, revelations were coherently ordered in chapters, or sūras, by the Prophet
himself. The sūras were later arranged into a muṣḥaf by the community, but within
nearly 20 years of the Prophet’s death.7 Thus the word of God as the Qurʾan entered
into the history of the Muslim umma, and it shaped it and was shaped by it.
The word of God in the Qurʾan is a manifestation of an archetypal source of
revelation which the Qurʾan calls umm al-kitāb, the mother or essence of the

5 See Mahmoud M. Ayoub, The Qur’an and its Interpreters (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1984), vol. I, 47 for different interpretations of this verse.
6 Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Ḥusayn al-Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-Īmān [The Branches of Faith] (Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1990), hadith number 6943.
7 Ayoub, The Qur’an and Its Interpreters, vol. I, 1.
 The Word of God 143
Scripture.8 Thus we read, “God effaces whatever He wills, and confirms whatever
He wills, for with Him is the mother of the Scripture” (Q 13:39).9 The Qurʾan
regards itself as a purified scripture, “none but the pure shall touch it” (Q 56:79).10
The Qurʾan is not only the pure word of God but also His glorious word: “Rather
it is a glorious Qurʾan in a well-guarded tablet” (Q 85:21–22). Therefore, the
Qurʾan that Muslims read every day in their worship and general devotions and
on special occasions of sorrow and happiness, success and failure, is nonetheless
an earthly manifestation of the archetypal source of revelation that is known as
umm al-kitāb. It must be added here that umm al-kitāb is the heavenly archetypal
source, not only of the Qurʾan but of all the scriptures revealed by God.
The word of God, moreover, transcends umm al-kitāb as it partakes in God’s
infinitude. The Qurʾan declares: “Say, were the ocean to be ink for the words of
my Lord, the ocean will be exhausted before the words of my Lord are exhausted”
(Q 18:109).11 In its infinitude, the word of God in the Qurʾan relates actually to
the entire creation facilitated by human beings.
The Qurʾan is believed by Muslims to be manifested under two modes: the writ-
ten and the recited Qurʾan. Parallel to these two modes are al-Qurʾān al-tadwīnī
and al-Qurʾān al-takwīnī. The first is the Qurʾan of revelation. The second is the
Qurʾan of creation, or book of nature. In both are manifested the signs (āyāt) of
God. In the first they are the recited verses of the Qurʾan. In the second they are
God’s signs “in the horizons” and in the human “selves” (anfusihim). God says,
“We shall show them our signs in the horizons and in their selves, in order that the
truth may be made manifest to them” (Q 41:53).12 With the verses of revelation
Muslims worship God and draw near to Him. Through the signs of creation Mus-
lims contemplate his power, majesty, wisdom, and mercy. The Qurʾan represents
the word of God, which is the divine logos behind the creation of all things. This
creation that is infinite began with the resounding word “let there be light,” which
is recorded in the book of Genesis (Gen. 1:3). This is the word of command (amr),
the divine fiat, as the Qurʾan tells us “when your Lord wills a thing, He but says
to it be and it is” (Q 36:82).
Creation, from the Qurʾan’s point of view, happens in one of two ways. The
first is called by Muslim philosophers and theologians the creation of the world
of generation and corruption (ʿālam al-khalq). Here, every instant is a new crea-
tion. Every breath God’s creatures take is a new creation. This creation happens
through the interactions of causes and effects. If, for instance, one puts his hand
close to a fire or touches an electric current, one will get electrocuted or be burned

8 The word umm literally means mother, entity, or binding custom. See Q 3:7, 13:39, 43:4.
9 Here the word umm denotes a heavenly archetypal source of revelation and destiny, or divine
decree.
10 See also 98:2–3, which speaks of the Prophet Muḥammad as a messenger from God, “reciting
purified scrolls” (ṣuḥuf muṭahhara).
11 In a similar statement the Qurʾan adds, “and every tree a pen.” (Q 31:27).
12 See Annemarie Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 75.
144 Mahmoud M. Ayoub
because God created heat in the fire and energy in an electric current. The burning
or electrocution of one’s hand are known to God but may or may not be willed
by him. Are human beings free or are they predestined to do the things they do?
Human free will and divine pre-destination as theological issues have occupied
Christian and Muslim theologians over the centuries. I myself prefer the rational-
ist view, which holds that God creates human beings with reason. Therefore, they
are responsible for their deeds, but they cannot thwart God’s plans or limit His
eternal and infinite knowledge. Still, human beings are responsible for what they
do, and God in his mercy and justice will reward them, punish them, or forgive
them as He wills. The word of God is the word that creates through causes and
effects. On special occasions, however, God wills otherwise and for His own pur-
poses he suspends the customary law of causality and creates instead miracles.
This is called muʿjiza in the primary Islamic sources of hadith and theology. A
muʿjiza is an event or happening before which human beings are powerless; they
are unable to achieve it on their own. Occasionally, however, God manifests a
miracle at the hand of a prophet or an intimate friend (walī) of God. Muʿjizāt are
called khawāriq al-ʿādāt (those that tear apart customs). For instance, fire burns,
but when Nimrod, the tyrannical king at the time of Abraham threw Abraham
into a blazing fire, God ordered the fire to “be coolness and peace for Abraham”
(Q 21:69). Here we are dealing with a purposeful creation, God did not create all
this in vain, but for a purpose. The purpose of God in creation is that all creation
should worship Him. God says, “I have not created the jinn and humankind except
to worship me” (Q 51:65).
A unique manifestation of the word of God in a human being is Jesus Christ,
whom both the Bible and the Qurʾan call “word of God.”13 In the Qurʾan, the
word of God with regard to Jesus does not relate to his coming into being or his
human generation but to his status as a special creation. The Qurʾan relates that
the angels said to Mary, “God gives you glad tidings of a word (kalima) from
Him, whose name is Jesus Christ, son of Mary” (Q 3:45). The word kalima liter-
ally means “word.” It also signifies simply a human locution or utterance. It may
further denote a discourse, a speech, lecture, or even a poem. Any kind of dis-
course can be called kalima, but kalima here is God’s word of command, kunn or
“Be!” In the previously quoted sūra, we read “surely the similitude of Jesus with
God is like that of Adam. He created him of clay and said to him “be, and he was”
(Q 3:59). Likewise, God created Jesus Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary by
his word of command as he created Adam of clay.
The word of God may be seen as a divine gift of life to Mary, and through her,
to humanity. It is a gift of blessing, healing, and peace.14 Furthermore, consider-
ing Jesus to be the “word of God” raises an important question. Do we have here

13 In some verses, the Qurʾan calls Jesus Christ, son of Mary, “God’s word,” and in others, “a spirit
from Him.” See Q 4:171, 3:45, 66:12.
14 See Q 19:30–33, where Jesus declares that God made him a prophet and a recipient of God’s peace;
“Peace be upon me the day I was born, the day I die and the day I will be brought back to life.”
 The Word of God 145
a hint of, or elusion to, a quasi-incarnational theology? Is the word of God Jesus,
“the word that became flesh and dwelt among us”?15 This interpretation of the
Qurʾanic references to Jesus as the word of God is not completely implausible,
at least from a dialogical point of view. The angels, as we have seen, announced
to Mary the glad tidings of a word from God whose name is “Jesus Christ, son of
Mary.” This good news may suggest some sort of ontological relationship of Jesus
with the word of God. The Jesus of the Qurʾan, however, remains one of God’s
special creations, but not God himself, as asserted by the Gospel of John.
The Qurʾan emphatically states that there is no being equal to God, nor is there
any thing like unto God.16 Since this chapter is concerned with the Bible and
the Qurʾan, it may be useful to attempt an Islamic reading of the opening verses
of the Gospel of John. John says: “In the beginning was the Word [logos], and
the word was with God and the Word was God.” In traditional Sunni Islam, the
Qurʾan is believed to be uncreated in time; rather, it eternally exists with God. In
the beginning was the divine word and the divine word was with God, but Sunni
Muslims do not say the word was God. Islam unequivocally affirms God’s One-
ness (tawḥīd). God is One, but God’s words are innumerable. We cannot therefore
identify the word of God with God. At best, we can say that the word of God is
a manifestation of the attributes of God and not of God himself. John continues,
“He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and with-
out him was not anything made that was made.” Jesus, according to the Christol-
ogy of John, is the agent of creation. According to the Qurʾan, God alone is the
omnipotent and omniscient creator. The Gospel of John further declares: “and the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). An Islamic reading of this
verse would be: “and the Word became a book and entered our history.”
Another important question is, how are we to understand the Qurʾanic state-
ment “This is Jesus son of Mary, the word of truth” (Q 19:34)? Is Jesus himself
“the word of truth” or is what the Qurʾan says about him the word of truth (qawl
al-ḥaqq)? Moreover, does the doubt—and hence conflict and arid debate that has
characterized Muslim–Christian relations—concern Christ himself or the “word
of truth” about him? These and many other questions have not concerned Qurʾan
commentators. To repeat what they have said in interpreting the verses under con-
sideration is to repeat the same arid and by now all-too-familiar debate.
The Qurʾan and the Gospel both affirm that God is God, the Lord of all creation.
They both affirm that “God’s will is done” in the universe. Jesus himself insisted
that not his will but the will of God who sent him must be done.17 The Qurʾan
insists that God alone should be worshipped: “They [the Jews and Christians]
took their rabbis and monks as lords instead of God,” and yet, “they were enjoined

15 I am not trying to attribute the Christology of the fourth gospel (John 1:1–14) to the Qurʾan, but
the question regarding the relationship of Jesus, the human creature, to the divine logos is worth
considering.
16 See Q 42:11. Sūra 112, which asserts the Oneness of God is known as the sūra of “sincere faith”
(ikhlāṣ).
17 See the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Mathew 6:9–14.
146 Mahmoud M. Ayoub
to serve God alone” (Q 9:31). Were the Qurʾan to speak to today’s Muslim com-
munity directly, it might add their religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ), their imāms, their
politicians, their ideologies, and even “their religion.”
The message of these verses is not meant for Christians only but for Muslims as
well. For Christians, it is to remind them that God alone is God. As for Muslims,
it is to remind them that God alone is the absolute Truth (al-ḥaqq). The word of
God, or the logos, is not in itself the agent of creation for Muslims, it is the word
of command (amr) through which God creates all things. The Qurʾan, as the word
of God, participates in the rise and development of human reason, and thus of
human civilization. Sūra 55 of the Qurʾan opens with the declaration “The All-
Merciful taught the Qurʾan (al-raḥmān ʿallama al-Qurʾān) He created human
kind and taught them the elucidation (al-bayān),” that is, the meaning of the mys-
teries of creation. In reality, therefore, the word of God does participate in the rise
and development of human rationality and human civilization but without itself
being the creator of anything; the one God is the creator of all things, including,
in the end, God’s own words.
In one of several Qurʾanic narrations of the creation of Adam and his spouse,
we read that “God taught Adam all the names.” God then displayed the objects
of these names to the angels who questioned His wisdom in creating on earth a
contentious creature “who will spread corruption on it and shed blood” while
they hymn God’s praise and sanctify God. God challenged the angels to recite the
names of the things taught to Adam. The angels remorsefully replied, “Glory be
to you; we have no knowledge save what you have taught us” (Q 2:32). God then
ordered them all to prostrate themselves before Adam.18 This was the prostration
of an acknowledgement that human beings were made “superior” to angels.19 By
teaching Adam the names, God made him a prophet. When, moreover, Adam and
his spouse succumbed to Satan’s temptation and ate of the forbidden tree, Adam
became a sinner. Thus Adam, the father of our humanity, was both the first prophet
and the first sinner. But Adam’s sin was his sin alone. Adam’s sin of disobedience
was forgiven, as the passage under discussion tells us, “Adam received certain
words from his Lord, and God turned towards him” (Q 2:37). Every human being
is born like Adam, capable of sin and righteousness.
According to the the New Testament, Jesus Christ—the divine Logos—is also
the saviour of humanity from Adam’s original sin. Therefore, the word of God is
a source of salvation. The fourth Gospel again tells us that when John the Baptist
met Jesus he announced, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of
the world” (John 1:29).20

18 The full narration under discussion is in Q 2:30–39. Chronologically, it is the last extended passage
to be revealed, dealing with Adam, his creation, sin, and divine forgiveness.
19 An important distinction must be made here between prostration (sujūd) of humble servants to
their superiors, which is called sujūd of reverence or obeisance, and the sujūd of worship, which
is due to God alone.
20 Jesus’s ministry began, according to the Synoptic Gospels, with his baptism by John the Baptist.
The Gospel of John instead makes John the Baptist the first to announce Christ’s salvific mission.
 The Word of God 147
The Qurʾan asserts that both Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan and thus
were equally responsible for the sin of disobedience. They were both taught by
God a prayer for forgiveness: “Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves and if you
do not forgive us and have mercy upon us, we shall be indeed losers” (Q 7:23).
These are the words which the Qurʾan tells us “Adam received from his Lord and
he turned towards him” (Q 2:37). Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden
of Eden in which God had placed them and sent down to the earth. Adam was
created not for paradise, but for the earth. Human salvation can be achieved not
through a divine sacrifice, but through divine guidance. God said to Adam and
his spouse, and by extension to all their descendants after expelling them from
paradise: “There will come to you from me guidance and anyone who follows my
guidance, no fear shall come upon them, nor will they grieve” (Q 2:38; see also
30–39).
This divine promise echoes what the Qurʾan presents as a “primordial cov-
enant” between humanity and God. The covenant is based on the divine ques-
tion “Am I not your Lord?” All of humankind, while still in the realm of atoms,
answered, “Yes, we hear and we witness.” God continued, “Beware that you do
not come on the day of resurrection and say ‘we were heedless of this,’ or that
you say our forefathers associated [other things with God] before and we are their
progeny after them” (Q 7:172–173).
In fulfilment of this covenant in human history, God sent prophets who are a
source of guidance and salvation. Human beings are supposed to show obedience
to God by obeying his prophets. This idea is expressed by the great Muslim histo-
rian Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, who understood human history to be a dialec-
tic between two powers, human and divine. For Ṭabarī, human history is a history
of prophets and kings, representing spiritual power and temporal power respec-
tively, but the source of both powers is God. God, the Qurʾan tells us, ordered the
Prophet, and through him all of humankind, to proclaim,

O God, Lord of all dominion, you grant dominion to whomever you will and
you seize dominion from whom ever you will, you exalt whomever you will
and you abase whomever you will. In your hand is all good and you are All-
Powerful over all things.
(Q 3:26)

Both powers are bestowed by God.

The question remains: In what way can we compare the word of God as the
Qurʾan in Islam with the word of God as Christ in Christianity? This brings us to
the concept of revelation in the two religious traditions.
Revelation is essential to prophetic religions, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christi-
anity, and Islam. Revelation is what God communicated to his prophets, and they
in turn conveyed it to their followers. Generally, two terms are used in the Qurʾan
to signify revelation. They are tanzīl and waḥī. The word tanzīl means sending
down. The word waḥī is probably of non-Arabic origin. It means urgent commu-
nication or whispering of a divine command or ruling that must be communicated
and obeyed. Both tanzīl and waḥī presuppose an agent of revelation. The agent of
148 Mahmoud M. Ayoub
revelation of the Qurʾan is the angel Gabriel, who brought Prophet Muhammad
divine revelations. Waḥī, or revelation, is what distinguishes prophets from other
human beings. The Prophet Muhammad, for instance, is told to say, “I am only
a mortal like you, who receives revelation (waḥī) from his Lord, that your Lord
is only one God” (Q 18:110). Like tanzīl, waḥī is a mode of communication. But
waḥī is not limited to prophets and messengers. Nor is it limited to divine–human
communications. God made waḥī to the bees (Q 16:68), teaching them how to
build and where to build their hives. God made revelation to the mother of Moses
(Q 28:7), telling her to put her child in a box and put it on the waters of the Nile.
Then God would inspire the wife of Pharaoh to find Moses and hire his mother to
care for him. The wife of Pharaoh, according to tradition, was a believer in God
and died a martyr for her faith. The word waḥī is also used to signify the whisper-
ings of the agents of Satan to their followers. But these are whisperings of vain
words that in the end mean nothing. Such satanic whisperings are only meant to
lead to self-conceit (Q 6:112).
As in Islam, the Christian concept of revelation is expressed in two ideas. The
first is inspiration, that is, by the Holy Spirit. Thus Saint Paul affirms, “All scrip-
tures are inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16).21 The Christian Arabic word for
revelation is kashf, which means uncovering, disclosing, unveiling, or apocalyptic
vision. The second idea, or doctrine, of revelation is “revelation” through incarna-
tion. It is on this doctrine that the high Christology of the fourth Gospel, discussed
earlier, is based. The actual words of the Christian scriptures are believed to be
inspired by God, or the Holy Spirit. But they are not dictated or written by God,
as in the case of the Torah. Nor are they directly transmitted by an angel, as in the
case of the Qurʾan. Christians and Muslims, however, do share the belief in sacred
words as a scripture revealed or inspired by God and which is to be devotionally
read or recited and lived by.
In Christianity, the authors of the Gospels and other books of the New Testa-
ment are human authors who wrote under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Nev-
ertheless, for the Qurʾan, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are part of what I call
“the family of the Scriptures.” This is not meant to impose a Muslim view on
Christians’ self-understanding but only to recognize that even as Christ is the
Word incarnate, Christianity also remains grounded in a sacred text like the other
two Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam. Furthermore, the fact that Chris-
tians adopted the Hebrew Bible as their Old Testament, they are in a real sense
“People of the Scripture.” Nevertheless, we must recognize the complexity of the
Christian doctrine of revelation. God, according to Christian theology, revealed or
disclosed the divine self through Jesus Christ. Therefore, revelation is incarnation.
In the Qurʾan, God reveals not the divine self but divine will or law for humanity.
In my view, the sharp divergence between the doctrines of revelation in the two
traditions places a real obstacle in the way of meaningful and constructive Mus-
lim–Christian dialogue.

21 The nearest idea to this in Islam is the word ilhām, which means inspiration and is open to all
spiritual and artistically creative men and women.
 The Word of God 149
Muslims have always considered incarnation (ḥulūl)22 to be a form of associa-
tion (shirk) of other things or beings with God, which is the only unforgivable
sin according to the Qurʾan (Q 4:48). Yet, based on the Qurʾan, Muslims have
held the religion of Christ and his followers in high regard (Q 5:82–85, see also
Q 2:62). This may explain why Muslims are not able to understand or even con-
sider the Christian concept of revelation. For Christians, the Gospels are human,
albeit inspired, interpretations of the life, ministry, and mission of Christ. For
Muslims, the true Gospel (Injīl) is the gospel which God revealed to Christ, as
God revealed the Torah to Moses, the Psalms to David, and the Qurʾan to Muham-
mad. It is imperative for people of faith to seriously strive to comprehend both the
Christian and Islamic doctrines of revelation on their own terms and through their
own primary sources.
A few words about the purpose of divine revelation as presented in the Qurʾan
are in order. I am convinced that the Qurʾan and prophetic tradition (Sunna) sought
to establish a sort of interfaith ecumenism among the three monotheistic religions,
that is to say, a community of faith communities.23 The community sought is one
wherein Christians accept the Qurʾan as a revelation from God and Muhammad as
an authentic messenger of God, and at the same time, Muslims accept the revela-
tion of God through Christ as well as the revelation of the Bible. It is a call upon
all three faith communities to recognize each other, as we read in the Qurʾan, “O
People of the Scripture, come to a just word of common consent between us and
you that we worship no one but God” (Q 3:64). This “common word,” which
inspired the interfaith project known as A Common Word,24 is a Qurʾanic call to
true humanism, a humanism which in the end is based on love of God and love
of neighbour. It is gratifying to see the way this document has been received by
evangelical Christians and others.25
The Qurʾan, which came after both the Torah and the Gospels, can present a
blueprint for interfaith dialogue today and help establish a fellowship of faith
among the three communities. The Qurʾan provides an important rule of etiquette
for this dialogue. It enjoins Muslims,

Do not dispute with the People of the Scripture except in the fairest manner.
Except those among them who commit wrongdoing; and say we accept faith
in that which was sent down to us, [the Qurʾan], and that which was sent
down to you, [the Torah and the Gospel]. Our God and your God is one and
to Him we are submitters.
(Q 29:46)

22 From a Christian perspective it should properly be tajassud, but among Muslim scholars ḥulūl is
often used.
23 For a historical exposition of this point, see Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers at the
Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
24 See “A Common Word” document at www.acommonword.com/.
25 Richard McCallum, “Love: A Common Word between Evangelicals and Muslims?” Political The-
ology 13/4 (2012): 400–413.
150 Mahmoud M. Ayoub
The word “submitters” (muslimūn) here refers not to the followers of an institu-
tionalized religion called Islam but to those who inwardly submit their will to the
divine will. Here we have the idea of salvation linked to the word of God, that is,
to God’s revelation to his prophets.
Jesus Christ is a healer in the Qurʾan. The miracles of Christ are distinctive. No
one was credited by the Qurʾan with the same miracles that we see are associated
with Christ. The miracles of Christ reflect the needs of his time. Christ lived after
the development of ancient Greek science and particularly Greek medicine. His
miracles also were meant to speak to the Pharisees’ and the Sadducees’ disagree-
ments regarding the afterlife and resurrection. For these and other reasons, all the
miracles of Jesus are miracles of healing and life giving, including the miracle
of the birds of clay, which he fashioned and transformed into real birds by God’s
permission (Q 3:49). The clay birds miracle is first mentioned in the apocryphal
infancy Gospel of Thomas.26 Jesus was given power to heal the leper, the sick,
the person born blind, and even to raise the dead by God’s permission. No other
prophet was given these great miracles.
The Qurʾan presents us with the great challenge of seeing Jesus in a wider
context of humanity’s relationship with God. It states: “God chose Adam, Noah,
the House of Abraham, and the House of Imran above all beings. They are of one
progeny, following one another” (Q 3:33). Jesus and his mother, as special mem-
bers of this blessed progeny, symbolize the unity of the human family around the
prophetic model. If all prophets are one family, then are we—their followers—not
members of this family that God has favoured and blessed? In my reading, the
Gospels suggest Christ is divine but he is also a human creation of God. He is a
prophet and more than a prophet. He is an example of piety and stern asceticism.
The Gospels present Jesus as a teacher, a rabbi, prophet of God, and “the son of
God.” Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā addresses more directly than any other Qurʾan
commentator the question of why the term walad is used in the Qurʾan to critique
the Christian belief in the divine sonship of Christ rather than the term ibn, which
is more commonly used by Christians to express their belief. Riḍā argues:

The reason for this choice is to show that if they intend actual son, then this
son must be a child born through the insemination of his mother by his father,
and this cannot be said of God. But if they mean son in the metaphorical
rather than the true sense, as the term is used in the books of the Old and
New Testaments to refer to Israel, David, the peacemakers and others of the
righteous, then it has nothing to do with divinity, nor would Jesus have any
special status.27

Who, then, is Jesus, the miracle of life, of love, and of healing? He is the “Word of
God” and the servant of God and the messenger of God. He is the saviour of us all,

26 The infancy Gospel of Thomas should not be confused with the important sayings in the Gnostic
gospel attributed to Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus.
27 Ayoub, A Muslim View of Christianity, 130.
 The Word of God 151
for what is salvation but healing? A saviour is not simply one who dies for the sins
of others but also one who heals the sickness of the human soul; one who infuses
life into dead spirits by his own life and spirit. The original meaning of salvation is
“to be healed,” “to be made wholesome,” “to be truly restored to life.” This, accord-
ing to the Qurʾan, was the mission of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John affirms both
the divinity and humanity of Christ. It declares, “The father is greater than the son”
(John 14:28). Jesus himself said to his women disciples, after his resurrection, “Go
to my brethren and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my father and your father, to my
God and your God’ ” (John 20:17). This is not simply an affirmation of Christ’s
humanity, this is an affirmation of Christ’s humanity and divinity, an affirmation that
does not violate the doctrine of divine Oneness. We have many statements of this
attestation in the Qurʾan. The most widely quoted is the following:

God will question Jesus, on the day of resurrection: “Did you say to people
take me and my mother as two gods beside God?” Jesus will answer, “If I had
said it, you would have known it. You know what is in my mind, but I do not
know what is in your mind. They are your servants. If you wish you could
forgive them, and if you wish you could punish them. When I was with them
I told them to worship you alone and you are the watcher of all of us. But
when you took me to yourself you became the watcher over them and you are
witness over all things.”
(Q 5:115–118)

In spite of its categorical rejection of the Christian doctrine of Trinity and the
divinity of Christ, the Qurʾan does not explicitly use the word to kufr (rejection of
faith) to deny Christ’s divinity. The Qurʾan does say, “They have committed kufr,
those who say God is the third of three” (Q 5:73). Christians, however, categori-
cally affirm that the Trinity is not “three” Gods. But the Qurʾan asserts, “They
have rejected faith, those who say God is Christ” (Q 5:17). Perhaps in deference
to the Christians, the Qurʾan counsels them not to hold extreme views in their
religion. It says,

O people of the Scripture, do not commit ghuluw [extremism or exaggera-

tion] in your religion and do not say anything about God except the truth.
Surely, Jesus Christ son of Mary is a messenger of God and his word which
he cast into Mary . . . do not say three; desist, it is better for you.
(Q 4:171)

The Christ of the Qurʾan, it could be argued, is not altogether different from the
Christ of the Gospels. Christ, the Lord in the Gospels, is the humble servant of
God. He is likewise a humble servant of God in the Qurʾan but is at the same time
“high-honored in this world and in the next, and one of those who are brought
near to God” (Q 3:45). Jesus was commissioned to teach humankind the truth and
thus to bring humanity nearer to God. Yet, he is sternly warned not to overstep
his human limits of humility and servanthood before the divine majesty. One such
statement that has occupied the attention of Western scholars is the Qurʾanic verse
152 Mahmoud M. Ayoub
asserting the servanthood of Jesus to God. It reads, “The Messiah [Christ] will
never scorn to be a slave (ʿabd) unto God, nor will the favored angels. Whoso
scorns His service and is proud, all such will He assemble unto Him” (Q 4:172).
In itself, this short statement is precise and unequivocal. It seeks to balance the
status of Jesus as the word of God and His Spirit (Q 4:171) and one who is highly
honoured (wajīh) in this world and the next (Q 3:45), with his humanity thus
declaring him to be, in spite of his high status, a servant (ʿabd) of God without
considering this in any way to be a denigration of his lofty rank.
According to the Gospel, Jesus is the stern teacher and warner, instructing
human beings and also passing harsh judgement on their folly and their hypocrisy.
Here again, Jesus is to be regarded as the chosen messenger sent to “warn” peo-
ple and to preach to them the divine revelation. He is, therefore, the Jesus of the
Qurʾan, one in the long line of prophets and messengers of God for humankind.
Thus we see that like the Christ of the Christian faith and hope, the Jesus of the
Qurʾan and later Muslim piety is much more than a mere human being, or even
simply a messenger with a sacred book. While the Jesus of Islam is not the Christ
of Christianity, the Christ of the Gospel often speaks through the austere, human
Jesus of Muslim piety. Indeed, the free spirits of Islamic mysticism found in the
man Jesus not only the example of piety, love, and asceticism, which they sought
to emulate, but also the Christ who exemplifies fulfilled humanity, a humanity
illumined by the light of God. This reflection of the divine light in the human heart
and soul is known in Sufism as tajallī—the manifestation of divine beauty and
majesty in and through a human being. In this concept of divine manifestation, the
Christian and Muslim images of Jesus converge at several points. Islam holds that
human beings can and must draw nearer to God. In the miʿrāj (the ascension of the
Prophet Muḥammad to heaven) and the “raising up” of Jesus to God (Q 4:158),
this concept takes on a most concrete form. Nevertheless, Islam insists on “man
being man” and God being God in the absolute sense.
Christianity, springing up in a different spiritual and cultural milieu from that
of Islam, begins not with the ascent of humans to the divine, but rather the descent
of the divine to humanity. If we look at it purely theologically, we can say that
the Islamic tradition, beginning with the Qurʾan, is a constant reminder to Chris-
tians of the need not only to be Christocentric but theocentric as well. It is also
a reminder to Muslims to discern God’s power manifested in the divine human
beings among his creatures. Thus, the “Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us” becomes a powerful expression of the encounter of humans with the divine. In
a way, therefore, the two approaches to the question of the divine–human relation
here presented are widely divergent; yet this is only true in points of emphasis and
in the position from which each of the two religious traditions starts.
In spite of these and other differences, however, I insist that Muslims and Chris-
tians can, and must, learn much from the human Jesus of Islam and from divine
Christ of Christianity. This can only be achieved through honest and sincere
efforts by members of both communities to be existentially involved in the mean-
ing and purpose of their existence not only in a world of sin and imperfection but
also a world sanctified by the divine presence among and in us.
8 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), Early
Sunni Exegesis, and Muʿtazilism
Sura 67 and the Five Principles
of Sunni Exegesis
Walid A. Saleh

The Muʿtazilite tafsir tradition is remarkably absent from the secondary literature
on the history of early tafsir, a rather unusual situation given that the Muʿtazilites
were pioneers in almost all other fields of the Islamic religious tradition.1 Some
of the blame rests on the nature of the surviving sources, but the real culprit is
the manner in which the field of tafsir conceived of its own inception. The early
history of tafsir was constructed on the basis of al-Ṭabarī’s (d. 310/923) mas-
sive Qurʾan commentary, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, where no traces of Muʿtazilism is to be
found. I have already argued that al-Ṭabarī not only avoided quoting Muʿtazilite
material but was deliberately erasing the Muʿtazilite exegetical heritage from the
picture.2 My contention is that Muʿtazilism was an early—if not one of the earli-
est—currents in the history of tafsir. Far more consequential to the history of
tafsir is that early Sunni tafsir was heavily influenced by and cognizant of the
Muʿtazilite tradition. Muʿtazilite tafsir was thus a major component in the devel-
opment of Sunni tafsir, and the entanglement of the two was evident from the
very beginning.3 This goes beyond what scholars so far have established of con-
nections between the Muʿtazilite tafsir tradition and the Sunni exegetical tradition
in the post-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) period.4 What I will argue here is that the
connection of Sunni tafsir to Muʿtazilism was early and continuous and not only

1 On Muʿtazilite Qurʾan commentary, see Bruce Fudge, Qurʾānic Hermeneutics: Al-Ṭabrisī and
the Craft of Commentary (London: Routledge, 2011), 114–131. For the studies on Muʿtazilite
exegesis, see also Suleiman A. Mourad, “The Revealed Text and the Intended Subtext: Notes on
the Hermeneutics of the Qurʾān in Muʿtazila Discourse as Reflected in the Tahd̠īb of al-Ḥākim
al-Ǧišumī (d. 494/1101),” in Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor
of Dimitri Gutas, ed. Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 367–395, esp.
footnote 2. See also the literature cited in Alena Kulinich, “Beyond Theology: Mutazilite scholars
and their authority in al-Rummānī’s tafsīr,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
78 (2015): 135–148.
2 On al-Ṭabarī’s relationship to Muʿtazilism, see my “Rereading al-Ṭabarī through al-Māturīdī: New
Light on the Third Century Hijrī,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 18 (2016): 193–194.
3 Ibid., 194–198.
4 See Suleiman A. Mourad, “The Survival of the Muʿtazila Tradition of Qurʾanic Exegesis in Shīʿī
and Sunnī Tafāsīr,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 12 (2010): 83. Mourad here discusses the influ-
ence of Muʿtazilite tafsīr on Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-10
154 Walid A. Saleh
a post-Zamakhsharī phenomenon. Shiite classical tafsir is not the sole inheritor
of the Muʿtazilite exegetical tradition;5 Sunnism was from the beginning adopt-
ing and adjusting its hermeneutics in order to answer to the challenge posed by
Muʿtazilism. This chapter will document this interaction through a close reading
of al-Māturīdī’s commentary on Sura 67 (al-Mulk). It will also confirm my previ-
ous finding that Muʿtazilism was a major component of early tafsir.

The Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān of al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944)

The Qurʾan commentary of al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, is, I have argued,
as significant a source for the history of early tafsir as al-Ṭabarī’s.6 The two exe-
getes were contemporaneous, and they both wrote massive encyclopedic Qurʾan
commentaries that were veritable storehouses of early material.7 The two share a
common pool of material that clearly reflects a broad Sunnite consensus on the
meaning of the Qurʾan. The material preserved in Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān is, how-
ever, far more extensive and contains not only Sunnite but Muʿtazilite material.
Indeed, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān preserved some of the earliest Muʿtazilite exegetical
material from early Islam. This material is not available in any later Muʿtazilite
Qurʾan commentary, and as such is far more critical in reconstructing the early
phase of Muʿtazilite exegetical tradition than commentaries like al-Zamakhsharī’s
al-Kashshāf or the Tahdhīb of al-Jushamī (d. 494/1101). A detailed analysis of the
Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān is now essential as a corrective to how we have so far con-
structed the history of early tafsir.
The Muʿtazilite material in the Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān is extensive and constitutes
one of the fundamental building blocks that al-Māturīdī used in constructing his
work. Though much of the material is not attributed to named authorities—he
begins most of his quotations by stating, “the Muʿtazilites say (wa l-muʿtazilah
yaqūlūn)”—he does quote two Muʿtazilite authorities consistently. These two
early Muʿtazilite exegetes are quoted all through the work, and the material attrib-
uted to them is one of the most important sources for early Muʿtazilite Qurʾan exe-
gesis. The first is Abū Bakr al-Aṣamm al-Kaysānī (d. 200/816; he will be referred
to as al-Aṣamm in this chapter), a leading Muʿtazilite thinker and the author of a
Qurʾan commentary that was famous.8 This Qurʾan commentary, called the Tafsīr
al-Aṣamm by al-Thaʿlabī, was used by various scholars across the ages, as van
Ess has shown already.9 Van Ess, however, had very limited material to go by,

5 On the connection between Shiism and Muʿtazilism, see Fudge, Qurʾānic Hermeneutics, 131–139.
6 Saleh, “Rereading al-Ṭabarī,” 180–181, and the literature cited there.
7 On Encyclopedic Qurʾan commentaries, see my “Preliminary Remarks on the Historiography of
tafsīr in Arabic: A History of the Book Approach,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 12 (2010): 17–21.
8 On al-Aṣamm, see Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra:
Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1991–
97), II, 396–418. See also Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid (London: Al-
Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2009), I, 594–595.
9 For the survival of this commentary in other works, see van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft,
II, 403–405. For the title as given by al-Thaʿlabī, see al-Kashf wa-l-bayān ʿan tafsīr al-Qurʾān,
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 155
and the new material in al-Māturīdī calls for a re-evaluation of this Qurʾan com-
mentary. A review of the sources clearly shows that the Tafsīr al-Qurʾān (another
title given to al-Aṣamm’s work) was one of the foundational Qurʾan commentar-
ies of the Muʿtazilite movement. In addition to it being used by al-Māturīdī, it
was used by al-Thaʿlabī and al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) among the Sunnite scholars.
That two major Sunnite scholars used the work shows that Sunnis were not una-
ware of the works of the Muʿtazilite movement and indeed read and incorporated
much of their material. The second Muʿtazilite author cited by al-Māturīdī was
Jaʿfar ibn Ḥarb (d. 236/850), one of the leading scholars of the Baghdad branch
of Muʿtazilism.10 He is not known to have authored a Qurʾan commentary proper,
and the work that was cited was most probably his Kitāb Mutashābih al-Qurʾān
(On the Problematic Verses of the Qurʾan).11 That al-Māturīdī would quote from
a work that is not tafsir proper is a clear indication that he was intimately knowl-
edgeable about Muʿtazilite scholarly engagement with the Qurʾan.12
Although the Sunnite material preserved in the Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān shares much
with the Jāmiʿ al-bayān of al-Ṭabarī, as I stated, it is also markedly different,
preserving a mode of Sunnite engagement with the Qurʾan that is not reflected in
al-Ṭabarī.13 This non-Ṭabarī Sunnite material clearly indicates that the Sunni exe-
getical landscape was far more complex and varied than was hitherto suspected.
The Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān is thus one of the most important sources we have now for
the study of early tafsir; a close reading of this work is the first step in reconstruct-
ing a lost picture that explains to us the persistent prominence in Sunni tafsir of
works that were markedly different than al-Ṭabarī’s Jāmiʿ al-bayān.

Sura 67—al-Mulk
There is little to no research on the post-canonical history of individual suras
and their reception in the Islamic tradition as stand-alone entities and apart from

ed. Ṣalāḥ Bāʿuthmān et al. (Jeddah: Dār al-Tafsīr, 2015), II, 129–130. See also Isaiah Gold-
feld, Mufassirū sharq al-ʿālam al-Islāmī fī arbaʿa al-qurūn al-hijrīya al-ūlā (ʿAkkā: Maṭbaʿat
al-Sarrūjī, 1984), 49.
10 On Jaʿfar ibn Ḥarb, see van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, IV, 68–77. See also Wilfred
Madelung,“Frühe muʿtazilitische Häresiographie: das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ǧaʿfar b. Ḥarb?” Der
Islam 57/2 (1980): 220–236.
11 On the title, see Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, I, 590–591. See also Madelung, “Frühe
muʿtazilitische Häresiographie,” 235. For another Muʿtazilite work with the same title that uses
this early work, see Suleiman A. Mourad, “Ibn Khallāl al-Baṣrī (d. after 377/988) and his Œuvre
on the Problematic Verses of the Qurʾān Kitāb al-Radd ʿalā al-jabriyya al-qadariyya (Refutation
of the Predestinarian Compulsionists),” in A Common Rationality: Muʿtazilism in Islam and Juda-
ism, ed. Camilla Adang, Sabine Schmidtke, and David Sklare (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2008),
81–99, esp. 91.
12 There remains a third source of Muʿtazilite material that needs to be assessed, which is the inter-
pretations from al-Ḥasan al-Basrī. This is, however, not the place for an assessment of this mate-
rial. I am preparing a study of the body of work attributed to this early source in al-Māturīdī.
13 On this difference, see Saleh, “Rereading,” 179–209.
156 Walid A. Saleh
their place in the commentary tradition.14 It is clear, however, that not all suras
were created equal—a fact that bedevilled the tradition itself. Some suras (and
some verses also) were far more resonant among Muslims, and soon this mani-
fested itself in the frequency of quotations, use in rituals, material art, and rever-
ence shown to such suras. Sura 67 has a special place in the history of Islamic
pietism—and it was one of the suras that would detach itself from the Qurʾan and
receive individual treatment as an object—just like Sura 112.15 Sura 67:1 is part
of a tombstone inscription from the year 102/721; it is one of the earliest surviv-
ing Qurʾanic quotations to be found on a tombstone.16 Sura 67, moreover, always
appears in lists of suras, usually of no more than three, which are to be read on
various occasions, especially after the burial of a Muslim.17 The cultic status of
Sura 67 would be secured by the prophetic traditions that spoke of its potency as
a salvific tool, traditions that appear in collections of hadith.18 Sura 67 was among
the suras that appear in the early work of Abū ʿUbayd al-Harawī (d. 224/838–839),
Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, indicating that its status as a privileged sura was early.19 Tradi-
tions on the merits of Sura 67 were quoted in tafsir literature, which we encounter
in al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035).20 A few centuries later, al-Ghāfiqī (d. 619/1222), in
his monograph on the merits of suras, provides a far more extensive list of tradi-
tions and hadiths on this sura, reflecting its growing status in pietistic circles and
among the Muslim public.21 The continuous growth of the status of Sura 67 is also
reflected in the Qurʾan commentary of al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505).22
A close reading of these traditions indicates that Sura 67 was tied to the Sunni
doctrine of the punishment in the grave (ʿadhāb al-qabr), an emotive issue that
became a shibboleth of the early Sunnis in contradistinction to the Muʿtazilites.23

14 See my “Word,” in Key Themes for the Study of Islam, ed. Jamal J. Elias (Oxford: Oneworld Pub-
lications, 2010), 356–376.
15 On Sura 112, see Saleh, “The Etymological Fallacy and Quranic Studies: Muhammad, Paradise,
and Late Antiquity,” in The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the
Qurʾānic Milieu, ed. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx (Leiden: Brill, 2010),
654–658.
16 See Leor Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2007), 22.
17 Ibid., 29.
18 See some of the hadiths in Ibrāhīm ʿĪsā, al-Aḥādīth al-Wāridah fī faḍāʾil suwar al-Qurʾān
al-karīm, dirāsah wa-naqd (Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 2001), 332–341.
19 Abū ʿUbayd al-Harawī, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad al-Khayyāṭī (al-Muḥammadīyah: Maṭbaʿat
Faḍālah, 1995), II, 69–70.
20 Al-Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān, XXVII, 79–85. On merit-of-sura traditions, see my The For-
mation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾan Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035)
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 103–108.
21 Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Ghāfiqī, Lamaḥāt al-anwār, ed. Rifʿat ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (Beirut:
Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmīyah, 1997), II, 987–1001.
22 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-Turkī, Cairo: Dār Hajar, 2003), XIV,
599–606.
23 On the history of the development of this doctrine and the literature, see Halevi, Muhammad’s
Grave, 197–233.
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 157
The early Sunnis believed that while in their graves, the dead experienced a ver-
sion of their future fate in hell or heaven and that sinners will be punished and
tortured in the grave. Such was the emotion around this issue that it was incorpo-
rated into early Sunni creeds.24 Sura 67 was thus positioned by the Sunni tradition
as the sura that guards against this torment in the grave.25 Those who read and
memorized this sura were spared the torture in the grave and saved. Muhammad
is supposed to have read it every night before he slept.26 One has to admire the
fascinating manoeuvre accomplished here by Sunnism. As the Muʿtazilites rightly
pointed out, there is no clear Qurʾanic attestation of the doctrine of the punishment
in the grave; but nevertheless, that Sura 67 had the power to forestall such a tor-
ture was, for Sunnis, the clearest evidence that the torture of the dead in the grave
is true. That this sura played such a salvifically specific role is actually not sur-
prising. Sura 67 seems to have been a favourite sura of Muʿtazilite exegetes, and
what would be more galling than robbing them of a sura by making it the focus of
Sunni pietism—and especially to tie it to a doctrine denied by Muʿtazilism. Sura
67 came to be forever tied to the doctrine of the torture in the grave.
There is, however, no direct correlation between the status of a sura in pietis-
tic and ritual practices and the attention it receives in tafsir literature. That Sura
67 would receive special treatment in tafsir was thus not a foregone conclusion.
Al-Ṭabarī does not seem to care much for the sura, and other Sunni exegetes pay
no special attention to it. However, this is not the case with the treatments of it by
al-Māturīdī and al-Rāzī. Al-Māturīdī’s treatment, I argue, is a direct response to
the central role of this sura in Muʿtazilite theology as is reflected by the amount of
early Muʿtazilite material that he quotes and responds to. It is thanks to him that
we can unearth the centrality of this sura to Muʿtazilism and the Sunni response.
His commentary is a sprawling 43 pages in the Turkish edition of his tafsīr (33
pages in the Beirut edition).27 Al-Ṭabarī has only 13 pages in the Ḥalabī edition
(22 pages in the Hajar edition). If one keeps in mind that almost half the material
in al-Ṭabarī is made up of chains of transmissions and repetitive interpretations,
the contrast becomes even more stark. The difference is both qualitative and quan-
titative. The only other exegete to give Sura 67 the same attention as al-Māturīdī
was al-Rāzī, who was clearly echoing al-Māturīdī; yet it is not clear what the
conduits of influence were—al-Rāzī either had direct access to al-Māturīdī or was

24 Ibid., 218.
25 A summary of the traditions on Sura 67 can be found in Musāʿid al-Ṭayyār, ed., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr
al-maʾthūr (Riyadh: Markaz al-Dirasāt al-Qurʾānīyah, 2017), XXII, 57–61.
26 Al-Ghāfiqī, Lamaḥāt al-anwār, II, 996.
27 Muḥammad Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, ed. Ahmet Vanlioğlu et al. (Istanbul:
Mızan Yayınevi, 2005–11), XV, 283–325; al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt ahl al-sunnah, ed. Majdī Bāsallūm
(Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2005), X, 101–133. The interpretation of Sura 67 occurs in the
last volume of any Qurʾan commentary, and since I have been working on this material for several
years, from before the complete publication of the Turkish edition of al-Māturīdī, I will be refer-
ring to the Beirut edition, which came out all at once and was used for this study. The Turkish
edition is far superior, and I follow some of the readings offered there.
158 Walid A. Saleh
responding to the Muʿtazilite material shared by both. I am inclined to believe the
former. The relationship between al-Rāzī and al-Māturīdī is yet to be explored;
I am, however, confident that al-Rāzī had access to the Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān. The
reception of al-Māturīdī in the general history of tafsir is a topic for another article.

Al-Māturīdī and Muʿtazilite exegetical material

The relationship between al-Māturīdī and the exegetical material from
Muʿtazilism is complicated and layered. He both depended on this material and
pushed back against it. He had no problem citing them approvingly when theol-
ogy was not at stake. His response was thus more than rejection or a polemical
stance; rather, it was a conversation with what appears to have been his main
counterparts in the exegetical tradition. Muʿtazilism was his main interlocutor.28
I have already offered an analysis of some aspects of this relationship—yet it was
done in an attempt to show how radically different his approach was from that of
al-Ṭabarī.29 Here, I will follow his use of Muʿtazilite material and his attempt to
answer Muʿtazilite use of Sura 67 in detail, and show that Sunnism was keenly
aware of the heritage of Muʿtazilite tafsir from early on, and not as a result of
al-Kashshāf of al-Zamakhsharī. Yet, even when the material is not directly con-
nected to Muʿtazilism, al-Māturīdī shaped his interpretation with this school in
the back of his mind. The five rules of interpretation that al-Māturīdī claimed are
at the heart of how to approach the Qurʾan are directly tied to his hermeneutical
response to the Muʿtazilite programme.

Q 67:1: “Exalted is He who has in His hand sovereignty

(mulk) and He has power over everything”
The engagement with Muʿtazilite material comes early on in the sura. Q 67:1,
which has the word “sovereignty,” or “rulership” (mulk), becomes the first locus
of exegetical parrying with Muʿtazilism. Al-Māturīdī divides the verse into two
phrases, dealing with each separately. The first phrase is “exalted is He who has
in His hand sovereignty.” Al-Māturīdī starts by disposing of the problematic
anthropomorphic term “hand” by claiming that it resembles an expression in Q
3:26, and as such the expression means that “he owns sovereignty (lahu milk
al-mulk).”30 This is rather ingenious and ironic; it is what a Muʿtazilite exegete

28 Manfred Götz adds another camp, the anthropomorphists (al-mushabbihah), that he thinks
al-Māturīdī was concerned to refute, see Götz, “Māturīdī und sein Kitāb Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān,” Der
Islam 41 (1965): 40.
29 See note 2.
30 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 101.
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 159
would have done, but more explicitly.31 The resemblance stops here, though.32
Al-Māturīdī then immediately quotes what the Muʿtazilites say about this verse,
“the Muʿtazilites state that the sovereignty of the nonbelievers is not real” or “does
not belong to Him” for “God does not give rulership to nonbelievers.”33 He then
also brings in their interpretation of Q 2:258 as their own support of their claims.34
Yet their approach, al-Māturīdī explains, would negate another verse from the
Qurʾan that clearly claims that God gives sovereignty (mulk) to whomsoever He
wants and strips it from whomsoever He wants (Q 3:26). The reference to what
the Muʿtazilites said about another verse is a clear indication that al-Māturīdī has
not only mastery of but access to a complete Muʿtazilite corpus of interpretation
of the Qurʾan.
Al-Māturīdī then launches into a critique of this interpretation and mocks it
relentlessly. I offer here a translation of this paragraph, and then follow it with
commentary. In true dialectical fashion, he draws out the implications of their
statements to their absurd conclusions, showing that they are illogical and
contradictory.

The Muʿtazilites should not halt their interpretation with the statement that
God does not give (imbue) sovereignty to a nonbeliever (kāfir). Rather, they
should press on and state: If giving sovereignty is better for them (aṣlaḥ) He
ought to give it to them, and if it is evil (sharran) He should not give them it,
since it is stated in their school that God does not do to his servants but that
which is the best for them (aṣlaḥ) in both religion and their worldly affairs.
This is the sum of their dogma! Yet, they are unable to tell us what constitutes
“the best” in what God does in all that God does. For do they not say that the
decision of God to leave the Devil alive till Judgment Day is good (ṣalāḥ),
although we (human beings) do not know exactly in what way this is good
[i.e. it is actually bad for humans to have a tempter making their life more
difficult]. They also state that the [allowing of the] killing of prophets and
messengers was an act of good, although we don’t know exactly in what way.

31 Cf. al-Zamakhsharī, who stated: “The use of hand (al-yad) is metaphoric, indicating a complete
possession of sovereignty and owning it.” See al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl,
ed. Muḥammad Qamḥāwī (Cairo: Muṣṭaf ā al-Ḥalabī, 1972), IV, 133. For al-Māturīdī’s conception
of the metaphoric language of the Qurʾan, see Ulrich Rudolph, Al-Māturīdī und die sunnitische
Theologie in Samarkand (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 319–330.
32 This agreement between al-Māturīdī and the Muʿtazilites on how to interpret anthropomorphic
expression in the Qurʾan is already mentioned by Götz in his “Māturīdī,” 42.
33 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 101. The argument here is that God has to give sovereignty to the non-
believers in order for Him to rob them of it. Otherwise, it is not there, and as such God is not grant-
ing anything or he is not in control of it.
34 Q 2:258: “Have you not thought about the man who disputed with Abraham about his Lord,
because God has given him [i.e. the man who is disputing with Abraham] power to rule?” Accord-
ing to al-Māturīdī, the Muʿtazilite commentators understood the pronoun “him” to refer to Abra-
ham, and not to the “man,” as the grammar of the verse would indicate.
160 Walid A. Saleh
So, let them state here that if giving sovereignty to the nonbelievers is good
for them, He has to give it to them, and if it were evil He ought to prevent
them from having it. They should not just leave us with negative statements.35

Al-Māturīdī is having fun at the expense of the absurdity of their statement. His-
torical evidence as well as Q 3:26 (“You, Lord, give sovereignty to whomso-
ever you want, and take it away from whomsoever you want”) clearly indicates
that mulk, sovereignty, does exist among and belong to the non-believers; and he
cites their interpretation of Q 2:258 earlier to show the absurdity of the lengths
to which they would go to deny the apparent meaning of the Qurʾan when it con-
tradicts their views. He finishes this interpretive exercise by stating the obvious:
“despite their denials, sovereignty exists among them (wa-maʿa dhālika yūjadu
fīhim al-mulk).”36 But al-Māturīdī takes the Muʿtazilites’ denial that God gives
sovereignty to non-believers as an occasion to go after one of their main doctrines,
namely, that God’s actions are scrutable and follow a clear moral basis, that God
acts always for the best of his creatures.37 What al-Māturīdī is making clear is that
we do not know the wisdom behind the acts of God, especially since He seems to
give the non-believers all the things that he gives believers, including sovereignty.
The Muʿtazilites have no logical consistency. They are unable to explain what is
manifestly illogical in God’s actions—leaving the devil to corrupt humanity, for
example, or allowing the killing of His own prophets and messengers. In all of
this, the power of God to decide is taken away and He is not able to act as He
wills.
It is after this analysis of sovereignty that al-Māturīdī offers a definition of
the term “mulk.” The definition is important insofar as it is one of the clearest
examples of the kalamization of the exegetical process. Definitions as such are
not common in early Sunni tafsir. If we compare this interpretative process with
that of al-Ṭabarī, we can see the radical differences in their assumptions and
methods. Al-Ṭabarī has a periphrastic 11-word sentence for this phrase. The verse
barely registers; he has no citations from previous exegetes, no elaborations.38 It is
what elsewhere I have labelled “orphaned interpretations,” where al-Ṭabarī fails
to offer any previous or any authority-based interpretations for a given verse.39
Yet, clearly there was a debate about this verse, as the Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān shows.
Much ink has been spilled over the material in al-Ṭabarī that is cited from previ-
ous authorities with a chain of transmission. Less, or nothing, has been said about
these orphaned explanations and their place in his work. This aspect of al-Ṭabarī
has escaped the attention of scholars working on him. The absented voices in such
a practice are not only the Muʿtazilite voices but also the mainstream Sunni voice

35 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 101–102.

36 Ibid.
37 For the aṣlaḥ doctrine, see TG, III, 277–278 (Abū l-Hudhayl) and III, 405–407 (Naẓzām).
38 Muḥammad b. Jarīr Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan Taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-Turkī
(Cairo: Dār Hajar, 2001), XXIII, 118.
39 See Saleh, “Rereading al-Ṭabarī,” 188–189.
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 161
which was deeply involved in a process of theological interpretation of the Qurʾan
in the same manner as the Muʿtazilites.
The second phrase of verse Q 67:1, “He has power (qadīr) over everything,”
was also the occasion of a systematic attack on the Muʿtazilites’ understanding of
God’s power. It is not clear that what al-Māturīdī is debating with the Muʿtazilites
was an interpretation of this very phrase; by this I mean that it is not clear whether
this is an interpretation or a discussion of a doctrine that can be connected to this
verse. The Muʿtazilite material that he brings up clearly centres on God’s power
(qudrah). It shares a word with the verse and centres around the same notion, so
if it is not directly an interpretation it is an elaboration of what a Qurʾanic term
means. The reference here to the Muʿtazilite doctrine is not attributed, and it starts
with “and among what the Muʿtazilites state is . . .”40
If one follows al-Māturīdī and how he deals with the Muʿtazilites, one can dis-
cern three approaches as to how he quotes and deals with their material. The three
approaches are: first, the quoting of a direct interpretation of a verse, an interpre-
tation that he objects to; second, he discusses their views when a Qurʾanic verse
contains a word that is at the heart of a doctrinal dispute, thus connecting the verse
to a position of the Muʿtazilites; I am assuming that here al-Māturīdī is following
a previous Muʿtazilite commentary that addressed the doctrine of God’s power at
this verse and as such he followed suit. The third method of his engagement with
the Muʿtazilite tradition, which I will discuss later, involves the approving citation
of Muʿtazilite material. Regardless of the mode of engagement, it is clear what the
overall strategy of al-Māturīdī is: he has the Muʿtazilites as his target.
After stating that God is indeed capable of doing what He wants, al-Māturīdī
recounts a string of dogmatic statements from the Muʿtazilites and refutes them.
I offer a translation here in full:

The Muʿtazilites state [were one to follow the corollary of what they believe
in] that God is not capable of/in command over (ghayr qādir) most things, for
they claim that the non-existent entities (or objects) are things; thus, accord-
ing to them the thingness of things exists autonomously and does not need
God to make it exist.41 They merely assert that God has the power to bring
these non-existent-things into being [from their state of being a thing-non-
existent]. If this is so, then according to their dogma God is not in control of
the thingness of things, just as they negate that He creates or controls the acts
of His creatures. For they also claim that God, [who has the power to choose
and act] can grant His powers to human beings [enabling them to have that
capacity], thus, when one of them is given that power and is guided to faith,

40 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 102.

41 The literature on the “thingness of non-existent things” is extensive. See Harry Wolfson, The Phi-
losophy of Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 359–372. See also Robert Wis-
novsky, “Notes on Avicenna’s Concept of Thingness (Šayʾiyya),” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
10 (2000): 181–221; Richard M. Frank, “The Non-Existent and the Possible in Classical Ashʿarite
Teaching,” MIDEO 24 (2000): 1–37.
162 Walid A. Saleh
God loses control which He has now bestowed to the creature. Thus, this
power is no more with God, and it can’t be said that it is with God, but rather
implied (or derivative).

If this is so, then God is no more capable of (or in command over) everything,
he is no more controlling everything. Rather, he is in control of some things. May
God be exalted from the statements of those ungodly people.42
This is a typical example of how al-Māturīdī follows the theology of the
Muʿtazilites in his Qurʾan commentary. The issues at hand are from the essence
of Kalām theology, not just mere contentious issues like predestination or grave
sins. What constitutes existence? And what constitutes “thingness?” Sunnite
Qurʾan commentary tradition will not see anything like this until much later, until
al-Rāzī in his Mafātīḥ al-ghayb; yet not even al-Zamakhsharī, the best exam-
ple we have of Muʿtazilite commentaries, was explicit about such topics in this
instance. Al-Zamakhsharī seems to allude to this controversy of what is exactly
under God’s command when he states: “He is capable of everything—as long
as it is not in existence—that is under His capacity.”43 The phrase is so cryptic
and terse that unless you have a notion of what is under discussion you will not
realize the resonance of the phrase. Al-Jushamī’s (d. 494/1101) Qurʾan commen-
tary al-Tahdhīb, the only other Muʿtazilite commentary to survive, shows that
this was the occasion to discuss the nature of God’s power.44 Lest one think that
the availability of these two late Muʿtazilite Qurʾan commentaries obviate the
need for consulting al-Māturīdī’s Qurʾan commentary, a cursory look at the three
commentaries on this instance shows that the Muʿtazilite position has radically
changed in the ensuing centuries, such that the later Muʿtazilite position is not
reflective of the early phase of the tradition. Al-Māturīdī may have been the only
source that has preserved for us the early position, and as such this work remains
indispensable for the reconstruction of the intellectual debates in tafsir in the first
three centuries of Islam.

Q 67:2: “[God] Who created death and life to test you and
reveal which of you does best”
If Q 67:1 was the occasion to go after Muʿtazilite interpretive strategies and
dogma, Q 67:2 presents a different kind of engagement with the Muʿtazilite tradi-
tion. The first authority that al-Māturīdī cites in interpreting this verse is actually
Abū Bakr al-Aṣamm. The citation here is in a positive setting; it is given a fully
authoritative position and placed on equal footing with other interpretations.45

42 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 102–103.

43 Al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, IV, 133 (sub Q 67:1).
44 Ḥākim al-Jushamī, al-Tahdhīb fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sālimī (Beirut: Dār
al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 2019), X, 7002.
45 Another example of such positive use of Muʿtazilite material is his interpretation of verse Q
67:27, see al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 130. He disagrees with the philological analysis of Abū Bakr
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 163
Such is the setting that one has to admit to the centrality of the Muʿtazilite corpus
in al-Māturīdī’s formation as an exegete. After citing the verse, al-Māturīdī states,
“Abū Bakr al-Aṣamm stated that He created death, that is a sperm, a clot of blood,
then a clump, then He revived you.”46 He then cites some other unnamed exegetes
(“and others said”) and finishes by stating his own opinion (“and as for our opin-
ion”), a three-tiered gradation that evinces no condemnation but rather respect for
an opinion that is uncoloured by doctrinal prejudices.
From Q 67:3 to Q 67:11, al-Māturīdī does not mention any Muʿtazilite mate-
rial, yet the shadow of Muʿtazilism is everywhere to be seen. The material here
is theological and constructed to reflect a Sunnite world view that is building an
anthropology of what a Muslim ethical human being is. One cannot claim that
Muʿtazilism is not present, it is only not cited. This absence comes to a quick
end by verse Q 67:12: “Those who fear (yakhshawna) their Lord in solitude
will earn forgiveness and great reward.” After a brief periphrastic interpretation,
al-Māturīdī makes direct reference to the aṣl (origin, font) of the verse, its real
import. This is an unusual practice in tafsir. He stops the flow of the interpreta-
tion to speak in general terms about the implication of the verse, turning to the
issue of the fear of God, stating: “The aṣl, general meaning of this verse, is that
no believer in resurrection exists that does not fear the Lord, although in varying
degrees, except the Muʿtazilites who fear him not.”47 This statement is followed
by a long discursive analysis, two pages, as to why a Sunnite is the only believer
who could be described as truly fearing of the Lord, and why the Muʿtazilites
have no real fear of God. It is a discourse on fear and human responsibility that
remains one of most unusual of psychological interpretations that I have encoun-
tered in any tafsir.48 Al-Māturīdī ties this fear with the economy of salvation in
both systems, presenting the waʿd and waʿīd (reward and punishment) doctrine of
the Muʿtazilites as the most exactingly transactional of processes in which emo-
tions have no place. God is diminished, He is turned into a quasi-slave, but so is
faith itself in this process of inescapable obligations.

A sunnite hermeneutical manifesto in Sura 67

Such is the hold of the Muʿtazilite interpretive tradition over Sura 67 that
al-Māturīdī offers as a counterweight in his interpretation of the sura a hermeneu-
tical manifesto—a remarkable occurrence and a warning to all of us who work
on early tafsir. The absence of a hermeneutical discourse in an introduction to a
Qurʾan commentary (which is the case in the Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān) should not mean
that there is not one in the body of the work. This makes for a sobering state of

al-Aṣamm, but this is a disagreement that is common in tafsir and has no theological implications
here.
46 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 103.
47 Ibid., X, 112.
48 Ibid., X, 112–113.
164 Walid A. Saleh
affairs, for unless we read a work completely, we will never be able to judge it
fully. The manifesto is remarkable because it offers a hermeneutical response to
the Muʿtazilite doctrinal hold over the Qurʾan. This is a master who has come near
the end of the process of writing a Qurʾan commentary and now distils what, in
his view, the Qurʾan is about.
From Q 67:12 to Q 67:19, al-Māturīdī offers quotations from Jaʿfar b. Ḥarb
and Abū Bakr al-Aṣamm, which are refuted systematically, building up into the
longest hermeneutical statement I have found in the Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān so far.
The statement is clearly meant as a blanket rule about the Qurʾan in general. The
significance of this statement from al-Māturīdī is such that I am offering a full
translation of it here. What is to be noted is that al-Māturīdī states that there are
five foundational purposes for the verses in the Qurʾan. It does not take much
to see the significance of this number, it is the same number of the uṣūl of the
Muʿtazilites.49 It is becoming apparent why al-Māturīdī is using the word aṣl
to refer to meaning. If the Qurʾan has uṣūl, foundations, they are not what the
Muʿtazilites claim them to be. Here is the translation of the hermeneutical dis-
course on the Qurʾan from Sura 67:

The aṣl, general import, of verses mentioned in the Qurʾan, is to confirm five
principles (awjuh):
The first is to confirm the capacity of God to resurrect the dead (baʿth).
But according to the Muʿtazilites, the verses of the Qurʾan do not confirm
God’s omnipotence, nor do the verses necessarily imply that God is capable
of resurrecting the dead. For God has offered as proof of His power to resur-
rect his power to create ab initio, as He said “Do not human beings see that
we created them from a sperm” (Q 36:77), and He said “He starts creation
and He repeats the act of creating again [the same thing], and it is easier the
second time around” (Q 30:27); so He used the fact that He can create from
nothing as a proof of His ability to resurrect—while to them, the Muʿtazilites,
nothing in this act of creating from nothing proves that He can resurrect.
This is because they denied that God is capable of creating the actions of the
creatures [human beings], although they do confirm that God created human
beings from nothing and brought them into being. And they do not tie the
ability to create individual entities to a capacity to create the deeds of these
entities, even though it would be easier to create the deeds of already created
things than creating the things themselves from nothing—which contradicts
God’s using His capacity to create from nothing as a proof that He can resur-
rect (and let us not forget that resurrecting is easier than creating from noth-
ing). Even though is easier to see the signs that acts are created and controlled
by God than it is to prove His ability to resurrect.
Do you not see that some of the deeds that human beings perform are
harmful to them, tiresome and painful, even though the human beings who

49 On the five principles of Muʿtazilism, see Daniel Gimaret, “Les Uṣūl al-ḫamsa du Qāḍī ʿAbd
al-Ǧabbār et leurs commentaires,” Annales Islamologiques 15 (1979): 47–96.
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 165
performed these deeds in order to enjoy them and take pleasure from them?
Thus, it is clear that someone else was in control of these acts, to obtain such
a contradictory state. For in human actions there are hidden consequences
that are beyond the person who performs the action, and humans are incapa-
ble of conceiving of the implications of their actions. For a deed (or action)
occupies a space, place, and time in such a way that no human imagination
can manage to master or a mind to comprehend. Thus, someone else has a
hand in the action, creating it and bringing it about. For an action can be good
or evil, and the one performing that act is incapable of predicting the degree
of the goodness or the degree of the evil of such an act—indeed, the very
good act repeated again will result in a different degree of goodness. Thus,
all that we have discussed clearly indicate that actions are not created by the
doers of these acts, yet the Muʿtazilites deny that these actions are created by
God. As such, there is no proof for the capacity to resurrect, and according to
them God is not in control. Indeed, one can forgive the nonbelievers in God
their denial of resurrection and not forgive the Muʿtazilites their denial of the
capacity of God to create the actions of the creatures and their denial of the
connection between God’s capacity to create from nothing and His ability to
resurrect and repeat the act of creation after death. Thus, it is clear that they
do not hold the implication of this first principle, that the verses of the Qurʾan
confirm resurrection.
The second principle that the verses of the Qurʾan confirm is God’s sole
divinity (waḥdānīya). God made the proof of His sole divinity His unique
capacity to create things and His being alone who is capable to bring them
into being. Take for example His statement in the Qurʾan, “Should they hold
others as equal to God in creating things as He created?” (Q 13:16), and also,
“He has no other deities with Him, otherwise each God would have con-
trolled what they have created” (Q 23:91). Yet according to the Muʿtazilites,
God is not unique as a creator of things; indeed most of created things are
created by creatures and not by God Himself, according to them. But if He
is not unique and alone as creator one cannot use this as a proof to know the
Creator and that He is a unique alone Deity, and if so then one cannot prove
that God is the sole deity, according to the Muʿtazilites, in so far as God used
His unique position as creator to prove He is the only God.
The third principle is that the verses of the Qurʾan were revealed to prove
God’s wisdom. [There are two issues under this principle. The first] is that He
made the proof of His wisdom the fact that He created the Heavens and the
earths and everything else. We ourselves have recognized that heavens and
earths are created because we have all seen that they are [made of] aggregated
[atoms], and that their being aggregated as atoms is an accident in their nature,
and since things that are incapable of breaking away from what is accidental
in their nature are by definition created things.50 A created thing has to have

50 On aggregation and separateness of atoms as a proof of creation, see Wolfson, The Philosophy of
Kalam, 386–392.
166 Walid A. Saleh
a creator, otherwise we would not have been capable of knowing that both
[heaven and earth] are created. Yet according to the Muʿtazilites, being aggre-
gated and being separated does not indicate being created, because accord-
ing to them anyone who has power can aggregate and separate things. [And
according to them] aggregation and or separation are done by someone who
is the aggregator and the separator, since they believe in the dogma of gener-
ated effect (al-mutawallidāt).51 Thus according to them, anyone who is fully
capable can aggregate things because he is powerful, and even someone who
is not omnipotent can aggregate to the extent of their power. Now if one is
to agree to their arguments, then it is not clear to us, human beings, that God
did indeed create heavens and earth since the only way to know that is by my
arguments and not by mere statements from God [a logical argument has to
prove that God created the world].52 [Just to give an example, if we accept
the notion of generated effects of the Muʿtazilites] then it is possible that God
could enable an angel of His and empower him to create heavens and earth,
and if this is the case, it would not be possible for us to ascertain that God
created the heavens and earth [the generated act of the angels is the angels’
and not God in this case], and it would be impossible to use the creation of
heavens and earth and everything else as a proof that He is wise, capable and
the only deity. But God did use this as a proof [so it is a false preposition].
The second aspect of the third principle is that He made the perfection of
the things He creates a sign of His wisdom. [Yet according to the Muʿtazilites
they admit the possibility that things could be perfect by other means and
not because of God, which we know is not the case.] But since God has not
put a mark on things He perfected to distinguish them from perfected things
made by others, His perfection of things is thus not a sign that God is wise,
rather it signifies the very opposite, His incapacity and weakness, for He did
not think to distinguish His own perfected things from those of others, and
since wisdom is putting things in their places and clarifying what is His from
what is not His.
The Muʿtazilites also say that God gave the unbeliever the power to believe
and did not hold back in His coffers any means that could be used [by this
unbeliever] to believe, even though God knows that these unbelievers will
not believe in Him. Is not this the utmost of foolishness, and the utmost of
frivolity, especially if we see such a state in our own lives here on earth? Do
you not see that if a person cultivated his land, by watering it, plowing it, and
erecting buildings, were he then to scatter seeds while knowing that the seeds
will not germinate, would we not consider him a fool and frivolous? A foolish
person cannot be a wise deity.
God said “God created death and life to test you who is better in their
deeds” (Q 67:2), yet according to the Muʿtazilites others also have created

51 On the generated effects, see ibid., 644–655.

52 Following the reading of the Turkish edition.
 Al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) 167
life and death, for the murdered is a “dead” person as we all agree [hence
the killer is someone who created death] and the Muʿtazilites claim that God
has nothing to do with the murdering of a person, and that he died before his
appointed time of death which God has originally set for him, had he not been
murdered. Thus if someone other than God is capable of creating death, and
another can create life through means—for example if one waters earth and
crops and by his watering it he is giving it life—if so, then God is not unique
in being able to create death and life, but He has partners in the creating of
things—according to them—and one cannot praise Him that He is the creator
of all things.
The fourth principle is that God used as proof for His [pre-]knowledge of
the actions of human beings His creation of these actions, for He said “does
He not know, He who created” (Q 67:14); while the Muʿtazilites [hum, they]
denied that God creates the actions of human beings, and if this is denied
then He could not know them; if so the verses of the Qurʾan that confirm that
God knows [in the absolute] do not confirm this according to them. If this is
so, then the Qurʾan is lying in its reports—May God be sanctified from such
claims.
The fifth principle is that He called Himself the benefactor and the gener-
ous, and proved His benefaction and generosity by verses that He used as
proofs to convince His creatures (or as warning to His creatures). However,
[according to the Muʿtazilites] not one gift given by God to human beings is
given unless they are deserving of it and are entitled to it from God. Thus,
God by giving these gifts is simply fulfilling His obligations in what he owes
them of rights in being gifted. But if someone pays back what they owe to
someone else, they are not benefactors or generous! They are paying back
their dues. If this is so, then the verses in the Qurʾan that confirm God’s ben-
efaction are not confirming His benefaction—according to their arguments.
May God be sanctified from what they say against Him.53

Conclusion
The five principles that can be deduced from the verses of the Qurʾan then are:
God’s power (manifest through resurrection and creation), oneness, wisdom,
knowledge, and benefaction. Each is defined according to Sunni understanding.
Each is a theological concept, theocentric, and has nothing to do with laws and
regulations. That is perhaps the starkest implication of this hermeneutical under-
standing of why the Qurʾan was revealed. A Muslim is a theological being, and
in this al-Māturīdī is in agreement with his opponents the Muʿtazilites. These
principles are also remarkably ahistorical, in the sense that Muhammad or the
early salvific community he established is not of theological concern. This is a
universalism of monotheism taken to its full extent. The principles evince also a

53 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 120–122.

168 Walid A. Saleh
different kind of pietism; it is not of rituals but of the right dogma. We in a sense
have forgotten the radicalism of early Islamic theology, its utter consecration of
the human mind as the road to God. God can be known, and human beings can
know Him. It is also remarkably non-hadith; in the entire hermeneutical section,
not a single hadith is cited. It is a process where the exegete is the only authority,
and the Qurʾan is not beyond his reach.54
It is also clear that each of these principles is a direct response to a Muʿtazilite
conception of God. Al-Māturīdī seems to care for no other Islamic sect, and there
were many, and he knew all of them. This requires a reassessment of how early
Sunni thought should be understood: it was not an adoption of Muʿtazilite meth-
ods to defend Sunnism (the Ashʿarism story), but rather an independent move-
ment that was partaking in a dialectic culture that was common to all. Another
implication of this reading is that the Qurʾan commentary of al-Māturīdī has now
to be seen as a source for the history of Islamic theology, and the article of Man-
fred Götz—pioneering as it was—should not be considered the final word on the
matter.55 Indeed that the Qurʾan is seen as primary a theological book is a statement
about how little we know of early Sunni tafsir.
That these five principles are seen everywhere in the Qurʾan is clear from
al-Māturīdī’s own reference to them in summary fashion after this statement. This
leads me to believe that the five principles were the distillation of his interpretive
engagement with the Qurʾan—and having formulated them, he refers to them in
summary afterwards. Thus, in the same Sura 67, in the interpretation of verse 23,
he mentions that the verse is a reminder of God’s “power, majesty, knowledge,
wisdom, beneficence, and his uniqueness from being equal to anything else (i.e.
oneness).”56 Al-Māturīdī then makes cross-references to his interpretation in Sura
77 and Sura 86, where he mentions these principles again.57 The interpretation
of Q 67 as presented by al-Māturīdī is nothing short of a summary of the major
differences between Sunnism and Muʿtazilite theology. It is not clear why such a
comprehensive summary of the debate between the two sects appears in this sura.
I do, however, think that we have to expect that some suras in the Qurʾan were
occasions for some exegetes to engage with larger issues. The significance of
Sura 67 in the pietistic Sunni tradition as well as its significance in the Muʿtazilite
Qurʾan citation might have made it a prime target for such discoursing. I think that
we have to now look into other suras in the Qurʾan and see if they have received
special treatment by exegetes. This goes beyond the obvious candidates like Sura
112, which despite its centrality was too terse to allow a real comprehensive expo-
sition of ideas.

54 On the exegete’s authority, see my “Rereading al-Ṭabarī,” 198–201.

55 Götz, “Māturīdī,” 27–70.
56 Al-Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt, X, 126.
57 Ibid., X, 127. For Q 77:25, see ibid., X, 381 (the same summary phrases as here); for Q 86:4, see
ibid., X, 493.
9 The Gināns
Betwixt Satpanthī Scripture and
“Ismaili” Devotional Literature
Ali S. Asani

Introduction
In December 1964, during one of his visits to Karachi, Pakistan, His Highness the
Aga Khan IV, the 49th Imam (spiritual leader) of the Nizari Ismaili community,
attended a concert (meḥfil) of devotional poetry.1 In his remarks to his followers
(“spiritual children,” as he calls them) he said:

I would be surprised if such a big Mehfil-e-Ginan has ever been held and
I congratulate my spiritual children here tonight for being present on this
unique occasion. Many times I have recommended to my spiritual children
that they should remember gināns, that they should understand the meaning
of these gināns and that they should carry these meanings in their hearts. It
is most important that my spiritual children, from wherever they may come
should, through the ages, from generation to generation, hold to this tradition
which is so special, so unique, and so important to my Jamat [community].2

The gināns to which the Aga Khan refers are the over 1,000 hymn-like poems
which constitute the religious and literary heritage of his followers in South Asia
who are popularly known as the Ismaili Khojas. Khojas use the term ginān to des-
ignate a poetic composition attributed to spiritually enlightened teachers referred
to as pīrs and sayyids. They believe that from the twelfth to the late nineteenth
centuries these individuals were entrusted by Ismaili Imams, then living in Iran,
with the responsibility of preaching Ismaili doctrines in the subcontinent. They
did so by composing gināns, utilizing various languages and dialects of Gujarat,

1 As Shii Muslims, the Nizari Ismailis believe that, after the death of the Prophet of Islam, the lead-
ership and guidance of the Muslim ummah (community) is the prerogative of his direct descend-
ants. They regard Shāh Karīm Al-Husaynī, currently Aga Khan IV, to be the 49th in an unbroken
chain of imams or leaders directly descended from the Prophet’s daughter Fātima and son-in-law
ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. The hereditary title Aga Khan was first bestowed in 1817 by the Qajar shah of
Iran on the 46th Ismaili imam, Ḥasan ʿAlī Shāh (d. 1881).
2 Speech made at Karachi, 16 Dec. 1964, in Farman Mubarak Pakistan Visit 1964, pt. 1, repr. edn.
(Mombasa, n.d.), 40.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-11
170 Ali S. Asani
Sind, and Punjab, such as Siraiki (Multani), Sindhi, Kachchi, Hindustani/Hindi,
Gujarati, and Punjabi. Sung in various melodies or rāgas, gināns form an impor-
tant component of daily worship in Ismaili jamā‘at khānas (houses of congrega-
tion), not only in South Asia but in other parts of the world to which Khojas have
migrated, including East Africa, Europe, North America, and Australia.
For several centuries, the gināns, in addition to playing a central role in daily
prayer rituals, have functioned as the principal scripture of the Khojas, shaping
their world views and determining personal and communal norms, spiritual and
material. However, over the last 150 years the contextual and functional relation-
ship of the gināns with Khoja communities has been transformed due to major
shifts in Khoja identity. We can discern three distinct phases in this transforma-
tion. First, in the early nineteenth century, during which Khojas primarily identi-
fied themselves as members of a caste adhering to a tradition called Satpanth;
second, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, when they
identified themselves as Satpanthī Ismailis; and third, from the latter half of the
twentieth century to the present, when Khojas identify themselves as Shia Imami
Nizari Ismailis, members of a multicultural, multiethnic, and transnational Shia
Muslim community headed by Aga Khan IV.

The gināns and Satpanth

We do not know how or when the gināns emerged as a distinct and well-defined
literary corpus, nor do we possess much reliable historical information about
their reputed authors. The identities of the pīrs and sayyids, including their reli-
gious affiliations, are contested. For example, Pīr Shams, an individual to whom
are attributed a substantial number of gināns, is today variously identified as an
Ismaili pīr, the Ismaili imam Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad, as well as the enigmatic
Shams-i Tabrīz, mentor of the Persian mystic, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī.3 What we do
have, however, are hagiographic and legendary accounts, some of which are
incorporated in the gināns themselves. Based on these accounts and other evi-
dence, Christopher Shackle and Zawahir Moir surmise that the age of the pīrs was
between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries and was followed by the period of
the sayyids from the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.4
Given the overall tenor of the gināns, it is evident that the central focus of
their composers was to inculcate among their audiences the awareness of a mes-
sianic figure (the Ismaili Imam), variously described as Nakalankī, Shāh, Swāmī,
Satguru, or the true guide to spiritual enlightenment and salvation. The pīrs and
sayyids framed their teaching to local contexts using local languages and idioms.
Most importantly, they used an Indic term, Satpanth, or “True Path” or “Path to

3 Azim Nanji, The Nizari Ismaili Tradition in the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent (Delmar, NY: Caravan
Books, 1978), 62–65.
4 Christopher Shackle and Zawahir Moir, Ismaili Hymns from South Asia: An Introduction to the
Gināns (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1992), 6–8.
 The Gināns 171
the Truth” to describe their teaching. To maximize their appeal to audiences living
in different contexts and ascribing to a wide range of outlooks and temperaments,
the pīrs used multiple frameworks to express key concepts and ideas of Satpanth.
As a result, the formulation of Satpanthī doctrine in the gināns was multilayered
and multivalent in character.5
In some of the earliest gināns, such as the Dasa Avatāra, often hailed as a
Satpanth classic, the pīrs represented themselves as guides who knew the wherea-
bouts of the long-awaited tenth Kalkī avatāra of Vishnu. Through a process of
mythopoesis, they created an ostensible correspondence between this messianic
Vaishnavite concept and the messianic Ismaili concept of the Imam. The tenth
avatāra of Vishnu referred to in the ginān tradition as Nakalankī “the stainless
one,” was identified with the Imam ʿAlī, the hypostasis of all the Shia Imams,
whose descendant/incarnation was said to be residing in the West (Iran). Accord-
ing to many gināns, he would one day appear in India and restore justice by van-
quishing the forces of evil and grant salvation to his devotees. Other basic Hindu
deities were redirected to Islamic personalities: Brahma, for example, was iden-
tified with the Prophet Muhammad, while the Prophet’s daughter, Fāṭima, was
identified with Shakti and Sarasvati. In this way, some gināns portrayed Satpanth
as the fulfilment of the Vaishnavite messianic tradition.6

In the West the Lord has come and is made manifest

How deluded are the heedless ones who have made no use of their lives!
Serve the lord Islam Shah, the Mahdi, tenth avatāra (manifestation) and Ali.
O invisible Lord, You are generous to Your creatures,
Great Lord, You veil the sins of those who take refuge with you.
Serve the Lord Islam Shah, the Mahdi, tenth avatāra and Ali.7

In a second type of ginān, the salvific authority of the Imam was framed within the
terminology of Sufi traditions. Several Sufi orders had a significant presence in the
areas in which the pīrs and sayyids were most active, namely, in Punjab and Sind.
In these gināns, the Imams and their representatives, the pīrs, were portrayed
as spiritually enlightened teachers (murshids) who could morally and spiritually
prepare their disciples to experience the “face-to-face encounter with God,” or
dīdār, “vision of the divine.” As keeper of the mysteries of bāṭin, the esoteric, the

5 For a detailed discussion of the polyvalent discourses used in the gināns, see A. Asani, “From Sat-
panthi to Ismaili Muslim,” A Modern History of the Ismailis, ed. F. Daftary (London: I.B. Tauris,
2011), 98–101. See also Shackle and Moir, Ismaili Hymns from South Asia: An Introduction to the
Gināns, 20–24.
6 Nanji, The Nizari Ismaili Tradition, 110–120, discusses the mythopoeic character of the ginān
literature and the reformulation, within a Hindu framework, of Ismaili concepts such as that of
the imamate. His definition of mythopoesis—a re-creation that reflects “a critique of the existing
social norms and points to a futuristic order”—is based on that of Harry Slochower, Mythopoesis
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970).
7 Shackle and Moir, Ismaili Hymns from South Asia: An Introduction to the Gināns, 158.
172 Ali S. Asani
murshid-Imām became not only the guide but also the object of the spiritual quest
to spiritually “see” the light (nūr) of the Imam, referred to frequently as ʿAlī. In
this context, ʿAlī refers not merely to the historical person but is symbolic of all
the Shia Imams and, indeed, the “Light of the Imamate,” a pre­eternal and cosmic
light believed to be inherited by all Shia Imams following ʿAlī.8
A third discourse found in the gināns is that of the Sants, a group of lower-caste
“poet-saints” who were part of a powerful anti-ritual and anti­caste movement that
swept across India between the late fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. At the core
of the sant tradition lay a critique of traditional figures of religious authority, such
as the Hindu brahmin or priest, the yogī or ascetic, Muslim mullā or qāzī, particu-
larly their claims regarding the superiority of rituals and scriptures as means to
salvation. Instead, the sants advocated an interiorized practice of faith, claiming
that the truth or enlightenment can only be found within oneself through medita-
tion under the guidance of an enlightened teacher, satguru. Formal organizations,
or panths, crystallized around some of the sants with the disciples of each panth
dedicating themselves to the teachings of a particular satguru. The gināns present
the Imams and pīrs as satgurus who could liberate disciples from entrapment
in the transitory material world (māyā) through knowledge of true reality. This
was only possible through regular constant remembrance (sumiran) of the divine
name (nām/shabd) given by the satguru, ambiguously identified in most gināns
as either the pīr or the shāh (the imam), or both.
In yet other texts, the Imam was invoked as a longed-for beloved or bride-
groom in the idiom of the bhakti tradition, a movement of devotionalism premised
on the importance of selfless love for the Divine as a means of salvation. The
most powerful representative of devotion in the poetic traditions of South Asia is
the virahinī, the woman longing for her beloved, best exemplified by Rādhā and
the gopis (dairy maids) in their longing for Krishna. In the gināns, the virahinī
becomes symbolic of the human soul, which experiences viraha (painful longing)
for the beloved, almost always identified as the imam. As a result, many gināns
portray the believer as a virahinī, waiting expectantly for salvific union (suhāg)
or marriage with the Beloved-Imam (piyā, sājan) from whom she has been sepa-
rated. An interesting consequence of the prevalence of the virahinī symbolism in
the gināns is that most of them are composed in a feminine voice, although their
authors are predominantly male.9

8 For an overview of spirituality among the Ismailis, see Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili
Gnosis, trans. R. Mannheim and James Morris (London: Routledge, 1983) and Azim Nanji,
“Ismailism,” in Islamic Sprituality: Foundations, ed. S. H. Nasr (New York: Crossroad Publish-
ing, 1987).
9 Ali S. Asani, Ecstasy and Enlightenment: The Ismaili Devotional Literatures of South Asia (Lon-
don: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 58–66.
 The Gināns 173
To add a further layer to their multivalence, gināns frequently associate the
teachings of Satpanth as being derived from the Hindu scriptures (Vedas) as well
as the Qurʾan.

The True Guide says: Pīr Shams has preached the Qur’an and preached the
four Vedas. Sitting among the Gat Jamat (congregation) he has narrated the
true signs.10
Pīr Shams narrates the knowledge of the Qur’an.
A believer is one who knows the divine knowledge.11
Sat Panth began from Ali and the Prophet [Muhammad]; follow it most
discreetly. This Sat Panth is according to Athar Veda (the last Veda) and you
can find its proof in the Qur’an.12

Some scholars posit that since Ismailis have historically been an intensely perse-
cuted minority, the adoption of multivalent discourses in the Satpanth tradition
may have been a strategy adopted to observe taqiyya, that is, hiding or camouflag-
ing their true identity and blending well with other traditions to avoid persecu-
tion.13 In this regard, Azim Nanji has remarked that the motivation to integrate,
reformulate, and acculturate to different environments is part of the Ismaili lega-
cy.14 One of the inevitable consequences of this legacy is that pre-modern Ismaili
communities often exhibited ambiguous and vague identities.
What is particularly striking about the pīrs’ articulation of Satpanth is that it fos-
tered amongst their followers a world view that does not conform neatly to mod-
ern post-enlightenment European notions of religions as distinctive ideologies of
identity. Satpanthīs saw themselves as neither Muslim nor Hindu. Neither did they
see themselves as “Ismaili” in the sense that we use the term today. It is significant
that the term “Ismaili” does not appear even once in the gināns. Since followers
of Satpanth have been difficult to define using contemporary yardsticks, scholars
have characterized them in ways that reveal their own biases. For instance, one
scholar of South Asian Islam, Aziz Ahmad, grouped the Khojas along with other
“syncretic” sects of indeterminate identity, declaring that their chief interest was
as “curiosities of mushroom religious growth,”15 who added “color to the bizarre
pageantry of India.”16 Another scholar, Bernard Lewis, regarded them as “Hindus

10 Kamaluddin Ali Muhammad and Zarina Kamaluddin, Qur’an and Ginan (Quranic Teachings in
the Ginans) (Karachi, 2014), xiv.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., xv.
13 Nanji, The Nizari Ismaili Tradition, 94–95.
14 Ibid., 132.
15 Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1964), 156.
16 Ibid., 162.
174 Ali S. Asani
under a thin Muslim veneer.”17 Rather than retrospectively projecting onto Sat-
panth contemporary notions of religion, it would be more productive to consider
Satpanth as a creative model of engagement with religious diversity that may
be partially understood through Tony Stewart’s translation theory. Following this
hermeneutic model, we may regard the use of multiple discourses in the Satpanth
tradition as an attempt on the part of those who composed gināns “to be under-
stood, to make themselves understood,” in several different religious “languages”
depending on the context they were addressing.18

The evolution of Satpanth and its contexts

Over the course of its history, Satpanth was a tradition marked by constant
transformation, as is evident in the fact that its adherents evolved into distinc-
tive groups in different geographic areas. In addition to the Khojas, there were
Pirānapanthīs, Shamsīs, Guptīs, Maulaīs, Jasnāthīs, Prahlādpanthīs, Āīpanthīs,
Barmatīs, Mahāmārgīs, Lālbegīs, Laldasīs, Momnās, Imāmshāhīs, and many oth-
ers. There has even been speculation that the Nānakpanthīs, the predecessors of
the contemporary Sikh community, may have been initially part of Satpanth.19
Each Satpanth group was distinctive in that its identity was centred on a particular
pīr who was often credited with initiating the group into the tradition. Simultane-
ously, many of these pīr-centric groups held different occupational, professional,
or caste affiliations. For example, the Khojas identified themselves as traders,
Shamsīs were goldsmiths, while the Momnās were farmers.20 Sometimes, within
these groups there were disputes over leadership, leading to several schisms, the
most well-known of which is the Khoja–Imāmshāhī split in the early sixteenth
century.21 As a result of such conflicts, rivalries, and competitions, the identities
of these groups were continually shifting and followed different historical trajec-
tories, many of which have yet to be researched.22
The Khojas, the focus of our discussion here, identified themselves histori-
cally with the fifteenth-century Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn. Their traditions assert that they
originally belonged to two trading castes—the Lohanas and the Bhatias. When
Pīr Ṣadr ad-Dīn initiated them into Satpanth, he gave them the title “Khwajah”
(a Persian term of which Khoja is a corruption) to replace the original Lohana

17 Bernard Lewis, quoted by Jacques Duchsene-Guillemin, “How Does Islam Stand?” in Unity and
Variety in Muslim Civilization, ed. Gustav E. Grunebaum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1955), 8.
18 Tony K. Stewart, “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving of the Muslim-Hindu Encounter through
Translation Theory,” History of Religions 40 (2001): 260–287.
19 Dominique Sila-Khan, Conversions and Shifting Identities: Ramdev Pir and the Ismailis in
Rajasthan (New Delhi: Manohar and Centre de Sciences Humaines, 1997), 235–266.
20 Nanji, The Nizari Ismaili Tradition, 76.
21 Shackle and Moir, Ismaili Hymns from South Asia, 7–8.
22 See Dominique Sila-Khan, Crossing the Threshold: Understanding Religious Identities in South
Asia (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2004), 30–50.
 The Gināns 175
“thākkur,” both meaning “lord” or “master.”23 The intent behind the new title was
apparently to bestow a higher caste status to a community that may have been of
a lower caste or even dalit in origin. Before the name of an individual, the title
“khwaja” served to indicate simultaneously occupational (merchant), social, and
religious identities. The pīr is also credited with consolidating Khoja identity by
establishing the first jamā‘at khāna (house of congregation) in the subcontinent as
well as inventing Khojkī, a script which Khojas initially used for mercantile pur-
poses and later to record their religious texts, including the gināns. Evidence from
British gazetteers indicates that in early nineteenth-century Bombay, the Khojas
functioned socially as an endogamous caste with its own panchāyat, or council of
elders, which oversaw administrative, financial, and social governance. In terms
of religious life, their beliefs and practices were eclectic, “a unique blend of Hindu
and Muslim, as well as Shia and Sunni customs and beliefs.”24
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the multivalent discourses
and practices of Satpanthī communities were no longer sustainable in light of the
introduction of European post-enlightenment notions of religion into South Asia
through British colonial rule. The very “idiom” of this rule, as Peter Hardy terms
it, was based on religion and entailed a systematic institutionalization of India into
a nation of discrete communities defined along religious lines through various
bureaucratic practices.25 Specifically, British colonial administrators employed
their notions of religion, based on the Church of England model, to classify their
Indian subjects into religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, as well
as “sects” within those traditions. Their positivist mindset was inimical to ambi-
guity and polyvalence, which were prevalent in Satpanth and other similar tradi-
tions in South Asia. As a result, communities of “indeterminate” identity, such
as the Satpanthīs, whom they perceived as inhabiting a kind of a middle ground
between Islam and Hinduism, were compelled to redefine themselves in sectarian
or denominational terms, clearly identifying themselves as adherents of either
Hinduism or Islam. As the category “Hindu” and “Muslim” acquired growing
political significance, these communities were also targeted by reformists from
those traditions seeking to “purify” them by either “Hinduizing” or “Islamizing”
them.
Among the Satpanthī groups who eventually came to identify themselves as
Hindus, the Barmatīs, Mahāmargīs, and Imāmshāhīs continued reciting gināns,
but in “Hinduized” forms, jettisoning in the late nineteenth and the first half
of the twentieth century any connection they may have had with Islam or the

23 The Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency (Bombay, 1899), 39, R. E. Enthoven, Tribes and Castes
of Bombay (Bombay, 1922), 220.
24 J. C. Masselos, “The Khojas of Bombay: The Defining of Formal Membership Criteria during the
Nineteenth Century,” in I. Ahmad, ed., Caste and Social Stratification among Muslims in India
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1973), 6.
25 Peter Hardy, Muslims of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 116.
176 Ali S. Asani
Ismaili tradition.26 In this regard, Dominique Sila-Khan has convincingly dem-
onstrated the processes by which the figure of Ramdev, believed to have been a
fourteenth-century Satpanthī pīr in Rajasthan, was so transformed that today, after
the suppression of any connections with Satpanth, he is represented as a Rajput
hero-saint, avatāra of Krishna linked to the Vaishnava bhakti tradition of High
Hinduism.27
The Khojas, on their part, after a complex process of reform and rearticula-
tion, eventually came to identify themselves as Muslims. In the early nineteenth
century, as a result of cases brought to colonial courts involving inheritance, there
were debates about whether the Khojas were Hindus or Muslim. By the mid-nine-
teenth century, the debates had shifted to determining what kind of Muslim they
were. Eventually, the Khojas split among Muslim denominational lines: Sunni
Khoja, Ithna Ashari or “Twelver” Khoja, and Ismaili Khoja. This schism was
partly the result of disputes created by the migration in 1841 of Aga Khan I from
Iran to India. Settling in Bombay in 1848, Aga Khan I began reforming Khoja
customs and practices as well as regulating issues related to Khoja caste property,
a move which upset the upper echelons of the Khoja hierarchy. In a series of cases
filed in British colonial courts, the Aga Khan’s opponents challenged his authority
over the Khojas by claiming that they were originally Sunnis. In response, in 1861
Aga Khan I asked the Khojas to abandon taqiyya, which was no longer necessary
under British colonial rule, and openly declare their Ismaili identity.28 Eventually
these disputes culminated in the so-called Aga Khan Case of 1866, in which the
court validated the Aga Khan’s authority over the Khojas:

A sect of people whose ancestors were Hindu in origin, which was converted
to and has throughout abided in the faith of the Shia Imami Ismailis, which
has always been and still is bound by ties of spiritual allegiance to the heredi-
tary Imam of the Ismailis.29

For the first time in their history, the Khojas came to be defined as a “sect” of Mus-
lims who ascribed to the Ismaili creed rather than a caste.30 Those who opposed
the judgement joined the Sunni fold, calling themselves Sunni Khojas. In 1908,
a British judge presiding over the so-called Hājī Bībī case, in which the plaintiffs
claimed that the Aga Khan was Ithna Ashari or Twelver Shia, gave further legal
validation to the Aga Khan’s authority and reaffirmed the Ismaili identity of the

26 Samira Shaikh, “Religious Traditions and Early Ismaili History in Western India,” in Ginans: Texts
and Contexts: Essays on Ismaili Hymns from South Asia, ed. T. Kassam and F. Mallison (New
Delhi: Matrix, 2007), 151.
27 Sila-Khan, Conversions and Shifting Identities, 60–94.
28 Sila-Khan, Crossing the Threshhold, 82.
29 W. E. Hart, ed., Report of Cases Decided in the High Court of Bombay (Rajkot, 1907), 363.
30 Amrita Shodhan, A Question of Community Religious Groups and Colonial Law (Calcutta: Samya,
2001), 110.
 The Gināns 177
Khojas.31 Consequently, among the Khojas, Satpanth came to be increasingly seen
as a form of Ismailism.
The consolidation of the Aga Khan’s authority set the stage for a gradual re-
articulation of Ismaili Khoja practice and interpretation in the first decades of the
twentieth century through a series of reforms in religious practices and beliefs
under the direction of Aga Khans II (d. 1885) and III (d. 1957). The goals behind
these reforms were twofold. The first was to remove any ambiguities in identity
by clearly demarcating boundaries in belief and practice between Khojas who
identified as Ismaili and those who chose to be Sunni or Ithna Ashari Muslims.
The second goal was to educate the Ismaili Khojas about their faith. For this pur-
pose, the Recreation Club Institute was set up in Bombay for training preachers,
missionaries, and religious education teachers and for conducting and publishing
research on Ismaili history and thought.32

The gināns as Satpanthī Ismaili scriptures

During the proceedings of the Aga Khan case of 1866, the gināns were introduced
to the court as “the ancient religious books of the Khojas,” the chief of which was
the Dasa Avatāra. In what sense can the gināns be defined as scripture? William
Graham remarks that the term scripture should not be limited to written texts (as
the term “script” would imply) but also to oral texts which can and do function
as “scriptures” within non-literate communities. He argues that in some cases, a
descriptive distinction between oral and written scriptures may be necessary, even
though etymologically “oral scripture” is a contradiction in terms and “written
scripture” a redundancy. He points out that there is nothing intrinsic in the form
and content of texts that qualify them as scriptures; texts become “scripture” only
when a community of believers perceives them to be holy, transcendent, power-
ful, and authoritative. This “relational and contextual aspect” of scriptures exam-
ines the roles they play within the context of the community’s religious life and in
individual piety, which is to say, the interaction between these texts and the people
who memorize them, recite them, and listen to them.33
Building on William Graham’s scholarship, James Watt remarks that scriptural
texts have three dimensions: semantic, performative, and iconic. The semantic
dimension relates to the construction of the meaning of the text, its interpretation,
and its influence in determining personal and communal norms; the performative
dimension involves performance of the texts in public and private settings, includ-
ing singing as well as dramatization; the iconic dimension is manifest through
a distinctive physical form, ritual manipulation, and artistic representation. He
argues that while many non-scriptural texts may also exhibit these dimensions,

31 Bombay Law Reporter (Bombay, 1908), 409–495.

32 Asani, “From Satpanthi to Ismaili Muslim,” 115.
33 See William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Reli-
gions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
178 Ali S. Asani
what distinguishes scriptural texts from non-scriptural ones is that their communi-
ties ritualize them at least to some extent in all three dimensions.34
Based on these criteria, the gināns have clearly played a scriptural role for
Satpanthī Ismaili Khoja communities. Although we do not know how and when
the gināns emerged as a distinct and well-defined literary corpus, we do know
that for several centuries they were transmitted orally, from generation to gen-
eration, and only recorded in writing late in their history. They shaped the world
views of those who listened to and recited them, providing guidance on a variety
of doctrinal, ethical, and mystical topics. The focus of intense veneration within
the community, they became for those who revered them the embodiment of the
faith; the substantiation of the salvific knowledge (gyān) that the pīrs conveyed.
The type of knowledge conveyed in a ginān is best understood as poetic knowl-
edge, most aptly described by Nosheen Ali as “heart-mind” knowledge since it
fuses the aesthetic and performative with the ethical, theological, and spiritual. It
is a knowledge that is emotive and experienced in immediate and transformative
ways through the mind and in the heart.35 In this regard, we could call it gnostic
knowledge.
It is the discursive-experiential quality of the gināns that Wladimir Ivanow
highlights when he notes “the strange fascination, the majestic pathos and beauty”
of the gināns as they are recited. He observed that their “mystical appeal [for the
Nizari Ismailis of South Asia] equals, if not exceeds that exercised by the Coran
on Arabic speaking peoples.”36
Illustrative of the significance and effect of ginān recitation are the following
comments by the Pakistani writer and poet G. Allana as he reminisces about a
childhood experience:

My mother Sharfibai start[s] singing a ginan. Her voice was unmatched. Eve-
rybody listened to her bewitching voice singing a ginan. No other person, as
is normally customary, dare join his or her voice with hers in chorus, whether
she sang a stanza of a ginan or the refrain of the ginan. The fragrance of that
spiritual atmosphere still lingers in my mind. One seemed to live and be so
near to the presence of the Omnipotent and the Omniscient One. The weight
of life’s burdens dissolved.37

Once Satpanth came to be increasingly identified among the Khojas as an

Ismaili form of Islam, Sunni and Ithna Ashari Khoja communities disassociated

34 James W. Watts, “The Three Dimensions of Scriptures,” Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts
and Contemporary Worlds 2/2–3 (2006/2008): 135–159.
35 Nosheen Ali, “From Hallaj to Heer: Poetic Knowledge and the Muslim Tradition,” Journal of
Narrative Politics 3/1 (2016): 5.
36 Wladimir Ivanow, “The Sect of Imam Shah in Gujarat,” Journal of the Bombay Branch, Royal
Asiatic Society 12 (1936): 68.
37 G. Allana, The Ginans of Ismaili Pirs (Karachi: Shia Imami Ismailia Association for Pakistan,
1984), vol. 1, 2.
 The Gināns 179
themselves from the gināns as they rearticulated their own identities. In contrast,
among the Ismaili Khojas, the ginān texts were canonized and printed so that they
could be widely distributed. The printed versions were based primarily on man-
uscripts dispersed among Khoja communities. The responsibility for collecting
these manuscripts was assigned to Lāljī Devrāj and his associates. On the basis
of manuscripts they had collected, Lāljī Devrāj and his team identified approxi-
mately 700 texts which they edited in varying degrees.38 These were eventually
published first through the Khoja Press and later through the Recreation Club
Institute, the official publishing presses for Ismaili Khoja religious texts. Since
Lāljī Devrāj’s publication activities were believed to have the imprimatur of the
Aga Khans, his editions came to be seen as the bona fide and authoritative texts
of ginānic literature.
The creation of an officially sanctioned corpus of gināns to serve as the scrip-
tural texts for the Ismaili Khojas made it necessary to articulate their relation-
ship to the Qurʾan, the principal scripture of Islam and an important hallmark of
Islamic identity. This was especially important as the gināns had a greater appeal
and importance among the Khojas than the Qurʾan. Thus, Syed Mujtaba Ali, writ-
ing on the religious life of the Khojas in the early twentieth century, observes:

The present writer has not been able to grasp the attitude taken by the Kho-
jahs towards the Koran and Hadith (Shii and Sunni). It seems that they con-
sider them to be holy scriptures but do not regard studying them as necessary.
By the more up to date sectarians the Koran, at least, is held in some respect
as can be seen from the articles regularly published in the Ismaili journals
which use the Koran for supporting their contentions.39

This clarification was given by Aga Khan III in his guidance (farmāns) to his
community:

In the ginans which Pir Sadardin has composed for you, he has conveyed and
explained the gist of the Qurʾan in the language of Hindustan.40

38 Many of these manuscripts contained, in addition to the gināns, devotional literature from a variety
of non-Satpanthī traditions that had previously played a significant role in the Khoja religious life.
For example, we find in these manuscripts, juxtaposed to the gināns, a diverse collection of texts,
including poems attributed to famous Sufi, Sant, and Bhakti poets; traditional Shia elegies and
narratives to be read during Muharram assemblies. These non-ginānic texts were not published,
as they were deemed no longer relevant to the then emerging formulations of faith that were spe-
cifically reorienting Khoja religious identity to an Ismaili focus in the early part of the twentieth
century.
39 Syed Mujtaba Ali, The Origin of the Khojahs and their Religious Life Today (Bonn: Ludwig Rohr-
scheid Verlag, 1936), 59.
40 Quoted in Ginān-e Sharīf: Ismāīlī piroe āpel pāk dīnnī roshnī (Karachi: Ismailia Association for
Pakistan, 1966), [2].
180 Ali S. Asani
The ginans composed and presented before you by Pir Sadardin are from
commentaries of the Qurʾan.41
If there were amongst you individuals who had read the Qurʾan and were
well acquainted with the ginans, I would be able to point out to you each
verse of the gināns from the Qurʾan.42

According to this interpretation, the gināns served as secondary texts generated

in the vernacular for the transmission of the teachings of a primary scripture—the
Qurʾan—to non-Arabic-speaking peoples. In this sense, they served as mediating
texts between the Qurʾan and the Ismaili Khojas. Such a mediating relationship is
not unusual in the context of the Islamic faith as traditional Muslim engagements
with the Qurʾan have rarely been directly with the Qurʾanic text itself, but rather
through mediating genres, be they scholarly commentaries and super commentar-
ies or poetic compositions such as Rumi’s Mathnawī, which has been called the
Qurʾan in Persian.
As a result of their mediatory relationship to the Qurʾan, the gināns continued
to be the primary means through which Ismaili Khojas understood and, indeed,
experienced their faith and their relationship to the Imam. Through gināns such
as the Dasa Avatāra, believers could conceive of their Imam simultaneously as
the avatāra of Vishnu, specifically Krishna and Rama, as well as a descendant
of the first Shii Imam, ʿAlī. For them, these personalities may have had different
physical forms, appearing in different historical and geographic contexts, but they
shared the same light, the same spirit.43
Such a perspective allowed Satpanth Ismailis to construct their faith by drawing
from allusions in the gināns to texts and stories from vastly different universes.
For instance, commenting on the importance of the Indian epics the Mahābhārata
and Ramāyāna for his late mother, Tajbibi Abualy, a quintessential Satpanthī
Ismaili, Mohamed Alibhai writes:

Both epics are part of the historical Satpanth tradition. The central male
divine figure in Mahābhārata is Krishna, whereas the central male divine fig-
ure in Rāmāyana is Ram. The Pirs reconceptualized these epics as the life
stories of Imam Ali by spiritually recognizing Krishna and Ram as Ali—and,
conversely, spiritually recognizing Ali as Krishna and Ram. The Pirs then
included in their Gināns stories from these two epics because, to them, they
were stories involving Ali.
For Tajbibi, my mother, these epics were an integral component of her
Satpanth dharam (religion).44

41 Bahāre rahemat yāne rahematno dariyo, comp. Hasham Bogha Mastar (Bombay, 1911), 17 (Kho-
jki text in Gujarati; my translation).
42 Ibid., 13.
43 Mohamed Abualy Alibhai, “Tajbibi Abualy Aziz (1926–2019): A Satpanthi Sita,” The Olduvai
Review, 4, https://theolduvaireview.com/tajbibi-abualy-aziz/ (accessed March 8, 2020).
44 Ibid., 6.
 The Gināns 181
Alibhai goes on to describe how two archetypical female personalities in these
epics, as mediated through the gināns, became role models for his mother:
Draupadī in the Mahābhārata, and Sītā in the Rāmāyana. Draupadī, for her trust
and devotion to Krishna (the imam), who came to rescue her when she was in
danger of being stripped naked, and Sītā, the silent suffering wife who responds
to the trials and tribulations inflicted upon her with compassion and kindness to
others.45
Other figures from Indian mythology were also considered to be model
Satpanthī Ismailis. Most notable in this regard is King Harischandra of Ayodhya,
who is epitomized in the gināns as the exemplary devotee willing to sacrifice eve-
rything out of loyalty to the Imam. According to the ginān Amar te āyo, attributed
to Pīr Ṣadr ad-Dīn, Harischandra was initiated into Satpanth after he passed a
severe test of his faith in which he had to sacrifice everything, including his throne
and his son, for the sake of the Satguru-Imām.46 Verses from this ginān are still
recited today in majority Khoja jamāʿat khānas whenever new appointments are
announced for various institutional positions in the community. The intent of the
recitation is to remind the new appointees that they need to serve the imam and
the community as selflessly as Harischandra did.
Instrumental to Harischandra’s initiation into Satpanth was his wife, Tārā, who
is represented as a satī, a pious woman who appears repeatedly in the gināns as an
exemplary devotee of the Satguru-Imām.47 Frequently, as is the case with Queen
Tārā, the gināns portray the satī’s affiliation with Satpanth as a secret or clandes-
tine one. As a result, she has to practise her faith with great discretion. Thus, in
the ginān Satgur āviyā apne dwār, “the Satguru has come to our door,” a satī, in
order to discretely offer her obeisance and respect to her spiritual master, bows to
him using as a pretext that she was picking up the scattered pearls from her broken
necklace. In this regard, it is important to note that the Satpanth Ismaili tradition
“feminizes” the archetypal devotee through a symbol that is ubiquitous in the
gināns, that of the virahinī, the woman who longs for union with her beloved. As
I have discussed extensively elsewhere, in keeping with Indic literary conven-
tions, the pīrs adopted the feminine voice in composing many gināns, particularly
those that belong to the category of the supplicatory (or ventī) gināns seeking

45 Ibid., 7.
46 The story of Harischandra appears in several other gināns, including Muman Chitāveṇī, which is
discussed by Wafi Momin, “On the Cusp of ‘Islamic’ and ‘Hindu’ Worldviews,” in Intellectual
Traditions in the Islamic World: The Ismaili Thread, ed. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov (London: I.B. Tau-
ris, 2020), 442–444.
47 The satī was so valorized in the tradition that some Ismaili Khoja communities held a spe-
cial monthly gathering called Satīmā jo rojo, “the fast of the satī,” which required those who
attended, mostly women, to keep a half-day morning fast as an act of piety. During the gathering,
a story extolling the benefits of fasting was recited. See satīmāje roje jī vārtā (“story of the fast
of the satī”), in Ali S. Asani, The Harvard Collection of Ismaili Literature in Indic Languages:
A Descriptive Catalog and Finding Aid (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1992), 676. During the “Islamization”
phase in the second half of the twentieth century, this gathering was renamed Mawlā jo rojo, “the
fast of Mawlā.”
182 Ali S. Asani
darshan or dīdār of the Beloved-Imam. Frequently, this longing was embedded
in the imagery associated with marriage or union with the bridegroom Imam.48
The fact that symbols and vocabulary in the gināns, such as that of the
virahin­ī darshan, satguru, could be interpreted in multiple ways depending on the
context of the listener meant that ginān texts were often “portable” beyond Ismaili
settings. For example, in the 1950s, Aziz Tejpar, a renowned ginān singer in East
Africa, recited gināns in public forums, much to the acclaim of Hindu and Sikh
members of the audience who were able to interpret and appreciate the gināns
within their respective theological frameworks. Consequently, he was invited on
several occasions to sing in a Sikh Gurudwara as well as a Hindu temple.49
The multivalent Satpanthī Ismaili understanding of the Imam in the gināns
was reinforced by the du‘ā, a formalized supplicatory prayer recited by Satpanthī
Ismailis thrice a day—in the early morning, at sunset, and after sunset.50 According
to Khoja tradition, the du‘ā was first introduced by Pīr Ṣadr ad-Dīn. It apparently
underwent many changes in its form over time. In the early twentieth century,
it was mostly in Gujarati with a smattering of Qurʾanic verses and supplicatory
phrases in Arabic. It consisted of 18 parts, with each part ending in a prostration
and entreaty to the Imam, who is described as pīr and murshid, the “immaculate
one.” The most significant portion was the fourth part, which was devoted to the
recitation of various forms of Vishnu, including the ten avatāras, with the tenth
avatāra, Nishakalankī, being identified with ʿAlī, the first Shii Imam. This was
then followed by the recital of the names of all the Imams from “Alī to the Imam
of the Time, Aga Khan III.”51 The seamless continuity between avatāra as Imam
and Imam as avatāra found in the gināns was thus reinforced by this daily sup-
plicatory prayer.
Such an ecumenical world view, as I have argued elsewhere, is historically
characteristic of the traditional Ismaili belief that a single existential reality under-
lies what appears as a plurality on the exoteric or material plane.52 It has meant
that Ismaili thinkers have expressed the concept of the Imam within diverse theo-
logical and philosophical systems with remarkable confidence. Characteristically,
Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the eleventh-century Ismaili poet-philosopher, writes:

All the Books of God are the Qur’an without any difference. Whatever the
ignorant know to be differences within the Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an
are not differences with respect to meaning, but they are different only with
respect to the exoteric aspect [ẓāhir], the expressions [lafẓ], the similitudes

48 Asani, Ecstasy and Enlightenment: The Ismaili Devotional Literatures of South Asia, 58–66.
49 Ibid., 13.
50 Although in Muslim contexts du‘ā usually refers to an informal personal prayer, among the Nizari
Ismailis it refers to a formalized prayer of supplication. For a description of the content of the cur-
rent du‘ā, refer to note 53.
51 Ali, The Origin of the Khojahs, 64–65.
52 Ali S. Asani, “Ismaili Engagements with the Quran: Nizari Ismaili Interpretations with the Quran,”
in Communities of the Quran, ed. Emran El-Badawi and Paula Sanders (Oneworld, 2019), 43–45.
 The Gināns 183
[mithāl] and symbols. Thus, the Gospel is with the Romans, the Torah is with
the Russians [Rūs] and the Scrolls of Abraham are with the Indians.53

The gināns as “Ismaili” devotional literature

Historical context
The twentieth century witnessed an increasing politicization and polarization of
religion in South Asia, with political and religious elites conceiving of Hindus and
Muslims not only as distinct religious communities but also as separate nations.
Questions of religious identity became particularly pressing in the aftermath of
the partition in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the
Khoja founder of Pakistan, conceived of it as a liberal Muslim-majority polity that
would provide all citizens—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—a haven in which
to practise their religions without interference from the state. However, in the dec-
ades following his untimely death in 1948, there were increasingly vocal demands
that Pakistan become an Islamic state whose underpinning ideology should be
“Islam.” A range of articulators of the Muslim tradition were concerned with for-
mulating a clear position on Islam, the typical Islamic personality, and the state.
In the 1970s, the regime of Zia ul-Haqq (1978–1988), introduced Islamization
policies with a view to promoting, among Pakistan’s Muslim citizens, religious
and cultural practices that were deemed to be “Islamically” correct. By privi-
leging a version of Sunni Islam (specifically the interpretation of the Jamāʿat-i
Islāmī), such policies marginalized alternative interpretations of the faith, result-
ing in heightened sectarian tension, not only between Shia and Sunni but even
among Sunni communities. They also provoked heated debate on what constitutes
a Muslim identity.
In an atmosphere of growing religious and political polarization among Mus-
lim communities, Ismaili Khojas also came under increased scrutiny, and their
position grew precarious, especially as a spectrum of Sunni proselytizing groups
launched vigorous campaigns to propagate their version of Islam among the
Ismailis and other Muslim groups perceived as being “deviant.”
As a result of this shift towards such as Islamization (“Sunnification”) poli-
cies, not only in South Asia but in several other Muslim-majority countries where
Ismaili Khojas reside, the polyvalent world view of Satpanth Ismailism became
increasingly difficult to sustain, at least in public articulation. Ismaili Khojas faced
increased pressure to clarify their conception of Islam in terms of the fundamental
and more universal concepts of the larger Islamic community. Consequently, Aga
Khan III and Aga Khan IV rearticulated religious life and practice with two inter-
secting objectives: first, to promote among the Khojas an understanding of Ismaili
concepts and practices using frameworks consistent with Shii and general Islamic

53 Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Wajh-i dīn, ed. Ghulam Reza Avani, introduction by S. H. Nasr (Tehran:
Anjumān-i Shāhanshāhi-i Falsafah-i Irān, 1977), 68, translated by Khalil Andani.
184 Ali S. Asani
traditions; and second, to articulate an interpretation of Islam that was relevant
to the emerging contexts of a postcolonial South Asia in a changing world. The
attainment of these objectives involved shifting the understanding of key doc-
trines away from local Indic frameworks (increasingly viewed as Hinduistic) to
ones that would be considered “authentically Islamic.” This meant that the Ismaili
doctrine of the Imamate, instead of being understood within a multivalent ginānic
frame of reference, came to be centred now on the Qurʾan and Ismaili Shii para-
digms of the authority of the Imam.

The Quranization project

The shift in perspective was most noticeable in the daily supplicatory prayer
(du‘ā) introduced by Aga Khans III and IV in the 1950s. The new prayer was
entirely in Arabic, maintaining a distinctive Ismaili character through the reaf-
firmation of the authority of the present Ismaili Imam in each of its six parts.
Unlike the previous prayer, which was predominantly in the vernacular (Gujarati/
Kachchi), it no longer used the avatāra-Imām paradigm. Instead, it included spe-
cific Qurʾanic verses that Shia evoke as proof texts for the authority of the imam-
ate.54 Through these verses, the prayer reinforced the notion of the Imam as the
locus of knowledge and divine authority. In the sixth part, to emphasize the con-
tinuity of the institution of the Imamate, the names of all the Imams are invoked
starting from the first Imam ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib to the present the 49th Imam, Shah
Karim Al-Husayni. Each part also contains intercessory prayers addressed to the
Imams and concludes in a prostration (sujūd) affirming obedience and submission
to God (Allah).
The introduction of the new prayer was significant for its use of Arabic, instead
of an Indic vernacular, aligned it with a pan-Islamic language of worship. It also
reflected the shift in the Khoja understanding of the doctrine of the imamate
from a multivalent Indic framework to a Qurʾanic one. In this regard, the new
emphasis on the Qurʾan as a foundational source of the faith mirrored the “back
to the Qurʾan” reform and revival movements in South Asia and elsewhere in the
late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The fact that the new prayer was to be

54 The prayer includes the following verses from the Qurʾan: Part 1: Sūrat al-Fātiḥa (1) whose main
theme is ʿibāda (worship) of God; Part 2: Sūrat al-Nisā (4:59—“O you who believe, obey God,
and obey the Messenger and the holders of authority amongst you”) and Sūrat Yāsīn (36:12—“And
We have encompassed all things in a manifest Imam”) whose main themes are obedience (ṭaʿāh)
to God’s representatives. Part 3: Sūrat al-Mā’ida (5:67—“O Messenger, proclaim that which has
been revealed to you by your Lord . . .”) whose main theme is the declaration (tablīgh) of the
Imamate; Part 4: Sūrat al-Fatḥ (48:10—“Verily, those who give their bayʿa unto you (Muham-
mad), they give their bayʿa unto God Himself . . .”) whose main theme is the bayʿa or mithāq
(covenant) with the Imam; Part 5: Sūrat al-Anfāl (8:27—“O you who believe, do not betray God
and His Messenger and do not betray your trusts while you know”) whose main theme is trust
(amānah); Part 6: Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ (112—“Say: He is God, the Unique. God is Independent. He
does not beget nor is He begotten. And there is none like unto him”) whose main theme is the
experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of tawḥīd (God’s unicity).
 The Gināns 185
universally recited by Nizari Ismailis the world over signalled a shift in the orien-
tation of Ismaili Khoja identity from “Satpanthī Ismaili” to “Shii Imami Ismaili.”
The centrality of the Qurʾan in contemporary Nizari Ismaili conceptualization
of the Imamate was formally articulated in a new Ismaili constitution ordained
by Aga Khan IV on 13 December 1986 applicable to Ismaili communities world-
wide. The constitution’s preamble, in presenting a framework for the Ismaili
Imamate, defines the responsibility of the Ismaili Imam, beginning with ʿAlī ibn
Abī Ṭālib, as guiding his followers by providing authoritative instruction (taʿlīm)
and the esoteric interpretation (taʾwīl) of God’s final message, the Qurʾan.55 It rep-
resents the Imam as the holder of authoritative knowledge (ʿilm) of both exoteric
and esoteric truth of the Qurʾan. In this sense, the text of the Qurʾan is conjoined
to the Imam, and proper understanding of it is not possible without the instruction
of the Imam and teachers appointed by him. The preamble’s articulation of the
Imam’s authority presents in effect a new framework to understand the farmāns,
or the pronouncements through which the contemporary Ismaili Imams provide
guidance to their followers.
From the perspective of the 1986 constitution, the farmāns can be viewed as the
tangible and concrete embodiment of the Imam’s authoritative instruction (taʿlīm)
and the esoteric interpretation (taʾwīl) of the Qurʾan. In this regard, the farmāns
embodied the ongoing and infallible guidance of the Imams, providing a road map
to guide one along the journey of physical and spiritual life.
The origin of the farmāns as a formalized genre of religious literature among
the Ismaili Khojas probably dates back to the settlement of Aga Khan I in India in
the mid-nineteenth century. Aga Khan I and his successors had daily interactions
with their followers, during the course of which they would provide formal and
informal guidance on a range of personal and communal issues, both religious
and secular. As a result, their farmāns gradually became an increasingly impor-
tant source of normative understanding of the faith. Even today, they are the pri-
mary medium through which the Aga Khans institute reforms on a wide range of
issues.56 With the rapid spread of print culture in South Asia in the early twentieth
century, farmāns were compiled and published, making them widely accessible
to the community. In most of the early publications, the farmāns were recorded/
translated in Indic vernaculars—Hindustani, Urdu, Gujarati, and Sindhi—while
in later years English became more prominent, though translations into local lan-
guages were also made available.
As the Word of the Imam, the farmāns became scriptural texts through which
Ismailis understood their faith and engaged with the Islamic revelation. Reading
excerpts of the imam’s farmāns became an important element of the daily liturgy
in jamāʿat khānas worldwide. The reading of farmāns was ritualized, with some
of the earlier generations reciting Gujarati translations of them in a distinctive

55 The Constitution of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims (n.p., 1986), 6.

56 Diamond Rattansi, “The Nizārī Ismāʻīlis of Pakistan: Ismāʻīlism, Islam and Westernism Viewed
Through the Firmāns, 1936–1980” (MA thesis, McGill University, 1981).
186 Ali S. Asani
melodious style. Today, it is always preceded and followed by the recitation of
ṣalawāt, the formulaic prayer invoking God’s blessings on the Prophet Muham-
mad and his family. As icons representing the Word of the Imam, farmān books
are treated with a great deal of respect, resonating with that accorded to physical
copies of the Qurʾan.

Rethinking the gināns

The introduction of a new Qurʾanic framework to articulate the Ismaili notions of
Imamate, as well as the emergence of the farmāns as a bona fide scripture, led to a
re-evaluation of the role of gināns. Their Indic framework and ethos raised a con-
cern in some Ismaili institutional circles that they were “Hinduistic” in nature and
that their world view was no longer applicable for the contexts in which Ismaili
Khojas lived. To address these concerns, several conferences involving repre-
sentatives of Ismaili Associations57 from various countries were convened. At the
Paris Conference held in 1975, it was resolved to make certain adjustments in the
future publication of gināns with the intent of removing “Hindu elements” from
the gināns and replacing them with “Islamic” ones.58
For this purpose, gināns were classified into three categories. The first category
included those texts that were not considered objectionable in terms of their con-
tent and therefore could continue to be published and recited. The second cate-
gory were those gināns that contained “peripheral” Hindu terms and idioms which
could be “Islamized” by replacing them with Islamic or Perso-Arabic ones. For
example, Hari, one of the names of Vishnu, was replaced by ʿAli and so on. The
third category comprised gināns whose frameworks were perceived to be entirely
“Hinduistic” and therefore inappropriate for contemporary contexts in which
Ismaili Khojas resided and should therefore no longer be recited.59 Subsequent
workshops were convened in Karachi in 1977 and in Nairobi in 1979 and 1980
to continue discussion on the future of the gināns and to review the edited texts.
At these conferences there was much debate about the appropriateness of revis-
ing ginān texts, which some considered sacred texts since they were composed by
the pīrs, whom they considered to be divinely inspired:

The ginans then have played a most significant role at least for seven hundred
years, all this in order to maintain our faith towards Sirat-al Mustakim [sic]
. . . Because of this unique, artful, divinely inspired independent style and
mode of expression, our Holy Gināns are also a Divine literary corpus in its

57 Institutions whose members are appointed by the imam to oversee religious education and the
practice of the faith in a particular country. With the implementation of the new constitution in
1986, Ismailia Associations were renamed Shia Imami Ismaili Tariqah and Religious Education
Board.
58 Report of the Ismailia Association Conference Paris—April 1975 (unpublished), 46–47.
59 For example, the Dasa Avatāra, one of the central texts of the Satpanth tradition.
 The Gināns 187
own right, with all the honors and dignity that pertain to any other Divine
literature.60

The definition of what constitutes a “Hindu” element as opposed to an “Islamic”

one was another focus of controversy, especially since during the editing process
terms from Indic languages with no specific theological connection to the Hindu
tradition had been interpreted as being “Hindu elements” and replaced by Perso-
Arabic ones.

Do we think that Islam can be preached and understood only through the
medium of Arabic and Persian languages and the same teaching presented in
any other [Indic] language should be regarded as a Hindu element?61
It is indeed a very regrettable affair that we have started making corrections
in our Holy Ginans without reaching a common ground for the interpretation
of Hindu elements, on the basis of the Quranic teaching of Islam.62

Much of the resistance to the editing of ginān texts came from an older generation
who were raised as Satpanth Ismailis and who saw revising the texts of the gināns
as an act of sacrilege that would undermine their importance. On the subject of
distinguishing “Hindu” from “Islamic” elements, they took particular issue with
the classification of figures from the Indian epics in gināns, such as King Hari-
schandra and the Pandava brothers as “Hindu.” From a Satpanthī Ismaili perspec-
tive, they were as much “Muslim” as the Abrahamic prophets, such as Abraham,
Noah, Moses, and Jesus, whose primordial religion was “Islam,” or “submission
to God.”

Therefore, it is proved beyond a shadow of doubt that Pahelaj mentioned in

our Holy Ginan was Muslim and His religion was Islam. Harischandra, Tara
Rani and Rohidas mentioned in our Holy Gināns were Muslims and their reli-
gion was Islam. . . . Because in their act of piety and noble deeds and purity
as prescribed by Allah and Islam, they became the object of examples in our
Holy Gināns.63
We should be proud to possess such a literary divine corpus [the gināns]
and proclaim that we are the true followers of the Holy Quran and all the

60 “Suggestive Guide to the ‘Islamic’ Interpretation and Refutation of the ‘Hindu’ Elements in our
Holy Gināns,” Unpublished paper presented at the Ismaili Association International Conference,
Nairobi, February 1979, 11.
61 “Observations and Comments on Our Modern Ginanic Literature,” Unpublished paper presented
at the Ismailia Association International Review meeting, Nairobi, Kenya 1980, 30.
62 Ibid., 34.
63 “Suggestive Guide to the ‘Islamic’ Interpretation and Refutation of the ‘Hindu’ Elements in our
Holy Gināns,” 30–31.
188 Ali S. Asani
parables, stories, metaphors, allegories which appear in our Holy Gināns are
nothing but the true message of the religion of Islam.64

As a result of Islamization, such ecumenical interpretations of “Islam” as a pri-

mordial universal faith were no longer possible, at least on an official institutional
level. The interpretation of the teachings of the gināns—their metaphors, their
symbols, their allegories—were mostly now limited to a Qurʾanic framework.
Such an approach is best exemplified by a notable publication by Kamaluddin Ali
Muhammad and Zarina Kamaluddin, Qur’an and Ginan (Quranic Teachings in
the Gināns).65 This book asserts the “Islamic” identity of the gināns by illustrating
the manner in which key Islamic concepts, such as the essence and attributes of
Allah, the angels, prophets, imamate, death and day of judgement, heaven, hell
(as expressed in various verses of the Qurʾan) are present in the gināns as well.
In post-partition Pakistan, in addition to the Qurʾanic framework, there were also
initiatives to conceptualize the gināns within an Islamic Sufi framework, particu-
larly relating them to traditions of Sindhi poetry.66 In this regard, the Ismaili pīrs,
particularly Pīr Ṣadr ad-Dīn, were represented as being among the pioneers of
Sindhi Sufi poetry.67

Gināns as “liturgy” in jamāʿat khānas

As gināns ceased to be the primary lens through which the key Ismaili concepts
and doctrines, such as the imamate, were officially articulated, attention within the
community context increasingly centred on their liturgical role during the daily
worship services held in the jamāʿat khāna. Younger and older members are pro-
vided instruction on their performative aspects: learning the “correct” or “stand-
ardized” rāga, or melody, for the texts; the correct pronunciation and enunciation
of words; and their literal meanings. For this purpose, books of approved ginān
texts, as well as audio materials, such as CDs containing recordings of gināns
being recited in “approved” tunes, became widely available to the community.
As Karim Gillani points out in his informative dissertation, the performance of
gināns within the jamāʿat khāna space has become highly regulated by an adab
(etiquette) of ritual performance.68 The etiquette includes the ginān reciter wait-
ing for the permission of the mukhī, or the head of the congregation, to begin
recitation; observing the time restrictions placed on the recitation (usually five

64 Ibid., 11.
65 Ali Muhammad and Kamaluddin, Qur’an and Ginan. Kamaluddin and his wife Zarina are prolific
authors and preachers in the Ismaili community in Pakistan who have, among their many books,
published a multivolume edition of the gināns. They have also played an important role in stand-
ardizing the rāgas, or melodies of the gināns.
66 Michel Boivin, “Gināns and the Management of the Religious Heritage of the Ismaili Khojas in
Sindh,” Gināns: Texts and Contexts, 34–36.
67 Ghulamali Allana, An Introduction to Sindhi Literature (Karachi: Sindhi Adabi Board, 1991).
68 Karim Gilani, “Sound and Recitation of the Khojah Ismaili Gināns” (Doctoral dissertation submit-
ted to University of Alberta, 2012), 126–173.
 The Gināns 189
minutes or less); reciting the ginān in an “approved” tune, preferably one that is
familiar to the congregation; and engaging the entire congregation so that every-
one can sing along (correct tone, proper pitch, diction, tempo, etc.) As Badar, one
of the ginān reciters interviewed by Karim Gillani, comments:

Some reciters have beautiful voices for the ginan but I don’t enjoy them, as
they only try to project their sole voices and forget the core essence of the
ginan which is to sing along with the jamat so then everyone appreciates the
beauty and meaning of the ginan.69

Alongside this focus on ritual performance, the gināns come to be framed in reli-
gious education curriculum as a South Asian form of Ismaili devotional poetry
parallel to the Ismaili poetic traditions of the Middle East and Central Asia in Ara-
bic and Persian. The emphasis is placed on common themes among these poetic
traditions, such as love and devotion to the imam as well as the quest for spiritual
enlightenment. Not surprisingly, the curriculum does not explore the specific his-
torical, theological, and literary contexts of the gināns or their association with the
Satpanth tradition. As a result, many younger Ismailis are not even familiar with
the term “Satpanth.”
Framing the gināns as equivalent to Arabic or Persian Ismaili devotional poems,
such as a qaṣīda or maddoh, has made it possible for these poems to be substituted
for gināns during the daily liturgy in jamāʿat khānas. In this sense, as the Ismaili
Khojas have continued to develop an increasingly stronger affiliation with a pan-
Ismaili identity, the repertoire of their devotional texts is no longer confined to the
gināns. It has been gradually Arabized and Persianized.

Gināns in non-institutional spaces

Although within the context of the official Ismaili institutional discourses, gināns
are increasingly viewed primarily from a liturgical and ritual perspective (and
hence regulated), they continue to play a significantly larger scriptural role, albeit
an informal one, in the daily lives of Ismaili Khojas at a personal level. Seen as
embodiment of the teachings of the pīrs and sayyids, who are regarded as part
of the larger Ismaili daʿwa, the gināns continue to represent for them a tradition
which their Imams have endorsed by urging their followers to keep their mean-
ings in their hearts.70 Many Ismailis turn to them as a source of moral and ethical
guidance. Others sing or listen to them as a form of solace and comfort when they
face the trials and tribulations of life, finding in them an emotive/experiential way
to engage with the faith.71 Some recite them in their homes or listen to them on
a variety of electronic devices while they are performing daily tasks, so that may

69 Ibid., 126–127.
70 Aga Khan IV in Farman Mubarak Pakistan Visit 1964, pt. 1, repr. edn. (Mombasa, n.d.), 40.
71 See, for example, the comments of Zulfikar Murji, who regularly recites gināns for Ismaili Khoja
patients sick in hospitals. Gilani, “Sound and Recitation of the Khojah Ismaili Gināns,” 156–157.
190 Ali S. Asani
bring barakah, spiritual and material blessing. Others have regarded the gināns
as “proof texts” predicting modern scientific developments, such as synthetic
foods, robots, atomic bombs, cardiac resuscitation, or as documenting scientific
facts related to the human body and the world of nature.72 The gināns have also
inspired artists to create visual representations of texts. Notable here is the work
of Jalal Gilani, a US-based artist and artist educator, whose project “Strokes of
Ginan” illustrates visually selected ginānic verses so that audiences can contem-
plate and meditate on their meaning.73
The revolution in media technology and the expansion of the Internet has
opened up widespread popular engagement with the gināns, both within and
beyond the Ismaili community.74 It has provided a range of artists the platform to
engage with the gināns as a vibrant and dynamic performative tradition of music.
Ginān recitations of prominent artists are now easily accessible through a range of
media, from CDs to online websites such as YouTube and Spotify. Many of these
recitations are accompanied by musical instrumentation, which is not permitted
in the context of jamāʿat khāna spaces. Also available are purely instrumental
renditions of ginān melodies.75
Websites offering digitized access to a vast collection of ginān recitations as well
as transliterations and translations of texts have emerged, including Ginan Central
at the University of Sasketchwan,76 Ismaili.Net Heritage,77 and JollyGul.78 Included
in these digital collections are texts of gināns that are not included in officially
published books. In addition, websites such as Ginan Guru have sponsored virtual
ginān and qaṣīda meḥfils (concerts) with a view to not only encouraging the reci-
tation of gināns featuring budding Ismaili artists from around the world but also
improving engagement with the gināns by having the recitations accompanied by
translations.79 These virtual concerts draw audiences from across the world.
The most dramatic transformation of the ginān tradition is evident in the range
of musicians involved in creatively reinterpreting the tradition. Karim Gillani has

72 See, for example, https://simerg.com/literary-readings/cutting-edge-science-in-syad-imam-shahs-

naklanki-geeta-are-the-answers-to-secrets-that-hadron-collider-will-reveal-already-in-the-ginans/
and https://simerg.com/literary-readings/concepts-of-modern-cosmology-and-astrophysics-in-two-
ismaili-ginans-choghadia-and-mul-gayatri/
73 For examples of Jalal Gilani’s paintings inspired by gināns, see https://vimeo.com/channels/
866719/117538359 (accessed August 17, 2020).
74 For the Nizari Ismaili presence on the Internet, see Karim H, Karim, “Tradition, Technology
and Authority: A Brief Review of Ismaili Muslim Media in Canada,” Ethnic Media in Canada
(forthcoming).
75 See the renditions by Mehboob Thawer, www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdyOULp2MNw (accessed
August 27, 2020).
76 http://gināns.usask.ca/ (accessed August 17, 2020), which, in addition to providing access to a
large collection of digitized recitations, also makes available a range of resources for the academic
study of gināns.
77 http://ismaili.net/heritage/home (accessed August 17, 2020).
78 www.jollygul.com/ (accessed August 17, 2020).
79 www.ginanguru.com/ (accessed August 17, 2020).
 The Gināns 191
meticulously analysed this transformation by documenting the work of Ismaili
musicians who have received training in various musical traditions, including
Hindustani classical music, Western classical music, and New Age/popular music.
Many of these musicians are part of the Ismaili Khoja diaspora living in North
America and have been engaged in reinterpreting the ginān tradition on the basis
of their own musical training and background. Through their projects they hope
to help first- and second-generation Ismailis born in the context of the Western
diaspora overcome the linguistic and other barriers to engagement with their cul-
tural heritage. For example, in his album Messages: Notes from the Soul, Shams
Soomar has composed instrumental music in which he blends melodies of gināns
with Western musical arrangements.80 He has experimented with creating musi-
cal interpretations of gināns since childhood, when he discovered that, although
he could not understand the meanings of the words in gināns, he could experi-
ence their spirituality through their melodies.81 According to him, music is the
most effective means for Ismaili youth in the diaspora to engage with the ginānic
tradition.82 Hussein Janmohamed, a Toronto-based choral artist, composer, and
music facilitator, has experimented with the Canadian Ismaili Muslim Youth choir
in the singing of gināns in the Western choral setting. His aim is not only to
engage young Ismailis raised in a Western context but also to foster a musical
dialogue with other faiths and cultures. Zaheed Damani, Alykhan Khimji, and
Bijan Mawani, members of the Calgary group Chaiwallas, created a fusion com-
position using a ginān sung in a traditional melody accompanied by a commen-
tary in a fusion of hip-hop and rap. The intent of the composition was to create
a bridge between the gināns, as they are traditionally sung by the older genera-
tion of Ismailis and hip-hop and rap forms that appeal to a younger generation.83
The piece became very popular among the youth in the community and has been
downloaded extensively.84
While these Ismaili musicians are engaged in negotiating a new space for the
gināns between traditional rāgas and modern Western renditions, non-Ismaili
South Asian musicians are also re-contextualizing the gināns within performative
traditions of South Asian music and poetry. Abida Parveen, the renowned expo-
nent of South Asian Sufi poetry, who has had the opportunity to sing gināns for
Aga Khan IV, regards the Ismaili pīrs Ṣadr ad-Dīn and Shams as great Sufi mas-
ters. Hence, she includes the gināns within the Sufi repertoire of Sind and Punjab:

Similarly, all of these poets such as Waris Shah, Shah Abdul Latif, Bulleh
Shah, Pir Sadardin, Pir Shams and even Guru Nanakji, Meera bai, they were

80 www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Aqzo_QZ3M (accessed August 17, 2020).

81 Gilani, “Sound and Recitation of the Khojah Ismaili Gināns,” 188.
82 Ibid., 190–191.
83 Ibid., 225.
84 www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE21S1SQJ-8 (accessed August 20, 2020).
192 Ali S. Asani
all divinely inspired people who chose music as a tool to their messages of
peace, love and humanity.85

Rageshwari Loomba, a renowned Indian singer, actress, and television personality,

recorded Lifting the Veil, an album on the gināns in collaboration with her father
Shri Trilok Loomba.86 Coming from a Sikh background, the father and daughter
connected in a personal way with the spirituality of gināns for which they com-
posed new melodies. Quoting and remarking on stanza from the ginān Sahebji
tūn more man bhāve, which he sang with his daughter, Shri Trilok Loomba said:

People worship Ram or Raheman, the names or forms differ but in reality
they are both from the same light. The foolish do not grasp the secret of all
of this. Here it is a profound message which is beyond any religion, call it
Sufism, or Bhaktism, or religion of humanity, they are all the same. It has a
universal appeal, and we really need this sort of message today to appreciate
and understand the beauty of human nature and humanity.87

Conclusion
In his groundbreaking scholarship on scripture, William Graham points out that
the relational quality of a scripture, that is, its contextual and functional quality,
is of the utmost importance in the study of religion. Ultimately, the significant
“scriptural” characteristics of a text are dependent on the roles it plays in a com-
munity as well as in individual lives. A text becomes scripture only “when men
and women of faith have found ultimacy, have encountered transcendence in its
text.”88 Commenting further on this, he observes:

[Scriptuality] arises not from the formal acts of religious leaders or church
councils, however important their eventual roles in confirming the sacrality
of boundaries of scripture, but rather in the interaction of persons and groups
of persons with a text or texts. . . . The study of a text as a document focuses
on the historical background and the origin and growth of the text. The study
of a text as scripture, on the other hand, focuses on its contextual meaning,
interpretation, and use—that is, the ongoing role that the text has played in
a tradition, not only in formal exegesis, but in every sector of life. To put it
succinctly, “scripture” is not a literary genre but religiohistorical one, and it
must be understood as such.89

85 Gillani, “Sound and Recitation of the Khojah Ismaili Gināns,” 206.

86 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKF99ZTfPBk&list=PL8-KGtAvEpq5j4f9f9e8ePCHSlW019cwD
&index=2&t=0s (accessed August 20, 2020).
87 Ibid., 210.
88 Graham, Beyond the Written Word, 6.
89 Ibid.
 The Gināns 193
This chapter has traced a religio-history of the gināns through the lens of the
Ismaili Khojas, one of several communities that has historically engaged with
these texts as scripture. Several themes characterize this religio-history. First,
the impact of changing historical and political contexts on the relationship of the
Khojas with the ginānic corpus as they transitioned from being members of a
caste associated with the Satpanth tradition to a transnational Muslim community.
Second, the key role played by the Aga Khans and various Ismaili institutions in
shaping and reshaping Ismaili Khoja identity, as well as the community’s engage-
ments with the gināns through various initiatives, for example, their canonization
and publication, and instruments such as the Ismaili constitution, the farmāns, and
religious education curriculum. Third, the divergence—particularly evident in
recent decades—between official Ismaili institutional perspectives on the gināns
and popular engagements with them by Ismailis in their personal capacities. Anxi-
eties about perceptions that other Muslims may have of the gināns, in particular
their vernacular Indic character, have been the primary concerns to Ismaili institu-
tions. These concerns have led to a marked de-emphasis of the semantic dimen-
sion of the gināns in the contemporary articulation of official Ismaili doctrine in
favour of a Qurʾanic one. Instead, there is an increased focus on the performative
aspects of the gināns and their ritualization as a form of Ismaili “devotional lit-
erature,” thus reframing them within the context of Ismaili literary traditions in
Arabic and Persian. Simultaneously, the revolution in media technology and the
Internet has opened up at a grassroots level popular engagement with the tradition,
both within and beyond the Ismaili community. The proliferation of websites con-
taining ginānic material—textual, performative, and interpretive—has provided
a wider range of audiences access to the tradition. This phenomenon has also
led to creative reinterpretations of the gināns by contemporary musicians—both
Ismaili and non-Ismaili—in new and innovative ways. It is a testimony to the fact
that, notwithstanding the many changes in their roles and functions over the last
century, the gināns continue to be an enduring source of inspiration for those who
listen and recite them. Members of the community, particularly in the diaspora,
are seeking to sustain and re-energize their appreciation for their religious and
cultural heritage through a variety of contemporary media and art.
10 The Holy Qurʾan
Whitney Bodman

William Graham has written extensively both about the Qurʾan and also, more
generally, about the concept of scripture, especially in its oral forms. As he regu-
larly points out, “scripture” is a difficult and ambiguous category when studied
across religious traditions, time, and space. Within the three so-called Abrahamic
religions the situation is a bit clearer. From the Qurʾanic point of view, the Torah,
the Gospel, and the Qurʾan are of a piece, derived from a common source and
testifying to a common God. They are all “Holy Scripture.”
Such a designation, though, introduces another contentious word, “holy.” In
what sense is the Qurʾan “Holy Scripture?” Does the word “holy” add anything to
our understanding of the Qurʾan?
The question I wish to explore is this: what is the character of the Qurʾan such
that it would be designated as holy? I am not asking what facts, or at least what is
recognized by the community of the faithful as facts, make the Qurʾan holy. The
Qurʾan regularly tells us that the book is sent down from heaven to ­Muhammad
and through him to his community. Similarly, we are told that it derives from
the well-preserved tablet, lawḥ maḥfūẓ (85:22), a heavenly Ur-text, from which
the Qurʾan, as well as the Torah and the Gospel, are in some way derived. These
locate the Qurʾan in the realm of transcendence. But these are both external
charac­teristics, claims in the Qurʾan about the circumstances of the Qurʾan. Is
there evidence within the Qurʾan that indicates the nature of its sacred character?
Navid Kermani locates the transcendent essence of the Qurʾan in its beauty,
particularly as presented in recitation.1 I propose that the beauty of the Qurʾan is
amplified by critical understanding of the concept of iḥsān that leads us beyond
the quality of beauty to a larger significance that is best captured by the idea of
the holy.

1 Navid Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, trans. Tony Crawford
(Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-12
 The Holy Qurʾan 195
Holiness
A book is sacred by being understood to be such by a community of the faithful.
Graham writes:

The sacred character of a book is not an a priori attribute but one that deve­
lops and achieves widespread recognition in the lives of faithful persons who
perceive and treat it as holy or sacred. A text only becomes “scripture” when
a group of persons value it as sacred, powerful and meaningful, possessed of
an exalted authority, and in some fashion transcendent of, and hence distinct
from, other speech and writing.2

As Graham indicates, holiness is not a sui generis category. This is in contrast

to the proposal of Rudolf Otto in the early twentieth century that there is a
realm of the holy, the numinous, that exists apart from any human conceptu-
alization. “There is no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost
core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name.”3 This sweeping
statement has largely been rejected as, among other reasons, an imposition of
Western concepts of religion upon all other expressions that may, or may not, be
identified as religion or religious. An act or item becomes holy by being desig-
nated as such, regarded as such, by a particular community, or even by an indi-
vidual. There is no provable category of the numinous independent of human
experience.
There are some, however, notably Robert Orsi, who argue that a blanket rejec-
tion of the existence of the transcendent negates the experience of those who find
it to be quite real. To say that it is “real to them,” but not real in any objective
sense, still drowns the experience of claimants of the reality of the holy in a sea of
subjectivity. It is worth quoting Orsi to drive home the point:

The confident translation of the stories men and women tell of their encoun-
ters with the supernatural into language that makes these stories about some-
thing else is based on the pervasive assumption in modern scholarship of the
“always already mediated nature of cultural relations.” The social determines
and accounts for all experience. . . . Such interpretations share the assumption
that what is happening when the transcendent breaks into time is not what
appears to be happening to the men and women to whom it is happening, nor

2 William A. Graham, “Scripture and the Qur’ān,” in Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies:
Selected Writings, Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers on Religion. Collected Works (Farnham, Sur-
rey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 178.
3 Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 6.
196 Whitney Bodman
is it what they say has happened to them. What participants say, as a matter of
fact, does “not faithfully represent actual historical occurrences.”4

Orsi recoils from the reduction of the transcendent to human experience capable
of being analysed by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neurologists,
and others in the sciences and humanities. If holiness is entirely the result of a
communal decision, is its status entirely arbitrary and imputed? Does the Qurʾan
communicate a sense of its own holiness?

Muqaddasa
Ironically, the Qurʾan never calls itself “holy.”
English translations of the Qurʾan often refer to the Qurʾan as holy. Abdullah
Yusuf Ali, Maulana Muḥammad Ali, Marmaduke Pickthall, Ali Quli Qara’i, and
Yahiya Emerick, for instance, entitle their translations “The Holy Qurʾan,” some-
times expanded as some variant of “The Meanings of the Holy Qurʾan. The Khān/
Hilālī, Bewley, and King Fahd translations follow the Arabic tradition of “The
Noble Qurʾan,” as authorized by the Qurʾan itself in Q 56:77 (qurʾān karīm). Ali
Ünal, A. J. Arberry, Alan Jones, and Abdel Haleem keep the unmodified “The
Qurʾan.” (Admittedly, different editions of the works are not always consistent—
Pickthall’s, for instance, is sometimes “Glorious.”)
English-speaking readers are most familiar with the “Holy Bible,” so referring
to the Qurʾan using the same terminology puts it in the familiar category of Holy
Scripture and affirms an equivalent status. Translators and publishers understand
that referring to the Qurʾan as “holy” communicates to Western, English-speaking
ears an accurate sense of the exceptional nature, the transcendent source, and the
reverent reception of the Qurʾan among Muslims. The term “noble,” karīm, is
peculiar to English ears, having no clear meaning as applied to a book. Even in
Arabic, karīm says little about the nature of the text it names. It relates to pre-
Islamic values of honour, generosity, and excellence, not holiness. The variant
karāma can refer to a kind of miracle, but that term is not found in the Qurʾan.5
The Qurʾan does not refer to itself using the Arabic term for holy, muqaddas.
Variants on the root q-d-s appear as a name of God (al-Quddūs, Q 59:23, 62:1,
and in verbal form, Q 2:30), the Holy Spirit (rūḥ al-qudus, Q 2:87, 2:253, 5:110,
16:102), the valley of Ṭuwā (al-wādi al-muqaddas tuwā, Q 20:12, 79:16) where
Moses encountered God in the medium of a fire, and the Holy Land (al-arḍ al-
muqaddasa, Q 5:21). From this we may propose that q-d-s applies to that which
cannot be approached—God and the Holy Spirit; the distant, wilderness valley
of Ṭuwā; and that which has already been named by biblical tradition, the Holy
Land.

4 Robert A. Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2016), 58–59.
5 Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’ān, Repr. 2007 (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2007), 51–54.
 The Holy Qurʾan 197
A term often translated as holy, ḥarām, denotes something that is sanctioned,
set apart by requirements and prohibitions. The thing set apart is then presump-
tively regarded as holy, not by the characteristic of the thing itself, but by the
nature of its treatment.
If the Qurʾan never refers to itself specifically as “holy,” it still makes a claim
to exalted status. It describes itself in terms of iḥsān.

God has sent down the most beautiful (aḥsan) of teachings: a Book that is
consistent and repeating itself; the skins of those in awe of their Lord shiver.
Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God.
(Q 39:23)6

We will return to this verse again to consider how aḥsan should be understood.

The Exceptionalism of the Qurʾan in Early Muslim Understanding

The Qurʾanic claim of beauty, authority, and prediction was not convincing to
many, or even most, of Muhammad’s community in Mecca. Even at the time of
the Prophet, the Qurʾan’s bona fides had to be proven to sceptics.
The six challenge (taḥaddī)7 verses confront Muhammad’s opponents with a
test to produce a verse, ten verses, or a sūra comparable to the Qurʾan. They do
not mention what it is that makes the Qurʾan incomparable, or how a verse would
be judged comparable. However, there was a long tradition of Arabic poetry sub-
mitted to contest, so presumably the criteria were known.8
The most extensive challenge narrative is Q 10:37–39:

Never could this Qurʾan be produced by other than Allah. Rather, it is a con-
firmation of what was before it, and an exposition of the Book. There is no
doubt in it from the Lord of the Worlds.

Or do they say, “He has forged it”? Say, “Then bring a sūra like it, and call
upon whomever you can, apart from Allah,9 if you are truthful.”

But they denied what their knowledge could not encompass, and whose inter-
pretation has not reached them. Similarly, those before them denied it, so see
the results for the wrongdoers. Some of them will believe in it; others will
not believe in it.

6 Translations from the Qurʾan are my own.

7 Q 2:23–4, 10:38, 11:13, 17:88, 28:48–50, and 52:34. There is also a challenge to find discrepan-
cies in 4:82.
8 Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, 59–66.
9 I use “Allah” in direct translations from the Arabic, but “God” elsewhere. I also capitalize pro-
nouns referring to God in order to distinguish such references from pronouns referring to others.
I will also retain, with reluctance, the masculine pronouns.
198 Whitney Bodman
There is no account in the Qurʾan that any opponent of Muhammad, having failed
at attempts to produce verses similar to those of the Qurʾan, then repented and
accepted the Qurʾan as sent down from God. In fact, there is no evidence that any
opponent even accepted the challenge. The Qurʾan predicts that they will be una-
ble to produce a similar sūra, but we never learn that anyone put the prediction to
the test. It is also unclear what particular qualities of the Qurʾan are presented here
as exceptional and inimitable, an issue taken up by theologians centuries later.
Here, in Q 10:39, the reason for the rejection of the Qurʾan is a lack of abil-
ity to comprehend, to encompass or “wrap their heads around” the Qurʾan based
on their limited knowledge and unawareness of interpretation. Elsewhere in the
Qurʾan we find other reasons for lack of comprehension, some wilful and oth-
ers not. The final note is one of resignation, or perhaps pragmatism. Some will
believe; others will not.
It is not clear what it is that the opponents denied. Did they deny that the text
was inimitable poetry? Did they deny its beauty? It seems that they denied the
message of the Qurʾan—what they could not understand—not its beauty. Whether
they admired its beauty or not, they clearly were not smitten by it.
Another strong argument in favour of acceptance of the Qurʾan as holy scrip-
ture is its similarity to previous known and accepted scriptures. This is an ar­ticle
of faith (Q 2:3, 3:84, 4:136). Based on this consonance, those who follow pre-
vious scriptures should accept the Qurʾan as well (Q 5:68). The Qurʾan even
explains previous scriptures (Q 10:37), and those with previous scriptures can
clarify ambiguities in the Qurʾan (Q 10:94) since much content is the same. This
last suggestion has been controversial in Muslim exegesis, especially when com-
bined with the issue of taḥrīf, to which we will turn later. Relying on previous
scriptures could compromise the claimed clarity of the Qurʾan.10
But objections are multiple. The people of the Book who already have their
scripture do not need another (Q 2:91), though some may actually know that the
Qurʾan is a valid new revelation (Q 2:101, 26:197). Some pagans argue that only
Jews and Christians have scriptures (Q 6:155), implying that no more scriptures
could be added to the corpus.
Some object to the manner of revelation: it should have been in writing (Q
6:7); it should have been accompanied by an angel (Q 6:6, 25:7) or at least a sign
(Q 20:133, 29:50). It should have been sent down all at once (Q 25:32). It should
have been brought by a great man of the “two towns,” likely Mecca and Taʾif (Q
43:31).11
Muhammad is often accused of being a fabricator (Q 16:101, 21:5, 25:4,
34:43, 46:7, 52:33, 61:6), repeating ancient fables (Q 25:4, 68:15, 83:13), being
bewitched (Q 17:47–48, 21:3, 25:7, 34:43). He must have had human help

10 Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Assessing the Isrā’īliyyāt: An Exegetical Conundrum,” in Story-Telling

in the Framework of Non-Fictional Arabic Literature, ed. Stefan Leder (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz
Verlag, 1998), 345–369.
11 EQ, s.v. Geography (A. Neuwirth), II, 293–312, at 295a.
 The Holy Qurʾan 199
(Q 16:103), though his inability to produce such a text is put forth as proof of its
divine origin (Q 29:48).
Some Meccans boasted that they already had the tradition of their ancestors, the
Kaʿba and its associated rites (Q 34:43, 43:22).
Some seem to have examined the text. They object to the contents. Some want
changes, presumably to remove what offends their sensibilities and customs (Q
10:15, 13:36, 15:89). Some do not accept the predictions of the Hour, regarding
that as pure speculation (Q 45:32).
The lowly blame the arrogant for having convinced them not to believe, and
the arrogant blame the lowly for ducking responsibility for their own belief (Q
34:31–33). And then some have been kept from the Qurʾan by God’s will or by
Shayṭān (Q 47:25)! God has sealed their hearts (Q 9:93, 17:45), but they are
not thereby without blame. How was it possible that any could manage to resist
what has come from God? How is it possible that such lame excuses, however
­numerous, can stand up to the beauty of the Qurʾan?

God has sent down the most beautiful of all teachings: a Scripture that is con-
sistent and draws comparisons; that causes the skins of those in awe of their
Lord to shiver. Then their skins and their hearts soften at the mention of God.
(Q 39:23)

It is not clear, here, whether those whose skins shiver at the hearing of the Qurʾan
are already in awe of the Lord, and thus predisposed to shiver, or whether this
physical reaction is the result of an initial, startling encounter with their Lord,
which results simultaneously in awe and physical reactions. The previous verse
implies that these recipients of the revelation are ones whose hearts have been
opened to Islam by God. The immediate cause is the Qurʾan’s beauty, not its mes-
sage, though if God has already opened their hearts to submission (al-islām), that
implies that they have heard the message.
Another passage adds a different reaction to the revelation:

Surely the strongest of the people in enmity to those who believe are the Jews,
and those who are polytheistic, and surely you will find the nearest to them in
affection to those who believe are those who say, “We are Christians.” That is
because among them are priests and monks, and they are not arrogant.
And when they listen to what was sent down to the Messenger you will see
their eyes overflowing with tears because of the truth which they recognize.
They say, “Our Lord, we believe, so inscribe us along with the witnesses.”

(Q 5:82–83)

A group of Christians hear the Qurʾan, what has been “sent down,” and erupt in
tears. Among these Christians are some that are priests and monks, but they are
a part of the group, not the totality. Nevertheless, by being mentioned, the pas-
sage implies that the group is somewhat sophisticated, and some are pious. That
200 Whitney Bodman
might explain a key difference between the two passages. The first group of lis-
teners responds to the beauty, the iḥsān of the Qurʾan, whereas the Christians are
responding to its truth, al-ḥaqq.12
Navid Kermani points out in his book God Is Beautiful that the primary impor-
tance of the Qurʾan is not that it is beautiful but that it is true.13 The beauty of
the Qurʾan is not its reason for being. Nevertheless, it seems that the beauty, the
poeticity, of the Qurʾan is a major source of its attraction.
The challenge in the taḥāddī verses does not seem to be proof by the criterion
of truth, but rather on the basis of beauty. This is a response not to the message
of the Qurʾan but to the Qurʾan itself. Its divine origination is evidenced by a
characteristic that Arabs already recognize as otherworldly—its poetry. Yet it is
not (mere) poetry. Arabs already recognized poetry as inspired by the world of the
spirits. The Qurʾan is beyond poetry, beyond the capabilities of the multitude of
spirits to inspire. As Kermani says, the Arabs “were obliged to admit the poetic
miracle.”14 Its beauty can only come from one superior to the muses of the poets.
It can only come from God. Hence it is the beauty of the Qurʾan, the overpower-
ing iḥsān, that is the mark of its divine nature.
The beauty of the Qurʾan is most manifest in recitation. In early Muslim nar-
ratives, the exceptional beauty of Qurʾanic recitation was given as a mark of its
sacred quality. Of course, at this time the Qurʾan existed only in the form of recita-
tion, but the nature of the recitation was not simply conveyance of the words but
was artistic and poetic. Some opponents of the early Muslim community in Mecca
are converted by simply hearing Qurʾanic recitation.15
Perhaps the most famous account of this stunning effect of the Qurʾan is the
conversion of ʿUmar. He was a fierce opponent of Muhammad but was told that
even members of his own household had converted to Islam. He stormed to the
house of his sister and, hearing recitation as he neared the house, demanded an
explanation. When he heard that the family had indeed converted, he hit his sister,
drawing blood. Ashamed of himself, he asked to read what his brother-in-law had
been reciting. As he read the page, he exclaimed, “How beautiful are these words,
and how noble!” and then demanded, “Lead me to Muḥammad so that I may
accept Islam.”16
In another story, when a strong opponent of Muhammad hears the recitation of
the Qurʾan, he is deeply impressed:

When Walīd ibn al-Mughīra—God’s curse be upon him!—Chief of Quraysh

and a man known for his eloquence heard [the Qurʾan], he was struck into

12 For fuller discussion, see Whitney S. Bodman, “Reading the Qur̕ān as a Resident Alien,” Muslim
World 99/4 (2009): 689–706.
13 Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, 129.
14 Ibid., 7.
15 Navid Kermani gives numerous examples of conversion stories. Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The
Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, 14–24.
16 A. Guillaume, The Life of Muḥammad: A Translation of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 156–157.
 The Holy Qurʾan 201
silence, his heart turned numb, his eloquence forsook him, his argument col-
lapsed, his case was devastated, his impotence clearly appeared and his wits
were befuddled; and he said “. . . By God, there is a certain sweetness to his
words, a certain greatness . . .”17

But he remained a dedicated adversary of Muhammad to the end, though his son,
Khālid, and other members of his family converted.18
The beauty of the Qurʾan is such that its recitation can even result in death.
Stories of such responses are recorded in biographical and other accounts. For
instance, the Persian Sufi al-Hujwīrī (1009–1072) records in his Kashf al-Maḥjūb:

Zurāra b. Abī Awfā, one of the chief Companions of the Apostle, while he
was presiding over the public worship, recited a verse from the Koran, uttered
a cry, and died. Abū Jaʿfar Juhanī, an eminent Follower, on hearing a verse
which Ṣāliḥ Murrī read to him, gave a loud moan and departed from this
world.19

These reactions presuppose that the listeners already are in awe (yakhshawna) of
their Lord. They had already accepted the authority and sacrality of the Qurʾan.
It is not clear whether non-believers were ever struck dead by the hearing of the
Qurʾan. Similar stories are reported in the Qurʾan commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (d.
1035), who goes so far as to regard those who die from hearing the Qurʾan as
martyrs.20

The iʿjāz of the Qurʾan

Though there is clear testimony that the Qurʾan is beautiful, both within the Qurʾan
itself and in early Muslim narratives, it is evident that these depositions are not
adequate to support the claim of its divine, or holy, character. This becomes clear
in the ninth and tenth centuries when it became necessary to establish the inimita-
bility of the Qurʾan against sustained assaults. The doctrine of iʿjāz serves a dual
purpose of proving the divine origin of the Qurʾan and verifying the prophethood
of Muhammad.21
The reasons for this new urgency are multiple. The rise of more formal Sufi
schools and organizations produced catalogs of miracles performed by saints and
adepts. These competed with the idea that the Qurʾan was the singular miracle of
Muhammad and Islam. Alternative traditions, such as that of the Ismāʿīlīs, had

17 Quoted in Sophia Vasalou, “The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur’ān: General Trajectories and
Individual Approaches,” Journal of Qur’ānic Studies 4/2 (2002): 23.
18 EI2, s.v. Makhzūm, VI 138–139.
19 ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān al-Jullābī al-Hujwīrī, The Kashf Al-Maḥjūb: The Oldest Persian Treatise on
Ṣūfism, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Luzac & Co., n.d.), 396.
20 Walid A. Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qur’ān Commentary of
al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035), Texts and Studies on the Qur’ān, v. 1 (Boston: Brill, 2004), 61–62.
21 G. E. von Grunebaum, “Iʿdjaz,” in Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 1018.
202 Whitney Bodman
very different ideas about prophecy, revelation, and knowledge. Non-Arab peo-
ples contested the presumption of the superiority of Arab culture and Arabic lan-
guage. This came particularly from the proponents of Persian. Muʿtazilites were
largely sceptical about miracles.22
Finally, there were the Christians. With the expansion of Islam, Christians,
writing in Arabic, needed to defend their own tradition against charges of absurd-
ity (such as the doctrine of the Trinity) and to defend their own congregations
against the temptations of conversion to Islam—an attractive option to many, not
just on theological or moral grounds but also for economic and social advantage.
In the increasingly polemical environment, Christians pointed to the many mir-
acles of Jesus (confirmed in the Qurʾan itself) as proof of his divine authority and
power. They challenged Muslims to produce any comparable divine authorization
of Muhammad. The Qurʾan’s self-proclamation of divine descent was apparently
not adequate.23 Muslim apologists needed to prove the divine nature, the miracu-
lous nature, of the Qurʾan from the contents of the Qurʾan itself. Even without all
these challenges, the growth of the commentarial enterprise required exegesis of
the taḥaddī verses.
The great debates on the iʿjāz of the Qurʾan by Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (940–
1013), ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (1009–1078), Abū al-Haṣan ʿAbd al-Jabbār (935–
1025), and others arose in the tenth century. The rise of kalām and falsafa required
that the miraculous nature of the Qurʾan be justified not only on a textual basis
but also on a rational basis. If the Qurʾan is created, as the Muʿtazilites claimed,
then its inimitability is compromised because, as Bāqillānī had to admit, God
could have created a Qurʾan equal to or even better than the Qurʾan sent down to
Muhammad. The claim of the uncreatedness of the Qurʾan defended against this
argument.
There were two main approaches to proving the iʿjāz of the Qurʾan, each defi-
cient. On the one hand, some Muʿtazilites proposed the theory of ṣarfa—God
prevented anyone from producing a text of equivalent beauty to the Qurʾan.24 The
problem with this approach, other than the obvious question of why a Muʿtazilite
should support such divine limitation of free will, is that it says nothing about
the Qurʾan itself. A similar weakness applies to the point that Muhammad was
illiterate, since an illiterate man would have difficulty producing a merely good
text as well. Some pointed to the predictions of future events, but the Torah and
the Gospel do that as well.
The primary focus, however, was the literary eloquence of the text itself, con-
sidering the words (lafẓ), the meanings (maʿnā), and the structure (naẓm). We
have already given the textual support for such a course in Q 39:23 and 5:83. The
last, the focus on naẓm, proved to be the most promising.25

22 Vasalou, “The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur’ān,” 24.

23 Ibid., 27–29.
24 Ibid., 30.
25 Ibid., 31.
 The Holy Qurʾan 203
Bāqillānī argued two points. First, he argued that the miracle of the Qurʾan was
that it introduced an entirely new literary form, superseding all its precedents.
This was not actually a proof of its miraculousness, only of its uniqueness.
His second claim was that the Qurʾan maintains a superlative level of elo-
quence throughout, even as it changes subject and focus. Here his argument is
less a consistent analysis than exuberant awe. It consists in “citation of verses;
elucidation of meaning and/or (more frequently) enthusiastic exclamations on the
wonderfulness and splendor of construction of the verses; exhortations to ‘think’
and ‘see,’ to ponder the verses and ‘ask ourselves’ whether greater eloquence
could ever be.”26
Ultimately, Bāqillānī falls back on a simple acclamation: the miraculous elo-
quence of the Qurʾan is self-evident, to be accepted by taqlīd, precedent. This
argument, of course, is directed only to the believer. It would be unconvincing to
anyone else. The Qurʾan is exceptional, transcendent in nature, because the com-
munity, historically, has affirmed it as such.
Jurjānī denounces dependence on taqlīd, undertaking to provide positive proof
from the close analysis of the naẓm, the syntax of phrases producing complexes
of meaning and suggestion. Though his effort is systematic and comprehensive,
its very thesis undermines its goal.
As Sophia Vasalou writes,

Could the eloquence of the Qur’ān be named and explained according to

systematic precepts articulated for literary works in general—including
human works of course—without depriving it of a degree of its “otherness,”
its miraculousness? Perhaps it could, but in Jurjānī’s case, one would say, it
does not.27

In effect, Jurjānī does not so much prove the miraculousness of the Qurʾan as
illustrate what is already accepted as fact.
Vasalou concludes:

The stumbling block for Bāqillānī was his not being sufficiently possessed of
a literary approach, thus leveling suspect criticism to human literary works,
taking the “otherness” he set out to prove as the premise to a great degree, and
finally lapsing into subjectivity; while for Jurjānī it was possessing too much
of a literary approach, and, in trying to “garden” the domain of knowledge the
Qur’ān, fell into gardening the Qur’ān itself.28

In the modern era, additional studies have refined the arguments of Bāqillānī and
Jurjānī as well as advanced new approaches. Some have tried to root the miracle

26 Ibid., 36–37.
27 Ibid., 41.
28 Ibid., 42.
204 Whitney Bodman
of the Qurʾan in its foreknowledge of future scientific discoveries, such as Shaykh
Ṭanṭāwī Jawharī (1862–1940).29 Others have focused on the aesthetic character
of larger units of the Qurʾan; examples are ʿAbd al-Mutaʿāl al-Ṣaʿīdī (d. 1971)
and Sayyid Quṭb (1906–1966).30 The aesthetics of the Qurʾan have also become
the focus of a growing list of Western scholars, but not with the motive of proving
its status as Holy Scripture.
A corollary of the doctrine of iʿjāz is the doctrine of taḥrīf, the claim that the
Torah and the Gospel, as currently known and preserved among Jews and Chris-
tians respectively, are flawed.31 If the Qurʾan is incomparable, then those texts to
which it would be logically compared (and are commonly compared in the Qurʾan
itself) must be in some way incomparable. They must be less miraculous than the
Qurʾan.
There are variant accounts as to the nature of the flaw. That the Jewish and
Christian scriptures are deficient has not been controversial since the early years
of Islam and remains near universally held to the present time.32 The explanation
of that deficiency falls into two camps.
The earlier interpretation is taḥrīf al-maʿnā, the tampering with the meaning of
the text. The Qurʾan accuses Jews and/or Christians of covering up (Q 3:71) and
concealing the truth (Q 2:140, 146), exchanging a revealed text for an unrevealed
one (Q 2:59, 7:162), writing texts (Q 2:79), twisting their tongues (Q 3:78, 4:46),
shifting words out of context (Q 4:46, 5:13), forgetting (Q 5:13–14, 7:53), and
hiding the truth (Q 5:15).
Those who believed that Jews and Christians had distorted the meanings of the
text, but that the text itself was secure from tampering, were thus able to mine
the scriptures for references and allusions to Muhammad.33 The implication of
this textual preservation is that if Jews and Christians had held their text in such
reverence as to protect it from tampering, one could trust that Muslims would do
likewise.
We may conclude from the preceding that Muslim tradition shows great con-
cern to validate the miraculous quality of the Qurʾan, that which sets it apart

29 Obaidullah Fahad Fallahi, “Re-Defining iʿjāz al-Quran: A Study of the Modern Scholars of Islam
on the Inimitability of the Quran—II,” Jihāt Al-Islām 3/1 (2009): 11–12; Johannes J. G. Jansen,
The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt, Photomechanical Reprint, [2. impr.] (Leiden:
Brill, 1980), 35–54.
30 Issa J. Boullata, “The Rhetorical Interpretation of the Qur’ān: Iʿjaz and Related Topics,” in
Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’ān, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1988), 148–154.
31 Gordon D. Nickel, Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qurʾan, His-
tory of Christian-Muslim Relations (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), vol. 13; Abdullah Saeed,
“The Charge of Distortion of Jewish and Christian Scriptures,” The Muslim World 92/Fall (2002):
419–436.
32 Kate Zebiri, Muslims and Christians Face to Face (Oxford, England and Rockport, MA: One-
world, 1997), 50.
33 Nickel, Narratives of Tampering in the Earliest Commentaries on the Qur’an, 21–22.
 The Holy Qurʾan 205
from all other traditions, and apart from all other literature. This concern is set in
motion by the taḥaddī narratives in the Qurʾan itself and culminates in literature
which tries to define the iʿjāz of the Qurʾan in terms of various qualities of its
meanings and rhetoric. Ultimately, these are not successful as proofs positive of
the divine character of the Qurʾan, and the scholars fall back on an argument from
taqlīd. The Qurʾan is miraculous—holy—because that is the universally accepted
understanding of the Muslim tradition and community.

Righteousness
Transcendence is the primary axis in Islam. All of reality emerges from God and is
relative to God. As Graham says in his article “Transcendence in Islam”:

In Islam, as in another traditions, the conception of transcendence that ani-

mates and permeates religious thought and practice can be discussed in terms
of two principal perspectives, one that focuses upon the nature or ontology
of transcendent reality, and one that is concerned with the realization of some
measure of transcendence by the human individual.34

According to Graham, the absolute transcendence of God may be characterized

in three aspects: unicity and singularity, majesty and omnipotence, and infinitude
and everlastingness.35 This perspective need not concern us. We are more con-
cerned with that aspect of transcendence that impinges upon human experience,
the second perspective Graham addresses.
Graham locates the human experience of God’s transcendence first in the aware-
ness of God’s pervasive mercy. Secondly, one encounters the divine through the
Qurʾan, the verbatim words of God, and the Prophet, the exemplar of God’s path.
Beyond that there is the further expression of the divine mandates, the sharīʿa and
the ʿibādāt.
There are a number of Qurʾan passages that outline the expected response of
human beings to God. One of the more fulsome summaries is in Sūrat al-Baqara
2:177:

It is not righteousness (birr) that you turn your faces towards the East and
the West.
Rather, righteous is the one who believes in God, and the Last Day, and the
Angels, and the Book, and the Prophets,
to give wealth in spite of love for it, to those who are relatives, and orphans,
and needy, and travelers, and to those who ask, and for (freeing) the slaves,

34 William A. Graham, “Transcendence in Islam,” in Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies:

Selected Writings, 73.
35 Ibid., 74–77.
206 Whitney Bodman
and establish the prayer, and give the zakāh,
and who fulfill the agreements they have made,
and who are patient in suffering and adversity and the time of distress.

These are the obligations of human beings. They are in two broad categories:
there are obligations of belief (īmān), and there are obligations to act. Among the
actions there are obligations of charity to others, obligations of religious perfor-
mance—prayer and zakāh—and, thirdly, an obligation of patience in the face of
hardship.
The inclusive word for righteousness here is birr, which can be translated as
righteousness, virtue, piety, or faithfulness, since it includes aspects of worship as
well as morality. It is mentioned in 6 other places in the Qurʾan, 18 with variant
forms, mostly as a noun.
Far more common, but with similar meaning, is ṣāliḥ. Both words have a
semantic range that includes acts of morality and acts of worship. While birr
includes acts of belief, as in Q 2:177, ṣāliḥāt, often rendered as acts of righteous-
ness, ʿamilū al-ṣāliḥāt, are often paired with commitments of belief, īmān, as an
associated term:

Those who believe (āmanū) and do good works (ʿamilū al-ṣāliḥāt)—they

shall be the inhabitants of paradise, to dwell therein forever.
(Q 2:82)

Ṣāliḥ occurs 122 times in nominal form, referring to acts of righteousness, and
another 40 times in verbal form, usually meaning to set things aright. It is always
applied to human beings, especially to prophets.

Iḥsān
More complicated than birr or ṣāliḥ is a third word used to describe righteousness,
iḥsān. It is here that the element of holiness appears.
Ḥasanāt are good deeds in accordance with God’s will. In this sense it is used
in a fashion similar to birr and ṣāliḥ. The semantic range of variants of the root
ḥ-s-n do not normally include acts of piety, religious observances, specifically, but
neither are they mentioned conjointly, as is true with ṣāliḥ.
The importance of the concept of iḥsān more generally in Islam is signalled by
the hadith of Gabriel cited in, among other places, the very beginning of the Saḥīḥ
Muslim.36 It is also the second hadith cited in the collection of 40 hadith of Imam
al-Nawāwī (1233–1277).37 There the angel Jibrīl defines the tradition of Islam as

36 Imam Abī Ḥusayn Muslim bin Ḥajāj bin Muslim, Saḥīḥ Muslim (Riyadh: Dar al-Islam, 1998),
24–25 Bāb al-Īmān, 1.
37 Imām Yaḥyā bin Sharaf al-Dīn al-Nawawī, An-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith, trans. Ezzedin Ibrahim and
Denys Johnson-Davies (Lahore: The Holy Koran Publishing House, 1977), 28–33.
 The Holy Qurʾan 207
islām, īmān, and iḥsān, which might be translated summarily as submission/acts,
belief/worship, and realization of what is good and beautiful. Here iḥsān encap-
sulates the essence of holiness, which is not acts (islām) nor belief nor worship
(īmān), but the realization and perception of the divine on which both of these are
premised.
Iḥsān is fundamentally an awareness of God’s presence, God’s “seeing” us. The
root ḥ-s-n appears, in various forms, 194 times in the Qurʾan. Toshihiko Izutsu
states that the root covers a semantic range from goodness to beauty.38 It embraces
both ethics and aesthetics. In most cases the context compels an understanding
towards one end of the range or the other, but the whole range is implicitly present
to some degree in every instance.
Another common word for beauty, jamāl, is found in this form only once in the
Qurʾan, applied to cattle (Q 16:5–6). The adjectival form, jamīl, appears seven
times, three in conjunction with patience, but elsewhere applying to the manners
of divorcing, leaving, and pardoning (Q 33:49, 33:28, 15:85, 73:10). It is always
applied to creatures and human conduct. It is never, in the Qurʾan, applied to
God.39
The semantic range of iḥsān, however, is actually greater than ethics and aes-
thetics. A close examination of its various usages in the Qurʾan shows that its
range of meaning extends to theology, beyond goodness and beauty to holiness.
It is broadly applied not only to human acts and human loveliness but also to the
Qurʾan, to the acts and activity of God, and as an attribute of God.
The most common applications of ḥ-s-n are passages that clearly reflect the
ethical end of the spectrum:

It is He who created the heavens and the earth in six days, and His throne was
over the water that He might test you—which of you is best (aḥsanu) in terms
of deeds (ʿamalan).
(Q 11:7)

We have charged humanity with goodness (ḥusn) towards their parents.

(Q 29:8)

And those who strive for Us, We will surely guide them in Our ways, and
indeed, God is with the good-doers (al-muḥsinīn).
(Q 29:68)

In this common usage, ḥ-s-n refers to actions, specific and collectively, of persons.
Goodness is sometimes contrasted with evil:

38 Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’ān, 221–226.

39 Kazuyo Murata, Beauty in Sufism: The Teachings of Ruzbihan Baqli (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2016), 32–33.
208 Whitney Bodman
If any good (ḥasana) touches you, it troubles them, and if any evil (sayyiʾatun)
afflicts you, they rejoice.
(Q 3:120)

Ultimately, goodness comes from God. It is a good reward given to those who
do good on earth. Those who do good on earth receive the reward of goodness in
Paradise:

For those who do good (aḥsanū), the best (al-ḥusnā), and more . . . they are
the companions in Paradise.
(Q 10:26)

Here the meaning of aḥsanū is clearly doing good works, but al-ḥusnā is more
generic—good things, enjoyment, beauty, all that is pleasing. The meaning has
more breadth than that which is morally good.
Goodness can be offered to God, often described as a loan:

Who will be the one who will loan to God a good (ḥasanan) loan, so He will
multiply it for him, and for him (is) a noble (karīm) reward?
(Q 57:11)

The human being is described as beautiful in form as well as having the potential
of good works:

He created the heavens and the earth with truth (bi-l-ḥaqq), and He formed
you and made beautiful (aḥsana) your form.
(Q 45:22)

And so her Lord accepted her (Maryam) fully (“with a good [ḥasanin] accep­
tance”), and raised her well (“with a good [ḥasanan]raising”).
(Q 3:37)

How might one know when to understand ḥ-s-n as good, the ethical dimension, or
as beautiful, the aesthetic dimension? It is often not clear. Whereas it seems rea-
sonable to see the shaping of the human form as beautiful, it is less clear whether
human behaviour should be regarded as in some way beautiful. What do we mean
when we refer to someone as a “beautiful person”? That can mean simply a physi-
cally beautiful person, but often it refers to a moral, and more than moral, a qua­
lity. It may include demeanour, grace, attitude, responsiveness to others, depth
of character, perhaps spirituality. It is a composite concept that sometimes has
nothing to do with physical form.
In many uses, ḥ-s-n refers to a general, good quality that is not limited to physi-
cal form or moral action.
 The Holy Qurʾan 209
The major uniqueness of ḥ-s-n, not found with birr or ṣalāh, is that it is used
for God’s activity as well as human endeavour. God is described as “good” in
several ways. One aspect of God’s goodness is expressed in God’s role as creator
of everything.

God, the One Who created the heavens and the earth and what is between
them in six days, then established Himself on the throne; there is not, for you,
any guardian or intercessor other than Him. Then will you not take heed?
He governs the affairs from the heavens to the earth, then it will return to
Him in a day, the measure of which is a thousand years by your count.
That is the Knower of the seen and the unseen, the Almighty, the Merciful,
the One Who made good (aḥsana) every thing that He created, and he began
the creation of the man from clay.
(Q 32:4–7)

And the word of your Lord was fulfilled—the best (al-ḥusnā) for the Children
of Israel.
(Q 7:137)

These statements are no longer purely ethical or aesthetic. They are theological
affirmations as well. The first statement, Q 32:4–7, is a broad statement of God’s
creative work, beginning with heaven and earth and continuing, after this passage,
with the creation of human beings. God is the Knower-of-Seen-and-Unseen, the
Almighty, the Merciful and the Creator-of-good.
The fourth attribute is a bridge between the first three and the return to the
specifics of creation, in this case the creation of the first human being from clay.
Thus the general pattern is a broad description of the beginning of the creation
of the heavens and earth in v. 4a, then a description of God’s continuing interac-
tion with the created world, arranging its affairs, protecting and interceding, in
vv. 4b and 5, then the iteration of the attributes of God in vv. 6 and 7a, the first
and last being complex, and the middle two being names in the single, nominal
form. The first of the four attributes relates to God’s knowledge of governing the
affairs of the world. A day in God’s reckoning is 1,000 years in ours, an example
of God’s superior knowledge of what is unseen to humans. In the list of the names
of God elaborated by al-Ghazālī, God is al-‘Alīm, and included in the description
is knowledge of the seen and unseen.40
The last of the four provides a transition to the story of creation of humanity. It
identifies God as Creator—the subject of the larger passage, vv. 4–11, and the One
who does Good. Neither is in the form of the beautiful names of God, al-asmāʾ

40 Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God =: Al-Maqṣad al-Asnā: Fī Sharḥ
Asmāʾ Allāh al-Ḥusnā, trans. David B. Burrell and Nazih Daher (Cambridge, UK: Islamic Texts
Society, 1992), 80–81.
210 Whitney Bodman
al-ḥusnā, though elsewhere God is al-Khāliq, the Creator (Q 13:16, 39:62, 59:24),
and, in the intensive form, al-Khallāq, the Master-Creator (Q 15:86, 36:81). The
name, al-Muḥsin, formed from the ḥ-s-n root, is not used in the Qurʾan and is
not included in al-Ghazālī’s list. It is cited as a name of God by Ibn Taymiyya
(1263–1328), Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn Al-Albanī (1914–1999), and others.41
To say that God is the best, or most beautiful, of creators is to make a statement
about the nature of God.

Blessed is God, the Best (aḥsan) of creators.

(Q 23:14)

Such an affirmation does not exclude the ethical and the aesthetic, of course. The
theological affirmation about the nature of God is a statement about the holiness
of God. That God is the best of creators, or the most beautiful of creators, is not a
claim based on a rational assessment of the facts of creation. There is no attempt
to compare the creative activity of God with the creative activity of others. It is
purely a claim about the status of God as a creator like none other, the Creator.
The theological dimension of ḥ-s-n is also clear in its use for the beautiful
names of God, al-asmā’ al-ḥusnā (7:180, 17:110, 20:8). The use of ḥusnā here
is categorical, applying to the nature of the collection of names. In Sūrat ṬāHā
the names are joined with the Shahāda, suggesting that the beautiful names are a
fundamental of the tradition:

God, there is no god but Him. To Him belong the Beautiful Names (al-asmā’
al-ḥusnā).
(Q 20:8)

The names are means by which God may be known. It is not so much that the
names are “beautiful” in any aesthetic sense. It is rather the power and utility they
have to align the believer, reciter, contemplator, with the virtues and wisdom of
each name. Al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) quotes two hadiths of the Prophet to make
this point:

You should be characterized by the characteristics of God most high.

Given that God is characterized by the 99 [names], whoever is characterized
by one of them enters paradise.42

41 Samina, “99 Names of Allah ‫( ىنسحلا ءامسألا‬Authentic List with References and
Resources),” The Believer’s Mirror (blog), December 4, 2017, #96, https://ayeina.com/
know-allah-better-through-his-names-authentic-list-with-references/.
42 al-Ghazālī, The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God, 149.
 The Holy Qurʾan 211
Al- Ghazālī takes particular care to define what it means for a mere mortal to be
“characterized” by a name or name of God, but the virtue of the effort is captured
succinctly in the title of the fourth chapter of his exposition on the Ninety-Nine
Beautiful Names of God:

Explaining how the perfection and happiness of man consists in conforming

to the perfection of God most high and in adorning himself with the meanings
of His attributes and names in so far as this is conceivable for a man.

Al-Ghazālī does not explain specifically what it is that makes the names “beauti-
ful.” Beauty is a term that encapsulates, summarizes, the nature of the names and
their effect, or potential effect, on the believer. One might recall the effect of the
beauty of the Qurʾan on the believer in Q 39:23, except that the cumulative effect
of the names encompasses moral as well as spiritual force.

Conclusion
When the scholars of the tenth and eleventh centuries attempted to identify the
nature of the iʿjāz of the Qurʾan, they were able to distinguish many Qurʾanic
grammatical, syntactic, and semantic features that are exceptional. Ultimately,
these failed to identify that characteristic that makes the Qurʾan categorically dif-
ferent not only from other existing literature but from all other possible literature.
Ultimately, they recognized that the unique nature of the Qurʾan is simply that
which must be accepted and affirmed on the basis of belief. It is a function of
taqlīd, a social and institutional fact accepted as real. It is holy because the com-
munity, over time, has asserted that it is holy, ascribed to it holiness, and thus it
has become a “fact,” a reality.
Iḥsān, as a characteristic of Muslim life, represents a quality of goodness and
beauty that is reflective of God’s goodness and beauty. As such, it carries a trans-
cendent character that is not present in the goodness represented by birr and ṣāliḥ.
It draws the believer to participate, in some small way, in the goodness and beauty
actualized by God. The individual is drawn into a concept that blurs but by no
means eliminates the divine human boundary.
Kermani, drawing on Christian imagery, refers to the encounter with God
through the Qurʾan as a sacramental act.

The central ritual of Christianity is not, or at least not primarily, the reading of
Scripture; it is consummated in the sacraments, culminating in the Eucharist,
the ritual assimilation of the body of Christ. . . .
Pronouncing the Word of God with one’s own mouth, receiving it in one’s
ears, holding it in one’s heart, is essentially a sacramental act, even if Islam
does not use that concept. The faithful do not simply recall the divinity: like
Christians taking communion, they absorb it physically. . . . The divinity
212 Whitney Bodman
appears or, more precisely, sounds at the moment mortals speak his words:
“your mouths are paths of God.”43

The iḥsān of mortal beings reflects the iḥsān of God. When the Qurʾan is recited,
the actualization of the Qurʾan creates that holy space in which goodness, beauty,
and holiness are realized for all who hear.

43 Kermani, God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran, 171–172.

Part III

The “Islamic” in Islamic

History
11 Does Pre-modern Islamic
Thought Allow for a Secular
Realm?
Roy P. Mottahedeh

At first the search for any possible analog to the Western dichotomy between the
sacred and the secular or profane realms in pre-modern Islamic thought seems
unpromising and even, if we are to believe some authorities, totally wrong-­
headed.1 Bernard Lewis, the doyen of American specialists on the Islamic Middle
East, tells us in an introductory essay published in 1984:

For a traditional Muslim church and state are one and the same. They are not
separate or separable institutions, and there is no way of cutting through the
tangled web of human activities and allocating certain things to religion, oth-
ers to politics, some to the state and some to a specifically religious authority.
Such familiar pairs of words as lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane,
spiritual and temporal, and the like, have no equivalents in classical Arabic
and other Islamic languages, since the dichotomy which they express, deeply
rooted in Christendom, was unknown in Islam until comparatively modern
times, when its introduction was the result of external influences.2

A work in German, the Lexikon Religiöser Grundbegriffe, published in 1987

under the general editorship of an excellent Islamicist, Adel Khoury, puts this case

1 A much earlier version of this chapter was delivered as a talk at the Harvard Divinity School in
the late 1980s, and I revisited the topic for presentation at the 28 September 2018 conference in
honour of William Graham’s retirement. Three colleagues, Professors Intisar Rabb, Andras Hamori,
and Sarah Bowen Savant, offered valuable comments. Long after this chapter was delivered to the
editors, I discovered on 16 June 2021 that a recent Harvard PhD, Dr Rushain Abbasi, had written
a 2020 dissertation on the religious and the secular. From this he published an essay, “Did Premo­
dern Muslims Distinguish the Religious and Secular? The Dῑn-Dunyᾱ Binary in Medieval Islamic
Thought,” Journal of Islamic Studies 31/2 (May 2020): 185–225. This recent work may supercede
what I have written here. I congratulate Dr Abbasi on his excellent work but cannot at this late stage
integrate his findings into my own chapter.
2 Lewis, “Preface,” 11, in Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the Pharaoh
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-14
216 Roy P. Mottahedeh
even more boldly in its article Sakral or the “Sacred” by the learned Dr S. Balić,
the Muslim author of the Islamic section of this article. He states:

the concept “sacred” is apparently foreign to Islam. This is to be explained

by the fact that on the one hand this religion regards the entirety of life—the
spiritual as well as the material—as its legitimate field of interest, and on
the other hand perhaps takes stronger cognizance of human limits than does,
possibly, Christianity. According to the Koran, only God is the holy ruler (al-
malik al-quddūs).3

This chapter will argue that such descriptions of the pre-modern intellectual world
of Muslims are misleading with respect to some Muslim thinkers. In fact, the
widespread view of Western Islamicists that there is a sphere in which, as Lewis
claims, that sacred and profane, or even sacred and secular, are undifferentiated
or even undifferentiable, corresponds much more to the assertions of some con-
temporary Islamic revivalists than to the majority of pre-modern Islamic opinion
in the Middle East. By pre-modern Islamic thought I mean the thought preserved
in the writings of Muslims in the Middle East in the period before the rise of late
Muslim empires (the Moghuls, Safavids, and Ottomans) around 1500. Perhaps
some of the confusion on this (as on so many other issues) springs from the desire
of some Islamicists and some Muslims to offer a reified Islam divorced from his-
torical context.
Before turning to possible analogues of sacred and secular I think we should
consider why some contemporary Islamicists have said that no such analogues
ever did exist. First, in some sense they correctly see Islam as the outcome of one
long trend in the history of Western Asia. If the ancient Babylonians carried off
each other’s gods, and if the Assyrians pretended that they smashed alien gods,
and if the new monotheistic religions claimed that their God was not limited to
any local place or season or period, wasn’t it likely that some form of monothe-
ism would hold that the moral will of the one true God should set the standard for
all human conduct in all places and at all times and in all matters? So, it would
seem, many Muslims view their own religion. But, not coincidentally, so do many
non-Muslim monotheists view theirs as well. Second, many of the specialists in
Islamic studies are caught up in Eurocentric considerations that have remained
all too common in our field. Only after explaining why Islamic Middle Eastern
societies are what they are can we ask why they are not what the West is (or, at
least, what we believe the West to be). Instead, however, we have continually
approached these societies with topsy-turvy questions: Why didn’t the Islamic
Middle East produce an industrial revolution? Why didn’t it produce representa-
tive systems of government? Why didn’t the Islamic Middle East grow economi-
cally the way that Western Europe has done in modern times? And so on. Such
questions are not irrelevant. Anyone who has spent years explaining, as every

3 “Sakral,” in Lexikon Religiöser Grundbegriffe, ed. Adel T. Khoury (Wien and Köln, 1987), 949.
 Pre-modern Islamic Thought 217
Islamicist in the West is compelled to do repeatedly, that the Qurʾan is not a Bible,
Muhammad is not a Christ, and that the ulema (or mullahs), the Muslim special-
ists in religious learning, are not priests, will understand the temptation to dwell
on explaining why things are not what they are not, instead of explaining why
they are what they are. Incidentally, the point concerning the lack of a priesthood
in Islam and of any sacraments that might mark some persons as priestly in func-
tion, does largely account for the absence of any distinction between “lay” and
“ecclesiastical.” Correspondingly, the distinction between a secular and regular
clergy would have little meaning in most Islamic settings.4
But are we, in pre-modern Islamic Middle Eastern thought, really faced with
the vast, flat, and undifferentiated terrain as seen by so many specialists? I think
not. To begin with, we should look at words from the root of the word men-
tioned by Dr. Balić, al-quddūs, in the phrase al-malik al-quddūs, “The King, the
Holy” (a root familiar to many Western readers from the Jewish prayer Kaddish).
A word from this root is used three times in the Qurʾan to distinguish sacred
space which is muqaddas, sanctified, from all other worldly space as when we
are told that on two different occasions God spoke to Moses in the sacred valley
(al-wādi al-muqaddas) of Tuwa below Mt. Sinai (Q 79:16) and as when Moses
tells his people to enter the Holy Land (al-arḍ al-muqaddasa, Q 5:21). And, to
this day Jerusalem is called in Arabic al-Quds, the Holy Place. But the words
associated most strongly both in the Qurʾan and throughout Islamic tradition with
sacred space are ḥaram and ḥarām, both derived from a root familiar to Wester­
ners in general because it appears in the term “harem” used for private quarters of
a house. It is also familiar to Bible scholars in particular because of the Hebrew
ḫerem, which specialists tell me has the same semantic spectrum as the Arabic
ḥarām.5 It is well to remember that in a general way ḥarām and ḥaram are both
terms for places, things, and actions that are separated from common use or con-
tact either because they are proscribed as an abomination to God or because they
are consecrated to God. Ḥaram is most often used for a sacred space and ḥarām
is most often used as an adjective meaning “forbidden,” but both terms have wide
application. Both are to some degree concerned with propriety, what is proper and
what is not proper. If we think of the harem, a word from the same root usually
translated as the women’s apartments of a house, in its specific legal sense, as the
women’s apartments that are allowed only to men within the prohibited degrees of
marriage, we understand the relatedness of sanctification and prohibition in those
things that have been separated from other things by God’s specific injunction.
Not only is the connection of ḥaram with sacred space and time amply attested
to in the Qurʾan, it is also amply attested to in the life of Prophet Muhammad
who, according to the traditional accounts of his life, personally supervised the
demarcation of the boundaries of the ḥaramayn, the two ḥaram areas of Arabia,

4 Secular clergy do not belong to a monastic order, while regular clergy follow the regulae of their
orders, such as the Jesuits or Franciscans or Benedictines.
5 See Haim H. Cohn, “Herem,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), viii, 343–355.
218 Roy P. Mottahedeh
one in Mecca and one in Medina, so that there would be no ambiguity as to the
exact areas within which certain ritual laws were to be observed.6 To my mind we
are close to the discussion among students of religion about the sacred and the
profane. An interesting feature of the Islamic case is that the sacred and the for-
bidden are special categories at the far ends of the spectrum of things and actions,
which leaves ordinary things and actions to fill the space between the sacred and
the forbidden.
The political life of the Islamic Middle East in the fourth/tenth and fifth/ele­
venth centuries illustrates a different line along which an analogue to the division
of sacred and secular appears, and here I think the word secular is more appro-
priate than profane. We need to review the history of the early Muslim commu-
nity to understand how this came about. Almost unanimously after the death of
the Prophet Muhammad Muslims accepted that there should be a single political
leader for their community, entitled caliph (khalīfa) or “successor,” and this insti-
tution of the caliphate was indivisible. Just as the universal and all-powerful God
had revealed, through a single prophet, a law meant for all mankind, She/He had
intended that all those who accepted that law should participate in a single moral
community whose structures of rights and obligations would be made uniform by
a single political authority. Hence, in this world which lived in a neo-Platonic twi-
light, just as we live in a neo-Freudian twilight, the One sensibly chose to emanate
Itself to the many through a single intelligence as surely in the political world as
in the metaphysical world. In many forms of Shῑʿite belief theories of the imamate
continue the system of a single moral authority.
By the fourth/tenth century, however, the political unity of the Islamic world
was a fond memory. Dozens of independent governments vied with each other. The
caliphs, reduced to ceremonial figures, were suffered to continue in part because
of the grandiloquent titles they granted to whichever “mayors of the pa­lace,” the
actual authorities (as in Merovingian times), happened to control them. These
titles are eloquent testimony that a sort of de facto recognition of the division
between sacred and profane had come into being. At first the Abbasid caliphs gave
their mayors of the palace titles such as Helper of the Dynasty, Nāṣir al-Dawla,
that is, Helper of the Dynasty of caliphs. Caliphs, like the Japanese emperors,
possessed a revered lineage even though the caliphs had lost their powers to their
mayors of the palace who were Middle Eastern equivalents of Shoguns. Soon,
however, the mayors of the palace, the Buyid rulers of Iraq and western Iran in
the tenth and eleventh centuries, wanted longer and loftier titles. By the second
half of the fourth/tenth century there are Buyid titles such as Glory of the Dawla
and Helper of Religion (Bahā’ al-Dawla wa-Nāṣir al-dīn).7 In such a title, Dawla

6 See R. B. Serjeant, “Haram and Hawtah, The Sacred Enclave in Arabia,” in Mélanges Taha Husayn
(Cairo, 1962), 41–58.
7 The title of the Buyid ruler who died in Shiraz in 403/1012.
 Pre-modern Islamic Thought 219
is moving away from its reference to a specific dynasty and towards its common
late medieval meaning of royal power.8
Another step in the evolution of titulature, and associated political ideas, appears
with the Saljuks, a powerful Turkish dynasty that entered the Middle East from
Central Asia in the fifth/eleventh century and reunited most of Western Asia under
one government. The Saljuks, like the Buyids, controlled the powerless caliphs
of Baghdad. The first major ruler of this dynasty was Tughril Beg, who took the
title Rukn al-Dunyā wa-l-Dīn, “Support of the World and Religion.” To my under-
standing, in the use together of “world” and the “religion” we have a re­ference
to something not wholly unlike secular and sacred. Alongside this evolution was
an evolution in spiritual thinking which created a stream of piety-minded Mus-
lims who changed their focus from the caliphate to individual morality. As far
as they could these Muslims ignored the formal government of Muslim society.
These trends continued until dunyā and dīn became distinct from each other. It can
be argued that this disassociation of political power from religion started earlier
when pious early Muslims felt alienated from the Umayyad caliphs of Syria. This
attitude among a group of the pious continued to exist more or less throughout the
pre-modern period.
Dunyā, the world, is referred to scores of times in the Qurʾan, overwhelmingly
to contrast it with the next life, for it means the nearer thing, that is, the nearer
life, as contrasted to the final or ultimate thing, al-Ākhira, the next or ultimate life.
Contemptus mundi, the despising of the world, is a strong theme in all Islamic
thought, which follows the spirit of the Qurʾanic verse (Q 2:86): “These are peo-
ple who buy the life of this world (al-ḥayāt al-dunyā) at the price of the Next
(al-Ākhira); their penalty shall not be lightened nor shall they be helped.” But the
world, held at its properly subordinate evaluation, is meant to be used and lived in.
Another verse in the Qurʾan (Q 43:32) says: “It is He [God] who apportions their
means of livelihood in this worldly life and raises some in position over the oth-
ers.” A further verse (Q 41:31) explains: “We are your friends in this worldly life
and in the next.” Clearly, although the Islamic world produced ascetics second to
none in their contempt of the world and mystics second to none in their contention
that the world was an illusion, the text of the Qurʾan and a great deal of Islamic
homiletic literature offers the world as a place with which a pious man can and
probably must come to terms.
In the new political conditions of the fourth/tenth and following centuries,
Muslim thinkers put the old division of dīn and dunyā to new use. Muslims rec-
ognized that there was a sphere that was probably not run in a righteous manner
and almost surely beyond the control of any individual Muslim. This sphere was
the dunyā. There was another sphere in which a Muslim could work to develop
his relation to God and hence his position in the next world/life. This sphere was
dīn, which I think is rightly translated “religiosity,” although here I use the more
familiar term “religion.” Rulers like Tughril Beg took titles implying that their

8 See E. W. Lane, An Arabic Lexicon (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1984), i, 935, col. 1.
220 Roy P. Mottahedeh
presence helped people both in dunyā and dīn. I think the existence of these two
spheres, for all that they overlapped and interpenetrated each other, was generally
understood. That these rulers never dropped dīn (religion) from their titles implied
that their support of religion was praiseworthy and part of the reason that their rule
might be divinely supported.
Interestingly, the traditional scholastic sciences cultivated among Muslims
give considerable theoretical support to this view of two spheres, although the
divisions suggested by these scholastic sciences do not exactly correspond to dīn
and dunyā, religion and the world. One such division occurs in the thought of a
group of theologians, namely, the followers of the theologian al-Ash῾arī, who
died in 324/935. Their argument about the nature of the Creator says that the
world has only a possible existence and there is nothing about it in and of itself
which requires that it exist. Since it does exist, we must conclude that something
other than it has chosen it for existence instead of non-existence, and this some-
thing is the divine or numinous world. This argument is called qiyās al-ghāʾib
ʿalā l-shāhid, usually translated “considering the absent as analogous to the pre-
sent.” Perhaps this argument could also be properly understood as “considering
the numinous to be analogous to the phenomenal.” The ʿālam al-ghayb or “world
of absence” is clearly the numinous world in pre-modern Islamic thought.9
Islamic jurists and jurisconsults had to face the problem of the two realms/
spheres squarely. It was they who had to tell people when and why the law saw
actions to be purely matters of the dunyā, of this worldly conduct, or matters vital
to dīn, religion, and hence matters affecting their position in the next world, or a
mixture of the two. Another important consideration in this regard is the distinc-
tion between acts of worship (ʿibādāt) and transactional matters between people
(mu‘āmilāt). One central tenet that Muslim jurists could bring to bear on these
distinctions is contained in the saying attributed to the Prophet: “The central prin-
ciple in affairs is lawfulness.”10 That is, when anything is neither commanded nor
forbidden, it is lawful and therefore open to the free exercise of human wishes.
Another central tenet was the distinction between farḍ al-kifāya and farḍ al-ʿayn.
The former, farḍ al-kifāya, is the duty incumbent on the community as a whole
but not incumbent on each of its members, i.e., a (communal) duty such as the
jihād. The latter, farḍ al-ʿayn, is the duty incumbent on the individual, such as
daily prayers. The distinction between individual and communal obligation made
possible a de facto sacred-profane distinction, because many things that are reli-
gious—one might even say “sacred” duties—are not essential to an individual’s
salvation since only the community and not the individual is faulted for failing to
fulfil them. According to some Muslims, these two tenets also created space for
important distinctions of this world. The existence of concepts such as the lawful-
ness of all things neither commanded nor forbidden created another axis around

9 On the translation of the Ashʿarite argument, see Bernard G. Weiss, The Search for God’s Law:
A Study of the Ethico-Legal Thought of Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (Salt Lake City, 2010), ch. 1.
10 See al-Mawsūʿah al-Fiqhīya (Kuwait, 1983), i, 130.
 Pre-modern Islamic Thought 221
which to construct a sacred and profane distinction, as with the ḥarām and non-
ḥarām distinction previously discussed.
Yet another relevant consideration of the jurists is the distinction between
God’s claims and human claims. In the discussion of this distinction many of the
previous themes of this chapter are evoked and related to each other. It is impor-
tant to remember that the word here translated as “claim” (ḥaqq, plural ḥuqūq) has
come to mean “right” or “rights” in modern Arabic. Claims considered as “rights”
have also become a central consideration in contemporary Islamic law, as in most
contemporary legal systems, where the individual is a nexus of rights. Pre-modern
Islamic law is indeed interested in rights or, more properly, “claims,” but it is far
more concerned with the classification of actions since, once an action is classi-
fied, the claims of those concerned flow from that classification. Declaratory rul-
ings (singular ḥukm, plural aḥkām) as to the classification of actions are, therefore,
much more central to Islamic law. Claims are held to be at least of two kinds,
divine and human, ḥuqūq Allāh and ḥuqūq al-nās. (This last term sometimes
becomes ḥaqq al-ʿabd or ḥaqq ādamī). Prayer, fasting, and the fixed punishments
(ḥudūd) for certain crimes are examples of God’s claims against mankind and, as
such, cannot be dropped. Their prosecution is a Muslim’s duty.11 In contrast, debt
and theft are examples of human claims, in which prosecution can take place only
on the demand of the person or persons concerned. Many human claims can be
transferred by the human concerned or even transferred involuntarily, as when a
creditor’s claim is inherited.
The distinction between God’s claims and human claims is very important not
only for the question of what matters can be prosecuted but also for judicial pro-
cedures. An open and still current question in Islamic law is whether a judge
can act on his own knowledge in cases before him or must only act according to
the evidence presented in court. The majority opinion among the largest Sunni
law school, the Ḥanafīs, is that a judge can indeed act according to his know­
ledge in cases involving God’s claims but not in cases in which human claims are
involved.12 There he must operate according to the evidence presented in court.
The rationale behind this distinction is, I think, clear. Whereas the judge and only
the judge can take on the responsibility for surmising what might be God’s ruling
(God’s ḥukm) concerning the fulfilment of God’s claims, human claims are all
subject to human considerations and even human whims. Hence the judge must
defer to the evidence humans choose to present to him.13 Human claims belong
to the realm of what Islamic thought (as well as Western thought, in deference to
their common Aristotelian heritage) call the realm of “practical reason” (al-ʿaql
al-ʿamalī) as contrasted to speculative or theoretical reason (al-ʿaql al-naẓarī).

11 One exception is the Ḥanafῑ idea of qadhf, or false accusation, which is one of God’s claims against
mankind that can be dropped. See Intisar Rabb, Doubt in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), 40–94.
12 Ibid.
13 David Santillana, Istituzioni di Diritto Musulmano Malichita con Riguardo Anche al Sistema
Sciafiita (Rome, 1938), i, 8.
222 Roy P. Mottahedeh
(I omit here the very large number of cases in which God’s claims and human
claims are held to be mixed.)
The brilliant and original eighth-/fourteenth-century jurisconsult al-Shāṭibī,
brings together many of these themes in his survey of the principles of Islamic
law entitled al-Muwāfaqāt. Al-Shāṭibī maintains that God’s claims by their char-
acter are not capable of being rationalized; they are devotional acts. (We should,
of course, remember that devotional acts in the context of pre-modern Islamic
thought include the prosecution and consequent punishment of people for certain
kinds of crime.) Interestingly, al-Shāṭibī discusses the large, though not complete,
overlapping of God’s claims with the individual’s obligation, the farḍ al-ʿayn.
As for human claims, their rationality is to be measured in terms of maṣlaḥa, a
term used in Islamic law to mean something like equity or commonweal but spe-
cifically defined by al-Shāṭibī to mean “what concerns the subsistence of human
life, the wholeness of a human’s way of life, and the acquiring of what man’s
emotional and intellectual faculties require of him in an absolute sense.”14 At least
for this jurisconsult the existence of human claims has created a vast area for the
exercise of human judgement.15
Let me try to sum up. Of course, in Islamic thought there are no distinctions that
neatly fit our distinctions between sacred and secular, sacred and profane, spiritual
and temporal, ecclesiastical and lay, or even divine and human. For most of these
distinctions, however, analogues exist in the Islamic tradition. Moreover, these
distinctions are important in their unexpected difference from the distinctions that
Western Christian traditions make.
What precisely are the distinctions that we find in the Islamic tradition of the
Middle East? First, there is sacred space and sacred acts and sacred time. The
guardians of sacred space in pre-Islamic Arabia were priestly families, and there
is some continuity in this tradition in some parts of the Islamic world right up to
the present. Of course, in a religion in which religious purity is related to proper
access to sacred space, profane space is described using the terms neutral or impure
(nājis) and similar words. Sacred acts like prayer and the pilgrimage are impor-
tant concerns for the law. The opposite of sacred acts can be found in the terms
“sacrilege,” “blasphemy,” “profanity,” and “desecration,” all of which express
reference to rupture with the sacred and/or defilement. With respect to sacred
time, a common term is al-ayyām al-mutabārika, “blessed time.” The distinction
between “blessed” and “unblessed,” introduces another aspect of this discussion
(that cannot be addressed in this chapter due to limitations of space and time).
Interestingly, the two far ends of the spectrum of things, the truly sacrosanct and
the truly taboo are described by the two words ḥaram and ḥarām, and represent,

14 Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Shāṭibī, al-Muwaffaqāt fī-Uṣūl al-Sharʿīyah (Cairo, n.d.), i, 160–161 and
291–292. For his definition of maṣlaḥa, see Muhammad Khalid Masud, Legal Philosophy: A Study
of Abū Isḥāq al-Shāṭibī’s Life and Thought (Islamabad, 1977), 345.
15 Santillana, Istituzioni di Diritto Musulmano Malichita, i, 11–12; ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Sanhūrī,
Maṣādir al-Ḥaqq fī l-fiqh al-Islāmī (Cairo, 1958), i, 44–46. See also the discussion and references
in Muḥammad Jaʿfar Jaʿfarῑ Langarūdī, Dānish-Nāmih-ye Huqūqī (Tehran, 1352), 6–7.
 Pre-modern Islamic Thought 223
I think, neighbouring areas at the beginning and the end of a great circle that gives
rulings or classifications for everything available to humans. While purposefully
avoiding in this chapter the names of Durkheim, Otto, and Eliade, the great West-
ern theorists of the sacred, I do think we have in the idea of ḥaram and ḥarām a
strong element of what Otto calls the fascinans, something of powerful and some-
times frightening attraction, even if we are commanded to avoid it or approach it
only in a special manner.16 According to some Muslim thinkers, the non-­sacralized
space, time, and actions of the world are licit for us to use as we wish but with
divinely set standards of behaviour always before us. Al-Shāṭibī defines this goal
as maṣlaha, equity or commonweal, but others define it differently. Our method
of operating within this worldly sphere is practical reason. Man, as the lord of the
created world, is in effect given a series of moral puzzles to solve by virtue of his
right to establish and drop claims in this world. The existence of a partly separate
sphere (which encompassed acts of devotion and of individual obligations to God)
allowed for this other sphere of practical reason to become in some circumstances
a partial analogue to our secular sphere, since it was recognized, usually with
regret, but with considerable realism, that it was necessary to compromise with
realities of government and communal life. Such compromise did not necessarily
affect a person’s salvation. In this sense while the distinction between sacred and
profane was in some cases accepted de jure, in many cases the distinction between
sacred and secular remained overwhelmingly de facto.
Does this mean that sacred and profane are universal categories? Not necessa­
rily. The problem of the apparent dualism of God and the world is common to all
monotheistic traditions. One partial solution is, in the words of the very celebrated
Karl Rahner and his co-author Herbert Vorgrimler, “the recognition that springs
from faith in the independence and comprehensibility of a secular world.”17 Such
attitudes have existed among Muslims as well as Christians, but even among
Christians they are based precisely on faith, that is, faith that God has granted us a
secular sphere. In the Muslim case the secular sphere is often seen as shot through
with references to the numinous sphere. In fact, significant areas of the worldly
sphere are under exclusive or partial obligation to God alone. The secular or pro-
fane is only a part of this worldly life, albeit a significantly large part.
The different boundaries of these partly analogous distinctions strengthen
my conviction that we have spoken all too freely and carelessly of the “disen-
chantment” with the world, that evocative term that Max Weber brought into
­currency.18 Without understanding a fraction of the sophisticated discussion that
has developed about “civil religion” (for example, the sacredness that Americans
feel towards their Constitution), I believe that some such category has existed

16 See Chapter 6, “The Element of Fascination,” in Rudolf Otto’s, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John
W. Harvey (New York, 1958), 31–46. I here use the Latin term that Otto uses in the original Ger-
man text.
17 Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985), 469.
18 See From Max Weber, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, 1946), 155.
224 Roy P. Mottahedeh
among us and must exist, in part to sacralize the rightness of some of the things we
do in the worldly sphere, even in an overtly secular society. Consider the confu-
sion among many as to why we punish criminals. This confusion is fostered by the
assumption that we can create a desacralized, disenchanted, and totally sanitized
law. To argue that the punishment fits the crime would be clear in a biblical con-
text but less clear in a modern secular context.
Even if one does not accept the Islamic approach to the this-worldly-life or any
other “religious” approach to it, it does seem that the life of this world will always
have sacralized and profane areas, however variously designated and justified.
I do believe, as Durkheim believed, that we will not remove the sacred completely
from the world as long as we share a sense of community. In those monotheistic
traditions in which the world is a created thing and not wholly or even partially
identical to its Creator, the complete sacralization of the world seems to me dif-
ficult to imagine. Correspondingly, the full desacralization and disenchantment of
the world has not yet arrived in our supposedly secular tradition. As long as the
non-pantheistic monotheisms allow for a sphere in which God’s will cannot be
fully known and human this-worldly principles are applied, these monotheisms
allow for a quasi-secular sphere. In this sense some pre-modern Muslim thinkers
developed world views through historical experience and the logic of their theo­
logy, which allow not just a profane realm but also a partly secular realm.
12 The Present Absentee
The Prophet Muhammad
in Jerusalem
Angelika Neuwirth

Prophethood, prophecy, and prophetology have been the subject of a number of

recent scholarly works on the Qurʾan.1 Yet the crucial question about the reli-
gious status of Muhammad—whether he was acknowledged as a prophet in the
monotheist universe shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims—has not yet been
seriously approached. A glance at the historical and the contemporaneous co-
existence, indeed co-habitation or “convivencia”2 of the followers of the three
religions in one particular space, a bird’s-eye perspective, might be helpful to
acquire new insights.
Let us therefore subject the topic of prophetology to a somewhat eccentric
reading and talk about not a prophet’s knowledge but the knowledge about a
prophet upheld in a particular urban space—a space which figures in our bibli-
cally imprinted imaginaire as “the city of prophets” par excellence, “the cradle of
prophethood,”3 Jerusalem. Let us throw light on this city’s relation to ­prophethood
today, not through biblical prophets but through a latecomer, the post-biblical,
“late-antique prophet” Muhammad, looking for traces of his representation in the
city’s diverse media of commemoration and his presence in the public encounter
between Islam and the two other religions.
Such an enquiry cannot be limited to contemporary issues (to be treated in the
first half of this chapter) but needs to consider the deeper historical layers of Jeru-
salem’s presence in the fabric of Islam as well (the second half of the chapter).

1 See, e.g., Uri Rubi, “Prophets and Prophethood,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an, ed.
Andrew Rippin (Hoboken: Blackwell, 2006), 248–261; Uri Rubin, “Prophets and Prophethood,” in
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, Bd 4, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 289–307, and most
importantly Sidney H. Griffith’s monograph, The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the “People of
the Book” in the Language of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
2 The term was coined to designate the vivid and culturally sophisticated interrelation between the
three religions in Muslim Andalus, see David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam,
and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014). By
bringing convivencia into the discourse on “Islam and Jerusalem,” we subscribe to the view of a
similarly spirited (though not identical) life lived transculturally, together.
3 The term was introduced by Uri Rubin, “Muḥammad’s Night Journey (Isrā’) to al-Masjid al-Aqṣā:
Aspects of the Earliest Origins of the Islamic Sanctity of Jerusalem,” Al-Qanṭara 29 (2008): 147–
164, here: p. 157.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-15
226 Angelika Neuwirth
Jerusalem, inseparable from its sanctuary, is not a haphazard choice. It is claimed
by the two older religions as their birthplace. It had been of crucial concern to
biblical and intertestamental prophets, it has been an object of zeal and utmost
grief to Jesus, only to become shortly thereafter a momentously contested issue
between Jewish and Christian theologians. It is at this stage of debates that the
early Islamic community enters the city as a new party. Consequently, multiple
Jerusalem-related theologoumena are to be reflected in the formation of the reli-
gion of Islam. Are these part of the DNA of Islam too?

The city
Talking about Jerusalem, we topographically intend the “Old City,” the wall-
enclosed area whose main roads still reflect the Roman urban structure with two
cardines (north–south axes) and a decumanus (west–east axis) that branch into
numerous narrow alleyways. Streets are often covered by vaults or domes that go
back to Mamluk, or even Crusader times, the more recent ones to Ottoman times.
Jerusalem, at first glance, appears as a well-preserved “medieval city.”4 Yet, it
does not really fit the pre-modern Islamic urban model, which demanded that
the main place of worship be in the centre. What is strikingly anomalous in the
case of Jerusalem is the peculiar location of the vast area of the city’s sanctuary,
al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf, not in the centre but rather situated on the flank, south-east
of the city. This unique, historically conditioned anomaly holds the key to under-
standing the special, sanctity-affine character of the city.
We have convenient access to the city’s structure via the map of “Mamluk
Jerusalem” by Shadha Malhis. It depicts the urban situation during the Mamluk
period5 but, grosso modo, it may be taken to reflect the city from the time of its
reconquest by Saladin in 1187 when it was subdivided into confessionally deter-
mined quarters.6
Not just the architectural fabric of the city but also its social life has been
shaped by religious traditions. Qurʾan recitations can be heard in some alleyways
throughout an entire day; many days of the year witness Christian processions
moving through the main streets of the city, accompanied by chants that shape the
city’s soundscape. These practices continue to reflect Jerusalem’s antique role as
the birthplace and continuous stage of verbal and performed liturgy. Modern wor-
shippers on their way through the “Via Dolorosa” heading towards the Anastasis

4 For the sacred geography of such buildings—though not in Jerusalem but in Aleppo—see Stefan
Knost, Die Organisation des religiösen Raums in Aleppo: Die Rolle der islamischen religiösen Stif-
tungen (auqāf) in der Gesellschaft einer Provinzstadt des Osmanischen Reiches an der Wende zum
19. Jahrhundert, Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 121 (Würzburg: Ergon, 2009).
5 Shatha Malhis, “The Spatial Logic of Mamluk Madrassas: Readings in the Geometric and Genotyp-
ical Compositions,” Nexus Network Journal 19 (2017): 45–72. Figure 5, reprinted by permission.
6 Building activities have massively increased since the Israeli appropriation of the city, which made
the restitution of the Jewish Quarter possible. A new kind of settling initiatives—Jewish families
moving in into the other quarters—also can be observed more recently.
 The Present Absentee 227

Figure 12.1 Map reflecting the design of Jerusalem during the Mamluk and Ottoman eras,
much of which has been preserved until today

Church may be associated with the ancient pilgrims who, with Davidic “Psalms of
Ascent” on their lips, once approached the Temple, though they now have a differ-
ent destination. The ancient pilgrim’s itinerary led them through what is today the
Bāb al-Silsilah street, the ancient decumanus, which covers under its pavement the
erstwhile main way of access to the Temple. This Mamluk main street7—flanked
by monumental buildings hosting pious institutions that often form an ensemble
with funeral monuments, the mausolea of prominent Mamluk authorities as well
as wealthy pious individuals from the wider Islamic world—still preserves traces
of its earlier liturgical function. The large windows opening to the street, secured
by huge iron grills, belonged to grave chambers where—following the will of

7 It is meticulously documented by Michael H. Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem: An Architectural

Study; with Additional Historical Research by D.S. Richards (London: British School of Archaeol-
ogy in Jerusalem, 1987). For detailed information about the founders of the institutions and builders
of the mausolea one of the most important sources, easily accessible is Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī,
Al-uns al-jalīl fī taʾrīkh al-Quds wa-l-Khalīl (Amman: Maktabat Muḥtasib, 1973). His survey cov-
ers the buildings up to 1492.
228 Angelika Neuwirth
their founders—continuous Qurʾan recitation was to be performed. Passers-by, on
their way to their “temple,” the Ḥaram, upon hearing the Qurʾan recitation were
called upon to respond with blessings on the deceased. Today these windows have
lost their function. They are, however, telling reminders of a time when liturgy—
visually underscored by monumental Arabic inscriptions adorning the entrances
of the buildings—was a major expression of religious belonging. Multifaceted
liturgical practice—even when conducted behind closed doors—should be taken
as a “sound chamber” within which prophet-related performances and interac-
tions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims take place to this day.
This seems to point to an ideal, aesthetically harmonious scenario. There is,
however, an intrinsic tension veiled by the polysemy of the lexeme bayit/bayt,
used for the “Temple” in Hebrew8 and for (a stone-built) “sanctuary” in Arabic.9
We need to remember that Jerusalem is not only the birth place of liturgy but also
a city notorious for its enmity towards prophets, the stage of a fateful antago-
nism expressed most forcefully in Jesus’s lament that he conveyed to his disciples
before his death:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those that are
sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings and you were not willing. See your house is left
to you, desolate!
(Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34)

It is the struggle over the “House,” the Temple, God’s heritage, that has caused
friction between prophets and the city. Jesus himself (John 2:17), it is claimed,
felt like the psalmist who in Psalm 69:9 stated: “The zeal of thine House has
eaten me up.” According to Jeremiah 12:7, the divine presence would leave the
Temple upon its destruction declaring: “I have forsaken my House, I have left my
heritage.”
This verdict underlies Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple, which
he utters on the same occasion:

Do you all see these buildings of the Temple? Truly, I tell you not one stone
will be left here upon another, all will be thrown down.
(Matthew 24:2)

Indeed, only a few decades after Jesus’s lament, the site of the sanctuary, the Tem-
ple Mount, became a wasteland. Roman urban politics, particularly under Hadrian

8 It applies to the ancient temple (and thus the ideologically coded temple of today’s controversy).
Modern Hebrew distinguishes this from the objective designation of a temple with the term hekhal.
9 Bayt (literally: “house”) is first and foremost the designation of the Kaʿba, figuring already in early
Meccan verses, Q 106:3: “fa-l-yaʿbudū rabba hādhā l-bayt,” “So they should venerate the Lord of
this Temple” (i.e. the Kaʿba), cf. Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. 1: Frühmekkanische Suren
(Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011), 118–124.
 The Present Absentee 229

Figure 12.2 Madaba map, Mosaic in the Byzantine church of St George, Madaba, Jordan
(section showing Jerusalem—without the Temple Mount)
Source: Public Domain, Wikipedia

from 135 onward, turned Jerusalem into a Roman city.10 Hadrian undertook the
daring step to move the sanctuary from the Temple Mount to the topographi-
cal site privileged in pagan culture, i.e., the highest point of the city, which he
honoured with a temple for the Capitolian Trias.11 Byzantine rulers, who about
200 years later inherited the city, only slightly re-shaped its fabric. Their most
important urban decision, however, involved the sanctuary. Adopting Rome’s
anti-Judaic attitude, they ignored the Temple Mount and established their new
spiritual centre, the Anastasis Church (dedicated 335), on the very site of the Had-
rianian Temple of Aphrodite.12 The centre of Christianity in Jerusalem thus was
shifted from its earlier memorial site on Mount Zion—again far away from the
Temple Mount, which had become virtually excluded from the city. Its exclusion
was made graphically clear in the Madaba map from the late sixth century, in
which there is no indication of the Temple Mount.13
The new church soon appropriated the most significant traditions of the Tem-
ple14 and celebrated itself as the new Temple, the new naos. The age of the prophets

10 See Martin Goodman, Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London: Allen
Lane, 2007), 481–528.
11 See ibid., 483–485.
12 See Yoram Tsafrir, “Byzantine Jerusalem: Configuration of a Christian City,” in Jerusalem: Its
Centrality in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, ed. Lee L. Levine (New York: Continuum, 1999),
133–150.
13 For recent research on the map, see Michele Piccirillo and Eugenio Alliata, eds., The Madaba Map
Centenary 1897–1997: Travelling Through the Byzantine Umayyad Period (Jerusalem: Franciscan
Printing Press, 1999), and for a short evaluation of the Byzantine renewal of the city as reflected in
the Madaba map: Tsafrir, “Byzantine Jerusalem,” 142–144.
14 The Anastasis Church came to absorb the protological significance of the Temple, hosting the
grave of Adam and marking the omphalos by a stone in the Basilica. It moreover adopted the
230 Angelika Neuwirth
who debated the Temple cult was felt to be over; even the messianic expectations
concerning the Temple’s reestablishment or Jesus’ soon to occur parousia that had
been pervasive in the first centuries of Christianity gave way to new ideologies.
What followed was an age of exegetes, Jewish and Christian theologians.15 The
rabbis went so far as to conclude from an exegesis of Psalm 90:12 that “the sage is
superior to the prophet” (ḥakham ʿadif mi-navi), BT Baba Batra 12a, in the words
of Guy Stroumsa, a rather rare “victory of the moderns over the ancients.”16
In Christian contexts, the epithet of “prophet” was early conceded to (exem-
plary) biblical figures in general17 as well as to the so-called intertestamental fig-
ures like Zacharia and John the Baptist.18 Subsequently, the erstwhile basis of
monotheist belief, the Hebrew Bible or the Torah, now understood as the Old
Testament, became a matter of debate and was seen by Christians as the vehi-
cle of a covenant that had been overcome. In Syriac theology in particular, the
gap between the two covenants was widened: the genealogies in the Gospels
were “squeezed” to stress the rift between both. Thus the Virgin Mary, Mother
of Christ, was associated with the line of David (see Luke 1:27; 3:23–28), thus
participating in the new messianic world view—contrary to Elizabeth, the Mother
of John, whose Aaronid pedigree (Luke 1:5) was underscored,19 as if to document
the fait accompli of the “parting of the ways” and the supersession of the old cov-
enant. Old Testament prophets were no longer remembered primarily as players
in the monotheist history connected to the Holy Land, but rather adduced meta-
discursively as witnesses in the argument that aimed to negate the eschatological
significance Judaism claimed for Jerusalem.20

foundational narrative of sacrifice, claiming Abraham and Isaac as “types” whose ʿaqedah typo-
logically pre-staged Christ’s sacrifice. Most importantly, the monastic prayers, by their designation
as “thysia,” were scheduled according to the ancient times of sacrifices, some being explicitly
marked as such, e.g., thysia hesperine, “the evening sacrifice” and the like.
15 For the development of a Temple/Zion theology, see Rahel Elior, “From Priestly (and Early Chris-
tian) Mount Zion to Rabbinic Temple Mount,” in Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s
Sacred Esplanade, ed. Oleg Grabar and Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Yad ben-Zvi Press, 2009),
309–319, particularly 403–404.
16 See Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity (Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 175.
17 See James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (New York:
Free Press, 2007).
18 In Byzantine liturgy both are celebrated as prophetai.
19 See Zishan Ghaffar, unpublished lecture held in February 2020 at the Dormition Abbey in
Jerusalem.
20 See Zishan Ghaffar, Der Koran in seinem religions- und weltgeschichtlichen Kontext. Eschatolo-
gie und Apokalyptik in den mittelmekkanischen Suren (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh,
2019), 7.
 The Present Absentee 231
Muhammad in Jerusalem

The Adhān
It is all the more remarkable that one prophet was to leave his particular imprints
on the city and have his memory be almost ubiquitously present in it even though
he had never trodden its ground—the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Let us leap in
time and focus on the presence of Muhammad in today’s Jerusalem.
The most striking sign of his presence is auditory: the Muslim call for prayer,
the adhān. It is true that this is in no way unique in Jerusalem; the adhān, which
goes back to the eighth century,21 is pronounced publicly in Muslim cities through-
out the world. In the “birthplace of monotheist liturgy,” however, the short hymnal
exclamation—today acoustically enhanced by loudspeakers—seems to possess a
surplus aura: it resounds older liturgical traditions that are still used locally:

Allāhu akbar, allāhu akbar (2 times)

Ashhadu an lā ilāha illā llāh (2 times)
Ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlu llāh (2 times)
Ḥayya ʿalā l-ṣalāh (2 times)
Ḥayyā ʿalā l-falāḥ (2 times)
Allāhu akbar (2 times)
Lā ilāha illā llāh
Allāhumma ṣalli wa-sallim wa-bārik ʿalā sayyidinā Muḥmammad
wa-ʿalā ālihi wa-ṣaḥbihi ajmaʿīn.
Great is God, great is God!
I attest that there is no god but God!
I attest that Muhammad is God’s messenger!
To prayer! To prayer!
To worship! To worship!
Great is God, great is God!
No god but God!
O God, bless, protect, and prosper our Lord Muhammad
and his household and his companions altogether!

To look briefly at the elements of the adhān: the hymnal exclamation at the begin-
ning, the four times articulated allāhu akbar, a formula not attested in the Qurʾan,
is intricate. In the daily prayer that follows the adhān, it serves as a kind of incan-
tation, a formula which subjects the person that articulates it to a change in status:
the worshipper leaves his mundane world to enter a state of sacrality. How to
translate Allāhu akbar? In the birthplace of liturgy such a wording resounds earlier

21 See Gerald Hawting, “Introduction,” in The Development of Islamic Ritual, ed. Gerald Hawting
(Aldershot: Ashgate-Variorum, 2006); cf. also I. K. A. Howard, “The Development of the Adhān
and Iqāma of the Ṣalāt in Early Islam,” Journal of Semitic Studies 26 (1981): 219–228.
232 Angelika Neuwirth
initiation formulas. Literally it evokes megas ho theos, “Great is God.” Being four
times repeated, however, it comes closer to the Trishagion, “Thrice Holy,” which
is chanted solemnly before the scriptural reading hagios ho theos, hagios ischy-
ros, hagios athanatos, “Holy is God, Mighty is God, Immortal is God;” which
evokes the heavenly worship imagined to be conducted by the angels which the
earthly worshippers strive to emulate. A formula of self-mutation then, not unlike
Allāhu akbar.
Allāhu akbar is followed by a confession of faith, familiar from the Christian
cult. “I confess that there is no god but God,” comparable to pisteuo eis ena theon,
“I believe in one God.” This is followed by the affirmation of the second author-
ity: the Prophet Muhammad, who occupies the place of the “second person.” In
the Christian context, we have kai eis ena kyrion Iesoun Christon, “and in one
Lord Jesus Christ.” Muhammad’s dignity is, however, not founded on a divine
status but on his mission as a messenger of God. The shahāda in its bipartite form
did not yet exist in the time of the Prophet; the two assertions were combined
only after the Prophet’s death. Only then the call to assemble for worship or ritual
prayer, ṣalāh, is uttered. Ṣalāh is additionally paraphrased by its synonym falāḥ,
which I have chosen to translate as “worship,” from the Aramaic pulḥānā, and
both exclamations are repeated.
A final Allāhu akbar, repeated twice, follows, marking the withdraw from the
state of sacrality, and affirming the divinity with the tahlīl or the unity formula.
Finally, and this is particularly distinctive of the adhān in the Holy Land, there is
a prayer said for the prophet as well as both his Household and his Companions
(matching the apostles in Jesus’ care) who were instrumental in promulgating his
message.
The adhān, then, is an exclamation full of echoes. Adopting the view that it
resounds formulas originating from the Greater Syrian “liturgical universe” which
Jerusalem stands for, a listener sensitive to liturgical language can understand the
adhān as a dialogue with Christian tradition.

“Rectifications” of “Ahl al-kitāb perceptions” in everyday life

and in Muslim ritual
It is interesting to see that the adhān in Jerusalem occasionally touches on claims
raised by the other religious traditions. Thus, the honorific sayyid, lord, in the last
verse, is a very common title in Jerusalem’s social life, used to designate high-
level Christian clerics who are addressed as sayyidunā, “our lord,” rendering into
Arabic the Greek despota. One has to keep in mind that the Byzantine Church,
which still is the most visible representation of Christianity in the city, is strongly
imprinted by patriarchal hermeneutics. Titles that evidence the hierarchical ranks
of clerics are carefully respected. Muslim co-citizens apply such titles as well
but use a somewhat lesser honorific, calling them abūnā, “our father,” which in
internal, Christian use belongs to the lower-level clerics. The compromise is evi-
dent. The title “lord” is “occupied” by the Prophet himself, as the adhān makes
unambiguously clear.
 The Present Absentee 233
The adhān comes to rectify Jewish prerogatives as well. At the end of Shab-
bat, when the worshippers at the Western Wall conclude their prayer, they chant
a litany-like piyyut known as en ke-elohenu, a multiple praise of God, where God
is evoked by four different names arranged according to the order in which they
appear in the Torah, as Elohim (“God”), Adon (“Lord” or “Master”), Melekh
(“King”), and Moshiʿa (“Deliverer”). The piyyut—eventually evoking 1 Samuel
2:2—merges into a reference to the Temple cult.22

There is none like our God. There is none like our Lord. There is none like
our King. There is none like our Savior. Who is like our God? Who is like
our Lord? Who is like our King? Who is like our Savior? Let us thank our
God. Let us thank our Lord. Let us thank our King. Let us thank our Savior.
Blessed be our God. Blessed be our Lord. Blessed be our King. Blessed be
our Savior. You are our God. You are our Lord. You are our King. You are
our Savior.

You are the one before whom our fathers burned the incense of spice.
You will save us.
You will arise and show mercy to Zion, for it will be the time to favor her,
for the proper time will have arrived. (Psalm 102:13)

This hymn expresses not only the uniqueness of God but equally his close rela-
tion to the group of believers who praise him. Its continuously repeated rhyme
-enu most emphatically stresses the exclusiveness of this relation. As it happens,
the recital of the hymn on Shabbat evening coincides with the adhān al-ʿishāʾ,
which is chanted from the nearby minaret, whose Allāhu akbar, “great is God,”
presents a counter-image “questioning” the binary relation. In the adhān, the God
of a privileged group that claims Him as theirs is not addressed, but rather the
unique God who is the subject of universal veneration is addressed. Of course,
this does not reflect liturgical politics but is a type of actual dialogue that can be
overheard by listeners sensitive to the language and performance of liturgy.
All in all, it is not the differences, however, but the shared attitudes that are
essential. Old Jerusalem is still a city where prayer is omnipresent. Christian
prayers—embedded in diverse monastic frameworks—are to be conducted at cer-
tain sacred times, early morning, noon, afternoon, sunset, late evening, and night.
Since at least three of these prayer times relate to the erstwhile times of sacrifice
in the Temple,23 and thus coincide with the official Muslim times of prayer, that

22 Moses I. Landau, Die alten Gebete der Israeliten (Seder ʿIyyun Tefilah) (Prag: M.I. Landau, 1839),
192.
23 According to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, citing a tradition by Rabbi Hanina, the three daily prayer ser-
vices were instituted in accordance with the daily sacrifices of the Temple period (cf. TB Berakhot
26b). Shaḥarit corresponds to the morning offering, Minḥah corresponds to the afternoon offering
(Lev 2), Maʿariv corresponds to an offering made on the evening. Though a consensus was never
234 Angelika Neuwirth
equally continue this tradition.24 The individual adhāns can be trusted to announce
not only Muslim but also Christian prayer. Sacred time, though respected in the
three religions, in Islamic Jerusalem is marked by the invocation of the Prophet.

The “House,” the Temple, contested

What about the Prophet’s presence within the space of Jerusalem? Jerusalem
owes its special status to the Jewish Temple, the “House,” bayit. This word that
is almost identical in both Hebrew and Arabic, reappears in a most significant
Qurʾanic verse (Q 3:97), a verse that is frequently encountered in Jerusalem on the
walls of private houses in the Muslim quarter. It is part of a text-image-panel cus-
tomarily fixed above the entrance of the house of a returnee from the pilgrimage
to Mecca. The verse contains the injunction of the pilgrimage that was imposed
during the Prophet’s Medinan ministry (Q 3:97b):

. . . wa-li-llāhi ʿalā l-nāsi ḥijju l-bayti mani staṭāʿa ilayhi sabīlan. . .

The people owe God the pilgrimage to the House [the Temple], whoever is able
to undertake it.25
It is remarkable that the image often accompanying the verse in posters around
Jerusalem (see Figure 12.3) does not focus solely on the Meccan sanctuary but
presents two other sanctuaries as well.
Although bayt in the Qurʾanic verse refers to the Kaʿba in Mecca, shown at the
centre of the panel, the word resounds the Hebrew bayit and thus evokes the Jeru-
salem Temple. Indeed, one of the three edifices to be seen on the panel is the one
atop the Temple Mount, i.e., the Dome of the Rock. This reference might at first
glance seem surprising. But looking back at the history of the emerging Muslim
concept of a sanctuary, the mention of the Jerusalem site appears quite natural; in
fact, the injunction to perform the Hajj in Mecca can be understood as the conclu-
sion of a development that had once begun in Jerusalem.
It is well known that the Jewish Temple, arguably the most prominent sanctuary
of monotheism in antiquity, continued—even after its destruction—to be remem-
bered as a sacred site. Not only was it regarded by Jews as a unique locus of divine
proximity which needed to be restored,26 it also remained for Christians a unique

reached, rabbinic authorities agreed that three daily services are the basic requirement of Jewish
daily prayer. Byzantine prayers explicitly refer to particular sacrifices; see note 14.
24 For a possible genealogy of the Muslim prayers, see Uri Rubin, “Morning and Evening Prayers in
Early Islam,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 40–64.
25 Cf. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “The Religious Dialectics of the Ḥadjdj,” in The Development of Islamic
Ritual, ed. Gerald Hawting (Aldershot: Ashgate-Variorum, 2006), 263–292.
26 This is the predominant attitude, as for the complex array of positions occupied by pre- or non-
Rabbinic groups, see Elior, “From Priestly (and Early Christian) Mount Zion to Rabbinic Temple
Mount,” 309–319.
 The Present Absentee 235

Figure 12.3 Ornamentation of a pilgrim’s home in Jerusalem

Source: Private photograph in possession of author

challenge inviting either emulation or eclipsing,27 a monument which continued

to serve as a model for later places of worship to be erected.28 The sanctity of the
Temple after its destruction, for some groups, remained with the Temple Mount;
for others it was transferred to its heavenly antipode.29 However multifaceted, the
temple still retained its uniqueness.
This uniqueness is challenged by the message of the Hajj panel, which epito-
mizes the Muslim development of the notion of the Temple. In the end, there is
no longer “one Temple,” one exclusive Holy Place, but three: the Kaʿba, the site
of the pilgrimage rites; the Mosque of Medina, the place of the Prophet’s political
ministry from where the community arose as a polity; and the Dome of the Rock,
or al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, now ranking third as the birthplace of Islamic liturgy, the
first direction of prayer, and the community’s eschatological abode. This remark-
able triadic concept of sanctuaries developed early; it is the legacy of the Prophet
Muhammad, who is reported to have decreed:

Only to visit three sanctuaries shall you saddle your mounts: to the sacred
sanctuary [i.e. the Kaaba], to my sanctuary [i.e. Medina] and to the ‘remote
sanctuary’ [i.e. al-masjid al-aqṣā].

27 For example, Justinian is often quoted (after the chronicler of his reign, Procopius) to have
exclaimed, after consecrating the Hagia Sophia, “Solomon, I have eclipsed you!”
28 Many cathedrals until today structurally and aesthetically follow the model of the Salomonian
Temple.
29 Elior, “From Priestly (and Early Christian) Mount Zion to Rabbinic Temple Mount,” 309–319.
236 Angelika Neuwirth
lā tushaddu l-riḥālu illā ilā thalāthati masājida: ilā l-masjidi l-ḥarāmi
wa-masjidī hādhā wa-l-masjidi l-aqṣā.30

It is noteworthy that this presentation of the “triple Temple,” distinctively appears

in images circulating in Jerusalem, sometimes on simple posters, sometimes on
elaborate carpets, often explicitly naming the three mosques according to the
hadith.

A Peripheral community and its discovery of Jerusalem as its

centre
The previous hadith refers to the Temple Mount as al-masjid al-aqṣā, “the remote
sanctuary,” a designation that pre-dates the expression al-ḥaram al-sharīf that is
predominant today. How did this identification emerge? How did a peripheral Arab
community—as the earliest Muslim community is usually imagined31—come to
encounter the theological significance of Jerusalem and its temple? Since contem-
porary documents about the interaction of the community with educated Jews and
Christians are not extant, the answer to this question needs to be deduced from
Qurʾanic texts. Suffice it to sketch its development in general terms.32 The com-
munity around Muhammad originated from a city—Mecca—centred around a
sacred precinct, a ḥaram, with a temple, bayt, of its own, the Kaʿba. But although
Mecca enjoyed considerable prestige being a commercial hub and frequented by
pilgrims from the entire peninsula for annual feasts, it could not claim to be a
religious or learned centre that would radiate into its wider milieu. It rather consti-
tuted—as Christian Robin has put it—an enclave, indeed “a pocket” of paganism
on the peninsula surrounded by people who had already become monotheist.33
The community that had emerged to reject the local Meccan cult had to look for a
spiritual centre elsewhere.34

30 This hadith dates back to the end of the seventh century, when the Dome of the Rock was erected.
See, for the background and the documentation of the hadith, Meir Y. Kister, “ ‘You Shall Only Set
Out for Three Mosques’,” Le Muséon 82 (1969): 173–196 [reprinted with additional notes in Meir
Y. Kister, ed., Studies in Jahiliyya and Early Islam (London: Variorum, 1980)].
31 This qualification is highly exaggerated. The northern peninsula needs to be regarded as a space
strongly impacted by the cultures of Judaism (Yemen, Mesopotamia) and Christianity (Ethiopia,
Southern Syria).
32 Such a development we do indeed assume. It is hard to ignore that the community’s notion of
space and thus of centre and periphery changed dramatically during the stages of the ministry of
the Prophet. The (relative) chronology on which the following assumptions are based has been
established in the Corpus Coranicum project; see www.corpuscoranicum.de, introduction.
33 Christian Julian Robin, oral communication during a discussion held at the Berlin-Brandenburgis-
che Akademie der Wissenschaften, December 2016. See more recently Glen W. Bowersock, The
Crucible of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
34 For a strictly historical perspective, see Patricia Crone, “The Religion of the Qur’anic Pagans: God
and the Lesser Deities,” Arabica 57 (2010): 151–200 [reprinted in: Patricia Crone, The Qur’anic
Pagans and Related Matters: Collected Studies in Three volumes, edited by Hanna Siurua (Leiden:
Brill, 2016), vol. 1, 52–101].
 The Present Absentee 237
They had early on found a kind of spiritual homeland outside their politically
contested space in middle-Meccan times, when sūras start to prioritize biblical
history over that of the Arabian Peninsula, which had been a principle topic of
the early Meccan sūras.35 Their spiritual orientation was now directed towards
“the land that we have blessed,” al-arḍ allatī bāraknā fīhā (Q 21:71, 81, cf. also
Q 7:173). The decisive step of the community’s self-alignment with Jerusalem as
its centre, however, does not occur randomly. It coincides with the adoption of the
new notion of sanctuary, the masjid. A masjid36 is a simple place of prostration,
irrespective of its being roofed, integrated into a building, or existing under the
open sky or even in the transcendent realm. The concept reflects the polemics of
biblical prophets against the image of God as being “present” in a bayit or a stone-
built temple. It is noteworthy that this revival of “Temple critique” was spurred by
a contemporary controversy, indeed a war: the devastating blow suffered by the
city in 614 with the Sasanian occupation.37 The Byzantines’ loss of Jerusalem to
the Sassanians in that year seemed to many observers to announce a catastrophic
turn. Contemporary reports mention the mass murder of Christian inhabitants,
the burning down of churches, and the capture of the relic of the Holy Cross.
Since the Sasanians favoured the Jews over the Christians, this development to
contemporaries seemed to reverse the religious-political status quo, thus arousing
apocalyptic associations. To quote Guy Stroumsa:

At least from the conquest of Jerusalem by the Sasanians in 614 and the
capture of the Holy Cross, the Christian world was rife with expectations of
the Endzeit, with its traditional imagery of cosmic war between the forces of
light and darkness.”38

In Jewish circles messianic hopes flared up, amply documented in writings of var-
ious literary genres, apocalyptic reports, and liturgical poems, piyyutim, alike.39
Reflections of these apocalyptic waves are clearly apparent in the Qurʾan as well.

35 See Angelika Neuwirth, The Qur’an and Late Antiquity. A Shared Heritage (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2019), 105–138.
36 The lexeme is probably a neologism coined to avoid the use of the conventional designation bayt.
It may well be a new derivative of the root SJD. The nomen loci MSJDN is, however, found in a
South Arabian Jewish inscription to denote a house of prayer; see Christian J. Robin, “L’Arabie
dans le Coran. Réexamen de quelques termes à la lumière des inscriptions pré islamiques,” in Les
origines du Coran, le Coran des origines, ed. Francois Déroche, Christian J. Robin, and Michel
Zink (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2015), 27–74.
37 See the historical reports in James D. Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World of Crisis: Historians
and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
38 Guy G. Stroumsa, “False Prophet, False Messiah and the Religious Scene in Seventh-Century
Jerusalem,” in Redemption and Resistance. The Messianic Hopes of Jews and Christians in Antiq-
uity, ed. Markus Bockmuehl and James C. Paget (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2007), 289.
39 See Günter Stemberger, “Jerusalem in the Early Seventh Century: Hopes and Aspirations of Chris-
tians and Jews,” in Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed.
Lee I. Levine (New York: Continuum, 1999), 260–272.
238 Angelika Neuwirth
The Prophet Muhammad himself seems to have been affected by the dynamics
unleashed by the event. His famous “visionary journey to Jerusalem” can be
understood as an intervention into the debate about Jerusalem’s status. The mid-
dle Meccan verse about the visionary journey, Q 17:1 reads:

subḥāna lladhī asrā bi-ʿabdihi laylan

mina l-masjidi l-ḥarāmi ilā l-masjidi l-aqṣā
lladhī bāraknā ḥawlahu
li-nuriyahu min āyātinā
innahu huwa l-samīʿu l-baṣīr.
Glory be to him who led his servant out by night (asrā)
from the sacred place of prayer (al-masjid al-ḥarām, i.e., the Kaʿba)
to the farther place of prayer (al-masjid al-aqṣā)
of which we have blessed the precincts
so that we may show him some of our signs,
surely he is the hearing, the seeing.40

The target of his journey, referred to as al-masjid al-aqṣā, “the restitute (or
remote) sanctuary,” seems to be a non-terrestrial site. Yet it is associated loosely
with the earthly “Blessed Land” “whose precincts we have blessed,” an ambigu-
ity which is in tune with Jerusalem’s widespread recognition as the axis mundi.
Perceived in these terms, Jerusalem cannot be claimed by the Byzantines—the
Christians—nor the Sassanians, the patrons of the Jews. The verse advances a
third option which becomes transparent in the light of a biblical correlate. The
beginning of the verse resounds the biblical locus classicus for the perception of
God’s presence in a non-spatial but rather cosmic sanctuary. It is the exclama-
tion barukh kevod YHWH mi-mqomo, “Praised be the glory of the Lord from
his place!” (Ezekiel 3:12), which the prophet Ezekiel hears during his vision of
the throne chariot (Ezekiel 3:12–15). In recent scholarship mi-mqomo is taken to
indicate the absence of the real Temple, God having taken “his place,” meqomo,
outside the Temple, in the cosmos as such.41 In later exegesis the exclamation
has been ascribed to the angels who celebrate their worship in the upper space to
which human celebrants also aspire when they articulate the exclamation in their
service. Muhammad’s visionary journey—not different from Ezekiel’s vision—
marks an important turn in his prophetical experience, affording him the intuition
of a no-longer-spatially-determined, non-terrestrial temple. Al-masjid al-aqṣā for

40 For a more detailed discussion of the verse, see Rubin, “Muhammad’s Night Journey”: 147–165,
and Angelika Neuwirth and Dirk Hartwig, Der Koran, Bd. 2/2: Spätmittelmekkanische Suren (Ber-
lin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2021), 159–189.
41 The scenario has been explained lucidly by Peter Schäfer, Die Ursprünge der jüdischen Mystik
(Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011), 58–82, see also Carla Sulzbach, “Of Temples on Earth,
in Heaven und In-Between,” in The Changing Faces of Judaism, Christianity and other Graeco-
Roman Religions in Antiquity, ed. Ian H. Henderson and Gerbern S. Oegma (Gütersloh: Güterslo-
her Verlagshaus, 2006), 47–62.
 The Present Absentee 239
Muhammad’s community henceforth becomes their spiritual sanctuary, worthy to
be their qibla, the destination of their daily prayers.42
The adoption of Jerusalem, the earthly reflection of the spiritual temple, as a
centre is no mere liturgical issue. Jerusalem’s occupation in 614, in the eyes of
the Prophet’s community, is a fatal blow which impacts monotheist believers irre-
spective of their provenance. What happens in Jerusalem now appears as a restag-
ing of the paramount catastrophic assault on Jerusalem in history: the destruction
of the Temple. Q 17:4–8 says:

4 We decreed to the Israelites in the Scripture:

You shall corrupt the earth twice
And shall soar to a great height.

5 When the time came for the first of two promises [waʿd],
We sent against you servants of ours of great might
And they marched against your habitations, shedding blood—
A promise fulfilled . . .

7 When the second promise arrived,

We sent against you servants of ours
To abase your faces
To break into the Temple, al-masjid, as they did once before
And to destroy utterly whatever they laid their hands upon.

8 Perhaps your lord will show you mercy;

But if you begin again, we shall begin again.
This Temple report, on closer look, is not only a historical flashback but reflects the
contemporaneous event of 614. The unusually technical military language applied
here resounds the language used to report on the wars of the time. Moreover, the
historical parallels are striking. In both cases, it is Jerusalem that is sacked, irre-
spective of its prominence as the site of a monotheist sanctuary; numerous casual-
ties are deplored, and precious cult objects are carried away. The new assault is an
antitype of the earlier destruction of the sanctuary.
Associating 614 with the earlier Temple destruction is not an original idea.
Strategios, a major Byzantine chronicler of the event,43 similarly contextualized
the two events, only to blame both on the victims themselves. The objective of the
Qurʾanic synopsis is different. It is a hidden critique of ideology. Since the Qurʾan
as a prophetic text is not supposed to comment on current political issues directly,
the memory of the earlier catastrophe as a pre-figuration of the contemporary

42 The institutionalization of the Jerusalem qibla is not explicitly mentioned in the Qurʾan. In view
of the community’s liturgical development, it has, however, to be postulated. See Neuwirth, The
Qur’an and Late Antiquity, 201–238.
43 See Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World of Crisis, 163–167, and Stemberger, “Jerusalem in the
Early Seventh Century,” 260–272.
240 Angelika Neuwirth
event comes as a welcome stratagem to express one’s political stance indirectly.
What both catastrophes had in common was their affinity to messianic specula-
tions that in Qurʾanic terms compromised major monotheist principles. Highlight-
ing the divine control over both history and eschatology, excluding any reference
to a messianic future, was a means to ward off the powerful ideology. What in
Jewish imagination was an inseparable chain of events: the destruction of the
Temple and the eventual advent of the Messiah are disrupted in the Qurʾan. It
is through silence, through the negation of a third promise, that the messianic
ideology current in the Qurʾan’s milieu is addressed. It is, however, worth not-
ing, that any hint at a Christian valorization of the event which would regard the
destruction of the Temple as a closure, as the end of the Israelites’ covenant with
God, is equally missing. After the two historically grounded promises have come
true (verses 5 and 7), there is no further temple-related promise to be fulfilled. As
Zishan Ghaffar has argued, its place is taken by the eschatological promise waʿd
al-akhira (mentioned in the end of the sura, Q 17:104), which will come true at
the end of time.44

The Medinan turn and the establishment

of an Arabian centre
In the Medinan period of the Qurʾan’s communication, the ten years following the
emigration of the community from Mecca to Medina, a place that hosted a learned
Jewish community,45 a number of reforms were introduced, one of the most effec-
tive of which concerned the concept of sanctuaries. It is in this phase that real,
stone-built temples are rehabilitated. The image of a spiritually overarched world46
with a non-terrestrial, “remote sanctuary” was subdued to rationalization. Medi-
nan Qurʾanic communications evince a politically informed pragmatic rethinking
of the message, perhaps inspired by the Jewish maxim, “Not in heaven is the
Torah but on earth,”47 which opened the gate for novel exegetical interpretations.
One of the first revisions of earlier held views hit a liturgical problem: the qibla
facing al-masjid al-aqṣā. The spiritual notion of the Jerusalem-related sanctuary
as a universal site of prayer turned out to contradict the Jewish claim to Jerusa-
lem as their national symbol.48 Jerusalem, already laden with biblical promises

44 Ghaffar, Der Koran in seinem religions- und weltgeschichtlichen Kontext, 19–20.

45 There is no explicit testimony about religious learning in Medina available; the thesis is based on
occasional fragments of quotes from Jewish liturgy in the Medinan suras.
46 See Angelika Neuwirth, Die koranische Verzauberung der Welt und ihre Entzauberung in der
Geschichte (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 2017), 40–44.
47 For this maxim which in a famous Talmudic story (BT Baba Meṣia 59a–b) serves to epitomize the
divine decision over a rabbinic controversy, see Gershom G. Scholem, “Offenbarung und Tradi-
tion als religiöse Kategorien im Judentum,” in ed. Gershom G. Scholem (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1984), vol. 4, 189–228.
48 For the development of the status of Jerusalem and its temple, see Lee I. Levine, “Second Temple
Jerusalem: A Jewish City in the Greco-Roman Orbit,” in Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Continuum, 1999), 53–68.
 The Present Absentee 241
concerning the Jewish people exclusively, had attracted in the rabbinic tradition a
new foundation narrative, claiming that its Temple was built on the very founda-
tions of the altar that the progenitor of the Jewish people, Abraham, together with
Isaac, had raised for their sacrifice—a frequent motif of late antique iconography
(see Figure 12.4).49 It is difficult to reconcile this genealogical concept with the
Prophet’s community’s imagination of Jerusalem as a spiritual site. The abolition
of the Jerusalem qibla was unavoidable.
The abrogation of the Jerusalem qibla is documented in Q 2:142–145:

The fools among the people will say,

‘What has turned them from the direction they were facing in their prayers
aforetime?’
Say: ‘To God belong the East and the West, He guides whomsoever He will
to a straight path.’
So we have made you an intermediary community (ummatan wasaṭan). . . .
We have seen you turning your face about in the heaven
Now We will surely turn you to a direction that shall satisfy you.
Turn your face towards the Holy place of worship (al-masjid al-ḥarām)
And wherever you are, turn your faces towards it.

The change was obviously controversial. To replace the non-physical al-masjid

al-aqṣā with a bayt, a building of stone, meant to return to an earlier notion that
was deemed obsolete. Yet, to renounce one’s liturgical claims to Jerusalem, to
retreat to the status of an “intermediary,” a reconciling community, turned out
to be a wise choice. To adopt the Kaʿba as the new centre was auspicious. Like
the Jewish Jerusalem, Mecca was a nationally significant site with a dignified
local history. Moreover, it could be connected to the same mythical event that had
afforded the Jewish Temple its genealogical significance: the Akedah, Abraham’s
planned sacrifice of his son.50 That event according to the Medinan Qurʾan (Q
37:102, a Medinan addition to the Meccan story of Abraham’s planned sacrifice
of his son) is staged not in the Holy Land, but—as has to be deduced from the
Hajj context in which the event is embedded—in Mecca. Abraham received the

49 This perception is no invention; it can be based on earlier interpretations of Gen. 22:2, such as 2
Chron. 3:1 and explicitly Jub. 18, 13, see Elior, “From Priestly (and Early Christian) Mount Zion
to Rabbinic Temple Mount,” 309–319, particularly 313–314.
50 See Angelika Neuwirth, “Wissenstransfer durch Typologie. Relektüren des Abrahamsopfers im
Koran und im islamischen Kultus,” in Denkraum Spätantike: Reflexionen von Antiken im Umfeld
des Koran, ed. Nora Schmidt, Nora Katharina Schmid, and Angelika Neuwirth (Wiesbaden: Har-
rassowitz, 2016), 169–208. The early community’s reaction can be deduced from Medinan addi-
tions to Meccan verses such as Q 37:102, which transfer the erstwhile undetermined scenario
of the Aqedah to Mecca, see Angelika Neuwirth, Der Koran, vol. 2/1: Frühmittelmekkanische
(Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2017), 190–195. See also Joseph Witztum, “The Foundation
of the House. Q 2:127,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies 72 (2009): 25–40.
242 Angelika Neuwirth

Figure 12.4 Floor mosaic of the synagogue Beit Alpha in Galilee: the Akedah
Source: Public Domain, Wikipedia

command to sacrifice his son during his Meccan pilgrimage. Building the altar for
the sacrifice, both he and his son laid the foundations for the Kaʿba.
The Medinan text, Q 2:128 affirms:

When Abraham and Ishmael raised up the foundation of the Temple (bayt):
(They prayed:) Our lord receive this (sacrifice) from us.
You are the all-hearing, the all-knowing.

The reversal of the qibla from Jerusalem to Mecca—though of far-reaching conse-

quences—should not be taken as a coerced concession. Retrospectively, it proved
to have been a “declaration of independence.” Disposing of a centre for one of
its own, the new community was finally fit to establish a sovereign polity. They
were finally able to formulate a legislation embracing both the pristine Meccan
sacrificial rites and the intricate legacy of the monotheist religions of the milieu.

Re-locations of sanctity
As a result of these developments, it is not Jerusalem but rather Mecca that is
privileged in our Hajj-panel. This change in valuation occurred still during the
Prophet’s ministry. Once the believers had settled down in the midst of a Jew-
ish community, their concept of a semi-transcendent sanctuary above Jerusalem
proved incompatible with the opposite Jewish claim to the site as their geographi-
cally real national sanctuary, the site of the Akedah, the offering of their forefa-
thers. Jerusalem was thus blocked to them as the orientation of prayer. Adopting
the Jewish concept of a spiritual centre as earthly required a real sanctuary.
 The Present Absentee 243
Mecca, the hometown of the community, with its Kaʿba, like Jerusalem a place of
sacrifice, and equally the site of Abraham’s offering, fulfilled the new conditions.
This politically significant place was chosen to replace the almost transcendent
al-masjid al-aqṣā.
This dislocation of sanctity in Islam has a mirror image in the way Christians
dealt with the Temple’s sanctity. In Jerusalem there are no fewer than three com-
memoration days relating to the bayt, the Temple. Long before the Muslim ḥajj
al-bayt—which is celebrated on the day of ʿīd al-aḍḥā—was conceived, the first
and probably the oldest of these feasts, the Jewish Tishʿa be-Av, came into being,
the commemoration of the loss of the Temple, the ḥurban, the only occasion on
which in Byzantine times Jews were admitted to enter the city, a day of lamenta-
tion expressed in particular biblical readings and numerous piyyutim. It is staged
today preferably at the western wall of the Temple, the Kotel. Its reverse image is
the Christian feast of Hypsosis, the Elevation of the Cross, reminding of the re-
erection of the Holy Cross in the Anastasis in 335, and at the same time the resto-
ration of the Cross, which, after his victory over the Sassanians in 630,51 Heraclius
brought back to the Anastasis Church, the “new temple” that had appropriated
the essential temple traditions, first and foremost among them, the prototype of
sacrifice—Abraham’s offering of his son. Both feasts are celebrated until this day
in close vicinity—both in terms of time and space. When examined in relation
to the temple in Judaism and the new temple, the Anastasis, in Christianity, the
triplication of the sanctuary or temple on our Hajj-panel in Islam bespeaks a dif-
ferent attitude towards sanctuaries. It is no exaggeration to claim that it presents
a counter-programme. Not one sanctuary—whose heritage is contested between
Jews and Christians—but three sanctuaries are to be adopted. First, Mecca, which
attracted the characteristics and functions of the Temple: sacrifice, pilgrimage
rites, and memory of Abraham. Second is Medina, the memorial of the Proph-
et’s founding of the first Muslim polity. Third—spiritually—is Jerusalem, where
Muhammad on his visionary journey had been affirmed as a prophet, a site whose
eschatological dimension—not shared by the two other sites—kept it connected
to prayer. This way of splitting the concept of sanctuary appears as a convin­
cing self-expression of the umma wasaṭ, an “intermediary community,” which the
verse about the abolition of the Jerusalem qibla (Q 2:143) attributed to the nascent
Muslim community.

The Dome of the Rock: outbalancing the prophets

in Jerusalem
This sanctuary in the end of the seventh century had become a real place, with
a political agenda of its own. It is here that we find a further screen on which an
image of the Prophet in Jerusalem is projected: the monumental Kufic inscription

51 For the synchronicity of particular major occurrences in the career of Heraclius and Muhammad,
see recently Ghaffar, Der Koran in seinem religions- und weltgeschichtlichen Kontext, 253–257.
244 Angelika Neuwirth

Figure 12.5 The Dome of the Rock

Source: Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia

found in the Dome of the Rock. The building, erected by the Umayyad ruler ʿAbd
al-Malik and completed in 691 incorporates a 280-metre-long inscription almost
completely composed of Qurʾanic verses, many of which have a bearing on the
status of the prophet.52 According to my reading, the text first and foremost docu-
ments the intent to position the Muslim Prophet on the same level as the local
prophet, Jesus, through Qurʾanic references. While Qurʾanic verses that portray
Jesus—like Muhammad—as an earthly servant of God abound, it was hard to find
verses that celebrate the Prophet—like Jesus—as a figure closely related to the
transcendent world. The only one verse that hints at such a relation, is therefore
quoted in the inscription no fewer than three times.

inna llāha wa-malāʾikatahu yuṣallūna ʿalā l-nabiyyi

yā ayyuhā lladhīna āmanū ṣallū ʿalayhi wa-sallimū taslīmā
God and his angels say prayers over the Prophet,
you who believe say prayers over him and wish him peace. (Q 33:56)

One can read this verse as an elevation of the Prophet to the status of Jesus.
But the quotation has a political dimension as well. It advocates a spiritual rela-
tion between the prophetic ruler and his community; being a clear veto against

52 The message of the inscription has not yet been satisfactorily explored. For surveys, see Heribert
Busse, “Die arabischen Inschriften im und am Felsendom in Jerusalem,” Das Heilige Land 109
(1977): 8–24; Marcus Milwright, The Dome of the Rock and Its Umayyad Mosaic Inscriptions
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). Contextualizing the inscription with the other ref-
erences in the building to the Byzantine milieu and regarding the urgency to introduce the Prophet
Muhammad into the Christian dominated milieu of Jerusalem, the verses most convincingly fit
with an intention to balance the two most important prophets of the city.
 The Present Absentee 245

Figure 12.6 Mosaic decoration in the Dome of the Rock with Kufi inscription at top
Source: Private photograph in possession of author

mundane imperial self-images, such as those constructed by the contemporary

Byzantine emperor Heraclius, who claimed the status of a second David and cher-
ished apocalyptic expectations. It is as well a votum against Jewish messianism
which strove to re-establish the throne of David in Jerusalem as it is, for example,
expressed in the 15th berakha of the Jewish daily prayer:

To Jerusalem, your city, may you return in compassion,

And may you dwell in it as you promised.
May you rebuild it rapidly in our days as an everlasting structure.
And install within it soon the throne of David
Blessed are you Lord who built Jerusalem.

Thus, the builders of the Dome of Rock again proved genuine inheritors of the
prophetic umma wasaṭ. There was no sign in the inscription of the Dome of the
Rock, nor in its iconography, that would point to an imperial self-presentation in
the vein of the Byzantines, nor a sign evoking messianic speculations. Rather, an
intermediary position between the two parties was chosen. Thus, the Umayyad
imagination of the Temple Mount was not historically but cosmically oriented.
The Muslim newcomers did not figure as inheritors of an imperial tradition.53
No allusion to Solomon’s temple nor to the Byzantine builders’ self- image is

53 This is a hardy supposition which is, however, based on no reliable contemporary sources nor on
the evidence of the inscription, whose exclusively religious message it would contradict. It has
been repeated lately again by Andreas Kaplony, “The Mosque of Jerusalem,” in Where Heaven and
246 Angelika Neuwirth
extant. Nor did they intent to build a third temple to accept the Davidic messianic
legacy.54 Yes, there was a throne on the Mount, still recognizable in the shape of
the Rock,55 but not a throne to be occupied by a messiah but the mythical throne
or footstool of God himself from where he had risen to heaven after the comple-
tion of his creation, an image based on Isaiah 66:1. The Rock thus is not the site
of a utopian event but a protological site and, moreover, an eschatological site.
The Last Judgment is invoked by diverse monuments on the ḥaram.56 Indeed the
entire Temple Mount is imagined as a stage for the eschatological events that will
eventually occur at the site. The Rock is the omphalus mundi, a place that is per-
meable, open towards both the nether and the upper world.
It is no surprise, then, that the Rock, which is the only object to be found in the
Dome—thus representing the non-figural presence of God—was in popular belief
recharged with a mythical meaning. It became the spot from which the Prophet,
in continuation of his “nocturnal journey,” the isrāʾ from Mecca mentioned in Q
17:1, ventured on an ascent to heaven. This ascent, miʿrāj, started from the Rock,
led him to the upper Jerusalem, to heaven, where he received the injunction to
impose the five ritual prayers on his community. This narrative, though a late
entry in the Prophet’s biography,57 became current far beyond Jerusalem, not only
as a popular story but equally as the topic of allegorical philosophical stories58
and most importantly as the motif of innumerable iconographic representations.59

Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade, ed. Oleg Grabar and Benjamin Z. Kedar (Jerusalem:
Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2009), 101–131, esp. 103–108.
54 The Third Temple hypothesis is a questionable view based on later texts founded on extra-Islamic
suppositions; see Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qur’an: The Children of Israel and the Islamic
Self-Image (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999). For the hypothesis, see Kaplony, “The
Mosque of Jerusalem,” 101–131, 112–114.
55 See Philip S. Alexander, “Jerusalem as the Omphalos of the World: On the History of a Geographi-
cal Concept,” in Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Lee
I. Levine (New York: Continuum, 1999), 104–119, cf. 114.”(According to Tanḥuma on Leviticus)
Jerusalem has cosmogonic significance: It is the first created place from which the rest of the world
grew outward concentrically. The “navel” is linked to the even shetiyyah, a stone or rock suppos-
edly located within the Temple which marked the exact spot from which the world developed like
a fetus form the umbilical cord.
56 The eastern double gate of the ḥaram is subdivided into Bāb al-Raḥma and Bāb al-Tawba, “Gate
of Mercy,” “Gate of Repentance;” the Western double gate is Bāb al-Sakīna “Gate of the divine
Presence” and Bab al-Silsila, “Gate of the Chain.” A small domed building east of the Dome of the
Rock is Qubbat al-Silsila, the “Dome of the Chain” (the “chain” being usually understood as the
chain to hang the scales for weighing human deeds on the Day of Judgment), to name only a few.
57 It is not yet found in Ibn Isḥāq’s (died 151/768) version of the sīra but was introduced only in the
later redaction by Ibn Hisham (died 218/833). See Alfred Guillaume, trans., The Life of Muham-
mad: A Translation of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (London: Oxford University Press, 1955),
181–186.
58 See, e.g., Peter Heath, Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna (Ibn Sina): With a Translation of the
Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascent to Heaven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1992).
59 See Christiane J. Gruber, The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and
Images (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019).
 The Present Absentee 247
It is through the miʿrāj narrative and iconography that the Prophet Muhammad
has become inseparable from Jerusalem.
Muhammad, in the local popular imagination of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, is
thus the Moses of the Muslim community. Like Moses atop Mount Sinai, Muham-
mad brought down commandments from his ascent to the heavenly spheres. He
did not return, however, with stone tablets with laws engraved on them; rather, he
returned with the injunction of a pious performance, five daily prayers, a liturgi-
cal legislation. Muhammad’s Jerusalemite legacy is hard to overestimate: it is the
primacy of liturgical service. It continues to be celebrated acoustically, five times
a day.
13 And Muhammad Is His
Messenger
The Role of Sunna and Hadith in
the Formation of Islamic Identity
Aisha Y. Musa

There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God. This is the
shahādatān, the double testimony of faith and the first of what is commonly
known as the “Five Pillars” of Islam. As Wensinck pointed out in the early twenti-
eth century, although the elements of the declaration of faith and the other pillars
are present in the Qurʾan, the pillars themselves are not.1 Indeed, the term “five
pillars” comes not from the Qurʾan, but from the Hadith. After discussing the
general way in which the Qurʾan uses the terms islam and muslim, this chapter
will look at how the concept of Prophetic Sunna and the vehicle of the Hadith con-
tributed to a separate confessional identity with uniquely Islamic beliefs and prac-
tices that distinguish Muslims from other monotheists. The focus will be on the
content and organization of the muṣannaf and sunan works in the Sunnī Ha­dith
canon. Examining the evolution and development of the content and organiza-
tion of these works can shed light on the crucial role that the Hadith-dependent
concept of Sunna2 has played in the formation and maintenance of a distinctly
Islamic identity.

Islam and Muslim as Qurʾanic Terms

The Arabic root s-l-m occurs 140 times in the Qurʾan: 22 times as the form IV
verb aslama, 8 times as the form IV verbal noun islām, and 41 times as the form
IV active participle muslim (this includes all instances in the masculine, feminine,
singular, and plural).3 The active participle muslim is applied to all of the pro­phets
and their followers in the Qurʾan, as is the verb aslama. This broad and general
usage is an important reason that Fred Donner argues that the Islam of the Qurʾan
is an “ecumenical” monotheism, a belief in the one God of Abraham. Relying pri-
marily on the Qurʾan to gain insight into the beliefs of the movement inaugurated

1 Arent J. Wensinck, The Muslim Creed: Its Genesis and Historical Development (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1932), 18ff.
2 Adis Duderija, “Evolution in the Canonical Sunni Ḥadith Body of Literature and the Concept of
an Authentic Ḥadith during the Formative Period of Islamic Thought as Based on Recent Western
Scholarship,” Arab Law Quarterly 23/4 (2009): 389–415.
3 Quran Dictionary, http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=slm (accessed August 9, 2019).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-16
 And Muhammad Is His Messenger 249
by Muhammad, Donner argues that Muhammad and those who believed with him
were

a strongly monotheistic, intensely pietistic, and ecumenical or confessionally

open religious movement that enjoined people who were not already mono-
theists to recognize God’s oneness and enjoined all monotheists to live in
strict observance of the law that God had repeatedly revealed to mankind—
whether in the form of the Torah, the Gospels, or the Quran.4

The ecumenism described by Donner is further encouraged in the Qurʾan by the

command to follow the religion of Abraham (Q 3:95, 16:123) and to believe in all
the prophets and messengers and what God revealed to them (Q 2:136, 3:84). It
is not only the very general way the Qurʾan uses the terms islam and muslim that
supports Donner’s conclusions. The Qurʾan is equally general in its discussion of
religious duties. The Qurʾan commands believers to establish prayer, pay charity,
fast, and make pilgrimage but does not describe how to do so in detail.
Although the Qurʾan strongly asserts that it is a continuation of the single
message sent by God with the various prophets and messengers, it also suggests
separate confessional identities in Q 5:48: “We have made for each of you, a law
and a way of doing things. If God had willed, He would have made you a sin-
gle community.”5 This declaration comes at the end of an extended discussion of
God’s revelation of the Torah and the Gospel to Moses and Jesus, in which the
recipients of the earlier scriptures are admonished to judge according to what God
revealed in those scriptures (Q 5:43–47).
The Qurʾan describes previous prophets and their followers as muslim in a gen-
eral sense because they surrendered to God, but it also refers to earlier peoples
of the book by names associated with their distinct individual communities—al-
yahūd/alladhīna hādū (Jews) and al-naṣārā (Christians). What distinguishes a
particular community is the identity of its prophet and its book (Q 5:44–48). In
addition to this direct reference to more than one community, the Qurʾan empha-
sizes the role of the messenger as an exemplar (Q 33:21) and someone believers
are commanded to obey (Q 3:132; 4:59, 5:92). Muhammad is “God’s Messenger
and the Seal of the Prophets” (33:40). The focus on Muhammad as God’s final
messenger who must be obeyed serves as the foundation for the concept of the
Prophetic Sunna—that is, Sunna of God’s Messenger (sunnat rasūl Allāh)—and
this concept, in turn, became the basis for the scriptural authority of the Hadith
literature.6 The need for distinct communal identity is articulated in the Hadith
in which the Prophet reportedly said, “Whoever imitates a people becomes one

4 Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012), 75.
5 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
6 Aisha Y. Musa, Ḥadīth as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
250 Aisha Y. Musa
of them,” which became the basis for the Sunnī doctrine of reprehensible imita-
tion, which is understood to mean that Muslims must distinguish themselves from
non-Muslims.7 It is the concept of the Prophetic Sunna and the Hadith literature
that provided details of a confessional identity and codified particular religious
practices and that unify Muslims broadly as a community separate and distinct
from their monotheistic cousins, the Jews and Christians.

Sunna and Hadith

The Arabic noun sunna is derived from the verb sanna. Among the meanings of this
verb is “he instituted, practiced, or prescribed” a custom or practice, whether good
or bad, that others followed after him. The noun sunna means “a way, course, rule,
mode, or manner, of acting or conduct or life,” in particular, one “that has been
instituted, or pursued, by former people, and has become one pursued by those
after them.”8 The term sunna relates first and foremost to actions. As a technical
religious term, it has come to mean the behaviour of the Prophet Muhammad, and
Islamic law recognizes three categories of sunna: those things that the Prophet
said (al-sunna al-qawliyya), those things that he did (al-sunna al-fiʿliyya), and
those things of which he tacitly approved (al-sunna al-taqrīriyya).9
The Arabic noun ḥadīth (pl. aḥādīth) literally means something that is said,
told, or related, that is, a story. As a religious technical term, the word ḥadīth
is used to refer to stories about the Prophet and the early community of Mus-
lims. Stories about the Prophet Muhammad and the earliest community of Mus-
lims served as an important source of practical knowledge, first orally and then
in writing, as Islam spread. The use of stories for elucidation and edification is
not unique to Islam or to the Qurʾan. Stories are integral to human society and
play a crucial role in all religious traditions. Richard Bulliet notes the mention of
Muhammad’s companions (as opposed to any mention of who in an area was the
first to memorize or own a copy of the Qurʾan) in Muslim literature as evidence
of the primary importance of Muhammad’s companions as sources of information
for the early Muslims in newly conquered lands. He argues that these compan-
ions used their memories of Muhammad—or what they learned about him from
others—to answer questions about the faith and practice asked by new converts
in the conquered lands. Bulliet further supports this argument with the fact that
the most important collections of Hadith focus primarily on matters of practical
importance in the daily lives of Muslims.10 Among the most important practical

7 Youshaa Patel, “ ‘Whoever Imitates a People Becomes One of Them’: A Ḥadīth and its Interpret-
ers,” Islamic Law and Society 25/4 (2018): 362.
8 Edward W. Lane and Stanley Lane Poole, An Arabic-English Lexicon (Beirut: Librairie du Liban,
1968), IV, 436b.
9 Aisha Y. Musa, “Ḥadīth Studies,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies, ed. Clinton
Bennett (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 76.
10 Richard W. Bulliet, Islam: The View from the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),
31–32.
 And Muhammad Is His Messenger 251
matters in the daily lives of Muslims are the religious duties of prayer, charity,
fasting, and pilgrimage. Each of these is mentioned in the Qurʾan, but the Qurʾan
contains few details of just how they should be carried out. The desire for specific
details spurred early Muslims to turn to the example of the Prophet Muhammad
and his companions. There has been disagreement among Muslims about the pre-
cise nature and scope of Sunna and its relation to Hadith, but for the majority of
Muslims, the Hadith and Sunna are inextricably linked.11 This is because, since at
least the time of Muḥammad b. Idris al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), many Muslims have
argued that the Hadith are the only source of information about the established
practices of Muhammad.12

Sunnī Hadith Collections

Hadith collections evolved over the course of the first two Islamic centuries from
small personal collections apparently meant as memory aids and teaching devices
to volumes arranged by topics or the identity of narrators and finally to compila-
tions arranged by the sunna established by the reports and appropriately titled
“sunan” works. The most revered Hadith collections are referred to by Sunnī
Muslims as al-kutub al-sitta or al-ṣiḥāḥ al-sitta. Over the course of the sixth–
seventh/twelfth–thirteenth centuries,13 these came to include the two Ṣaḥīḥs of
al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) and Muslim (d. 261/875) and the Sunan works of Ibn
Māja (d. 273/886), Abū Dawūd (d. 275/888), al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), al-Nasāʾī
(d. 303/915). Of these, the Sunan of Ibn Māja was the last to gain a place in
the Sound Six.14 Thus, of al-ṣiḥāḥ al-sitta, four are sunan works, making them
the majority of the Sunnī canon. An examination of the structure and content of
the muṣannaf and sunan collections shows that they developed to meet the com-
munity’s need for an authoritative source detailing how to properly perform the
religious duties of prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage. The development and
evolution of Hadith collections, in particular, the Muṣannaf and Sunan works,
represent the growth and maturation of a distinctly Islamic sense of communal
identity in which the beliefs and practices commanded in general terms in the
Qurʾan are implemented according to the Sunna of Muhammad.

11 Adis Duderija, ed., The Sunna and Its Status in Islamic Law: The Search for a Sound Hadith (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Yasin Dutton, “ʿAmal v Ḥadīth in Islamic Law: The Case of
Sadl Al-Yadayn (Holding One’s Hands by One’s Sides) When Doing the Prayer,” Islamic Law and
Society 3/1 (1996): 13–40.
12 Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿi, “The Book of the Amalgamation of Knowledge,” in Musa, Ḥadīth
as Scripture (see footnote 6), 118.
13 Muhammad Zubair Siddiqi, Ḥadīth Literature: Its Origin, Development and Special Features
(Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993), 73–74.
14 Ibid., 242–243.
252 Aisha Y. Musa
The Hadith of the Five Pillars15
A well-known Hadith that quotes the Prophet Muhammad as saying that Islam
is built on five pillars encapsulates a concise framework of belief and practices
on which a distinctly Islamic identity is built. Versions of the Hadith are found in
several of the canonized collections. Al-Bukhārī includes one report in his Ṣaḥīḥ,
in the chapter on faith. Al-Tirmidhī and al-Nasāʾī each include one report in the
chapters on faith in their Sunans.
The only compiler who includes several variants is Muslim, who lists four
separate reports.16 Each of the variants is reported on the authority of ʿAbdallāh
b. ʿUmar through a different chain of narrators, and in each the Prophet is quoted
as saying, “Islam is built on five . . .” After this opening declaration, there are
differences in matn wording. Some differences are relatively minor; others are
more significant. The matn of the first report that Muslim includes reads: “God’s
Prophet said: ‘Islam is built on five [pillars]: on declaring God is one,17 establish-
ing the prayer, giving the obligatory charity, fasting Ramadan, and pilgrimage.’ ”18
The second variant included by Muslim also quotes the Prophet as saying that
“Islam is built on five,” but this is followed by “on worshipping God and deny-
ing [belief] in anything besides Him,19 establishing the prayer, giving the obliga-
tory charity, pilgrimage to the house, and fasting Ramadan.” What is immediately
noticeable in these first two reports is that the shahāda, the testimony of faith, is
not directly mentioned. Instead, each report points to monotheism in a different
way. The third and fourth variants directly mention the shahāda. The third vari-
ant contains the dual shahāda: “testifying that there is no god but God and that
Muhammad is His servant and Messenger,” while the fourth variant mentions
only the first part: “testifying that there is no god but God,” as the first of the five
things on which Islam is built.
Muslim states in his Introduction to the Ṣaḥīḥ that his aim is to avoid repea­
ting variant reports, except when such reports contain additional information that
clarifies previously mentioned reports.20 Presenting the variants that contain the
dual shahāda after those that do not fits his stated aim. Building on the oneness of
God first and adding the clarification that Muhammad is God’s servant and mes-
senger leaves no doubt that the purpose of the shahada is, first and foremost, to
acknowledge the One God and recognize Muhammad as God’s servant and mes-
senger, whose example is to be followed, according to the Qurʾan (3:132; 4:59,

15 The word arkān (pillars) is not in the Arabic text, but the word “pillars” is used in the most com-
mon and widely accepted translations of this Hadith, so I have used it throughout this chapter.
16 Muslim b. al-Hajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (Beirut: Dār al-Taʾṣīl, 2014), I, 363.
17 The Arabic uses the passive here: an yuwaḥḥada allāhu, literally, “that God is declared to be one.”
I have used the gerund for the sake of a better English translation.
18 Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ (see footnote 16), I, 363.
19 Ibid., 364. Here too, for the sake of good English, I have used the gerund where the Arabic uses
the passive: yuʿbada allāhu wa-yukfara bi-mā dūnahu, literally, “God is worshipped and what is
other than Him is denied.”
20 Ibid., 299.
 And Muhammad Is His Messenger 253
5:92.33:21). The four versions reflect an historical development, from affirming
God’s oneness in a general sense to a particular formula, the dual shahāda, to
distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims.
The dual shahāda bearing witness that there is no god but God and that Muham-
mad is God’s Messenger, is what brings a person into the community of Muslims.
Each of the other duties arises from this dual testimony. After the testimony of
faith, each of the religious duties is mentioned, starting with establishing the ritual
prayer and giving the obligatory charity (iqām al-ṣalāt wa-iʿtāʾ al-zakāt). All four
variants contain exactly the same wording, using the verbal nouns that corres­
pond to the command form of the verbs found in the Qurʾan (2:43). The variants
show disagreement over the order of fasting and pilgrimage. The first report in
the section quotes the Prophet as saying, “fasting Ramadan and pilgrimage to the
House,” and then shows a man asking Ibn ʿUmar “pilgrimage and fasting Rama-
dan?” To which, Ibn ʿUmar replies, “No. Fasting Ramadan and pilgrimage, that is
how I heard it from God’s Messenger, peace be upon him.”21 Thus, the Five Pillars
Hadith encapsulates the framework of belief and religious duties that structure the
lives of pious Muslims. It also broadly reflects the organizational structure of the
muṣannaf and sunan works that form the Sunnī canon.

Muṣannaf Collections
Following small personal collections, topically arranged (muṣannaf) works
appear in the mid-second/eighth century. The earliest extant muṣannaf work is
the Muwaṭṭaʾ of the Medinan scholar Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795), the eponymous
founder of the Māliki school of Sunnī jurisprudence and teacher of Muḥammad
ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī. Jonathan Brown22 notes that the Muwaṭṭaʾ combines Prophetic
reports with the statements of his companions and their successors, as well as
the opinions of Mālik himself. Yasin Dutton has convincingly argued that the
Muwaṭṭaʾ is representative of a time when the term sunna was not yet linked
intimately to Hadith, a time when the term ḥadīth referred to text and sunna
referred to action.23 It would be Mālik’s student, Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī,
whose arguments would be instrumental in making the texts of Hadith integral to
the understanding of the term sunna. What is pertinent to the current discussion
is the fact that the term sunna appears more often in the Muwaṭṭaʾ than in any of
the other canonized collections of Hadith.24 Brown describes the Muwaṭṭaʾ and
similar early muṣannaf works as essentially “transcripts of legal debates,” the

21 Ibid., 363.
22 Jonathan A. C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oxford:
Oneworld Press, 2009), 25.
23 Yasin Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur’an, the Muwaṭṭa’ and Madinan ᶜAmal (New
York: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 3.
24 A search of the term “sunna” in the Hadith collections at www.alim.org reveals 65 instances in the
Muwaṭṭaʾ, less than half that number in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and none in the other collections. This
search is limited to the actual matns of the Ḥadīth themselves, however, and does not return results
254 Aisha Y. Musa
result of pious scholars’ attempts to answer questions about faith and practice.25
The organization of information in these collections is reflected in the Hadith of
the Five Pillars discussed earlier.

Muwaṭṭaʾ Mālik
The Muwaṭṭaʾ is the earliest muṣannaf work in the Sunnī canon, predating the
Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Muslim by close to a century. It is primarily considered
to be a work of jurisprudence (fiqh), but it is also a collection of Hadith.26 It is
work intended to help Muslims practise their religion properly, and it uses stories
of Muhammad and the community of Medina to do so. Like other muṣannaf col-
lections, the Muwaṭṭaʾ is divided into chapters (kutub), and each chapter (kitāb) is
divided into sections (abwāb). Each section (bāb) contains one or more reports.
As a muṣannaf work, the chapters are arranged by topic, and the sections within
each chapter contain various subtopics. Unlike the Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Mus-
lims, the Muwaṭṭaʾ does not open with a chapter on faith. Instead, it begins with
the central point around which Muslim daily life is organized—the ritual prayer.
This is not surprising, as the text is a fiqh manual intended to help Muslims prac-
tise the religion properly.
The daily lives of Muslims are structured around the ritual prayers, which the
Qurʾan declares are decreed for believers at specified times (4:103), and prayer
timings is the first topic in the Muwaṭṭaʾ.27 Purification is a prerequisite of prayer,
and this is the next topic of the Muwaṭṭaʾ.28 Mālik segues from issues related to
the timing of prayers to issues of purification with the prohibition of coming to
the mosque reeking of garlic and of covering the mouth during prayer.29 There are
8 sections on issues related to the timings of the ritual prayer, and there are 30
sections on various subtopics of purification. The reports dealing with purifica-
tion cover everything from the proper way to do the ritual washing ordered by
the Qurʾan (Q 4:43, 5:6) to the rules and regulations of purification after sexual
intercourse and menstruation.30
Following the chapter on purification are several chapters on ritual prayer.
These chapters and their subsections cover everything from the proper way to call
the prayer to the details of bowing and prostrating within the prayer itself. Reports
on how and what to recite from the Qurʾan are included here as well. There are
also reports on prayer while travelling, during an eclipse, prayers for rain, and

from the introductions of compilers such as Muslim, Ibn Māja, and al-Tirmidhī, who each discuss
the sunna directly, as addressed elsewhere in this chapter.
25 Brown, Hadith (see footnote 22), 25.
26 Aisha Y. Musa, “The Sunnification of Hadith and the Hadithification of Sunna,” in Duderija, ed.,
The Sunna and Its Status in Islamic Law (see footnote 11), 79.
27 Mālik b. Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 2013), 33.
28 Ibid., 43.
29 Ibid., 42.
30 Ibid., 43–88.
 And Muhammad Is His Messenger 255
funeral prayers.31 Prayer is central to the daily life of the community as well as the
individual, and Mālik dedicates chapters to the congregational prayer, covering
everything from bathing on Friday and walking to the mosque to how to behave
in the mosque and during the congregational prayer itself, as well as what to do if
you arrive after the prayer has started.32
As in the Hadith of the Five Pillars, the topic that follows prayer in the Muwaṭṭaʾ
is the obligatory charity, zakāt. The subsections on zakāt address how much to
pay, when to pay, and who is eligible to receive zakāt.33 The chapter on zakāt is fol-
lowed by a chapter on fasting34 and a chapter on the nightly retreat to the mosque
during the month of Ramadan35; these are followed by a chapter on the pilgrimage
to Mecca.36 The topics of prayer, charity, fasting, and pilgrimage take up the first
half of the Muwaṭṭaʾ. The remainder addresses a wide variety of legal topics from
jihad to marriage and divorce, to trade, legal judgements, and more.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī
Like all muṣannaf collections, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥiḥ Muslim are divided
into chapters (kutub), and each chapter (kitāb) is divided into sections (abwāb).
Each section (bāb) contains one or more reports. The chapters are arranged by
topic, and the sections within each chapter contain various subtopics. The first of
the Five Pillars mentioned in the Hadith is the belief in and worship of the One
God and the recognition of Muhammad as God’s Messenger. This is reflected in
the organization of both Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥiḥ Muslim.
Al-Bukhārī does not begin with an introduction. The first topic in al-Bukhārī’s
Ṣaḥīḥ is divine inspiration (waḥy), and the author opens this chapter with the
beginning of Qurʾan 4:163, “We have inspired you as We have inspired Noah and
the prophets after him.”37 This is followed by seven Hadith that describe Muham-
mad’s revelatory experiences, establishing his status as God’s Prophet and Mes-
senger. The brief chapter on divine inspiration is followed by a much longer
chapter on faith (īmān). This section contains more than 50 reports on the charac-
teristics of faith (īmān) and Islām. This chapter begins with the Hadith of the Five
Pillars and al-Bukhārī’s discussion of how these include both words and deeds.38
Al-Bukhārī follows the chapter on faith with an even longer chapter on ʿilm. The
word ʿilm literally means “knowledge,” but it is clear from the content of this
chapter that the knowledge in question is religious knowledge.39 The chapters on

31 Ibid., 89–211.
32 Ibid., 105–139.
33 Ibid., 211–239.
34 Ibid., 239–258.
35 Ibid., 258–265.
36 Ibid., 265–345.
37 Muḥammad b. Ismāᶜīl al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Beirut: Dar al-Tāṣīl, 2012), I, 179.
38 Ibid., 193–194.
39 Ibid., 246.
256 Aisha Y. Musa
faith and knowledge are relatively short compared to those on purification, prayer,
charity, pilgrimage, and fasting, which follow the chapter on knowledge and con-
tain hundreds of reports on many topics related to those key religious duties.

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim
While al-Bukhārī began his collection with a chapter on divine inspiration,
Muslim begins with an introduction in which he lays out the criteria for judging
between weak and sound Hadith transmissions and describes his methodology.
His first chapter is on faith. As described earlier, this is the chapter that contains
the Hadith of the Five Pillars. Unlike the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, however, this Ha­dith
is not at the beginning of the chapter on faith. Muslim begins his chapter on faith
with reports on faith, islām, predestination, prophethood, and the oneness of
God.40 The section of the Five Pillars is followed by more than 90 more sections
dealing with a wide variety of issues related to faith.41 After the chapter on faith,
like al-Bukhārī and Mālik before him, Muslim turns to purification, then prayer,
charity, fasting, and pilgrimage. As with the earlier collection, Muslim includes
hundreds of reports detailing how to properly perform each of the religious duties.

Sunan Collections
The word sunan is the plural of sunna. The majority of the sunan works appear
rather late as a genre of Hadith literature, well after the appearance of ṣaḥīfa,
muṣannaf, and musnad collections, and after al-Shāfiʿī’s arguments for linking
the concept of sunna exclusively to the precedents set by the Prophet Muhammad,
defining the sunna as sunnat al-nabī. Therefore, the sunan works are perhaps the
most important demonstration of the linkage of sunna with Hadith. According to
Muhammad Siddiqi, “the sunan works constitute the richest branch of Ḥadīth
literature.”42 Although the compilers of sunan works frequently included useful
reports that were doubtful or disputed in terms of their authenticity, they did not
do so haphazardly or carelessly. On the contrary, they carefully noted weaknesses
of and disputes about those reports.43
Among the most important Sunan works are those of Abū Dāwūd (d. 275/887),
al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), al-Nasāʾī (d. 303/915), and Ibn Māja (d. 273/886).
Together with the muṣannaf collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, these make
up the al-ṣiḥāḥ al-sitta (literally, the six authentic collections). A major aim of the
sunan works was to include reports that would be particularly applicable to law,
ritual, and behaviour.44 Like the muṣannaf collections, the sunan collections are

40 Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ (see footnote 16), I, 251–262.

41 Ibid., 363–587.
42 Siddiqi, Ḥadīth Literature (see footnote 13), 61.
43 Ibid., 231.
44 Ignác Goldziher, Muslim Studies, ed. S. M. Stern, trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern (London:
Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1971), 198.
 And Muhammad Is His Messenger 257
arranged topically according to the practices (sunan) that they report and repre-
sent further progress in the development of Hadith literature, combining a focus
on prophetic reports with the topical arrangement needed to facilitate a distinctly
Islamic faith and practice.
Unlike Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥiḥ Muslim, the sunan collections do not begin
with reports on faith. With the exception of the Sunan Ibn Māja, which begins
with a chapter on the obligation to obey the messenger, all of the sunan collections
begin with the topic of purification, followed by prayer, charity, fasting, and pil-
grimage—the practices that came to be known as the Five Pillars on which Islam
is built. It is these five pillars, practised by Muslims in accordance with the Sunna
of Muhammad as transmitted in the Hadith, that provide Muslims with a distinctly
Islamic identity and distinctly Islamic religious practices.

Conclusion
The message of the Qurʾan brought Muhammad and the Arabs into the family of
Abrahamic monotheists. The Sunna of Muhammad recounted in the Hadith pro-
vided them and following generations of Muslims particular beliefs and practices
that broadly unify them as a community distinct from their Jewish and Christian
cousins.45 Over the first three centuries after Muhammad, Muslims put great care
and effort into compiling stories that shaped distinctly Islamic beliefs and prac-
tices. Over several more centuries, some of those collections coalesced into the
Hadith canon that is still in use today. It is the Hadith literature that still provides
details of praying, fasting, giving charity, and making pilgrimage that are recog-
nized the world over as being distinctly Islamic.

45 William A. Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,” The Journal of Inter-

disciplinary History 23/3 (1993): 495–522.
14 Crisis and Caliphate in the
Spring of 865
Chase F. Robinson

Whatever its forms, being religious “Islamically” has meant taking history
seriously, and ultimately so, for history or, still more, biography (the history
of persons) represents the prime medium through which authority and truth
have been transmitted and thus made available for each new generation.1

This assertion of the primacy of history, the concluding sentence of one of Bill
Graham’s most ambitious and influential pieces, can serve to begin an essay that
offers some provisional results from a modest project of historicization. He was
concerned with a perennial feature of Islamic thought, traditionalism, for which
he coined the term “isnād paradigm.” I am concerned with a striking episode of
Islamic politics in the ninth century, when crisis produced a document that served
to broadcast religio-political propaganda.
The project of identifying and recovering early texts that have resisted the
editing, redacting, and expurgating pressures of transmission is fundamental to
reconstructing early Islamic history. These pressures were more or less always in
constant operation, varying from genre to genre and period to period. In the earli-
est stages, the décalage between (presumptive) composition and (apparent) docu-
mentation is well over a century. The case that I’ll be discussing is very different.
Mummified within deep layers of rhetoric and hyperbole, it is a time capsule of
sorts, which can be opened to reveal a specific moment in history. Born of des-
peration, the text has been largely ignored by scholarship, medieval and mod-
ern. That it survives at all testifies to the industry and interests of a handful of
scholars who belonged to a network of writers, poets, compilers, and historians
in mid-ninth-century Baghdad. Put another way, its survival reflects the omnivo-
rous appetite of early Islamic traditionalism. And this, Graham argued, reflected a
“keen awareness of the intensely personal character of knowledge.”2 No student

1 William A. Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,” Journal of Interdiscipli-

nary History 23 (1993): 495–522 at 522.
2 Ibid., 513. What follows is a sondage into material related to mid-ninth-century letters, textual-
ity, and political culture, which will ultimately take the form of a translation and study of the text
discussed provisionally here. I use Common Era dating in general but provide hijri dates when
especially relevant or significant.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-17
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 259
of his could fail to see that the observation applies not merely to the isnād para-
digm he was describing, but his own approach to teaching.

Context
Before we turn to the propaganda, let us briefly set the scene.
In late 861, the tenth Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil (rg. 232–247/847–861),
was assassinated in Samarra, the capital founded in 836 by his father, al-Muʿtaṣim
(rg. 218–227/833–842). The death inaugurated a period of political turbulence,
which accelerated the well-known (if still poorly understood) process by which
the unifocal political culture of the early Abbasid period gave way to the polyfocal
Islamic ecumene of the tenth century and beyond. Sources have it that Samarra
was founded to quarantine armies of (mostly) Turkish soldiers away from Bagh-
dad. Whatever the precise reasons, a generation after Samarra’s founding, Abbasid
politics and political culture had been subordinated to a crude economy of extorted
favour, access, and military pay. Al-Mutawakkil’s murderers were part of a fac-
tion of Turkish commanders aligned with one of the caliph’s sons, al-Muntaṣir,
who succeeded his father, and in whose killing he is sometimes directly implicat-
ed.3 Within a few months—“six months and a day,” as al-Masʿūdī has it4—he,
too, was dead, the second victim in a murderous decade that had begun in 861
and would end in 870, with the accession of al-Muʿtamid. The organs of caliphal
government would return to Baghdad, but the militarization of politics was now
irreversible.
Arguably, the nadir of the Samarra period came in a year-long civil war
between two grandsons of al-Muʿtaṣim, al-Mustaʿīn (rg. 248–252/862–866), who
succeeded al-Muntaṣir, and al-Mustaʿīn’s cousin, al-Muʿtazz (rg. 252–255/866–
869).5 Fissures were naturally always part of the structure of the Abbasid ruling
house, engorged as it was by revenues from Iraqi and provincial taxes. But a turn-
ing point came in Ṣafar of 248 (April of 862), when al-Muntaṣir’s chosen succes-
sors, al-Muʾayyad and al-Muʿtazz, were forced to renounce their succession. The
abdication was engineered by a court faction symbolized (and probably directed)
by the state secretary and vizier, Aḥmad b. al-Khaṣīb, one of the two most influ-
ential figures in al-Muntaṣir’s court (until he was exiled to Crete), according to a

3 See the anonymous Fragmenta Historicorum Arabicorum (Leiden, 1871), ii, 561, where the author
suppresses “ugly matters that are not to be set down in a book”; see also Ibn Ṭiqṭaqā, Kitāb al-Fakhrī
(Paris, 1894), 327–328; cf. the comments, sympathetic to al-Muntaṣir, of Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī, Kitāb
al-Awrāq (St. Petersburg, 1998), 482.
4 Al-Masʿūdī, Kitāb al-Tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf (Leiden: Brill, 1893), 363.
5 The most detailed account remains the published dissertation by M. Forstner, “Das Kalifat des
Abbasiden al-Mustaʿin (248/862–252/866)” (PhD, University of Mainz, 1968); for more recent
overviews, M. Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 2001), 90–97; A. Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in
the First Muslim Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 283–293 and, in a popular
vein, H. Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2004), 276–281.
260 Chase F. Robinson
contemporary witness, al-Yaʿqūbī.6 The abdication was effected through the dis-
solution of the bonds of loyalty sworn before God in the acclamation ceremonial
(bayʿa) by rivals and subordinates. As we shall see, this was a violation of politi-
cal norms that foreshadowed events to come. With the succession of al-Mustaʿīn,
episodes of public violence and rioting, some pitting Turkish factions against
Abnāʾ (the descendants of Abbasid armies from Khurāsān), became common. By
the 4th or 5th of Muḥarram of 251, al-Mustaʿīn had been forced to flee Samarra
for Baghdad, where he was sheltered by the governor of the city, Muḥammad b.
ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṭāhir, the “amīr-son of an amīr-son of an amīr,” as one source put
it crisply.7 Meanwhile, al-Muʿtazz was given the bayʿa in Samarra. Two rival
caliphs, supported by armies with contrasting ethnic compositions and, at least
to some extent, religious colourings, each making exclusive claims to rule from
adjacent cities—the situation was unprecedented.
Given the size of the Samarran military, which was made up of mainly of Turkic
Central Asians (atrāk), Farghānīs, and “Westerners” (maghāriba), al-Muʿtazz’s
claim to the caliphate meant that Baghdad was now in grave peril. Al-Mustaʿīn
and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh immediately took steps to shore up their cause
and city, hastily preparing for an attack: issuing a flurry of letters to support the
caliph’s claim against al-Muʿtazz’s, and secure the loyalty of key commanders
(especially Mūsā b. Bughā and ʿAbd Allāh b. Bughā), imposing an embargo
on Samarra of foodstuffs (downriver) from Mosul and (upriver) from Bagh-
dad, fortifying walls and gates, raising temporary tenting, erecting various war
engines (ballistas, mangonels), razing bridges, and cutting and flooding defensive
trenches. The construction work was concentrated on the (exposed) western and
north-eastern flanks of the city, especially on and along city gates, particularly the
Shammāsiyya Gate, which lay adjacent to the river and served as the conventional
riverine point of entry from and exit for Samarra. Since the great bulk of the impe-
rial army was in Samarra, assembling the manpower necessary to defend Baghdad
seems to have been the greatest challenge. To say that the resulting force was het-
erogeneous is to understate things. Some of the defenders to be were proper sol-
diers, such as men loyal to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh and to commanders whose
services could be purchased; at a late moment, some additional Shākiriyya also
arrived from Samarra.8 But here, as earlier in the civil war,9 the narratives are

6 Al-Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh (Leiden: Brill, 1883), ii, 603–604.

7 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Baghdād (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1931), v, 418. For economy’s
sake, I shall refer to him hereafter as Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh.
8 If the Central Asian origins of the Samarran armies has become clearer over the last 20 years or so,
the composition of the Shākiriyya (and other units), both military and otherwise, remains a riddle;
see A. Northedge, The Historical Topography of Samarra: Samarra Studies I (London, 2008), 167–
171 (with bibliography); the most recent installment, which adds to the complexity, is A. Elad, “Pre-
liminary Notes on the Term and Institution of al-shākiriyya in Early Islam (ca. 14–218/635–833)
Mainly According to the Arabic Sources,” in Transregional and Regional Elites—Connecting the
Early Islamic Empire: The Early Islamic Empire at Work, ed. H.-L. Hagemann and S. Heidemann
(Berlin, 2020), i, 171–266.
9 Thus the Fragmenta Historicorum Arabicorum, ii, 562–564.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 261
at some pains to emphasize the role of irregulars. We read of Khurāsānī pilgrims
who, passing through the city, were pressed into service; of mobs (al-ghawghāʾ),
and gang or vigilante groups (ʿayyār), who were issued crude, homemade weap-
ons—shields fashioned from tar, studded clubs, bags of stones, and slingshots; of
the Mubayyiḍa, “Wearers of White,” a sectarian group apparently associated with
such mobs;10 and of pastoralists (aʿrāb) who were enrolled in the cause. Emer-
gency tax levies and redirected revenues paid for the troops, the irregulars and all
the frenetic fortifying in and around the city.
What appears to have been a crucial piece in the defenses, one of the newly
erected walls, was soon complete.11 It was just in time. For by the 23rd of
Muḥarram, an army had been ordered by al-Muʿtazz to march on Baghdad; six
days later, it had reached ʿUkbarā, which lay more or less equidistant between
Samarra and Baghdad, on the western side of the river; and eight days or so after
that, the army was encamped outside of Baghdad. The Samarran troops, num-
bering in the thousands,12 and paid by an extraordinarily (and unprecedented)
large emission of irregularly weighted silver coins,13 were battle hardened. News
of violence and the destruction of property in neighbouring districts must have
been circulating in the city: to some Baghdadis, the barbarians were literally at
the gates—and they were defended by civilians. Time had to be bought. Riders
were sent out to harry the army, but the circumstances also called for both theatre
and negotiation. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh presented himself at the gates, hav-
ing donned armour that had belonged to his grandfather Ṭāhir b. al-Ḥusayn, the
celebrated commander who had taken the city for al-Maʾmūn in Baghdad’s first
siege of 812–813. Accompanied by learned men and judges, he offered threats
and promises to the Samarrans; if they withdrew, al-Muʿtazz, he pledged, would
succeed al-Mustaʿīn.14 Fear must have gripped the city.
And then, an extraordinary turn of events took place: over about a week, Bagh-
dad’s ragtag army of defenders, under the inspired command of Muḥammad b.
ʿAbd Allāh, repulsed the Samarran forces, which had attacked in what seems to
have been two main assaults. Not only that: al-Muʿtazz’s armies were routed,
pursued in one case as far as Samarra itself, which endured the humiliation of
receiving a delivery of severed heads. In Baghdad, victory bonuses were awarded
and honorary robes were bestowed. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, the account tells

10 On the mubayyiḍa in the Iranian east, see P. Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran:
Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 106–
143, where she notes (at p. 142) their appearance in Baghdad in the civil war between al-Mustaʿīn
and al-Muʿtazz, and asks when they came to Iraq. For what it is worth, Narshakhī gives an answer
(the reign of al-Mahdī); see R. Frye, The History of Bukhara (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1954), 67–68.
11 See note 18.
12 For the size of the armies, which at their greatest may have been over 10,000 troops, see note 17.
13 See. L. Treadwell, “Notes on the Mint at Samarra,” in C. F. Robinson, ed., A Medieval Islamic
City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), 141–156 at 150–152.
14 Given the fate of al-Mustaʿīn, one should imagine that the governor was already hedging his bets.
262 Chase F. Robinson
us, then ordered two of his commanders to mop up what remained of the enemy
forces but decided against dispatching an army to march on Samarra.15
Where does all this material, so textured and detailed in its control of events,
come from? How do we know that of the unfortunate group of Khurāsānīs caught
up in the events, two pilgrims from Shāsh were amongst the first casualties of the
Samarran assault, or that Samarran soldiers, having been driven into the Tigris,
were struck down by fighters pre-positioned in gondola-like boats (shabbāras),
presumably requisitioned from the caliphal fleet, or that the robes bestowed upon
Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh to the commander Bundār were of four distinctive
types of textile? For all of this, the second siege of Baghdad during the second
Abbasid civil war, we have no fuller and more authoritative account than the one
preserved by al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), here a contemporary of the events that he nar-
rates.16 Born in 839, al-Ṭabarī first arrived in Baghdad in about 855, but he spent
much of the following 15 years or so in travel and study in Syria, Palestine, and
Egypt, taking up something like permanent residence in Baghdad in, or soon after,
870. We do not know if he was in the city during the fateful (near) year-long siege.
Whatever al-Ṭabarī’s own direct knowledge may have been, his sources were well
placed. For the events in question, which begin in Muḥarram of 251 (February or
March of 865), he draws on a mix of eyewitnesses and informants, sometimes
anonymously, other times quoting by name. The point applies both to his adopted
town of Baghdad and Samarra, but he is especially informed about the former: the
accounts describe the actions taken by Baghdad’s defenders far more than their
Samarran adversaries, or the impact of the civil war upon Samarra itself.
The quantity and quality of the material—a multitude of names, details of the
commanders’ and forces’ movements, specifics about the fortifications being
erected (including locations in the urban landscape), the exchange of messages,
the size of the armies,17 the exact dating of key events, and the issuing of bat-
tle orders—do not come at the expense of coherence or efficiency. The narra-
tive moves quickly in the months of Muḥarram and Ṣafar, building momentum,
propelled along by al-Ṭabarī’s regular and frequent dating: in some passages,
the reportage is almost daily. The effect is journalistic in its vividness, and on

15 The text explains things otherwise, but one is tempted to see this as a second indication that the
governor was playing both sides off each other.
16 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), iii, 1542–1645; for an English
translation, which is misleading in spots, G. Saliba, The Crisis of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1985) (The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XXXV),
34–113. Al-Ṭabarī is the basis for most later accounts; for a sample, see Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī
l-taʾrīkh (Beirut, 1982), vii, 139–157; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī taʾrīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam
(Beirut, ʿAṭā and ʿAṭā ed.), xii, 43–46; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya (Beirut, n.d.), xi, 7, who
tells the reader that al-Ṭabarī describes the battles at length.
17 The accounts include several numbers, and taken together they might imply a total force of 10,000
or so; for example, the army camped by the Shammāsiyya Gate was estimated by an observer at
2,000 men and 1,000 mounts. (As we all know, crowd sizes are amenable to exaggeration.) See
al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1558–1559 and, more generally, H. Kennedy, The Armies of the Caliphs:
Military and Society in the Early Islamic State (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 134–136.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 263
occasion it takes for granted the reader’s familiarity with the landscape of the
city.18 In these and other respects, the treatment of events contrasts sharply with
the compound and oft-inconsistent narratives of his non-contemporary history.19
Little wonder that accounts of the siege, which continue for some pages, have
been put to good use in reconstructing the history of Abbasid armies and pre-
Mongol Baghdad. It is what happened in the immediate aftermath of the miracu-
lous victory that occasions this article, however. “He (Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh)
granted safety to those [of the defeated] who requested it,” we read, “and ordered
Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd to compose a text (kitāb) in which he recounted the battle, and
to have it read out before the people of Baghdad in the congregational mosque.
A copy reads as follows.”20
Some 181 lines in the Leiden edition (11 pages of densely printed pages), the
copy (nuskha) that al-Ṭabarī possessed seems to have been very rare—indeed,
almost unique. I say almost because its introductory taḥmīd also survives in an
unedited copy of the Kitāb al-manẓūm wa-l-manthūr by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (d.
893), who pre-deceased al-Ṭabarī by a generation.21 Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr calls
this fragment a “taḥmīd by Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd about a victory.” As preserved by
al-Ṭabarī, the text is akin to what is often described as a public letter—an official
document intended for multiple addressees.22 Does it make sense to call it such?
A comparable text that belongs to a generation earlier, Aḥmad b. Yūsuf’s Risālat
al-khamīs, similarly intended for a large politico-military audience, bears the
name of the issuer (al-Maʾmūn) and its addressees (“to those who have entered
into a bayʿa of truth, supporters of true religion from amongst the Khurāsānīs,

18 “Work on the wall was completed on Thursday, the 21st of Muḥarram” (reading tisʿ for sabʿ). But
which wall, the one in the west or in the east? Presumably it was the massive one that described
the eastern flank of the city, which survived for centuries. For a description of this wall and other
siege-related buildings, see G. Le Strange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1900), 311–313; G. Makdisi, “The Topography of Eleventh Century
Bagdād: Materials and Notes (I),” Arabica 6 (1959): 178–197 at 178–179. For a map, M. Gordon,
C. F. Robinson, E. Rowson, and M. Fishbein, eds., The Works of al-Yaʿqūbī: An English Transla-
tion (Leiden: Brill, 2018), i, 66.
19 In one case, the author inserts himself in the narrative, explaining that he has eschewed details of
correspondence between al-Muʿtazz and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh; see al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii,
1553.
20 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1565, l. 7–1576, l. 14 (Ibrāhīm, ix, 296, l. 17–303, l. 7); the text is also
reproduced in A. Z. Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil al-ʿarab (Cairo, orig. 1937, multiple printings), iv,
237–245; al-Y. A. al-Sāmarrāʾī, Rasāʾil Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd wa-ashʿāruhu (Baghdad, 1971), 105–117.
21 Ikhtiyār al-manẓūm wa-l-manthūr, MS Dār al-kutub Adab, 581, f. 167a, l. 22—f. 167b, l. 16. I am
indebted to Shawkat Toorawa for securing a copy of these folios.
22 Research on aspects of oratory (especially, but not exclusively khuṭbas) is longstanding and active;
see, for some recent examples, T. Qutbuddin, Arabic Oration: Art and Function (Leiden: Brill,
2019); L. Jones, The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012); P. Walker, Orations of the Fatimid Caliphs: Festival Sermons of the
Ismaili Imams (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009); S. Dähne, Reden der Araber: Die politische ḫuṭba
in der klassischen arabischen Literatur (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2001). Less well
researched is the related problem of the public letter, for all its prominent role. For an example
that comes from the dīwān of al-Muntaṣir, see the Fragmenta Historicorum Arabicorum, ii, 558.
264 Chase F. Robinson
and other Muslims”). It calls itself a risāla.23 Our text, which comes without the
name of issuer or addressee, is called a kitāb (“text” or “document”). Because
it was manifestly intended to reach an audience of hundreds (or perhaps even
thousands),24 we may call it a “proclamation.”25 All the rest of the proclamation
(including one section that a sceptic might dismiss as superfluous),26 we owe
entirely to al-Ṭabarī, much as we owe almost entirely to him the striking details
of the siege itself.

The account
Let us imagine the scene. For weeks, the city has been mobilized to prepare
for a siege, with able-bodied men and women pressed into frenetic service to
strengthen its defences. The work in building the great eastern wall, which was
perhaps some six kilometres in length—excavating the alluvial mud, transporting
water, forming very rough blocks, demolishing and repurposing adjacent struc-
tures, and setting courses—must have been staggering. So, too, the trenches that
Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh had dug; like the defensive wall, one may have sur-
vived for generations.27 In the space of weeks, much of the eastern city, including
extramural areas, was transformed; so, too, the northern and western exposures of
the western city. Then, for days, there was an oscillating din of battle cries, chants,
and songs, orders shouted to the guards manning the walls, and to the teams load-
ing ballistas and other siege machines; threats and insults hurled across walls and
gates, all manner of hollering and yelling; barking dogs, nickering horses, braying
mules; the hammering of smiths, carpenters, and masons working weapons and
repairing engines and breaches in the walls and gates—all that and much more

23 Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil, iii, 317–334 at 317–318, on which see A. Arazi and A. Elad, “L’Épitre
à l’armée: al-Maʾmūn et la seconde Daʿwa (Première partie),” Studia Islamica 66 (1987): 27–70.
Conquest letters, whether called risālas or kitābs, are very common; eighth- and ninth-century
examples are plentiful in Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil; for some Buyid examples of inshāʾ, which
belong to Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābiʾ, K. Hachmeier, Die Briefe Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Ṣābiʾis (st. 384/994
H.H./A.D.) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2002), 97–98 and 235 (nuskhat kitāb anshaʾahu . . . ʿind
fatḥ).
24 Wadād al-Qāḍī (“Early Islamic State Letters: The Question of Authenticity,” in The Byzantine
and Early Islamic Near East I: Problems in the Literary Source Material, ed. A. Cameron and
L. Conrad [Princeton: Darwin Press, 1992], 215–275 at 216) aligns text and audience differently,
distinguishing between “epistle” (“letters written by one person and addressed to one person or a
group of people”) and “essay” (“written for a general audience”).
25 A point anticipated by Forstner (Das Kalifat des Abbasiden al-Mustaʿīn, 101) (“eine wohltönende
Verlautbarung”).
26 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1567, l. 10–1568 l. 2 (inclusive).
27 For a discussion, see J. Ahola and L. Osti, “Baghdad at the Time of al-Muqtadir,” in Crisis and
Continuity at the Abbasid Court: Formal and Informal Politics in the Caliphate of al-Muqtadir
(295–320/908–32), ed. M. van Berkel, N. M. El Cheikh, H. Kennedy, and L. Osti (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 221–238, at 224–226. For the tenting, trenches, and the two walls, al-Ṭabarī reports an
expenditure of 330,000 dirhams (Taʾrīkh, iii, 1551).
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 265
that is harder to imagine.28 And then, starting some time on the 19th of Ṣafar, after
the exultation of deliverance, an anxious stillness and relative quiet. The battle has
been won, but what, exactly, happened? And what will happen next? News and
rumours begin to circulate; criers announce that an address will be made; crowds
gather; a silence falls on those in the mosque, and it is broken by the basmala and
ammā baʿd.
The proclamation can be divided into four sections.
§1. (Leiden, iii, p. 1565, l. 7—p. 1568, l. 2; Ibrāhīm, ix, p. 296, l. 17—p. 298, l.
6; Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, f. 167a, l. 18—f. 167b, l. 16.) Following the basmala and
ammā baʿd, Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd begins with a 41-line exordium. “Praise be to God,
the Benefactor (al-munʿim) whose favor no one’s gratitude suffices.”29 This is a
taḥmīd, and it is an ambitious and revealing one, which moves from praise of God
to praise of His caliphs—keepers of the prophetic message, trustees of God’s mis-
sion, guides, and protectors. The vocabulary is Qurʾanic, and much of the imagery
martial: those who attack God’s truth are stymied by God and His instruments.
Syntax (especially parallelism) and loose rhyming do the work. Initially, active
participles that glorify God (al-munʿim, al-qādir, al-ʿazīz, al-ḥakam, al-nāṣir,
al-mālik, al-hādī, al-muqaddim) give way (the transition is marked by fa-hum)
to participles that describe His caliphs (al-mustaḥfiẓūn, al-umanāʾ, al-ḥāmilūn,
al-hādiyūn).30 “When they carry out jihad, God’s proof is with them; when they
make war, God decides in favor of victory; when an enemy rebels against them,
God’s sufficiency is a barrier before them and a stronghold for them,” he contin-
ues. God is one; His caliphs are many.
A continuing section, which moves out of the conditional, employs a quasi-con-
ditional syntax (“Whosever aggresses against them, he aggresses against the true
religion [al-dīn], which God strengthens and protects through them”). A series
of nominal sentences with parallel and rhyming predicates (manṣūra, maḥfūẓa,
dāfiʿa, ʿāliya) contrasts the caliphs’ divinely sanctioned armies with their way-
ward enemies. Yet another change in syntax (with initial predicates) serves to
emphasize the terrible fate those enemies invite: “Speedy will be God’s venge-
ance. . . . Made ready is God’s punishment.” This opening section begins to draw
to a close with a taṣliya:

May God’s prayers—perfect prayers, which yield His everlasting blessings—

be upon His chosen prophet, His favored messenger, who delivers [us] from

28 For some examples of the cacophony of battle, see al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1570–1572 (rāfiʿūn
aṣwātahum bi-l-tawaʿʿud . . . wa-shuʿāruhum al-takbīr . . .).
29 Cf., concerning letters, Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, Rusūm dār al-khilāfa, trans. E. Salem (Beirut: American
University of Beirut, 1977), 83 (“If the writer begins with information regarding a conquest or
religious issue, he will then invoke God through his attributes”).
30 The suspicion that Leiden’s singular (al-hādī) is to be emended to the plural is confirmed by Ibn
Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, f. 167b, l. 2 (intuited by Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil, iii, 238). This is not the only
place where his text improves upon al-Ṭabarī’s, as reconstituted by its editors. I am inclined to
think it is closer to the original, assuming there was a single original.
266 Chase F. Robinson
error and towards [true] guidance. . . . Praise be to God, recognizing how far
short our thanks fall from the extent of His munificence.

Here ends Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr’s version, while al-Ṭabarī’s continues for a fur-
ther nine lines of praise. There we have a “double” or “extended” taḥmīd, which
constitutes something like a coda, if I may.31
§2. (Leiden, iii, pp. 1568, ll. 3–14; Ibrāhīm, ix, p. 298, ll. 7–16.) The begin-
ning of a second section is signalled by a clever—almost teasing—employment
of syntactic postponement (taʾkhīr), which takes us back to the very first epithet
of God and so foregrounds a theocratic model that binds God to man, commander
to caliph, and subjects to caliphs—in stark (if implicit) contrast to the perfidy of
the Samarrans.

At the head of the caliph’s mission, the sword of his dynasty, the guardian of
his authority, the locus of his trust, the first of his allies in loyalty and counsel,
and defender of his rights, who undertakes the jihād against his enemies . . .
is Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, the client of the caliph, and a benefit (niʿma)
of God’s.32

This second section is brief because it is transitional: we are being moved from
the landscape of model, myth, and timeless constancy—above all, God’s belea-
guered but immutable truth—into what we might call its instantiated present.
Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd signals that move by introducing Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh,
the protagonist in the struggle. The introduction is effected not merely through
honorifics but by allusion to glorious moments of intersection between Abbasid
and Ṭāhirid history, when, according to God’s design, Ṭāhirid forefathers sup-
ported the forefathers of the (unnamed) caliph (amīr al-muʾminīn; khalīfa) in the
revolution (al-daʿwa al-ūlā) and the civil war between al-Maʾmūn and al-Amīn
(al-daʿwa al-thāniya).33 In sum, it is the commander, not the caliph, who will take
centre stage. He is about to re-enact the role played by previous generations of
Ṭāhirids in realizing mythic truths in history.
§3. (Leiden, iii, pp. 1568, l. 14–1576, l. 9; Ibrāhīm, ix, pp. 298, l. 17–303,
l. 2.) The third section—a detailed, almost blow-by-blow account of glorious

31 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1567, l. 9–1568, l. 2. On the taḥmīd in khuṭbas, see Qutbuddin, Arabic Ora-
tory, 72–74; the origins of the long taḥmīd in epistolary may lie in innovations made in the reign of
Hārūn by Aḥmad b. Yūsuf (see what follows); see J. K. S. Abu Safieh, “Umayyad Epistolography
with Special Reference to the Compositions Ascribed to ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib” (PhD disserta-
tion, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1982), 163.
32 Given that the identity of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh was scarcely in doubt, the effect was perhaps
not unlike that created by the announcer introducing one of the fighters in a boxing match: “And in
the red corner, a native of New York, New York, winner of 34 fights, all by knockout, pound-
for-pound the greatest fighter . . .”.
33 The text reads dawla. Recall that Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh is reported to have presented himself
at the city gates wearing Ṭāhir b. al-Ḥusayn’s armor; see note 14.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 267
victory—is the heart of the proclamation. Having honoured and prayed to (or for)
God, His caliphs and commander, and deploying Qurʾanic language that positions
caliphs and subjects into a covenantal vice of obedience, Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd makes
a second transition: from history to current-day events. The change is signalled
by a change of voice (to the second person) and reference to an earlier dispatch:
“You’ve already learned, in the caliph’s message that preceded [this one], about
the breakaway party (firqa) that strayed from the path of their God, abandoned
the inerrancy of their religion and showed ingratitude to the benefits of God and
His caliph.” Just as he drew out his introduction to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh,
so Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd now teases the listener again, forcing the audience to wait
as he compounds clause after clause, until he reveals to them what they already
know: the breakaway band consists of “the Turkic clients, who came to the aid of
the [mere] youth known as Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mutawakkil.” It is the first time
that mawālī (“clients”) occurs, a term that is given to contrast with the Qurʾanic
awliyāʾ, those who are steadfast in their loyalty to the caliph.34 The “caliph’s ear-
lier message” can scarcely be reconstructed in full, but the recapitulation as we
have it makes clear that it included news of al-Mustaʿīn’s flight to Baghdad and
the Turkic Central Asians’ bayʿa to al-Muʿtazz: the summary thus begins with
events that took place starting on or around 23 Muḥarram. Given this reference to
an earlier kitāb—presumably, also a proclamation—we might imagine an ongo-
ing project of spreading information/propaganda, which began with al-Mustaʿīn’s
arrival in the city.
The shift from recapitulation of old news to delivery of new news is signalled
by thumma: “Then these violators [of the oath] gathered a great host of atrāk and
maghāriba and their ilk . . . and they put at their head the man known as Abū
Aḥmad b. al-Mutawakkil, and marched in the direction of Baghdad’s east side.”
What we have now is a news dispatch intended for the audience of a besieged
city. Like other examples of propaganda, it is a mix of hyperbole, polemics, and
some genuine information—dates, times of day, loci of fighting (the Qaṭrabbul
and Shammāsiyya Gates especially), the names and feats of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
Allāh’s fearless commanders (Muḥammad b. Abī ʿAwn, Bundār b. Mūsā al-Ṭabarī,
ʿAbd Allāh b. Naṣr b. Ḥamza, and others). Naturally, specificity is asymmetric:
whereas his commanders are singled out for praise, those leading the Samarran
army go nameless. Over and over again the “faction that strayed from the path
of their God, abandoned the protection of their religion, ungrateful for the ben-
efits of God and the benefits of His caliph” were “called to the truth,” invited to
repent, and forewarned. And over and over again these “enemies of God” ignored
those appeals, obdurate and arrogant in their disobedience, killing Muslim and
non-Muslim alike, despoiling their lands, and making off with their possessions.
Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, sincerely and decisively executing the caliph’s and

34 Because it is used here in a derisory way, it contrasts with the technical sense used in the nomen-
clature of Samarran armies.
268 Chase F. Robinson
God’s will, leads the “faithful allies” (awliyāʾ) against the “partisans” (ashyāʿ)
and “breakaway party” (firqa).
§4. (Leiden, iii, p. 1576, ll. 9–13; Ibrāhīm, ix, p. 303, ll. 2–5.) The fourth and
very brief final section consists of a closing taḥmīd—“Praise be to God, suppres-
sor of errant evil-doers, rebels who break His covenant, dissenters who quit the
collectivity constituted by the people of His truth”—and a taṣliya.

Context, composition, and transmission

What sense can we make of this piece of official propaganda, this (premature)
celebration of victory (as we shall see) that glorifies God and His caliph, and, most
of all, the city’s governor? Because it was an official emission of the state, we can
begin by placing it into a documentary context.
Setting aside some exceptions that appear mainly on the margins (especially
Egypt and Khurāsān), the documentary record from the central Islamic lands dur-
ing the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods is meagre. By the ninth century, Bagh-
dad’s governing bureaus must have been producing mountains of documents,35
but little survives.36 There are any number of reasons why the survivors are so
rare, some common (climate-driven deterioration, re-use, the vicissitudes of
the landscapes of Samarra and Baghdad), others more noteworthy: episodes of
destruction occurred in the midst of the Samarra-period violence itself, when “the
dīwān was ransacked, and the tax registers were ripped up and thrown into the
fire.”37 Whatever the precise mix of variables, the result is that we are at the mercy
of quasi-literary narratives that we usually call histories, bureaucratic manuals,
and adab. The range of material in such sources is impressive: we have what
purport to be sermons and orations, proclamations, letters (especially those direct-
ing appointments, dismissals, military campaigns, negotiations, etc.), succession
texts, treaties, grants of safety—and much more besides. As far as the ninth- and
tenth-century sources are concerned, most of this material appears in fragmentary
form, abbreviated or epitomized either in the course of transmission or narration,
subordinated by compilers and authors to the imperatives of narration.38

35 For an overview, see M. van Berkel, “Reconstructing Archival Practices in Abbasid Baghdad,”
Journal of Abbasid Studies 1 (2014): 7–22.
36 Among the exceptions can be counted three near-contemporaneous Damascene papyri; see
N. Abbott, “Arabic Papyri of the Reign of Ğaʿfar al-Mutawakkil ʿala-llāh (A.H. 232–47/A.D.
847–61),” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 92 (1938): 88–135 and the
(mostly) still unpublished material from Herzfeld’s excavations in Samarra, on which see L. Rein-
fandt, “Administrative Papyri from the Abbasid Court in Samarra (Ad 836–892),” in Actes du
26e Congrès international de papyrologie, ed. P. Schubert (Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A., 2012),
639–645.
37 Fragmenta Historicorum Arabicorum, ii, 565.
38 There are important exceptions. To judge from their fidelity to the formal characteristics of extant
papyri, there are letters that appear to be reproduced in extenso. Some purport to come from a
secondary phase: thus ʿUmar II to ʿIyāḍ b. ʿUbayd Allāh, cited by al-Kindī, which starts with the
basmala + correspondent + addressee + salām/taḥmīd + ammā baʿd, and concludes with the salām
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 269
For the earliest stages in the tradition, questions of authorship, provenance,
and dating are usually impossible to pin down, which means that authenticity is
difficult or impossible to establish. “The orations of famous personalities may be
pure literary fiction,” as Jones put it,39 capturing what may be a consensus about
the first decades of Islam. Describing the same stage of the historiographic tradi-
tion, Noth said much the same thing about letters.40 By the middle decades of
the eighth century, the state bureaucracy having grown more sophisticated and
the court’s portfolio of communications more elaborate, the record changes. The
rise of Arabic epistolography and the emergence of a secretarial institution in
the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods are intertwined;41 we have corpora
of “authored” letters and related prose texts, now written in increasingly elabo-
rate styles, some of which have strong claims for authenticity.42 It is only in the
late eighth and early ninth centuries, however, that presumptive document and
preserving text begin to converge in date, as what Toorawa calls a “writerly”
culture emerged. Authored letters became common, preserved in several different
ways, not the least significant of which are historiographic compilations, notably
al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, and literary anthologies, notably Ibn Abī
Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr’s Kitāb al-manthūr wa-l-manẓūm. This scarcely means that authen-
ticity should be presumed. For example, serious doubts can be raised about several
specimens in the cluster of documentation (letters, speeches, Hārūn’s succession
text) that was occasioned during the civil war between al-Amīn and al-Maʾmūn.
Not so, this text, which, composed by a bureaucrat at the heart of the caliphal
machinery and copied into a work of history by a contemporary, dates from a
time when many of the most powerful of these deforming pressures had eased.
It betrays no anachronisms and is of a piece with other examples of chancellery
prose in this period, including some that belong to the author.
Baghdad, relatively late in what Wickham has called a period of “full economic
centralization” (770–870),43 was the focal point in an Iraqi web of patronage. This
is why state secretaries played a prominent role in that “writerly” culture. By the
middle decades of the ninth century, we have good evidence for the professionali-
zation of norms and styles, such as ps.-Ibn al-Mudabbir’s Risālat al-ʿAdhrāʾ and
al-Baghdādī’s vade mecum, “un aide-mémoire résumant l’essentiel de ce que les

and date of composition; see Yūsuf al-Kindī, Kitāb al-Wulāt wa-l-quḍāt (Beirut: al-Ābā, 1908
and Leiden: Brill, 1912), 336–337. Others purport to come from the earliest period: thus ʿUmar
I to al-Mughīra b. Shuʿba, which features, in addition, the name of the copyist; see al-Balādhurī,
Futūḥ al-buldān, 351. For a sample of originals, see Y. Rāğib, “Lettres arabes (I),” Annales Isla-
mologiques 14 (1978): 4–35.
39 Jones, The Power of Oratory, 33; for a survey of attitudes, Dähne, Reden der Araber, 1–6.
40 A. Noth (in collaboration with L. Conrad), The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Criti-
cal Study (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994), 76–87.
41 An efficient illustration of this is Jahshiyārī’s recapitulation of administrative and financial changes
ushered in by Hārūn, in which he includes the introduction of chancellery formulary (e.g. the
taṣliya); see his Kitāb al-Wuzarāʾ wa-l-kuttāb (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1938), 177.
42 See Al-Qāḍī, “Early Islamic State Letters.”
43 C. Wickham, Framing the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 10.
270 Chase F. Robinson
Secrétaires devaient savoir sur leur métier et donnant quelques exemples célèbres
de ‘beau style.’ ”44 Creatures of the court and its protocols,45 state secretaries
contributed to the torrent of poetry and prose that entertained private audiences
in the literary circles frequented by elites and “the refined Baghdadian middle
class.”46 In state service, they were tasked with drafting official correspondence
and, in the case of those at the highest levels, composing addresses and briefings
for ceremonial occasions, both large and small.47 The author of our proclama-
tion, Abū ʿUthmān Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd (d. after 871), poet, littérateur, and, starting
in 249,48 head of the Correspondence Bureau (dīwān al-rasāʾil),49 was one such
state secretary.
Born in Nahrawān to a family that could claim descent from dihqāns, and the
son of a Muʿtazilī father (Ḥumayd b. Saʿīd b. Baḥr), Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd was preco-
cious as a student and caustic as an adult, making and losing friends and lovers
within a circle of littérateurs that included poets both minor (Abū Hiffān) and
major (al-Buḥturī).50 Mocking verses occasioned by his appointment as head of
the dīwān al-rasāʾil in 249/863–864 have it that he left poverty for wealth.51 The
charge is banal: impoverished or indebted secretaries are something of a trope,52
and besides, there no was quicker shortcut to wealth than government service,
which gave the high-level functionary access to the rivers of revenue flowing
into Iraq: secretaries arrested, imprisoned, and mulcted is a leitmotif in historical

44 Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil, iv, 176–212; D. Sourdel, “Le «Livre des secrétaires» de ʿAbdallah
al-Bagdādī,” Bulletin d’études orientales 14 (1952–4): 115–153 at 116.
45 Thus we have “senior kuttāb” (mashāyikh al-kuttāb) gathered in front of al-Mutawakkil in special
garb; al-Shābushtī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt (Beirut, reprint of ʿAwwād ed.), 154–155.
46 I borrow the phrase from B. Gruendler, Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry: Ibn al-Rūmī and the
Patron’s Redemption (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 5.
47 A good illustration comes in the events surrounding the accession of al-Muntaṣir, when a group
of “commanders, scribes, notables, Shākiriyya, soldiers and others” gathered at the Jaʿfarī palace
(in Samarra), where the vizier Aḥmad b. al-Khaṣīb “read out to them a text, which informed them,
on the authority of the Commander of the Faithful, al-Muntaṣir” about the murder of his father by
Fatḥ—and Fatḥ’s execution. See al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1471.
48 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1514.
49 The first proper biographical notice of Saʿīd in a European language seems to be that of C. Huart,
“La poétesse Fadhl, scenes de moeurs sous les Abbassides,” Journal Asiatique (1881): 5–43 at
11–36; the fullest biography can be found in al-Sāmarrāʾī, Rasāʾil, 5–61; much more briefly, see J.
Bencheikh, “Les secrétaires poètes et animateurs de cénacles aux IIe et IIIe siècles de l’Hégire,”
Journal Asiatique (1975): 266–315, at 308–310; S. Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr and Arabic
Writerly Culture: A Ninth-century Bookman in Baghdad (London and New York: Routledge Cur-
zon, 2005), 117–118; M. Zakeri, Persian Wisdom in Arabic Garb (Leiden: Brill, 2006), i, 29–30
and EI (2), s.v. (W. Heinrichs).
50 For examples of the gossiping of the kuttāb class, see Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī
(Beirut, ʿAbbās ed.), xviii, 111–121, including hijāʾ directed against Abū Hiffān (d. ca. 870) (cf.
Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil, iv, 249–250).
51 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1514; al-Ṣūlī, Kitāb al-Awrāq, 455. For his generosity, Ibn Khallikān,
Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. I. ʿAbbās (Beirut, 2013), iii, 79–80.
52 For one example, see al-Jahshiyārī, Kitāb al-Wuzarāʾ wa-l-kuttāb, 198.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 271
accounts of this period.53 Himself a Shuʿūbī, and immoderate in his hostility to ʿAlī
and in his embrace of the Sunni cause, he wrote at least one pro-Persian work but
was known in literary circles especially for his love for the poetess Faḍl al-Shāʿira
and his shameless plagiarism; one of his critics was Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr himself.
In one case of plagiarism (pinching Faḍl’s verse), he openly admitted to it.54 All
in all, the consensus of modern scholarship is less than flattering: for Bencheikh,
his love poetry suffers from a “dispiriting mediocrity,” though others are more
generous.55 The original sources often show grudging or ambivalent approval.56
That he was recognized in his own time as a model stylist is clear enough: pieces
of his are cited as exemplary not only by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, but by another
contemporary, Ibn Qutayba (d. 889).57 A few generations later, Abū al-Faraj
al-Iṣfahānī (d. ca. 970) identified him as a “secretary, poet and epistolographer.”58
Much less has survived than he seems to have produced. He himself speaks of
“my collected letters” (rasāʾilī al-mudawwana),59 and Ibn al-Nadīm, writing in
987–988, credited him with a dīwān of epistles and another (perhaps slighter)
of poetry.60 Neither survives as such. In 1937, Ṣafwat published 36 pieces of
his prose, many fragmentary; in 1971, Sāmarrāʾī published 43, along much the
same lines. (Especially in Sāmarrāʾī’s case, several of the attributions appear to
be optimistic.) A mixture of official and unofficial material, the great majority of
Sāmarrāʾī’s pieces fall into one or another epistolary genre, e.g., letters of felicita-
tion or congratulation (tahnīʾa), condolence (taʿziya), counsel or advice (waṣiyya),
and apology (iʿtidhār), including some for Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh.61 The for-
mulaicness that explains Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd’s modest stature as a poet may have
been an advantage within the bureaucracy: the small corpus of prose that survives
seems to work within established genres and betrays a fair amount of repetition.
Derivative and reliable, rather than gifted and unpredictable, he could be called
upon by the court to draft correspondence and documents.

53 Of the many examples, see al-Shabushtī, Kitāb al-Diyārāt, 122–123.

54 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ (Cairo, 1956), 426; Ibn al-Sāʿī, Consorts of the Caliphs:
Women and the court of Baghdad, ed. S. Toorawa (New York: New York University Press, 2015),
70–71; Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, 46 and 117–118.
55 Heinrichs (“Smooth and elegant”); al-Sāmarrāʾī, Rasāʾil, 46–61.
56 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist (London, 2014), i, 384.
57 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār (Beirut, reprint of Cairo, 1925), iii, 63 (al-taʿāzī wa-mā yutamath-
thal bi-hi fīhā).
58 Al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī, xviii, 111.
59 Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ, 427.
60 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, i, 384; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, iii, 80. Many of the speci-
mens pulled together by al-Sāmarrāʾī (Rasāʾil, 74–118) are fragmentary, and one is reconstructed
by the editor from multiple sources. Given the occasional references and allusions (e.g. the Naw-
ruz felicitation to al-Ḥasan b. Makhlad [84–86], taʿziyas to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh [92–93 and
94–95], a victory letter for Waṣīf [95–97; see what follows], and, inevitably, a letter to Faḍl [104–
105], more could be done to date the pieces and so reconstruct, at least in part, his literary career.
61 Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʿil, 237–265. Is it possible that his Sunni enthusiasms also recommended
him to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh? See G. Lecomte, Ibn Qutayba: L’homme, son oeuvre, ses ideés
(Damascus: Catholic Printing Press, 1965), 356–358.
272 Chase F. Robinson
So it was in his capacity as head of the dīwān al-rasāʾil that Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd
penned the proclamation, having accompanied al-Mustaʿīn from Samarra. We
can narrow down to a handful of days when he drafted it. In proposing that he
“wrote it on Saturday, the 7th of Ṣafar of 251,” al-Ṭabarī’s text is obviously cor-
rupt: the proclamation itself mentions the date of the arrival of Samarran forces at
the Qaṭrabbul Gate on the 18th of Ṣafar; it also alludes to events thereafter. One
solution was proposed as long ago as 1937, when Ṣafwat emended khalawna for
baqīna; Saliba and Heinrichs followed suit.62 But the result (the 24th of Ṣafar) is
doubly problematic. For one thing, it is not a Saturday. For another, if we can be
fairly certain that the battle was won on the 18th and 19th, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
Allāh would scarcely have waited five or six days to spread the news of near-
miraculous victory: the situation was far too precarious for that. The solution may
be to emend the original’s li-sabʿ khalawna to li-tisʿ baqīna (both being typical
scribal errors), which takes us to the 21st or 22nd, a Saturday and Sunday. Given
the nature and length of the proclamation, I take “he wrote it” to mean “completed
writing it.” Since the military situation was fluid and news presumably confusing,
we might guess that it was only late on the 19th or even early on the 20th, when
the scale of the victory became clear to the Baghdadis, that he began the work of
drafting.
We also know where the proclamation was made public. According to al-Ṭabarī’s
text, it was read out “in its [Baghdad’s] congregational mosque,” which in this
context means the congregational mosque in the Ruṣāfa quarter, which lay on
the eastern bank of the Tigris. It was there, in Muḥammad b ʿAbd Allāh’s palace,
that al-Mustaʿīn had made his residence after arriving from Samarra. He prob-
ably was not given much of a choice: his situation may well have amounted to
house arrest.63 It is difficult to imagine that a document of this significance and
impact would have been delivered at a single mosque, however. In this period,
we know that major announcements were made in (at least) the two congrega-
tional mosques, one in the western city, the other in the eastern.64 Accordingly,

62 Ṣafwat, Jamharat rasāʾil, iv, 245, n. 3; Saliba, The Crisis of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, 58, note 109;
Heinrichs, s.v. “Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd” alike.
63 See the Fragmenta Historicorum Arabicorum, ii, 577; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1542; cf. the col-
ourful report that has the caliph and his entourage taking a “light craft” (ḥarrāqa) prepared by
Maysān, his [chief] boatman (al-Ṣūlī, Kitāb al-Awrāq, 446), which also features in some mocking
verses (al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1540–1541).
64 Thus al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1645 (the accession of al-Muʿtazz). Ahola and Osti (“Baghdad at the
Time of al-Muqtadir,” 231–233) can identify another 15 or so active mosques in this period, a
handful of what must have been many more. Apparently, it was only in the tenth century that the
number of congregational mosques expanded significantly; see P. Wheatley, The Places Where
Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2001), 274. Cf. Umayyad Egypt, where edicts were read out in parish
churches; see M. S. A. Mikhail, From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics
after the Arab Conquest (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 148.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 273
we might imagine that multiple mosques were involved,65 and, as it happens, that
is exactly what at least one source tells us.66 Who delivered the proclamation we
do not know, although we are entitled to assume that it was a khaṭīb employed
in the mosques in question. One may imagine that it was read with a stentorian
delivery and, depending on the passage in question, in a tone that ranged from
impressive gravity to mocking outrage. It must have been riveting and engaging
to hear, as we shall see. One may speculate about whether Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr
or al-Ṭabarī, both contemporaries, were present in the Ruṣāfa mosque, which was
not far from al-Ṭabarī’s residence-to-be on the eastern side of the city. Whatever
the case, given its length and complexity, we can probably exclude the possibility
that the proclamation was transcribed or memorized simultaneously by a member
of the audience.67
How did al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr secure their copies? Since they
were contemporaries of the events, we do not have to account for much transmis-
sion history.68 Setting aside the relatively minor textual variants between the two,
we can follow several speculative paths. Presumably, at least one copy would
have been made for safekeeping in the dīwān’s archives,69 Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd’s
workplace, and to these al-Ṭabarī may well have had access, via, for example,
the family of the vizier ʿUbayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā b. Khāqān, himself a man of liter-
ary tastes.70 Al-Ṭabarī, who could and did tap into a network of informants that
included men of state, bureaucrats, performers, and many more besides, may have
received it directly from Saʿīd himself, whom he, as others, cites elsewhere as an
informant.71 So, too, for Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, who belonged to Saʿīd’s network of

65 Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy, 155–159; H. Munt, “The Official Announcement of an

Umayyad Caliph’s Successful Pilgrimage to Mecca,” in The Hajj: Collected Essays, ed. L. Porter
and L. Saif (The British Museum, 2013), 15–20 at 17.
66 Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, xii, 46.
67 Cf. P. Crone and M. Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 117 (on the letter of al-Walīd II) and Yūsuf b.
al-Qāsim’s speech (in the note that follows).
68 Cf. a speech given in 170/786, composed and delivered by the secretary, Yūsuf b. al-Qāsim, on
the occasion of Hārūn’s succession, which is preserved in al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 600–601; Dähne,
Reden der Araber, 128–131, who considers it to be authentic, suggests that it was passed down
within Yūsuf b. al-Qāsim’s secretarial family.
69 Van Berkel, “Archiving.”
70 On al-Ṭabarī’s informants and perspective more generally, see M. Gordon, “The Samarran Turkish
Community of Samarra in the Taʾrikh al-Tabari,” in Al-Tabari, ed. H. Kennedy (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 2008), 237–268 at 246; Idem, “The Khāqānid Families of the Early ʿAbbasid
Period,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (2001): 236–255 at 244–245.
71 Revealing examples include al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1637 (where Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd reveals knowl-
edge of a secret meeting with ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṭāhir) and iii, 1472–1473 (the bayʿa to al-Muntaṣir);
see also al-Ṣūlī, Kitāb al-Awrāq, 476 (where Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd recounts, on the authority of his
patron, Aḥmad b. al-Khaṣīb, the abdications of al-Muʿtazz and al-Muʾayyad). On al-Kindī’s and
al-Balawī’s access and handling of a document from a few years later, see M. Bonner, “Ibn Ṭūlūn’s
jihad: The Damascus Assembly of 269/883,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 130 (2010):
573–605.
274 Chase F. Robinson
writers and poets. In fact, since he was something of Saʿīd’s “frenemy,” a reason-
able assumption is that he got it from the man himself.
There is yet another possibility. Might copies (perhaps partial) have been
distributed around the city? We have cases when political news in Samarra and
Baghdad was posted on city walls and thoroughfares. At least sometimes, what
resulted was something of a public debate carried out in writing. In his entry
for 255, al-Ṭabarī reports that the “populace” (ʿāmma) wrote “notices” (or “leaf-
lets”; riqāʿ) that they posted in the “congregational mosque and the streets.” The
text that he then cites—on the authority of “someone who claims to have read
one such notice”—is predictably short but surprisingly formal. It turns out that
the notices were effective in attracting the attention of the mawālī, who, having
read them, were at pains to explain themselves; their objections lead the caliph,
al-Muhtadī, to issue a public letter of his own. Having heard the letter, the mawālī
began to respond, only to be told that their response should come in the form of a
letter to the caliph! Since their objections allude to matters that go unmentioned
in al-Ṭabarī’s quoted text, it is fair to assume that the original posts were of some
length.72
Access to narrative material is one thing; deliberate inclusion in a work of lit-
erature is another. As I noted earlier, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr reproduced the taḥmīd
as a specimen of victory rhetoric; whatever his politics, he presumably chose it
because of its exemplary or notable style. Al-Ṭabarī had philological chops as
well, and one presumes that he found the piece as attractive as Ibn Abī Ṭāhir
Ṭayfūr did. But he was also a very keen observer of Abbasid political life, and
it strikes me as inadequate to imagine that he reproduced this long and detailed
piece merely for its bravura. Another reason, surely, is that it taught lessons. For
within a matter of weeks—by the end of Rabīʿ I (early May), we read—a del-
egation from Samarra had delivered an overture to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh;73
back-and-forth fighting around the city would drag on through the summer and
early fall, but by the beginning of Dhū al-Qaʿdā (late November), the city was
capitulating. The siege succeeded, and the ever-faithful Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh
betrayed al-Mustaʿīn for his rival, al-Muʿtazz. Al-Mustaʿīn was given false assur-
ances and would die the following year. What we have, then, is both tragedy
(the implosion of the Abbasid house), and dramatic irony, which would not have
escaped any reader of al-Ṭabarī’s text.74 For the reader who knows his history,
the proclamation documents Samarran politics at its most tragic and treacherous.
Marsham has shown that al-Ṭabarī’s narratives on the accession of al-Mustaʿīn
betray an unsympathetic attitude towards his regime, which, at least in part, may
be explained by the vicissitudes of patronage.75 Not only that: insofar as serial

72 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1795–1797; the text starts with the basmala and taṣliya and ends with a
taṣliya.
73 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1594.
74 For a summary, see Forstner (Das Kalifat des Abbasiden al-Mustaʿīn), 131–156.
75 Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy, 290–291 (al-Ṭabarī was the tutor of Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd
Allāh b. al-Khāqān, son of the vizier).
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 275
betrayals and disposable bayʿas characterize the political chaos of the period,
there could scarcely have been a more telling episode for al-Ṭabarī’s attention:
after all, covenant is arguably the single most powerful theme of his work.76 Since
the account revolves around a Ṭāhirid, one is also entitled to think that the effect
created by the interweaving of historical narrative and proclamation text—that
dramatic irony—gives voice to the author’s attitude towards the Ṭāhirids in par-
ticular, or, more precisely, his judgment on the terms of the Ṭāhirid-Abbasid mar-
riage of convenience. The text makes much of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh’s loyalty
to the (Abbasid) institution of the caliphate, but virtually nothing of his loyalty to
the person of al-Mustaʿīn. What lesson might al-Ṭabarī have seen in this? Three
generations into their marriage, the balance of power was clearly shifting from the
Abbasids to the Ṭāhirids: while al-Mustaʿīn’s political capital lay almost entirely
in his family, which meant that he was as strong as family rivals were weak,
Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh’s lay in both reputation and men. The Ṭāhirid-Abbasid
marriage had worked for Baghdad when the Ṭāhirids remained in the provinces.
It stopped working in the 860s, as al-Ṭabarī showed. The author put his pen down
about 35 years after Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh’s death in 867. A good 20 years
after the Ṭāhirid peril had passed, other perils (in Egypt and the East) were now
emerging. It was as good a time as any to reckon with the Ṭāhirids’ role in the
Abbasid caliphate. What better way to prompt the reader to such a reckoning than
to reproduce the proclamation, packed as it is with fulsome praise for Muḥammad
b. ʿAbd Allāh, passionate pleas for community and unity, and bitter imprecations
hurled at the disloyal?

The power of persuasion

One might characterize our proclamation as a product of a secretary’s literary vir-
tuosity, in that sense a stepping stone on the road that starts with seventh-century
oratory and reaches its apogee in Buyid inshāʾ. In that vein, much could be said
about particular features of style (assonance, rhyme, parallelism, chiasmus, and
much more besides),77 not to mention lexicon, especially the handling of Qurʾanic
material.78 I shall set such questions aside and focus briefly on the question of
audience and message.
For whom was Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd writing? Given the literary culture in which
he was operating, the narrowest answer is that he was writing for a patron. It is

76 Thus R. S. Humphreys, “Qurʾanic Myth and Narrative Structure in Early Islamic Historiography,”
in Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity, ed. F. M. Clover and R. S. Humphreys (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 271–290; U. Martensson, “Discourse and Historical Analy-
sis: The Case for al-Ṭabarī’s History of the Messengers and Kings,” Journal of Islamic Studies
16 (2005): 287–331; T. El-Hibri, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun
Caliphs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
77 For a useful survey in the khuṭba genre, see Dähne, Reden der Araber, 171–209.
78 See, for example, the discussion in A. F. L. Beeston, Samples of Arabic Prose in Its Historical
Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 14–18.
276 Chase F. Robinson
the protagonist in the drama, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, who should be credited
with commissioning the proclamation, rather than al-Mustaʿīn, who is given vir-
tually no role and is never mentioned by name. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, as the
sources regularly emphasize, was as generous a patron as he was powerful as a
political figure; it was the governor, not the caliph, who wielded effective power
in Baghdad in 251 AH (865 CE), having been in power for over a decade.79
“No one was more fearsome to al-Mustaʿīn’s followers than the master (ṣāḥib) of
Khurāsān,” according to al-Yaʿqūbī.80 One may ask if Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh
had something personal to prove since he may have been familiar with a lengthy
letter written under his grandfather’s name and sent to al-Maʾmūn, which was
occasioned by Ṭāhir’s victorious siege and the capitulation of al-Amīn’s Bagh-
dad.81 That Saʿīd knew the history of Baghdad’s capitulation (including, presum-
ably, the relevant documents) is surer: after all, he transmits some of it on his
father’s authority.82 Be this as it may, the patron is to be praised, and so he is. §2
and §3 of the proclamation are a paean to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh. His loyalty
is underscored by the sobriquet “the client of the commander of the faithful”; he is
ubiquitous in the proclamation’s reportage: besieged by God’s enemies, he is for-
bearing and strategically brilliant, anticipating the enemy’s movements, fortifying
where fortification is needed, and dispatching commanders. As we have seen,
al-Mustaʿīn is invisible; while the generic “caliphs” appear regularly in the plural,
we are being given to understand that Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh was fighting for
the institution of the caliphate. On this reading, Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd was doing far
more than praising his patron: he was positioning the governor and the Ṭāhirid
clan as stalwart defenders of the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, a position that con-
veniently left open the possibility that Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh might also ally
himself with that other member of the Abbasid house, al-Muʿtazz. In sum, Saʿīd
b. Ḥumayd was doing the governor’s bidding.
Of course, Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd’s was not an audience of one. Nor is the proclama-
tion devoted wholly to praising or even positioning his patron. The proclamation
was intended for delivery in mosques filled with people; drafted by the head of
the chancellery, it would have been received as an official emission from the city’s
ruling institution. Our evidence for Abbasid religio-political discourse is typically
what one might call “intramural,” produced by and for reception within the politi-
cal elite. In this case, the setting was emphatically public and the audience must

79 A celebrated patron and poet in his own right, and, along with his brother ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAbd
Allāh, the leading figure of that third generation of Ṭāhirid patrons; see M. Kaabi, Les Ṭāhirides:
étude historico-littéraire de la dynastie des Banū Ṭāhir b. al-Ḥusayn au Ḫurāsān et en Iraq aux
IIIème s. de l’Hégire/IXème s. J.C. (Paris, 1983).
80 Al-Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh, ii, 604.
81 That letter was about the defeat of a caliph who had broken the oath of allegiance, and his proc-
lamation in 251 was about the stunning defeat of another caliph who had broken the oath of
allegiance. See al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 926–930. Credited to al-Madāʾinī, the text has it that “Ṭāhir
wrote to al-Maʾmūn about the victory,” but one is entitled to wonder who actually authored it. It is
not clear to me why Jones (The Power of Oratory, 148) calls this a “speech.”
82 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 934.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 277
have been relatively heterogeneous: members of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh’s
entourage, some steadfast in support, others presumably vacillating; work-for-
pay, opportunistic commanders and tribal chiefs, along with their retinues and
kinsmen; and, perhaps, throngs of city folk, whose nerves had to be settled and
energies replenished.83 In the midst of civil war that occasioned frantic fortifi-
cation, deliberate flooding in and around the city, and the panicked recruitment
of fickle irregulars as defenders against professional armies, the main purpose
of the proclamation is obvious: it was to rouse or solidify support from among
that audience. A reflex triggered by political and military crisis, its charge came
in the heartening news it was celebrating and the elevated register of language
that delivered it. By way of conclusion, I shall sketch out an explanation for that
charge. It is highly provisional and, given the nature of the evidence, necessarily
inferential.
Because the project of rousing and solidifying support is in part psychologi-
cal, the truism that orations are designed to move an audience has particular rel-
evance.84 I have already mentioned two especially obvious instances (in §2 and
§3) when Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd appears to tease the crowd, delaying for maximum
effect the delivery of the very information that it knew was coming. There are oth-
ers. The most striking feature of §1 is the extended taḥmīd, which in the circum-
stances must have served to focus attention and build tension for an assembling
or newly assembled crowd.85 §3 is peppered with passages that imply different
kinds of audience engagement: the heaping of praise and abuse (often through the
serial use of apposition); the winking deployment of sobriquets (e.g. “the [mere]
youth known as Abū ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mutawakkil”); perhaps most important, the
shift into second person, and the (breathless) blow-by-blow reportage about the
governor’s and caliph’s startling victory and the humiliating defeat of the Samar-
rans. Given that the text was composed for oral delivery to an expectant audi-
ence, these (and other) passages should be understood as moments—moments in
a performance designed and uttered so as to elicit audience response: attention;
excitement, outrage, pleasure, relief.86

83 Cf. the crowds, armed and otherwise, that gathered in and around the congregational mosque on
the west side of the city a year later; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1663.
84 An example from Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd’s atelier is a letter from al-Mutawakkil to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
Allāh, which was drafted by Aḥmad b. al-Khaṣīb in Muḥarram of 248 (March 862). It notifies its
audience of Waṣīf’s campaign against the Byzantines, and its purpose, as is frequently the case
with jihād khuṭbas and letters, was to galvanize action: “Write to your officials in your districts
with the text of this, the Caliph’s letter, ordering them to read it out to the Muslims under their com-
mand, and so inciting and enthusing them to undertake jihād, and telling them about the rewards
that God gives to those who do so.” See al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1485; Fragmenta Historicorum
Arabicorum, ii, 558.
85 Compare, for example, the length of the taḥmīds in addresses, both given in not entirely dissimilar
circumstances, by al-Amīn and Ṭāhir; see al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 931, 932. (Neither, of course, may
be preserved in full.)
86 Whereas my argument is inferential, Jones (The Power of Oratory, 232–256, “The Audience
Responds”) can adduce positive evidence; see also Dähne, Reden der Araber, 165–170.
278 Chase F. Robinson
What was the point of eliciting such affects? If moving one’s audience is in the
nature of oration, enthusing this particular audience was imperative. The task was
to translate those feelings into political action, by which I mean the consent and
compliance necessary to save the city. In understanding this translation, we can
usefully distinguish between two complementary techniques. By “implicating,”
I mean generating and capturing those feelings of attention, excitement, outrage,
pleasure, and relief: the building of tension, the (virtual) call and response, the
praise and abuse, the recounting of deliverance and victory. The moments were
implicating because crowd and speaker—and, by extension, the patron he repre-
sented—were conjoined in a shared performance, which was curated (if I may)
in public space (mosques) that the patron, ultimately, controlled. Disposed by
this shared experience—“softened up,” one might say, by participating in per-
formance—the crowd was also subject to persuasion. By “persuasion,” I mean
the deployment of rhetoric in its broadest sense: not just the use of high-register
chancellery language infused with Qurʾanic language (the proclamation wraps
its argument for adherence to the bayʿa—an institution weakened by the abdica-
tion—within the very language of the bayʿa itself); or structure, be it at the level
of sentence (such as affirmation and repetition) or section (such as the unfolding
logic of §1–§4). I also mean an even larger programme of conjuring, remember-
ing, and inspiring, such as is delivered by the conflation of present crisis and time-
less archetype, the latter ultimately based upon a theology and a prophetology.
The rhetoric had work to do because the argument for loyalty was exacting. If
the proclamation has a keystone sentence, it is this: “God has made His religion
a mercy for His servants, His caliphate a protection for His religion, and obedi-
ence to His caliphs an absolute obligation (farḍan wājiban) for the entirety of the
community.”87 The sentence is key because it conjoins the principles and polari-
ties that power the argument: mercy/reciprocity, loyalty/right belief vs. disloyalty/
sin, harmony/community vs. disunity/violence. God being above all merciful, as
Izutsu wrote, man

owes everything, his very existence and subsistence, to the boundless mercy
of God. This means that he owes Him the duty of being grateful for His good-
ness which is being shown him at every moment of his life. A Kāfir is a man
who, having thus received God’s benevolence, shows no sign of gratitude in
his conduct, or even acts rebelliously against his Benefactor.

That Izutsu could summarize so much of the proclamation’s logic shows just how
Qurʾanic the proclamation’s logic is.88 But the exigencies of civil war required
tapping especially deeply into the Qurʾan’s reservoir of moral demands. De Gifis
has identified “God’s favor” as the most pervasive Qurʾanic motif in what she

87 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh iii, 1565.

88 T. Izutsu, Ethico-religious Concepts in the Qurʾān (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2002 repr.), 120.
 Crisis and Caliphate in the Spring of 865 279
calls the “wartime discourse” of the conflict of al-Amīn and al-Maʾmūn.89 There,
as here, the concept of covenant reigns.
One may recall that §1 begins by proposing that God is “the benefactor
(al-munʿim) whose favor no one’s gratitude (shukr) suffices,” and that §2 begins
with that clever bit of syntax that aligns God, caliph, and Muḥammad b. ʿAbd
Allāh, who is identified as “God’s favor” (niʿma). What we have here is an evoca-
tion of a Qurʾanic model of patronage and reciprocity that is grounded in covenant:
God’s mercy—and, by extension, that of His agents—is an investment that elicits
returns. Relevant Qurʾanic passages abound, the most apposite of which may be
3:103, which instructs believers to “hold fast to the rope of God,” remembering
his “favor.” As Qurʾan 46:15 puts it: “Arouse me that I may be thankful for your
favor that you conferred upon me and my parents” (awziʿnī an ashkura niʿmataka
allatī anʿamta ʿalayya wa-ʿalā wālidayya). This and other verses allude to the
primordial covenant that binds God to mankind, which is a Qurʾanic leitmotif:
ʿahd and mīthāq together appear some 54 times, but the concept is developed else-
where too, not least of all in 7:172–173, which is something of a locus classicus
for the Sufi tradition. “Am I not your Lord? Yes, we testify!” (balā shahidnā). At
the very dawn of creation, the children of Adam acknowledged God’s oneness and
sovereignty. The pattern that it triggers thus renews, with each prophet and each
caliph (through the bayʿa), that assertion. Man owes gratitude to God, and God’s
favour signals that the Baghdadis and fissiparous atrāk now owe it to Muḥammad
b. ʿAbd Allāh.
As the “keepers” of the prophetic message, “trustees” of God’s mission, and
“guides” to salvation, the caliphs conform to early Abbasid norms. But here the
caliphs are no legislators, much less symbols of the community of believers, as
they function in later, classical constructions of the caliphate. Nor is there any talk
of sunna (prophetic or caliphal), much less law, either by way of constraining or
manifesting caliphal authority. Above all, the caliphate is a defence (ʿiṣma), and
the caliphs, supported by their “parties” (ashyāʿuhum) and “allies” (awliyāʾ), fight
on behalf of God’s religion and God’s people. The atrāk are “enemies of God”
because they have broken their covenant with al-Mustaʿīn and so with God Him-
self, thus triggering war. The bayʿa is no mere transaction that can be reversed; it
is a mode of confession. Proper belief, community, and loyalty to the caliph are
thus coextensive. “In holding firm to him [the caliph] there is soundness in reli-
gious convictions (al-adyān) and preservation of the favor they receive” (biqāʾ
niʿmatihim).90 By contrast, “He who opposes (or attacks) them [the caliphs],
opposes the religion which He has strengthened and protected through them.”91
To break the oath of loyalty (bayʿa) to the caliph is thus nothing less than apos-
tasy—“leaving the religion of God and quitting oneself of his Prophet, and the

89 V. De Gifis, Shaping a Qurʾānic Worldview: Scriptural Hermeneutics and the Rhetoric of Moral
Reform in the Caliphate of al-Maʾmūn (London: Routledge, 2014), 50–70.
90 Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, iii, 1569–1570.
91 Ibid., 1566.
280 Chase F. Robinson
inviolability of [their] possessions and women,” language that finds itself in the
contemporaneous bayʿa texts, as Marsham documents.92
A century earlier, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ was concerned to theorize loyalty to the
caliphs by balancing the need for order with the danger of blind obedience, pro-
posing what Joe Lowry calls a distinction between “interpretable and non-inter-
pretable spheres of religious law.”93 The term dīn, for Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, denotes
a mode of divine direction that complements reason (ʿaql) and transcends both
law and politics. Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd had no such concern and was unencumbered
by such subtlety. Dīn for him much more closely resembles its principal Qurʾanic
usage: in no small part because it can be “sundered” (Q 6:159), because it can be
changed or replaced, and so spread corruption in the land (Q 40:26), so must it
be fought for (as in Q 8:39). For God, as Qurʾan 9:33 has it, “Is He who sent His
messenger with guidance and the religion of truth (dīn al-ḥaqq) in order to make
it prevail over all religion.” Caliphs thus follow the Prophet in prosecuting jihād
against unbelievers who have sundered the community by breaking the oath of
loyalty.
In a political culture where rituals of succession had been grossly devalued
by coerced abdication and murder, the oath may seem like a curious place to
make one’s stand.94 But it is hard to see that Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd or Muḥammad b.
ʿAbd Allāh had an alternative. Surely exigency goes some way towards explain-
ing things, but there was no use in invoking takfīr unless it was thought to have
the prospect of gaining some purchase. The economy of benefit and gratitude was
not merely moral or discursive. It had become baldly and transparently financial:
patrons delivered (and were extorted for) pecuniary benefits to their clients; when
a caliph received the oath of allegiance, the money was supposed to flow. The
money necessary to purchase loyalty may or may not have run out, but there
can be no doubt that it was running very low. The currency of rhetoric, by con-
trast, was not yet completely devalued—provided that it was effective enough to
inspire.95

92 Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy, 294–308.

93 J. Lowry, “The First Islamic Legal Theory: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ on Interpretation, Authority and the
Structure of the Law,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 128 (2008): 25–40.
94 Thus Bonner found it striking that Ibn Ṭūlūn would invoke jihād against al-Muwaffaq (“Every-
one could agree, then as now, that ingratitude, rejection of kinship ties, and violation of oaths are
terrible things, but they seem unusual as casus belli and a basis for jihad”); see his “Ibn Ṭūlūn’s
jihad,” 594.
95 I am grateful to Matthew Gordon and Anna Akasoy for commenting on drafts of this article.
15 People Versus Books1
Sarah Bowen Savant

One of the greatest calamities is taking texts as shaykhs.

Ibn Jamāʿa d. 733/1333

Verifying past knowledge

It is an exciting time to be thinking about Arabic book history, as many ques-
tions are now being re-framed and addressed in ways that speak to a wider field
of scholarly investigation. These questions concern, for example, the arguably
scant material evidence for books up until roughly the eleventh century CE, the
non-survival of books treating important topics, the great variability of witnesses
to individual works, and the ways that recycling of parts of prior books operated
across time and place. Such questions, which query the very nature of “the book,”
are relevant for the first four Islamic centuries, but also for later periods.2 By

1 This chapter represents a first attempt to interpret substantial data generated with support from
the European Research Council (ERC; KITAB, grant #772989) and in partnership with the Qatar
National Library, through the Digital Sira Project. The data is a joint creation, and its interpretation
also something of a shared exercise. I would like to thank especially Abdul Rahman Azzam, Mathew
Barber, R. Kevin Jaques, Sohail Merchant, Ryan Muther, Lorenz Nigst, Aslisho Qurboniev, Maxim
Romanov, Masoumeh Seydi, David Smith, Gowaart Van Den Bossche, and Peter Verkinderen. The
data, the roles of the projects, and the individuals within them, are described in more detail in
the appendix to this chapter. I would also like to thank James Harris, Konrad Hirschler, Christian
Lange, and Paula Caroline Manstetten for comments that improved the chapter.
2 I am referring to a move beyond the study of textual transmission narrowly. Such important ques-
tions are now broached partially through case studies for particular authors (e.g. al-Layth b. Saʿd,
Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahāni and al-Maqrīzī), books (e.g. the Khudāy-nāma and
the Qurʾan), genres, topics (e.g. translation), time periods (especially the first centuries), and locali-
ties (e.g. Shīrāz and Qazwīn). In broader terms, that connect more expressly to book history as a
field, see esp. monographs by Beatrice Gruendler, The Rise of the Arabic Book (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2020) and Konrad Hirschler, including The Written Word in the Medi-
eval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2012); Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library: The
Ashrafīya Library Catalogue (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016); and A Monument to
Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2020). Also, the volumes edited by Lale Behzadi and Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Concepts of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-18
282 Sarah Bowen Savant
way of example, there are many statements about books in the first centuries of
Islamic history. So how can we explain why the major biography of the Prophet
Muḥammad, by Ibn Isḥāq (d. ca. 151/768), survives only in substantial numbers
of excerpts from a half century or more later?3
Professor Graham belongs to, indeed led, a generation of scholars in re-concep-
tualizing the relationship between oral and written transmission of texts.4 A key
insight in Beyond the Written Word (1987) and “Traditionalism in Islam” (1993)
is that authenticity requires human transmitters. This insight, I believe, is critical
for addressing the previous questions. It has been absorbed into discussions on
transmission, and for the period of early Islam, but its wider significance, espe-
cially for book history, has not been fully grasped. In “Traditionalism in Islam,”
Professor Graham stressed the “intensely personal character of knowledge” as
a key aspect of Islamic tradition.5 Islamic traditionalism has a sense of personal
“connectedness” running through it.6 He coined the neologism ittiṣāliyya, which
he described as:

Authorship in Pre-Modern Arabic Texts (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2015) and Letizia
Osti and James Weaver, “Organizing and Finding Knowledge in the Fourth/Tenth Century,” the-
matic issue of the Journal of Abbasid Studies 7/2 (2020). There is also a growing scholarly literature
on print books in Arabic. The history of papermaking belongs to any account of Arabic book his-
tory, but often has been given an outsized role (where it can even be the main or only factor consid-
ered to explain the rise of the Arabic book). See Jonathan Bloom, Paper before Print: The History
and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001) and “How
Paper Changed the Literary and Visual Culture of the Islamic Lands,” in By the Pen and What They
Write: Writing in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2017), 105–127; for caution, Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing
Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 63.
Work on manuscripts and codicology and palaeography is also, obviously, foundational (e.g. studies
by Jan Just Witkam, Stefan Leder, and others). There are several projects that offer particular hope
for expanding our understanding of book history, mindful of material aspects; for example, “Biblio-
theca Arabica,” based at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig.
3 This question animated much of KITAB’s work with the Qatar National Library on the Digital
Sira Project, which marked off digitally Ibn Isḥāq passages within later witnesses. It is noteworthy
that the question of survival has been a major topic for scholars working on documentary sources,
but comparably little attention has gone to problematizing in a theoretical way the situation of
books. For recent reflections on documentary sources that might inspire book historians to think
harder about what survives, in what forms, and from when and where, see Marina Rustow, The Lost
Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2020).
4 William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Also, see esp. Gregor Schoeler, Écrire et trans-
mettre dans les débuts de l’islam (Paris: Presses Univ. de France, 2002); idem, The Oral and the
Written in Early Islam, translated from the German by Uwe Vagelpohl, ed. James E. Montgom-
ery (London: Routledge, 2006); idem, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the
Read, revised ed. of Écrire et transmettre, in collaboration with and translated from the French by
Shawkat M. Toorawa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
5 William A. Graham, “Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,” Journal of Interdiscipli-
nary History 23 (1993): 495–522, at 513.
6 Professor Graham built his article on a mountain of scholarship; for the specific concept of “tradi-
tionalism in Islam,” he referred back to Johan Fück, “Die Rolle des Traditionalismus im Islam,”
 People Versus Books 283
[T]he need or desire for personal “connection” (ittiṣāl) across the generations
with the time and the personages of Islamic origins—something that has been
a persistent value in Muslim thought and institutions over the centuries. I do
not contend that Islam is unique in valuing personal connectedness, for such
valuation might well be taken as a fundamental, even defining, sociological
trait of “traditional” as opposed to “modern” societies. I suggest rather that
whereas Muslims have elaborated this emphasis in different ways, at different
times, and in different sectors of their collective life, they have always done
so in ways that are characteristic, identifiable, and central. Indeed, it is pos-
sible to discern a basic, recurrent pattern that is used to express their ittiṣālīya,
and hence their traditionalism.7

Professor Graham went on to define the “isnād paradigm,” which he described as

the way through which Muslim traditionalism has most clearly and consistently
expressed its need for personal connection:

[T]ruth does not reside in documents, however authentic, ancient, or well-

preserved, but in authentic human beings and their personal connections with
one another. Documents alone, without a line of persons possessed of both
knowledge and righteousness to teach and convey them across the years, are
useless as instruments of authoritative transmission.8

The paradigm is most exemplary in the Hadith—or the collective corpus of tra-
ditional reports ascribed to Muhammad or others of the first generation of Mus-
lims—which are backed up by isnāds (or supports, which, like genealogies, link a
transmitter to an original witness). But isnāds in Hadith were only the most visible
manifestation of the paradigm.
Earlier generations, including Professor Graham, considered connectedness
most often in discussion of the oral versus the written word. In what follows, my
aim is to use new data generated through machine learning methods both to reflect
on the importance of this human connectedness and also to propose the relevance
of a further opposition specific to book history and the history of knowledge trans-
mission in Muslim societies, which is of people versus books.
My argument (or to put it more grandiosely, my theory) is as follows. The
reason we have so few books surviving in the first centuries of Islamic history is
because knowledge transmission depended on the authority of individuals. Infor-
mation flowed through networks of people, and the final document which con-
tained information took many forms. The codex was one of these forms (versus,
for example, notebooks and lists). Codices most typically concatenated multiple

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft XC (I939): 1–32 and George Makdisi,
“Remarks on Traditionalism in Islamic Religious History,” in The Conflict of Traditionalism and
Modernism in the Muslim Middle East, ed. Carl Leiden (Austin: Humanities Research Center, Uni-
versity of Texas, 1966), 77–87.
7 Graham, “Traditionalism,” 501.
8 Ibid., 507 (emphasis in the original).
284 Sarah Bowen Savant
pieces of independently verifiable pieces of information. Although verification of
the codex as a whole on occasion occurred, more commonly the separate pieces
were verified individually by persons whose authority gave them the ability to
stand behind a transmitted historical account, poem, grammatical interpretation,
reading, or any other information worthy of transmission. As generations of people
passed, the codex, as a whole or separate pieces of it, underwent re-verification.
Re-verification occurred in a variety of ways, none of which held the codex
itself as a fixed object in particularly high regard. The collection as a whole might
be verified, and the work re-created, through students, resulting in what we today
recognize as different versions of the work. Or, as happened frequently, pieces of
information might be faithfully extracted from written works to make new works.
This extraction might occur with citation, or it might not. Verification, and the
requirement for it, also helps to explain the non-survival of books on crucial top-
ics, such as the Prophet’s biography. The problem was not that the subject lacked
treatment—everyone was talking about it, and much of this information was writ-
ten down. The very popularity of the topic, however, created many potential lines
of knowledge and complex verification requirements. To expect an unchanging
book treating the Prophet’s life would be to assume a centralized authority that did
not exist when the Prophet’s biography was written down. Who got cited varied,
but generally reflected the authorities standing behind a piece of information and
the quality of the transmissive chain, not where it happened to get written down.
As for isnāds, as the most prominent mechanism for verification, in the first
centuries it was more important to cite chains of authorities than to cite the works
from which they were taken. Even when books were used, they might not be cited.
In other words, verification in such cases occurred most often through people, not
books. But as our data discussed later shows, from the fifth/eleventh and sixth/
twelfth centuries onwards, verification through isnāds generally declined. This
decline, I propose, might help us to consider trends discussed in current schol-
arship on book history from roughly this period onwards, including the greater
survival of manuscripts and the greater stability of versions, as well as in later
centuries the building of large authorial masterpieces which were unburdened by
isnād citation. As citation left the text block, other manifestations of ittiṣāliyya
remained or even increased, in colophons, reading and ownership statements, and
marginal comments. Ittiṣāliyya continued, but in changing ways as the idea of the
book as a fixed object, or codex, took more hold. Any account of the history of the
Arabic book requires, I believe, this longer view—and consideration of the means
of citation, whether by people or by books.
Although it might seem self-evident that citing a person is different from citing
a book, the field, in general, has not grasped the full significance of the distinction
and why it mattered for the composition of books. Nor, it is worth emphasizing,
is distinguishing between people versus books another iteration on an oral-written
opposition (where oral = people; written = books). The field now understands that
orality and writing co-existed in complex and often mutually dependent ways. The
tendency might be to assume a similarly complex interrelationship between peo-
ple and books. While authors might, for example, speak to us in ways that confuse
(meaning books, but citing people, for example, or including a book reference
 People Versus Books 285
within an isnād), I believe this occurred less often than the field assumes. My
main aim is, therefore, to explore differences (rather than complementarity) and
why these differences mattered.
A key point is that authors themselves often adopted positions relative to people
versus book citation.9 We are partially in a realm of Foucault’s discourse, where
different modes of knowledge acquisition, transmission, and display were organ-
ized according to rules known and recognized by contemporaries.10 The pres-
tige of one versus the other was not constant across time, but shifted, including
according to the type of work being created. But the method of citation mattered.
In historiography, over time a general trend was to drop isnāds, but we also see
the decline of isnāds more broadly. There are exceptions, for example, in post-
canonical Hadith scholarship. But the trend overall is striking, nonetheless.
To consider people versus books is to open up new ways of thinking about the
long history of the Arabic book. A key area for exploration is citation practices.
How should we interpret isnāds that back up information also found in books,
when the isnād includes an author’s name? When do books get cited versus the
authors to whom they are credited? More broadly, there is a great need to read
our narratives, manuscripts, and digitally generated data together to try to under-
stand the craftsmanship of books by what the authors say they are doing; what we
can see in the material record; and what data, such as text reuse alignments, can
reveal. Addressing the history of the Arabic book, from multiple angles, mind-
ful of people versus books, should also encourage us to think about knowledge
production more broadly and what conventions won the support of writers and
readers over the centuries in different times and places.

Verification by people
Let me first give a quick introduction to the data that provides a long view of the his-
tory of isnāds. New data generated by the KITAB project provides a bird’s-eye view
of the rise and decline of isnāds across a corpus of nearly 4,300 texts.11 The method,
developed by Ryan Muther, relies on training data generated by historians who used a
formal definition of an isnād as consisting of at least two transmitters linked together
by a transmissive term (such as ḥaddathanā) to support a report. They tagged where
isnāds begin and where they end in a set of texts from the third to the tenth centuries
(hijri), and then from this data the machine extrapolated the properties of isnāds as
a specific type of text and then tried to identify parts of text with the same properties
in other, previously unseen texts (for more details on the method, see the appendix).
This trained an algorithm to identify isnāds across all periods and all types of texts
within the corpus, including literary and historical ones, as well as Hadith.

9 For the concept of authorial “position,” see Antonella Ghersetti, “A Pre-Modern Anthologist at
Work: The Case of Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Waṭwāṭ (d. 718/1318),” in Concepts of Authorship,
23–45, at 24–25.
10 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 1989), 25–27.
11 On “macroanalysis” through digital approaches, see esp. Matthew L. Jockers, Macroanalysis:
Digital Methods and Literary History (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
286 Sarah Bowen Savant

Graph 15.1 Each of the dots on this graph represents a book within the OpenITI corpus (on
the corpus see the appendix). They are plotted using the programming language R accor­
ding to the century in which the author died all the way up to the tenth century hijri (x­axis)
and what percentage of the work consists of isnāds, i.e., its “Isnad Fraction” (y­axis). This
was calculated by counting the number of word tokens located within isnāds divided by
the number of word tokens in the entire text.12 The top smoothed line represents the median
isnād fraction for the middle two quartiles for each century. The additional, lower line rep­
resents a filtered subset of the same data (similarly calculated) based on works classified as
“History” (“Geschichte”) by Carl Brockelmann

Both this model and the corpus itself are works in progress. We are working to
improve the model to get better outputs across genres, including histories, Hadith,
and all genres in which isnāds appear. A key methodological assumption run­
ning through our work is that people citation through such transmissive chains
is a general phenomenon. Historians and computer scientists, trying to develop
algorithms to detect isnāds, have primarily relied on Hadith works; that is, their
models are based on finding them in books of Hadith. This has the unfortunate
result that the algorithms will be less adept at detecting isnāds in other genres,

12 There are different ways to break sequences of characters into groups for analysis. The form of
word tokenization we relied upon would count characters typically joined to words (such as the
wāw) as part of a single word.
 People Versus Books 287
such as history. It also provides a limiting view of the origins and evolution of
history writing.13
The corpus is under development and will shape findings, including through
the addition of works that generally included few if any isnāds, such as scientific
texts. The story of the heavy use of isnāds within corners of the tradition, such as
post-canonical Hadith, also requires closer investigation and requires additions to
the corpus.14
From our training data so far, a broad trend seems to emerge already. In gen-
eral, the third–fifth centuries represent a high-water mark for isnāds within the
OpenITI corpus, and the use of isnāds declines with time.15 This is true across our
corpus though works classified as “History” or “Historiography” by Brockelmann
follow this general trend by about a century.16
The stories of individual works vary. There are many works with few or no
isnāds, represented by the dots clustered at the bottom of the graph, and there are
works that are much heavier in isnāds (represented by the dots in the upper part
of the graph—though notably several of these are very small works). More along
the curve, there are works such as those in Table 15.1.17

13 See Tarif Khalidi, ch. 2, “History and Hadith,” Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17–82. The isnād has also often been ignored
entirely by early modern publishers and historians alike because of their formulaic features. There
has been substantial prior work on Hadith corpora. See, e.g., Shatha Altammami, Eric Atwell, and
Ammar Alsalka, “Text Segmentation Using N-grams to Annotate Hadith Corpus,” in Proceed-
ings of the 3rd Workshop on Arabic Corpus Linguistics (Cardiff: Association for Computational
Linguistics, 2019), 31–39; Fouzi Harrag, “Text Mining Approach for Knowledge Extraction in
Sahîh Al-Bukhari,” Computers in Human Behavior 30 (2014): 558–566; Hajer Maraoui, Kais
Haddar, and Laurent Romary, “Segmentation Tool for Hadith Corpus to Generate TEI Encoding,”
in Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics
2018, ed. A. Hassanien, M. Tolba, K. Shaalan, and A. Azar (Cham: Springer, 2019), 252–260;
Muazzam Ahmed Siddiqui, Mostafa El-Sayed Saleh, and Abobakr Ahmed Bagais, “Extraction
and Visualization of the Chain of Narrators from Hadiths Using Named Entity Recognition and
Classification,” International Journal of Computational Linguistics Research 5/1 (2014): 14–25.
14 This includes works whose creation served particular communities of scholars. See Garrett A.
Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition: A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission
across a Thousand Years (Leiden: Brill, 2020) and Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian
Book Culture.
15 Maxim Romanov has created a tool that measures the frequencies (relative and absolute) of words.
Entering transmissive terms that figure within isnāds into the tool suggests a broadly similar pat-
tern. See http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3725855.
16 The Brockelmann classification only very partially covers the corpus and is of heuristic value.
Walid A. Akef undertook a painstaking comparison of Brockelmann and the corpus in 2018 (the
mapping therefore requires updating for new works added to the OpenITI corpus since then). He
relied on Brockelmann, History of the Arabic Written Traditions, trans. Joep Lameer, 2 vols. and
3 supplements (Leiden: Brill, 2016–18). The KITAB project looks forward to adding other clas-
sifications to the OpenITI corpus.
17 However, according to our isnād fractions data set, the largest works in the corpus prior to
1000H—exceeding 1 million words, of which most in Table 15.1 represent a subset—rely in gen-
eral less upon isnāds than works that are in either the first quartile, lengthwise (up to 6,829 words),
or even the top quartile generally (at or exceeding 104,335 words). In other words, the works in
288 Sarah Bowen Savant
Table 15.1 A sampling of historical and other texts and the percentages of the works that
consist of isnāds, according to Muther’s model18

Author Died Title Book ID Word Isnād

Count Fraction

Ibn Hishām 213 al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya Shamela0023833 279,337 1.31%

Ibn Saʿd 230 al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā Shamela0001686 915,988 15.66%
al-Yaʿqūbī 292 Taʾrīkh JK001493 190,323 1.26%
al-Ṭabarī 310 Taʾrīkh Shamela0009783 1,631,198 2.34%
al-Ṭabarī 310 Jāmiʿ al-bayān Shamela0007798 2,910,592 17.79%
al-Khaṭīb 463 Taʾrīkh Baghdād Shamela0023764 2,558,282 24.95%
Baghdādī
Ibn ʿAsākir 571 Taʾrīkh Madīnat JK000916 8,151,141 38.81%
Dimashq
Ibn al-Athīr 630 al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh JK000911 1,349,726 0.14%
Ibn Manẓūr 711 Mukhtaṣar Taʾrīkh Shamela0003118 2,397,281 1.07%
Dimashq
al-Nuwayrī 733 Nihāyat al-arab fī Shamela0010283 2,419,819 0.27%
funūn al-adab
al-Dhahabī 748 Taʾrīkh al-Islām Shamela0035100 3,305,526 2.37%
Ibn Kathīr 774 al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya Shamela0004445 2,192,611 4.79%
Ibn Kathīr 774 Tafsīr al-Qurʾān Shamela0008473 1,582,344 7.46%

The previous works cover a range of periods and genres. In what will come as
no surprise to specialists, Ibn Hishām uses relatively few isnāds in his biography
of Muḥammad and the early Muslim community built on the earlier work of Ibn
Isḥāq. The work’s narrative has held the attention of Muslims for centuries, in
an edifying and entertaining way that benefited from his continuous account and
commentary. The Prophet’s biography was, and still is, compared unfavourably to
Hadith by scholars of Hadith looking for certain knowledge about the Prophet’s
life. Meanwhile, al-Ṭabarī’s Qurʾan commentary carries, on a percentage basis,
more isnāds than his history.19 Ibn ʿAsākir’s Taʾrīkh Madīnat Dimashq is the larg-
est book in the OpenITI corpus prior to the year 1000, and the author is one of
the most reliant on isnāds. For all of their particular situations, however, there is
a general decline over time.
The larger social and cultural patterns to which this decline belongs need more
exploring than is possible in this chapter. But to anticipate, it is no accident, or
surprise, that our largest works were produced in cities like Baghdad, Cairo,

this list belong to the general trend in the corpus, but for their size, some are particularly isnād
heavy. According to the data set, there are 177 works of a million or more words (115 for prior to
1000, the KITAB project’s core focus). Of the 177 works, 118 have an isnād fraction of 1 percent
or less (and for the 115 works, 72 have an isnād fraction of 1 percent or less).
18 For the isnād fractions for the OpenITI corpus (Arabic), see the Zenodo release associated to this
chapter, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5074633.
19 I discuss this comparison in my forthcoming A Cultural History of the Arabic Book.
 People Versus Books 289
and Damascus, with significant writerly cultures embedded within chanceries
and other learned milieus. These contributed to flourishing book markets, which
provided secure incomes for producers and spurred production. Ibn Manẓūr (d.
710/1311), for example, worked in the Mamluk chancery, and produced numerous
other abridgements as well. He reportedly left 500 volumes in his own handwrit-
ing at his death. Texts, and just as importantly, new texts, served as cultural capital
in socially and politically competitive arenas where lecturing, reading, debating,
and scholarly discipleship took place.20 Over time, these large-scale producers,
and also smaller ones, shifted to favour a style of citation unencumbered by
isnāds. They still cited people as authorities, but not in chains. Living in bookish
milieus, they more often cited the book itself. The decline in the isnād thus coin-
cided broadly with new approaches to producing and consuming books.21 When
Ibn Manẓūr turned his hand to creating a mukhtaṣar (abridgment) of Ibn ʿAsākir’s
work, he reduced the isnāds dramatically.

Ibn ʿAsākir, a master of ittiṣāliyya

Among the works at the height of isnād production, is the Taʾrīkh Madīnat
Dimashq (TMD) by Ibn ʿAsākir. It is one of the largest works in the OpenITI
corpus, with 80 volumes in the modern printed edition, and a word count of over
8 million.22 Ibn ʿAsākir completed the work under the patronage of Nūr al-Dīn b.
Zangī (r. 541–569/1141–1174). It consists of a first volume, treating the history
of the city, including its ancient roots and seventh-century conquest, and a second
volume, treating the topography of the city. The remainder of the book comprises

20 See esp. Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 21–25 and Hirschler, The Written Word, ch. 1, “Read-
ing and Writerly Culture,” 11–31.
21 See esp. Konrad Hirschler’s observations on the growing textualization and popularization of the
written word between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries CE in Damascus and Cairo: The Written
Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands.
22 The first modern scholarly edition of the TMD was only completed in 2001, reflecting the chal-
lenges the work posed to editors, in terms of the witness record (there was no complete manu-
script), its size, and its contents—including the isnāds. On the book’s publication history, see
Steven Judd and Jens Scheiner, “Introduction,” in New Perspectives on Ibn ʿAsākir, ed. Steven
Judd and Jens Scheiner (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1–3 and Nancy Khalek, “Prologue: The Publication
of the Dār al-Fikr Edition of Ibn ʿAsākir’s Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq,” in the same volume, 4–8.
This edition and the manuscript tradition upon which it is based contains lacunae (judging partly
on the basis of Ibn Manẓūr’s Mukhtaṣar); on which see James E. Lindsay, “Appendix C. Major
Lacunae in TMD,” in Ibn ʿAsākir and Early Islamic History, ed. James E. Lindsay (Princeton, NJ:
Darwin Press, 2001), 141–143. The OpenITI file that we used for this chapter, 0571IbnCasakir.
TarikhDimashq.JK000916-ara1, is based on this 80-volume, 1995–2001 Dār al-Fikr edition edited
by ʿUmar al-ʿAmrawī and ʿAlī Shīrī, but excluded volumes 71–80. Volumes 71–74 represent a
mustadrak, or amendment, by the editors (including additional biographical entries); volumes
75–80 represent indices. See now also a further critique of the Dār al-Fikr edition (which would
support exclusion of the mustadrak), Suleiman A. Mourad, Ibn ʿAsakir of Damascus: Champion
of Sunni Islam in the Time of the Crusades (London: Oneworld, 2021), 78–80.
290 Sarah Bowen Savant
biographies of the elites who lived or passed through Damascus prior to Ibn
ʿAsākir’s time. Scholars have considered different parts and aspects of the work,
as they have sought to explain what motivated Ibn ʿAsākir to write it. Among
motivations cited are a politics that supported Sunnism and which restored Syria,
including Damascus, home to the Umayyads (the first dynasty of Islam), to the
centre of early Islamic history at the expense of Baghdad. In this view, Syria was a
perennial bulwark against wrong belief (in his day, represented by Crusaders and
the Ismāʿīlī Shiʿites patronized by the Fāṭimid dynasty in Egypt).23
Ibn ʿAsākir’s lifetime, in the “post-canonical” period of Hadith transmission,
coincides with the high-water mark for isnād citation, and what Paula Caroline
Manstetten has described as “an increasing formalization of ḥadīth transmission.”
Manstetten has argued that isnād display is at the centre of Ibn ʿAsākir’s work.
The enormous variety of isnāds he collected over his lifetime, including short
isnāds, showcased his “cultural capital” in a post-canonical context.24 I would
concur and perhaps go further to see Ibn ʿAsākir as taking delight in regaling his
audience with complex isnāds, whether they supported Hadith or any other piece
of knowledge. For him, they clearly were content itself, reflecting the expert cul-
ture, networks, and competitive environment in which he lived. Nearly 40% of
his massive TMD is made up of isnāds—which is more than 3.16 million words
worth of isnāds. To put that in context, those isnāds fill as much space as about 25
works of the size of the book you are reading now.
Ibn ʿAsākir’s position as a citer of people is perhaps best illustrated by how
he cites information that runs back to earlier, well-known authors. He obviously
wants his readers to know that he is an expert in verifying whatever has come
down from these authorities. He does not often name an author in conjunction
with his book. Rather, these authors each appear as one (albeit perhaps very well-
known) figure among any number of persons within a list of transmitters. Quite
often, there is no indication within tens of thousands of words that the person in
question ever wrote a work at all (and indeed, some authors’ books go unmen-
tioned entirely). Moreover, Ibn ʿAsākir provides many different transmission lines

23 Zayde Antrim compares the introductions to the TMD and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Taʾrīkh
Baghdād, to point out the way in which Ibn ʿAsākir is not just writing for Syria but is also writing
against ʿIrāq. See Antrim, “Nostalgia for the Future: A Comparison between the Introductions to
Ibn ʿAsākir’s Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Taʾrīkh Baghdād,” in New
Perspectives on Ibn ʿAsākir, 9–29, esp. 25. On Ibn ʿAsākir’s “full co-optation by the state” (i.e.
appointment to the newly established Dār al-Ḥadīth by Nūr al-Dīn), see Dana Sajdi, “Ibn ʿAsākir’s
Children: Monumental Representations of Damascus until the 12th/18th Century,” in New Per-
spectives on Ibn ʿAsākir, 30–63, at 33–34.
24 Paula Caroline Manstetten, “Ibn ʿAsākir’s History of Damascus and the Institutionalisation of
Education in the Medieval Islamic World” (PhD thesis, Department of the Languages and Cul-
tures of the Near and Middle East, SOAS, University of London, 2019), 113–114, and especially
ch. 3, “Isnāds as Capital; Isnāds as Records—Ibn ʿAsākir’s Work in the Context of Post-Canonical
Ḥadīth Transmission.” The first attempt to publish the entirety of the TMD excluded isnāds. Sulei-
man A. Mourad, “Appendix A. Publication History of TMD,” in Lindsay, ed., Ibn ʿAsākir and
Early Islamic History, 127–133, at 128.
 People Versus Books 291
leading back to the same authors. This is as if to assert, emphatically, that he did
not simply pick up the book of such-and-such a person, but rather gained access
through many different authorities and a painstaking process. The powers of his
expertise have been brought to bear on these many and complex transmissions.
To illustrate my point, consider how Ibn ʿAsākir cites (or better, does not cite)
the Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā of Ibn Saʿd, listed in Table 15.1. Our text reuse data points
to a large number of passages that belong to both works, though they are scattered
across the TMD.25 What does Ibn ʿAsākir himself have to say? Bear with me as
I run through what Masoumeh Seydi, the digital lead for the KITAB project, and
I found in an investigation into Ibn ʿAsākir’s isnāds and how it illustrates exuber-
ant people citation.
Using search tools called “regular expressions,” we collected all transmission
chains within the TMD that included Ibn Saʿd. We then trimmed the chains to
include only names occurring between Ibn Saʿd and Ibn ʿAsākir. Since many
names were clearly variant ways of referring to the same person, we then created
an authorities list to map variations.26 The authorities list relied on a Latin-script
name to unify variant Arabic-script names in the TMD isnāds, as exemplified in
Table 15.2.

Table 15.2 Reconciling variations of names within isnāds that feature Muḥammad b. Saʿd

Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبو عمر بن حيوية‬

Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبي عمر بن حيويه‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبو عمر ابن حيوية‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبو عمر محمد بن العباس بن حيوية‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبو عمر محمد ابن العباس‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبي عمر محمد بن العباس بن حيوية‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫ابن عباس‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫محمد بن العباس‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫محمد ابن العباس‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫محمد بن العباس بن حيويه الخزاز‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫أبو عمر محمد بن العباس‬
Ibn Hayyawayh ‫محمد بن العباس لخزاز‬

25 Passim identifies 3,794 alignments between the two books (this is the second-largest number of
alignments between the TMD and another, earlier work (behind al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Taʾrīkh
Baghdād, also featured in the table). They are spread out across the TMD and often not very pre-
cise. Furthermore, although close study is still required, it is not the case that isnāds that feature
Ibn Saʿd map at all easily to the reuse alignments. For KITAB project’s work on text reuse, see
the appendix.
26 “Regular expression” is the name of a formalized way of constructing search patterns, imple-
mented in many computer languages and text-editing software. Regular expressions can be used,
for example, to allow for intervening words or to locate passages that cross page or other bounda-
ries. See Jan Goyvaerts and Steven Levithan, Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd. rev. ed. (Farn-
ham, UK: O’Reilly, 2012).
292 Sarah Bowen Savant
The name of Abū ʿUmar b. Ḥayyawayh (d. 373/983–984) is written in many
ways, representing differences in orthography and use of name elements (e.g.
whether a kunyā such as “father of so-and-so” is used). The data file from which
this list is excerpted contains 424 such equations for names in Ibn Saʿd isnāds.27
Seydi then used an algorithm to group together the most similar strings of
names. Even with the reduction of the name variants to single versions, the data
remained too extensive to see patterns. We then filtered the total data set to look
for only the most commonly occurring transmissive chains and only those span-
ning six transmitters, the most commonly occurring length.28
Seydi then graphed the dramatically filtered data, which produced Graph 15.2.
The graph features one simple chain that runs back to Ibn Saʿd via Abū Bakr
Muḥammad b. Shujāʿ, Abū ʿAmr b. Manda, Abū Muḥammad b. Yawh, Aḥmad b.
Muḥammad al-Lanbānī,29 and Abū Bakr b. Abī al-Dunyā. The other six chains,
in the left part of the graph, involve nine transmitters in the five generations after
Ibn Saʿd. The transmissive lines cross one another and (when displayed in colour)
appear something like a map of the London Underground.
The effort required to create this data set is significant. The isnāds were not
sitting there ready to be plucked from the TMD but required many hours of pain­
staking disambiguation of names and pruning of data. We leave much on the cut-
ting room floor, and still the left of the graph does not yield a simple picture of
transmission. This messiness reflects the vagaries of naming practices and the
deterioration of information through the transmission process. But it also suggests
that the ways that Ibn ʿAsākir accessed the wisdom of earlier centuries was likely
quite complex. Different parts of Ibn Saʿd’s oeuvre may have passed through dif-
ferent ones of these lines. Or the transmission may have been more mediated than
that, with Ibn ʿAsākir accessing a more dispersed corpus of Ibn Saʿd materials. He
may even have been judging the relative merits of different transmitters for differ-
ent pieces of information. It is hard to know whether his audience could track the
varieties of names or the contents that mapped to lines (perhaps not), but the sheer
number of lines and names was part of their expectations of a book such as Ibn
ʿAsākir’s.30 Giving them what they expected, Ibn ʿAsākir performed his role as a
major scholar in the post-canonical era of Hadith transmission.
What materials Ibn ʿAsākir had to hand is an open question. Interestingly, pe­ople
listed in these chains could well have been aggregators of content. Elsewhere in

27 The file is included in the Zenodo release for this chapter, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5074633.
28 There were also isnāds with between 7 and 12 transmitters within them, but 6 nodes was by far
the most common.
29 Or al-Lubnānī, though less common.
30 For reflections on varieties of names in another context and challenges of pinning names to titles,
see Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, 177–178 (esp. the concept of “scho­
larly ownership” as more helpful than “authorship”).
Table 15.3 The most frequently occurring six-person isnāds that run back to Muḥammad b. Saʿd. Pruning the data to get these transmissive lines
involved excluding other distinct lines of six-person isnāds

freq cluster_id name1 name2 name3 name4 name5 name6

674 12 Abu Bakr Muhammad Abu Muhammad Ibn Hayyawayh Ahmad b. Ma’ruf al-Husayn b. Muhammad b. Sa’d
b. ‘Abd al-Baqi al-Jawhari Fahm
390 22 Abu Ghalib Abu Muhammad Ibn Hayyawayh Ahmad b. Ma’ruf al-Husayn b. Muhammad b. Sa’d
al-Jawhari Fahm
235 11 Abu Bakr Muhammad Abu ‘Amr b. Abu Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad Abu Bakr b. Abi Muhammad b. Sa’d
b. Shuja’ Manda Yawh al-Lanbani Dunya
102 1 Abu Ghalib Abu Muhammad Ibn Hayyawayh Sulayman b. Ishaq al-Harith b. Abi Muhammad b. Sa’d
al-Jawhari Usama
100 5 Abu Bakr Muhammad Abu Muhammad Ibn Hayyawayh Ahmad b. Ma’ruf al-Harith b. Abi Muhammad b. Sa’d
b. ‘Abd al-Baqi al-Jawhari Usama
93 22 Abu Ghalib Abu Ishaq Ibn Hayyawayh Ahmad b. Ma’ruf al-Husayn b. Muhammad b. Sa’d
al-Barmaki Fahm
82 5 Abu Bakr Muhammad Abu Muhammad Ibn Hayyawayh Sulayman b. Ishaq al-Harith b. Abi Muhammad b. Sa’d
b. ‘Abd al-Baqi al-Jawhari Usama
People Versus Books
293
294 Sarah Bowen Savant

Graph 15.2 This graph represents the small subset of lines of transmission running back
to Ibn Saʿd in Table 15.3

the TMD, there are phrases such as qaraʾtu bi-khaṭṭ (“I read in the handwriting of”
such-and-such a person), where collated materials are described.31
When book titles are mentioned by Ibn ʿAsākir, they occur most commonly
outside of isnāds. A reading of these citations suggests that he used a number of
books as references works, including the Taʾrīkh Baghdād.32 He also had access

31 This phrase occurs hundreds of times within the TMD, including in contexts that feature specific
reference to a transmitter’s summary of prior works. The phrase, though ostensibly referring to
written transmission, often occurs within isnāds. Elsewhere, I have conjectured the existence of
“sourcebooks” that collected thematically related material. See “Genealogy and Ethno-Genesis in
al-Masʿudi’s Muruj al-dhahab,” in Genealogy and Knowledge (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 2014), 115–130 at 123–125.
32 He may have had this work through various channels. For example, in an entry for a Ḥaydara
b. Aḥmad, Ibn ʿAsākir mentions that he obtained one part of al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Taʾrīkh
Baghdād from Ḥaydara, and that Ḥaydara had heard it directly from the author.
 People Versus Books 295
to what might be reckoned as a number of other written reference tools, including
various lists of persons and extractions of other works, including in notebooks,
that he could consult for his own book. These works, and how he describes them,
bring to mind the many small-scale Hadith booklets that circulated in Damas-
cus in this period and that encompass a wide variety of ways of organizing such
knowledge.33 His citation of these texts typically shows his own diligence in com-
pilation and attempt to track down information, wherever it might be found.34 Ibn
ʿAsākir states on several occasions that he had looked up information on particu-
lar figures in al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Taʾrīkh Baghdād or al-Zubayr b. Bakkār’s
(d. 256/870) Kitāb al-Nasab, but had failed to find the person treated. He does find
rare pieces of information. A fairly typical example is the following, falling within
the entry of “People with the name Zarāfa”:

Zarāfa: The chamberlain for al-Mutawakkil. He narrated accounts about Dhū

l-Nūn al-Misrī and about al-Mutawakkil. ʿĪsā al-Baghdādī relied on him in
his narrations. He came to Damascus in the entourage of al-Mutawakkil, as
the poet ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Khaṭṭābi mentioned in his Names of
Those Who Came to Damascus with al-Mutawakkil (according to what I read
in his own handwriting).

This book, or more properly, reference list (tasmiya), is mentioned once in the
TMD. Citing it shows Ibn ʿAsākir’s breadth of knowledge and access to multiple
sources of information. But let me emphasize how few these references are, rela-
tive to the total heft of the TMD. They can be found through searching for terms
such as Kitāb and Taʾrīkh, but compared to straightforward isnāds, are uncommon.
In terms of scholarship on the TMD, my reading of it represents a departure
from previous work. By way of example, I would note that Jen Scheiner’s recent
study of the TMD reads heavily against its grain to identify books upon which Ibn
ʿAsākir relied. Doing so, I think, is to misunderstand Ibn ʿAsākir’s method and
to neglect scholarship on transmission practices that support more prevalent—­
people centred—ways of “activating” texts.35 Scheiner has described Ibn ʿAsākir’s

33 A point raised by Hirschler (personal communication, 29 September 2020). See, for example,
Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture.
34 On Ibn ʿAsākir’s long travels and studies “with hundreds of scholars,” see Lindsay, “Ibn ʿAsākir,
His Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq and its Usefulness for Understanding Early Islamic History,” in ed.
Lindsay, Ibn ʿAsākir and Early Islamic History, 1–23, at 3–5.
35 Hirschler, The Written Word in the Arabic Lands, chs. 1–2, esp. 16–17. For relevant technical
terms, explained in the context of book production, also see Stefan Leder, “Spoken Word and Writ-
ten Text—Meaning and Social Significance of the Institution of riwāya,” in Islamic Area Studies
Working Paper Series 31 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 2002), 1–16, and idem, “Understanding
a Text Through its Transmission: Documented samāʿ, Copies, Reception,” in Manuscript notes
as Documentary Sources, ed. Andreas Gӧrke and Hirschler (Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut, 2011),
59–72.
296 Sarah Bowen Savant
“virtual library,” and in an analysis of transmissive chains, argued that Ibn ʿAsākir
decided to:

introduce (almost) every tradition with a single isnād or the riwāya of the
work from which he had extracted it. Hence, he was not just faithful to the
content of the sources he quoted, but was also very thorough in documenting
his information consistently.36

Scheiner builds on the earlier work of Aḥmad M. Nūr Sayf, Gerhard Conrad,
ʿUmar al-ʿAmrawī and ʿAlī Shīrī, Steven C. Judd, and Ṭalāl ibn Saʻūd Daʻjānī to
create a list of 100 works that Ibn ʿAsākir consulted.37 For 58 of the works, he
provides one or two riwāyas, chains of transmission documenting recensions of a
text.38 He maintains that Ibn ʿAsākir’s use of these works, and others, illustrates
“Ibn ʿAsākir’s love for books.” As for Ibn ʿAsākir’s teachers and predecessors, he
notes that works compiled by them “are not quoted extensively.”39
A key principle underlying Scheiner’s work (stated only towards the end of
his chapter) is that the chains of transmitters in the TMD “as a rule of thumb
have to be understood as riwāyas of works.”40 As employed by Scheiner, in the
appendices, the sense of a riwāya is that it represents the recension line for a
work; this would contrast with an isnād, as a supporting chain of transmission
for a single report. In Scheiner’s reading, this means that many of the chains of
names that occur in the TMD—insofar as they include the names of well-known
authors of earlier times—should be read as indicating Ibn ʿAsākir’s consultation

36 Jens Scheiner, “Ibn ʿAsākir’s Virtual Library as Reflected in his Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq,” in
New Perspectives on Ibn ʿAsākir, 156–257, at 247. Parenthetical “almost” Scheiner’s. See also
Scheiner’s “Single Isnāds or Riwāyas? Quoted Books in Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tarjama of Tamīm al-Dārī,”
in The Heritage of Arabo-Islamic Learning: Studies Presented to Wadad Kadi, ed. Maurice A.
Pomerantz and Aram A. Shahin (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 42–72, esp. 51–56 and 67 (based on a small
piece of the TMD).
37 Nūr Sayf, Maṣādir taʾrīkh Ibn ʿAsākir min kutub al-ḥadīth wa’l-rijāl, in ed. Wizārat al-Taʿlīm
al-ʿĀlī, al-Kalimāt wa’l-buḥūth wa’l-qaṣāʾid al-mulaqāt fī’l-iḥtifāl bi-muʾarrikh Dimashq al-kabīr
Ibn ʿAsākir (Damascus: Wizārat al-Taʿlīm al-ʿĀlī, 1979), 475–504; Conrad, Abū’l-Husain al-Rāzī
(-347/958) und seine Schriften: Untersuchungen zur frühen Damaszener Geschichtsschreibung
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991); idem, Die quḍāt Dimašq und der Maḏhab al-Auzā’ī: Materialien
zur syrischen Rechtsgeschichte (Beirut: Orient-Institut der DMG, 1994), idem, “Zur Bedeutung
des Taʾrīḫ madīnat Dimašq als historische Quelle,” in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländis-
chen Gesellschaft, Supplement VIII: XXIV, ed. Werner Diem and Abdoldjavad Falaturi (Stuttgart:
Deutscher Orientalistentag, 1988, 1990), 271–282; eds. al-ʿAmrawī and Shīrī, TMD (Dār al-Fikr
edition), vol. 80, 713–720; Judd, “Ibn ʿAsākir’s Sources for the Late Umayyad Period,” in Lind-
say, ed., Ibn ʿAsākir and Early Islamic History, 78–99, at 89–90; Daʿjānī, Mawārid Ibn ʿAsākir
fī taʾrīkh Dimashq ([Medina]: al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabīya al-Saʿūdīya, Wizārat al-Taʿlīm al-ʿĀlī,
al-Jāmiʿa al-Islāmīya bi’l-Madīna al-Munawwara, ʿImādat al-Baḥth al-ʿIlmī, 2004).
38 He lists 52 books with one riwāya (he notes a bit of name variation); for six books he provides two
riwāyas, for one (a “notebook” by Ibn Isḥāq), he provides four riwāyas.
39 Scheiner, “Ibn ʿAsākir’s Virtual Library,” 247–248.
40 Ibid., 251.
 People Versus Books 297
of a specific book or notebook as it came to him through a specific line of trans-
mitters. Scheiner lists one riwāya each for the Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr (via, in
the generation prior, Abū Ghālib) and the Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-ṣaghīr (via Abū
Bakr Muḥammad b. Shujāʿ).41
This surely misses a more mediated transmission, as the previous efforts to
graph the isnād data suggest. What’s more, it goes against what Ibn ʿAsākir plainly
says he is doing. For example, Scheiner writes that “[w]hen citing the riwāya of
the Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr” Ibn ʿAsākir regularly indicates that “he had the
work at hand by saying ‘I read it in the presence of Abū Ghālib b. al-Bannāʾ,’ who
was one of his teachers.”42 While it is true he may have had the book, or part of it,
the point of the quote is that he did not simply read it by himself but “activated” it
by reading it with his teacher.43 Also, the title al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr occurs only in
two spots in the TMD, and once in direct proximity to a transmissive chain (which
matches the one listed by Scheiner). The title al-Ṭabaqāt al-saghīr occurs twice,
and not within an isnād.44 This means that the vast number of times Ibn ʿAsākir
mentions Ibn Saʿd, he does so without direct reference to a work. This matters
both for how Ibn ʿAsākir was working and for what he wanted his audience to
know. It also matters that the persons listed by Scheiner as responsible for books
(in his riwāyas) represent a small percentage of the total figures appearing within
isnāds within the TMD. These authors and persons in their transmissive chains
just cannot account for the great diversity of persons listed. Why so many chains
were marshalled is an open question—partly it is a matter of a fragile historical
record (where there are evident confusions in names that have arisen in the long
processes of transmission up until and including within our digital files). But there
is also an evident satisfaction in possessing information that runs back to Ibn Saʿd
through multiple lines. People mattered to Ibn ʿAsākir far more than books.

Verification by books
To recap to this point: I am arguing that a reliance on verification by people,
for which the isnād is only the most prominent example, impacted how books
were created and recreated, resulting, for example, in the general variability of

41 Scheiner uses the titles as written by Ibn ʿAsākir (rather than al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, as the book is
also known).
42 According to Scheiner, Ibn ʿAsākir “quotes” three works by Muḥammad b. Saʿd—the Ṭabaqāt
al-Kabīr (as “Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt,” “al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr,” or “Al-ṭabaqāt”), al-Ṭabaqāt al-ṣaghīr, and
al-Taʾrīkh. Scheiner, New Perspectives, 179–182 and Appendix 1, p. 277. Cf. Judd, “Ibn ʿAsākir’s
Sources,” 89–90.
43 Hirschler, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, 16. For how Ibn ʿAsākir’s book was
read aloud in medieval Damascus, see idem, ch. 2, “A City Is Reading: Popular and Scholarly
Reading Sessions,” 32–81.
44 For Scheiner’s detective work, linking this to a riwāya by Ibn Abī Dunyā, see “Ibn ʿAsākir’s Vir-
tual Library,” 181. Arabic readers may wish to use the following search pattern on the OpenITI
TMD text in the Zenodo release that accompanies this chapter to see for themselves what I am
talking about: ‫كتاب الطبقات|الطبقات الكبير|الطبقات|الطبقات الصغير‬
298 Sarah Bowen Savant
witnesses to a book within the early tradition.45 In the case of Ibn ʿAsākir, I am
arguing that verification by people produced highly mediated and complex trans-
missions of earlier works. It is not the same thing to cite a person as it is to
cite a book. These two ways of citing are different practically (insofar as works
get chopped up into smaller units and reused in other works), as well as in how
authors position how they are working (authors position themselves differently
when they cite people rather than books). Verification by people is embodied,
face to face, and often involves updating, to the most recent generation. It might
operate through multiple ways, including written texts that might even be rather
ephemeral (as when an earlier scholar collated pieces together and used them in
reading sessions, which then often resulted in small Hadith booklets). It could also
serve as an impetus to the creation of new books, either as updated, re-verified
versions, or as new creations in which an author could show his own mastery of
past knowledge and the verification system. Verification by people impacted book
production itself and played a role in the shape of the written tradition over time.
By contrast, the authority of books, I would propose, is externalized, portable,
and material. It is also embodied, but books do not talk back; there is no dialogue
with them, except perhaps in a figurative sense. Whereas hearing matters more
with people, sight matters more with books.46 A book is the sum of its parts and
can be broken up if subsequent generations find value in its pieces. Over time,
the Arabic book became increasingly structured. It featured finding devices and
other navigational aids. All of this facilitated more breaking up of the text and the
recycling of its parts. Such recycling happened at great scale by the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries.

Al-Nuwayrī, master anthologist

To illustrate citation of books, and a strong text reuse signal, I would highlight
the case of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī (d. 733/1333). He is the fourteenth-cen-
tury author of the Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, one of the most well-known
and regarded encyclopaedic works of the medieval Islamic world. Al-Nuwayrī
produced his book, 33 volumes in the modern edition, after a career in financial
administration in Egypt and Syria. Elias Muhanna aptly has referred to the Nihāya
as “the world in a book,” and has shown that al-Nuwayrī’s aspirations were “not
so different from what today’s proponents of liberal arts education champion: the
exposure to a certain worldview, an intellectual habitus, a cultural vocabulary.”
His encyclopaedic work—emerging out of processes of abridgment, expansion,
and concatenation of earlier works—“was reflective of the valorization of highly
informed, intertextual, recherché engagements with the Arabic literary heritage.”47

45 On versions and their differences, see my blog, http://kitab-project.org/2019/11/14/judging-the-

difference-between-different-arabic-text-versions-mathematically/ (accessed July 6, 2020).
46 I thank Christian Lange for this observation regarding the senses.
47 Elias Muhanna, The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 72.
 People Versus Books 299
This book was offered up to the learned classes, but al-Nuwayrī also wrote it
partly for his own use, “as an aide-mémoire of what he had read.”48
The Nihāya is a book that is conscious of itself as a book. Like other works
described as encyclopaedias, it is organized in a way to make its contents acces-
sible, and it strives for some form of completeness.49 The Arabic text repeatedly
reminds readers where they are, within the overall structure, using the termi­nology
of fann, qism, and bāb. The hierarchy posts what follows—leading down to topi-
cal anecdotes. This is an important feature in an era when authors and scribes do
not appear to have regularly marked-out folio numbers. Such a regularly sign-
posted hierarchy, combined with regular cross-referencing, enabled readers to
look up topics, useful for any number of purposes, and also to return to parts of
the book later to cross-check. As a system, with its multitude of topics, it provided
readers with something that many wanted: distilled information, as notes, from a
growing sea of potential sources.50
In terms of methods of book citation, there are many—Ibn Saʾd’s Ṭabaqāt,
for example, is mentioned by name at least 42 times. Al-Nuwayrī casually intro-
duces a speaker by his book when he writes, “The author of the Experiences
of Nations (Tajārib al-umam) has said.” By which al-Nuwayrī means Miska-
wayh (d. 421/1030), the historian and philosopher from three centuries prior. On
dozens of occasions, al-Nuwayrī notes that an author said something fī kitābihi
(“in his book”) and then provides a title. Muhanna’s discussion of al-Nuwayrī’s
sources especially stresses the reliance of al-Nuwayrī on the work of an older
contemporary, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Waṭwāṭ (d. 718/1318), for Books 1, 3, and 4.51
This debt was both in matters of form and content. Most importantly, the Nihāya
followed al-Waṭwāṭ’s hypotactic structure, in terms of the book, section, and
chapter layout.
This is not to say that al-Nuwayrī always cites books directly. There is plenty of
pass-through citation, where he relies on a source to gain access to an even earlier
one. But here too one finds the author as a figure on display—e.g., Ibn Sīnā, Abū
l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, Abū ʿUbāda al-Buḥturī, and others—without the distraction
of an intervening isnād, and by implication, the book itself is on display, whether
directly accessed or not. People matter as authors of books, and in this way, many
names cited in the Nihāya can be identified.

48 H. Kilpatrick, “al-Nuwayrī (667–732/1279–1332),” in Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. Julie

Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (London: Routledge, 1998), ii, 590–591.
49 Maaike van Berkel, “Opening Up a World of Knowledge: Mamluk Encyclopaedias and Their
Readers,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 357–375.
50 Ann Blair makes this point in general for encyclopaedic works before and especially after print as
“offering something that readers wanted: ready-made reading notes that they were not willing or
able to take themselves but that they wanted to have all the same” (Blair, Too Much to Know, 174).
51 Muhanna, The World in a Book, 42–49; see also eds. A. Samiuddin and N. K. Singh, Encyclopae-
dic Historiography of the Muslim World (New Delhi: Global Vision Publishing House, 2003), vol.
3, 71 and M. Chapoutot-Remadi, “al-Nuwayrī,” EI2.
300 Sarah Bowen Savant
Conclusion
William Graham’s ittiṣāliyya is a neologism that encompasses many different
practices within the Islamic tradition that have features in common. One of the
concept’s merits is that it points beyond the individual cases to see a pattern,
which is the sort of work that specialists in the History of Religion do and which
Professor Graham exemplifies so well. The present contribution takes this idea as
a starting point—to see citation practices, and especially isnāds, as part of a wider
verification system, which is a system of practice for the passage of information,
which affects the composition of books and involves a discourse through which
authors position themselves.
Critically, a key aspect of verification is its operation as a discursive system
with practices that emerged, ran alongside, and outlived the practices of the early
written tradition. Citing authorities was a practical solution in the earliest periods
of Islamic history. But over time, it was a choice and way of asserting the trans-
mission of collective memory. Other technologies were possible, including those
existing within the emerging “documentary infrastructure” of books.
Whether authors cited people or books, they shaped and reshaped the past. But
the mechanism of mediation was different and subject to a periodization, whereby
isnād citation declined after the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries. This
difference was partly a matter of a discourse, but not just that—it had an impact on
the form through which texts travelled as well. For the long history of the Arabic
book, I am arguing that this mattered.

Appendix: Comments on data

Several types of data underlie my discussion and were prepared by members
of the KITAB and Digital Sira Project teams. Please see the Zenodo release for
details: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5074633. Here, I offer additional com-
ments pertaining to:

1. The OpenITI corpus of texts. This collection of 4,285 unique texts (at the
time of this chapter’s preparation) is partially vetted and annotated structur-
ally. Its main source is texts, freely available, from repositories such as al-
Maktaba al-Shamila. It is important to recognize the tremendous and almost
entirely anonymous effort that was made to create these machine-readable
texts. The quality of the texts is generally very high (meaning they are loyal
to the printed editions upon which they are based). The metadata is gener-
ally accurate but often incomplete. The KITAB annotation team, under the
supervision of Maxim Romanov and Lorenz Nigst, has prepared all the texts
for digital analysis (Masoumeh Seydi oversees technical aspects of this,
including the normalization of texts). The annotation team is also doing a
general quality check on a first subset of the book files, noting errors and
annotating their structure. The text of Ibn ʿAsākir was annotated by Maryam
Foradi, Hamid Reza Hakimi, and Gowaart Van Den Bossche; Hakimi anno-
tated al-Nuwayrī’s text. The corpus as a whole can be downloaded through
 People Versus Books 301
Zenodo (version 2020.1.2, for this chapter). Users should cite it, as they
should acknowledge any other resource.52
2. Data from an isnād classifier. Ryan Muther, a Northeastern University com-
puter science PhD student, developed an algorithm for the Qatar National
Library, Digital Sira Project that automatically identifies and marks isnāds
in texts. The algorithm essentially goes through the text, asking whether par-
ticular words (as tokens) belong to an isnād or not. His model is more general
than most existing attempts, which rely on what computer scientists term
“rule-based” systems to identify isnāds and the individual transmitters within
them, and which have been applied to much narrower selections of (gener-
ally Hadith) texts. The algorithm focuses, for now, on identifying isnāds,
rather than trying to extract either the matns or information from within the
isnāds. Both are goals for later work (the KITAB project aims to work on the
transmission networks represented within isnāds—but this requires several
additional steps of work).

To train the model, Muther relied on a set of transmission terms assembled by

R. Kevin Jaques and a training data set generated iteratively by eight historians/
Arabists (including me).53 To create this set, the annotators agreed on features
for defining isnāds, including how to identify starting and ending points (the lat-
ter was more of a challenge for the model than the former). In weekly meetings
over a period of approximately four months, they discussed unusual cases. The
model learns from strings of tokens (words) that contain isnāds, as well as from
those that do not. The total number of training lines fed to the model was 94,104
(907,111 words, as tokens) from 54 texts from a variety of genres and periods.
The data that was generated includes the location of isnāds within each text; the
number of words in each text comprising isnāds; and the percentage of the text
that comprises isnāds (the isnād fraction). While the annotators were loosely
informed by the historic tradition’s definitions of isnāds (including through their
own training), the goal was not to reflect a historic understanding as such, but
rather to get the computer to consistently find the lists of transmitters. The KITAB
team intends to generate more such training data in the future to better reflect the
diversity of the OpenITI corpus.
Computer scientists evaluate such models in terms of “precision” and “recall”
at both the level of the individual word (is it an isnād word or not) and also in
terms of correctly identifying the span of an isnād (where it starts and finishes).54

52 http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3891466. Lorenz Nigst, Maxim Romanov, Sarah Bowen Savant,

Masoumeh Seydi, and Peter Verkinderen (2020). OpenITI: a Machine-Readable Corpus of Islami-
cate Texts (Version 2020.1.2) [Data set].
53 The annotators were Abdul Rahman Azzam, Mathew Barber, Hamid Reza Hakimi, Ahmed Has-
san, R. Kevin Jaques, Simon Loynes, Lorenz Nigst, and Sarah Bowen Savant.
54 Recall = pertinent results retrieved by the algorithm divided by expected results; precision = all
results retrieved divided by expected results. Precision is the percentage of predicted results that
are actually relevant (i.e. are isnāds), while recall is the percentage of isnāds that show up in the
predicted results. Failures of precision occur when the model predicts a text span belongs to an
302 Sarah Bowen Savant
At the level of the token, or word, the model had an 89 percent accuracy, in terms
of precision, and 90 percent in terms of recall. For identifying the spans, meas-
urement was performed in multiple ways. In the toughest measurement—did the
model find the start and ending point with no errors whatsoever?—the model per-
formed rather poorly, with 31 percent precision and 31 percent recall. But at the
more meaningful level of partially identifying the span (missing the start or end-
ing point by some words, for example), the model scored 93 percent for precision
and 90 percent for recall. While this is not perfect, the data already, we believe,
has heuristic value for showing trends. The method for assessing precision and
recall and arriving at these numbers involved running the model on most of the
training data, in multiple instances, but each time withholding 10 percent of it.
This meant that the computer did not “see” this data and could not therefore learn
from it. Then, the model, now trained, evaluated this withheld bit of training data.
The results were compared against how the annotator himself/herself had marked
the text. It is worth noting that the model’s efficacy is unknown for texts for which
no training data was prepared (because it was not tested against them).
The task of identifying isnāds, for the computer, is not simple. Indeed, to get
an understanding of how difficult the task of labelling isnāds is, five annota-
tors performed an inter-annotator agreement study in which we compared our
own annotations against each other for 2,000 lines of the same text (Abū l-Faraj
al-Iṣfahānī’s Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn). This showed that identifying the end points
of an isnād is indeed harder than its starting point and that correctly identifying
as distinct adjacent spans of isnāds can be quite difficult. The vast majority of
disagreements were very small at the word level; but we, a group of professionally
trained historians and specialists in Arabic, agreed only 53 percent of the time on
the precise word with which an isnād ended.
The data file for isnād fractions can be read within the Zenodo data release
linked to this chapter.

3. Named Entities listings for Ibn ʿAsākir’s TMD. This is work in progress
by the author and Seydi. We are creating an authorities file for persons listed
within isnāds in the TMD and assembling files with subsets of labelled isnāds
in the hope that we will be able to better understand how Ibn ʿAsākir assem-
bled the TMD (including, as mentioned earlier, through unnamed codices).
We are segmenting the text through regular expressions and relying also on
Jaques’s list of transmissive terms.
4. Text reuse alignment data. The passim software was authored by David
Smith, Muther’s PhD supervisor at Northeastern University, who has super-
vised its adaptation and implementation for Arabic. The data set was created
in February 2020 by Muther and Seydi, based on the 2020.1.2 corpus release.

isnād, but it does not. A failure of recall occurs when the model fails to predict that a span belongs
to an isnād, but it does.
Part IV

William A. Graham
as Colleague and
Administrator
16 Fifty Years as Colleagues
Pilgrims’ Progress
Diana Eck

Bill Graham was the first person I met when I arrived at Harvard as a first-year
PhD student in the fall of 1969. It takes my breath away to realize it was fully
50 years ago. The fact that we have been colleagues ever since is one of the great
and rare gifts of university life. That first meeting was, appropriately, in the com-
mon room of the Center for the Study of World Religions at an opening recep-
tion for faculty and students. It was a warm early fall evening, and everything
was new to me, so I was happy to meet someone who had been in the doctoral
programme for a year. Bill had come from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where
he had studied history and was drawn into the study of Islam at Harvard. He had
studied in Arabic in Lebanon. He had been to India and had worked with a doctor
in Tamilnadu who performed cataract operations. There was much to talk about.
Bill lived there at the Center and introduced me to the assistant director, John
Carman and his wife, Ineke. He pointed out some of the other faculty—Masatoshi
Nagatomi in Buddhist studies; Annamarie Schimmel in Islamic studies; Gordon
Kaufman, a Christian theologian; and Krister Stendahl, the dean of the Divinity
School. Before long, everyone settled into the chairs and couches of the common
room and the director, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, offered some welcoming remarks.
In his usual measured cadence, he opened the horizon on a year in which all of us,
together, he said, would embark on the most consequential and exciting journey
into the study of the religious life of humanity. Nothing could be more important.
Nothing could be more challenging and demand more of our joint work as a com-
munity of scholars. He believed this, lived this, and somehow instilled in us this
sense of the profound importance of our work in the study of religion.
In the 1970s, the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) was the
academic center of the PhD students in the world’s religions, then called “Field I,”
which essentially meant those of us whose field was other than one of the eight
other fields of Christian and Jewish studies, biblical studies, or the ancient Greco-
Roman world. Our academic records as students in the Faculty of Arts and
­Sciences (FAS) were kept right there in the office of the director. The overall chair
of doctoral studies in religion was Richard R. Niebuhr, whose office was deep in
the stacks of Andover Library in the Divinity School, across the street. We didn’t
realize it then, but Bill and I would end up spending hours, year after year, trying
to clarify for puzzled students, applicants, and faculty members just what was the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-20
306 Diana Eck
relationship of FAS and the Faculty of Divinity, and how CSWR fit into this, or
didn’t.
That common room in the CSWR was the site of a weekly colloquium for stu-
dents and faculty. It was not a for-credit course or seminar, but none of us would
dream of missing it. It was based on Smith’s assumption that all of us—no matter
what our particular tradition of specialization—are working in the larger global
context of the historical and interrelated study of religion. Comparative study is
a process, and our common colloquium was part of that process. We would talk
about our own work, or something that particularly fascinated us. In the process,
we stretched our intellectual muscles and also knit together a strong community
of students and faculty—and spouses were welcome too.
I was well aware of the critical and linguistic skills, the painstaking work that
would be involved in studying and trying to understand the religious life of a com-
munity not my own. But Smith added another challenge to that difficult work: that
of what he called “critical self-consciousness.” By this he meant the excavation of
one’s own religious or secular presuppositions that would shape the problems we
might tackle and the questions we might ask. It was important to be aware of this,
rather than leave it to stream along under the surface. That the study of someone
else’s tradition requires the excavation of one’s own presuppositions and world
view—whether Christian or Jewish, secular or humanist—was to me a bold and
somewhat frightening proposition. Bill and I were both Methodists of sorts, but
Bill had taken a stronger turn towards the secular historical tradition.
That weekly colloquy embodied the expectation of common work in the com-
parative study of religion in the colloquy. Bill and I were very much involved in
the seminars in which he would undertake the exploration and deconstruction of
the very categories we use in religious studies. Smith had already addressed the
term “religion” in his groundbreaking work The Meaning and End of Religion.
During the years of our graduate work, his way of working became increasingly
clear in the seminars in which Bill and I participated on “faith,” “belief,” and
“scripture,” excavating these overworked English terms with a range of other lin-
guistic resources—Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit. Bill’s own work on
scripture was certainly influential in Smith’s subsequent work. The comparative
study was as much a process as a product. The question of category formation was
front and centre.
Developing a community of conversation was not only an intellectual matter,
it also took us outside Cambridge. Among the high points in our graduate jour-
ney was a hiking trip into the White Mountains with Bill and his wife Meg, Jack
Hawley, Ron Koetsch, me, and my then-roommate Letty Arends, all of us joined
by Wilfred Cantwell Smith himself. We hiked in the sunshine of a fall Saturday,
puffed up trails, forded streams, and eventually pitched our tents and made dinner
over the campfire. The next morning, we woke up to snow!
One of the important developments of those years was the creation of an
undergraduate programme in religion, something that was commonplace at most
of our sister universities. Still, at Harvard in the 1960s an undergraduate inter-
ested in majoring in religion would have to apply for a “Special Concentration.”
 Fifty Years as Colleagues 307
With considerable lobbying by faculty both in the Divinity School and the Fac-
ulty of Arts and Sciences, a concentration in the Comparative Study of Religion
was passed by FAS, with very strict guidelines and the insistence on a five-year
review. Some faculty were apprehensive, thinking “religion” to be much too
challenging for undergraduates; others felt it was much too vague a subject to
merit a concentration. Bill and I were not directly involved in the discussion
leading to the approval of the concentration, but when the concentration was
approved, designated faculty were needed. A senior professor would be neces-
sary to anchor the programme and Divinity professor Richard R. Niebuhr was
seconded to Arts and Sciences for the position. As for junior faculty, Bill was
appointed as a lecturer, and when I finished my thesis, I became the second lec-
turer to join the effort. We moved into offices on the top floor of what was then
the old Freshman Union.
The three of us worked together to develop our first introductory course: Reli-
gion 10, “Pilgrimages: A Thematic Introduction to Religion.” It was a challenging
undertaking, and it was fun for all of us. We shared our introductory lectures—
Dick Niebuhr on the meanings of symbol, Bill on the meanings of myth, and I on
the meanings of ritual. Of course, we covered some of the famous sacred places
and pilgrimages. I introduced the holy city of Banaras, the great sacred city of
India, and Bill introduced the hajj, the great pilgrimage to Mecca. Dick Niebuhr
led us to Walden, where we settled in with Thoreau’s inner journey.
But we all moved out of familiar territory too. The readings we chose were both
first-hand accounts and interpretive studies. We loved The Book of the Wander-
ings of Friar Felix Fabri, a German friar who travelled to the “holy land” where
he could visit the very places marked across the pilgrim landscape: where the
bread was baked that was served at the Last Supper, where Jesus was taken down
from the cross, where the Lord had appeared to Mary Magdalene, where the true
cross was discovered by Saint Helena. It was a rich, place-centred pilgrimage that
reminded me of Hindu pilgrimage to the dozens of evocative sites in the home-
land of Krishna. Another choice was Basho’s memoir, The Narrow Road to the
Deep North, where he describes how he closed up his house and walked hundreds
of miles around Japan, seeking out the sacred places and moments. He was not
looking for temples or monuments, nor places associated with some mythic event.
Rather, he bowed his head where the plum blossoms bloom at the door in a par-
ticular spring month, where the heron takes off across a still pond, where the crow
sits on a leafless bough in the gathering autumn dusk.
We began with a pilgrimage none of us had studied before: the journey of the
Huichol Indians of Mexico to their ancient homeland, illumined by the work of
anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff and a remarkable film, To Find Our Life. For the
first part of the journey, they travel in vans, practising carefully the ritual of how
and in what order to get in and out of the vehicles on this journey. They reach the
starting point of their foot journey to the sacred homeland, Wirikuta. They have
a shaman guide as they go through “gateways” and “crossings” to the watering
place “where our mother is.” Then, knotted together in ropes and blindfolded,
they arrive at the place “where the clouds open.” There, they hunt the peyote, with
308 Diana Eck
bows and arrows, as they might hunt the deer. There, they cross over and “find
our life.”
Many of our students in the decade or so of the Pilgrimage class also “found
their lives.” Several in that first class found their lives as Religion concentrators
and eventually took these studies into doctoral work. Ali S. Asani, who had jour-
neyed from Kenya, found his life right here at Harvard. Michael Como went to
Japan and found his life as a professor of Japanese Religion at Columbia. Rebecca
Gould followed the track of Thoreau and found her life at Middlebury College.
Lawrence Cohen travelled to India and eventually found his life at Berkeley. And
there were many others: Kimberley Patton at Harvard Divinity School, Scott
Alexander at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Elizabeth Hutchison at the
University of New Mexico, and Laurie Patton at Chicago, Duke, and Middlebury
College.
As the years passed, Bill had more responsibilities in Near Eastern Languages
and Civilizations, and eventually in the Al-Waleed bin Talal Center. He continued
to teach critical courses in religion, such as his signature course on “Scriptures
and Classics,” but he also taught courses on Islam and the Qurʾan. At a time when
Islam was in the headlines, Bill was often called upon to weigh in as a scholar. In
this he did important outreach work in the public understanding of religion and
of Islam in particular. When fellow Harvard faculty member Samuel Hunting-
ton came up with his much-publicized thesis on the “clash of civilizations,” Bill
realized that Islam scholars had to speak up, and he did. As dean of the Harvard
Divinity School, Bill continued to be a public spokesperson and reconfigured the
relationship between the two sides of Francis Avenue—HDS and the CSWR.
I will never forget Bill’s last class, formally speaking, at Harvard. It has been
the custom at Harvard to have a last lecture open to colleagues, and I was delighted
to be able to come. He planned it as a breakfast lecture in the Thompson Room
of the Barker Center and he supplied a bountiful breakfast fare. His students from
“Scriptures and Classics” came, as did many of us who had been his colleagues
for years. While he began with a summation of the dilemmas and lessons to be
learned from the great literature that might be called a “scripture” or a “classic,”
he went on to articulate his understanding of the study of religion—what it means
to the humanities, what it means for the wider University, what it means for the
wider public, and what it has meant for him personally. I hung on every word,
and I await the day when every word of it is published. For 50 years we have
been working side by side in this field, and I have never seen the harvest so richly
gathered.
17 William A. Graham’s
Approach to Comparative
Religion as Scholar, Teacher,
and Administrator
Raquel M. Ukeles

Introduction
Professor William A. Graham, more than most scholars of his calibre, devoted a
significant portion of his career to higher-education administration, including a
decade as Harvard Divinity School dean during a critical period of institutional
transformation. Graham’s administrative positions at Harvard spanned four dec-
ades, and he made significant contributions in the areas of academics, pedagogy,
residential life, and financial stability. These positions include:

• Allston Burr Senior Tutor (academic dean) in the John Winthrop House,
1975–1977
• Chair, Foreign Cultures Area, Harvard College Core Curriculum, 1981–1986
• Faculty Council, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1989–1992
• Head Tutor (director of A.B. studies in Comparative Religion), 1974–1977,
1980–1982
• Chair, Committee on the Study of Religion, 1987–1990; director of PhD
studies, 1984–1987
• Chairman, Committee on Middle Eastern Studies, 1991–1996; Acting Chair,
1988
• Director, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1990–1996; Acting
Director, 1988
• Master of Currier House (Harvard undergraduate residential college),
1991–2003
• Chair, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1997–2002
• Chair, Council of College Masters, 2001–2002
• Dean of the Faculty of Divinity and John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity,
Harvard Divinity School, 2002–2012

Graham also advised numerous other universities in the United States and Europe
on religious studies, college general education, and comparative studies. From
1993 to 1996, he served as chair of the Council on Graduate Studies in Religion
of North America.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252221-21
310 Raquel M. Ukeles
This contribution seeks to examine Graham’s administrative work as an inte-
gral part of his oeuvre. Rather than dismiss his administrative work as ancillary
to his scholarly project, I would argue that one can identify clear themes that run
through his scholarship, teaching, and administrative work.
The following is structured as an interview and draws both from written
responses by Graham to interview questions that I posed in late August 2020 and
from an oral interview conducted on 1 September 2020. The interview format
allows Graham to reflect upon his scholarly approach to comparative religion; his
administrative achievements, with a focus on promoting comparative religion as
HDS dean; the strong influence of Wilfred Cantwell Smith on Graham’s approach
to comparison; and the common methods and goals of his work.1

Graham’s approach to comparative religion

Raquel M. Ukeles (RMU): In general, I think it’s fair to say that a comparative
approach permeates your scholarship. Even when you discuss specifically Islamic
subjects, you situate these subjects in broader human categories. At the same
time, some of your writing is explicitly comparative, and here I see two general
approaches. In Beyond the Written Word, for example, you explore across many
traditions the general question of orality and scripture. In this work, your research
on the oral dimensions of scripture in Islam led you to rethink the category more
broadly and to a comparative analysis in several different traditions. What I appre-
ciate about this work is that you hone the very terms of orality and scripture with
each subsequent tradition—leaving space for differentiation while maintaining a
common thread. One can find a different (perhaps more conventional?) method in
Three Faiths: One God. Here, you participate in a parallel exploration of a given
theme and provide the Islamic perspective. I would love to hear your thoughts on
these and other approaches that you have marshalled in your writing and whether
your preferred methods have evolved over the years.
William A. Graham (WAG): I can’t really claim that Three Faiths is very com-
parative, although I did write my portion of it with Jewish and Christian analogues
and differences always in mind. As it was a more popularly oriented book, there
wasn’t a real effort to focus on issues of comparison beyond the three of us agree-
ing on chapter categories at the most general level.
As to my general approach, if such really exists, I have always thought that it
is usually less good to start out trying to find a topic/phenomenon/idea that one
can then pursue across two or more traditions with comparative intent; instead
I have preferred either to take something that I have found interesting or striking
in a given tradition and then see how it works out/if it works out in the context of
one or more other traditions. The “orality of written texts” theme of Beyond the
Written Word came from my work on the word qurʾān (“reciting”), in the context

1 I would like to thank Bill Graham for his extraordinary generosity of time and spirit in providing
rich and detailed responses to my questions.
 William A. Graham’s Approach 311
of the development of a written scriptural text in early Islam; I became fascinated
with how the Qurʾan always has functioned orally even while being fixed in a
written text, and of course my own southern US Protestant upbringing gave me,
in addition, memories and experiences of how important the oral application of
biblical (read: King James English) passages and images and phrases has been in
many Christian (read: American Protestant) traditions. I had also studied Sanskrit
and Pali at a basic level in graduate school and been schooled in the dominance of
Vedic orality and Buddhist text chanting, so these were to hand as well.

RMU: If I were to start classifying methods of comparative religion, I would point

to three general methods. The first is a very traditional approach of tracing
influence. At Harvard, during my doctoral studies in comparative Islamic and
Jewish studies (1996–2006), there was mostly support for comparison as a
way of tracing influence, and you were the exception.
WAG: That may be right. And I have to say, credit where credit is due, I think that
was fundamental to Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s approach to comparative reli-
gion long before. Smith really did not believe that the answers lie in origins,
for instance. Certainly he worked on tracing influences in his article on the
coalescence of a notion of scripture, which he did relatively late in his career
when both of us were working on scripture, and we talked about that a lot. He
is willing to say that you get influences from the biblical traditions of Jew-
ish and Christian things, and then you get a very new thing with Mani, and
then ultimately, Muhammad will carry this tradition to its logical extreme; so,
he does see it as an historical continuum. I have always felt too that things
always are in historical context, but I do feel he, as well as I, was sceptical of
trying to interpret one tradition out of its borrowings from another tradition.
I think he always felt that was inherently a potentially polemical approach—
and certainly I’ve always felt that it is, and I think I must have gotten that
from him to an important degree. . . .
    I had a couple of teachers also in literature who, just as Wilfred [C. Smith]
did in religion, emphasized that each new historical or literary phenomenon
of any note is a new creation in some important sense and naturally borrows
from everything that the makers have absorbed and pulled together. But, to
try to explain it out of its etiology, or genealogy, is only one part of the story
that can’t really offer a satisfactory, full explanation. It’s the old business
of good poets borrow, great poets steal. And it’s just a fact of history in my
opinion.
RMU: The second method is to see certain traditions as parallel systems or parallel
worlds and to start with similarities in order to create juxtaposition, and then
to identify what’s distinctive. The goal of this approach is to sharpen what’s
interesting about each tradition. Here, the comparative method is a way of
shining light on each tradition and identifying elements that you might miss if
you’re just studying one tradition. . . .
    And then there’s the (third) method that you described in your article
“Reflections on Comparative Study in Religion: ‘Scripture’ as a Case in
312 Raquel M. Ukeles
Point,” which we see also in your book Beyond the Written Word. Here, you
examine multiple traditions in relation to certain categories or phenomena.
The journey that you take within a tradition and across traditions teaches
us first and foremost about the complexity and historical dynamism of each
tradition. But your comparative approach also teaches us something about
ourselves. And this is what’s distinctive about your approach, that doing the
work of comparison teaches us about how we look at things, and it’s a way of
coming to terms with our own preconceptions and biases, our way of analys-
ing and structuring phenomena. So, the goal of your method is to lead us to a
greater humanism. Would you agree?
WAG: Well, I don’t know whether I could claim having set out with or attained
those great goals, but that is an underlying hope for everything I do. I think
that there’s some sort of greater human awareness that comes out of recogniz-
ing the specifics as well as the generalities. I mean, I don’t think you can have
just the generalities or just the specifics, but the two together can often illu-
minate things that are simply human, as opposed to culturally or ethnically
or religiously defined within a particular historical and area, or traditional,
context. I think that’s an ideal to have. In other articles and work that I’ve
done, I think I worked with the idea that you take something from the tradi-
tion you know best, then you move out and test it however you can in other
contexts. That’s one way. The other way that I think has been important for
my thinking is that sometimes in reading material, let’s say for me in Bud-
dhist or Hindu or Far Eastern traditions, I find questions or ideas that would
not normally be posed or elaborated in Islamic (or Jewish or Christian) con-
texts; that’s where teaching is such a good thing. By working out things for
lectures, for example, on the Chinese tradition or on Japan, you sometimes hit
upon something and ask, why is it framed like that? Why do the sinologists
or the Japanese specialists ask this question? And why we don’t see that in
the Islamic world? So, the other way [to do comparative religion] is then to
bring questions or even phenomena back to your specialty tradition and look
at them in the context of the tradition you know best, whether it’s your own
background tradition or your academic specialty tradition. Whatever way one
proceeds, however, I think it is always a kind of dialectic between the particu-
lar and the multiple.
    This may be a legacy of [W.C.] Smith as well, of course. He so often forced
you in seminars and in his own work to look at the meanings of specific
words and concepts and to interrogate these. And in some ways, scripture as
a concept was something that he also worked on during the same period when
he came back to Harvard, when I had started working on the matter of the oral
dimensions of written scripture. At that time he was, from a different angle,
beginning to work on scripture as category, mostly through the commentary
on the Song of Songs that had fascinated him at the time. But we at least both
shared that interest in scripture for a decade or two, before he returned to
Canada, and even up to his death. In that way, I always felt that it was just
an extension of the kind of questioning that he taught his students to do in
 William A. Graham’s Approach 313
classes, which was simply not to take any category or the meaning of any
concept for granted. There’s no scholarly category that is ultimate or that is
perfect, so you just have to question it from start to finish.
    I think the same is also true for other work that I did. I worked on the hajj
in an early article on the meaning of ritual. It was the first piece of scholarly
work that I felt was really my own pushing out into new territory. I [worked]
from the ground up, and even though I knew that it could be critiqued and
criticized (and it has been), I also felt that it had a lot of stimulating ideas
about Islam as well as pilgrimage. That was an early indication I think, in
retrospect, that the ideal for me in much of my work is not so much solv-
ing problems as bringing problems out into the open and making new sug-
gestions about them that cause the next generation or colleagues to ask the
question in different ways or contexts (and, it may be hoped, answer it better
because of [their] better expertise or their expertise in a different area). It’s
one of the reasons I dropped the two chapters that I thought I would eventu-
ally do [in Beyond the Written Word], on Buddhist scripture and on Jewish
scripture from my later book. I just saw that it had already taken me eight or
nine years, and I thought it was going take another long while and I would
have not only to rely on my rudimentary Buddhist languages but also to learn
Hebrew to do it. So, I just decided, well, I’ve made my general point with
reference to three traditions. Let’s just get it out there and let others take it
and run with it in other contexts if they want to, or critique it and run with it
if they want to—and that’s, in general, what has happened. The book has had
interesting responses from biblical scholars and Asian specialists, and those
have been the ones I liked best.
    And I’ve always said that it’s back and forth between the particular and the
general, or between the comparative and the specific/the specialized single
tradition. I’ve always used a kind of dialectic in which if you move out to
compare and then come back, again to the specifics, because you have to go
to other specifics before you come back and test ones in your own familiar
tradition of specialization.
RMU: The dynamic process that you describe highlights a key difference between
the specialist in Islamic studies and the scholar of comparative religion.
Through the exploration of Islam or Buddhism or any tradition, you’re con-
tinuing the work of trying to understand better these general human cate-
gories. That’s what makes the study of comparative religion different from
historical scholarship on a particular tradition.
WAG: Yes, I think so. I think that was always very natural to me, going back to
how I worked in comparative literature as an undergraduate. That’s really to
some degree how I saw comparative work from the outset, wholly apart from
religious studies. I did my undergraduate thesis on Thomas Mann and Euripi-
des and compared the daemonic in both (and, of course, since I was an under-
graduate, I also pushed out more broadly to see Euripides’s work responding
to the Peloponnesian War as in some ways analogous to Mann’s responding
to the First [and then the descent into the Second] World War). I argued that
314 Raquel M. Ukeles
the irrational, or daemonic, in their work was a way of parsing the societal
chaos and absolute unpredictability such wars visit on people’s lives. So that
work was overtly comparative, in that sense of using two specific, historically
and culturally disparate writers who were doing, I thought, parallel things,
each with their work writing their own literary genre (classical tragedy and
realistic novel, respectively) almost into impossibility, or at least into a new
key. They were obviously not the same, but they were doing parallel things
by focusing on the irrational in human affairs. For Euripides, you can see it
in, among others, the tragedy of Heracles, where in the middle of the play the
gods cause Heracles to go mad and slay his own beloved family. The remain-
der of the drama shows how a friend tries to help him recover after his being
broken by his return to sanity to face the appalling thing he had done. It’s a
very different kind of classical tragedy by Aristotle’s or any other measure,
but it’s not unlike the tragedy of Adrian Leverkühn, Mann’s Dr. Faustus, with
respect to the breaking in of the irrational or daemonic into “normal” exist-
ence. So, I look back at that youthful essay as very similar in method to my
later efforts to move comparatively between different phenomena, working
from specific to general or comparable and then back to one or the other
specific. In this, I don’t really see any large, overarching comparative theory
to be spun out as a method. I just see such interrogation of historical ideas or
products as a kind of a kind of work in process that I call comparative. . . .
I think that comparative work of any kind is where you begin to expand your
horizons and to think more humanistically, more broadly about the vicissi-
tudes and possibilities of the human adventure anywhere.

Higher-education administrative work

RMU: Most academics do administrative work. Some enjoy it more than others,
but academics rarely discuss the administrative aspects of their work or con-
nect it to their scholarship and teaching. Relative to senior scholars in our
field, you have done a remarkable amount of administrative work throughout
your career. At the same time, you have maintained an international scholarly
presence. The first question I want to ask is, why have you invested so much
time in your career on these administrative positions? Can you please share
what aspects of higher-education administration that you have found mean-
ingful or fulfilling?
WAG: I confess that although I have loved nothing better than solitary library
work, I also have always taken a very down-to-earth, elementary pleasure in
working on things that yield more immediate, tangible results. In scholarly
writing and teaching, you cast your bread on the water, as it were, and the
tides or current take it away, out of view for the most part, and there is little
immediate gratification of knowing whether or not your labors have actually
made any difference at all. Even in my “leisure” activities, I have always
loved most the most active, hands-on, physically demanding activities like
distance running, sailing, and, above all, mountaineering. At the same time,
 William A. Graham’s Approach 315
administrative work, which I always thought of as work that uses ideas and
effort concretely to shape institutions and groups, became almost uncon-
sciously a natural inclination for me in my professional life, even if I would
not have put it in those terms early on. I loved and love bringing people
together to solve a problem or make things in some sphere in some way bet-
ter. That turned out to be the tangible, hands-on work I could do alongside
my ivory-tower scholarly work and get a very different kind of satisfaction
from it. I was always and remain “a jack-of-all-trades and master of none” at
a very basic level, and I like the shifting of gears, the Abwechslung, of pairing
scholarship and administrative work.
RMU: Putting aside your tenure as HDS dean for the moment, which were the
administrative positions that you found to be particularly rewarding? In
which positions did you feel synergy between and among your scholarship,
teaching, and administrative work? I’m curious to hear reflections on your
involvement in creating the undergraduate concentration in comparative reli-
gion in 1974, in comparison with your work as HDS dean. You have also spo-
ken of your participation in a college world-civilization textbook as a source
of pride.
WAG: Of course, on revient toujours à son premier amour, and so the work I did
with Dick [Richard] Niebuhr in my first year on the faculty (’73–’74) in
designing and putting through the FAS faculty a new concentration in the
Comparative Study of Religion remains especially important as a particu-
larly rewarding experience in my career. Working with the first couple of
undergraduate-concentrator classes and teaching them jointly with Dick was
a magical learning opportunity for me as a young, raw faculty member. Sec-
ond, I think my work as a Senior Tutor in Winthrop House, which I did in
’75–’77 while teaching basically full time in Religion and NELC (Near East-
ern Languages & Civilizations), was also especially satisfying, as it opened
up academic administrative work to me in varied ways. I always knew my
first love in higher education was the American ideal of a liberal arts educa-
tion, and being a Senior Tutor as well as developing and leading a new under-
graduate concentration at the same time put me squarely in the middle of my
primary allegiance to college liberal arts education.
    Third, I also loved working from 1978 to 1983 as one of only two non-
tenured members on the five area committees of the new Core Curriculum: it
was an exciting experiment in undergraduate curriculum revision (and even
led to my preparing a paper, later published, for a California conference on
liberal education in the late ’70s; thereafter I became the second chair of
the Foreign Cultures subcommittee and loved trying to develop its curricular
offerings in diverse global arenas).
    I think such tasks as those aforementioned remain strong memories for
me because they so well combined (even in a synergistic way) my scholarly
work and expertise with my practical bent and love of seeing results “on the
ground.” Such synergy I also found later in other work, but because those
were early and perhaps formative ones for me, they remain vivid. Otherwise,
316 Raquel M. Ukeles
it is interesting that the six years I spent as director of the CMES (Center
for Middle Eastern Studies) probably best prepared me for the dean’s job at
HDS, as I gained, among other things, good experience fundraising for ME
positions and student research support. Further, the CMES was a fairly wide-
ranging entity that had oversight of both the AM area studies program and
four joint PhD programs in Middle Eastern Studies (with Economics, Fine
Arts, History, and Anthropology). The position also required my building an
outside advisory body as the Director’s Council that brought together some
very interesting men and women from a variety of professions and parts of
the world. It also required a lot of hands-on administrative and financial work
as well as working with and hiring and firing staff.
RMU: From an outsider’s perspective, it seems that your tenure as HDS dean was
different from your other administrative positions—and that HDS provided a
greater opportunity to put into practice the principles that you have espoused
in your scholarship and teaching. Does this appear to be true because you had
more opportunities to give public addresses about this work as HDS dean?
Or do you regard your leadership as HDS dean as a distinctive opportunity to
shape the field and the next generation of students?
WAG: Very much the latter of the last two. Oddly, I think I did less in my alumni
and public addresses as dean than in my work with faculty on programmes
and appointments that allowed me to build HDS towards a more eclectic,
comparative, and diverse institutional ideal—I think in good part because
I felt that 1) as a non-Christian specialist (the first and thus far only such as
HDS dean) who in personal religiosity leans towards agnosticism in his reli-
gious identity and 2) as an Arts and Sciences faculty member (I only joined
the HDS faculty when I became dean) who was thrust upon the HDS faculty
by President Summers, I did not think I was in a position to be the one out
front on making major changes in the direction of a reduced Christocentric
focus at HDS. Fortunately, I did not have to do a lot of public exposition of
my ideas or ideals; the faculty had several strong members ready to move as
I hoped they might, and every appointment of the many I was privileged to
make (32 in all, I think, at junior and senior levels) moved us further in the
same, more pluralistic direction (in terms of both religious and disciplinary
diversity). I had tried repeatedly to turn down the deanship when the presi-
dent asked me to do it on an acting basis for the spring term of 2002 and then
thereafter to do it on a regular basis for the coming years. But by the summer
of 2002, I had glimpsed some, I thought, huge possibilities for a changed
HDS that would be a challenge to pursue and that might even be fun to work
on, so finally in July I agreed to become dean. It turned out to be work that
I did enjoy, more so after the first three or so very hard years of often pain-
ful change, of course, but I look back on it as work that I finally loved and
remain proud of.
RMU: Of the changes that you ushered into the Divinity School, which are the
changes that you regard as the most significant?
 William A. Graham’s Approach 317
WAG: First, building an expanded and stronger faculty of fine scholar-teachers
with a patently global and non-sectarian orientation in their thinking about the
HDS mission. Second, radically increasing the extent and amount of financial
support for HDS students and raising substantially the quality of the students
admitted (both of which required cutting the student-body size basically in
half). Third, laying the groundwork for bringing religious studies in FAS and
Divinity together with a single PhD programme and joint oversight of reli-
gious studies at Harvard, including undergraduate studies. Fourth, bringing
HDS and its staff through the 2008 financial crisis with absolutely minimal
loss of personnel through reductions. These seem to me the most significant,
though I should add that the revision of first the MDiv and then the MTS
programmes should probably be a fifth thing that was particularly signifi-
cant in my first five or so years. Overall, I want to stress above all, that “I”
didn’t really “usher in” these things, certainly not alone, and all I can claim
is having tried to channel energies and ideas in ways that made such changes
possible. I do view leadership, not least in the academy, as working from the
middle, if not the rear, of one’s team to build collaboration and enthusiasm
for change and growth, not being “out front” pulling team members along to
where you want to go.

Graham’s deanship at Harvard Divinity School

RMU: I would be grateful if you would elaborate on the kinds of comparative
projects that you aimed for in the restructuring of the HDS curriculum and
whether the approach differed for the Masters in Theological Studies pro-
gramme (MTS) and Masters in Divinity programme (MDiv).
WAG: The first changes that we made were to the Masters in Divinity (MDiv)
programme. George Rupp’s revision of the programmes back in the 1980s
had already set the Divinity School in a more global context. George was a
superb Christian theologian who had read in world religions and was very
attuned to that. He had already started the MDiv in a more eclectic curricu-
lar direction, which continued under his successor, Ron Thiemann, but after
I arrived, the faculty decided that to revise this programme, we wanted to do
something more radical, bringing the perspective of comparative and global
religious studies into the Christocentric curriculum. Even then there were
non-Christian in addition to Catholic and Protestant students in the MDiv
as well as the MTS. The faculty MDiv committee asked, why not make the
program even stronger and encourage a diversity of mission beyond training
Christian ministers? And that’s really where the faculty took the programme
in the revisions it approved. Of course, I was delighted. I did not have to get
out in front waving that flag, but with some of our newest appointments from
2002 on, it became natural that the revision process brought a multi-religious
MDiv training of religious professionals into being, and that’s the way it’s
continued to move ever since.
318 Raquel M. Ukeles
    You know that we always had a strong Jewish and Catholic contingent
among all the Protestant MDiv students, many of whom have used the degree
as training for professional work in their religious communities. Now, there’s
a well-funded “ministry” programme in particular that trains Buddhist stu-
dents to be leaders in Buddhist communities. And there are a few Muslims
who have come and done the MDiv preparatory to going on to work as imams
or other leaders in their Muslim communities as part of their training. So, too,
with students of other traditions, such as the Hindu or Sikh. So, we have at
least the possibility now that a Hindu or a Buddhist can train at HDS with
core work on studies in their own tradition, just as we always had Jewish
students who went on positions in synagogues, often as rabbis who took also
a Rabbinic degree. And there are more Catholics, particularly women, who
have gone to work in the Catholic hierarchy in various places, obviously not
as priests, but in every other capacity. So, this process was ratifying what was
beginning to happen on the ground in the previous decade or two before my
time at HDS.
RMU: Let me ask you about the areas of comparison for students in these two
programmes; this will help us connect the two conversations about your
scholarship and your work as dean. In the MDiv programme, I understand
that Christians who are training for ministerial work study alongside people
from other religions who are training for a kind of ministerial work in their
own traditions. There’s one kind of pluralism where I do my thing and you’re
next to me doing your thing, and we have opportunities for comparative con-
versations in an informal way. . . . Is it that Christian ministerial students are
training alongside Buddhists and Jews and Muslims and the conversations
around the dinner table are the basis of comparison, or does everybody have
a requirement to study other traditions?
WAG: There are certainly some formal comparative requirements. Everybody has
both to fulfil requirements in specific studies outside their special tradition
and also to take a common course at the very beginning of their programme
for a full year. This is a common MDiv seminar that is usually broken into
two or three class groups. And that involves, of course, concretely, all stu-
dents doing the same work, albeit from their various perspectives. So that’s
the almost explicitly comparative element at the core of their programme, but
the other comparative [component] is that they’re required to do both com-
parative work and work in a specific second tradition.
RMU: Is that true for MTS students as well?
WAG: Yes, but typically MTS students work even more eclectically. The MTS
always had more options to do work outside of whatever one’s special field
might be. In recent years, special fields have multiplied, and there are now,
I believe, as least 15 different fields that people can choose as their focus. In
all of them, there have to be some courses that are either explicitly compara-
tive or in a second tradition. Also, you have to move outside your own core
methodological orientation, as well as outside your own tradition of speciali-
zation. I am not up to date on the exact requirements, but I think these points
remain generally valid.
 William A. Graham’s Approach 319
    One interesting observation about the HDS curricula is that a lot of
the revisions to both master’s programmes came indirectly as a result of
the undergraduate curriculum that had required a global, multi-tradition
approach from the get go. That curriculum had, in turn, been generated with
conscious imitation of some of the earlier PhD distribution requirements for
anyone in the comparative subfield of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Faculty
had been advising and teaching in the undergraduate program in the ’80s and
’90s, and they were well aware of the global, eclectic focus of those studies.
I believe that made such focus familiar and available as a model when the
HDS faculty set out to revise the two HDS master’s programmes from 2003
onward.
RMU: When, near the end of your tenure as HDS dean, you gave the talk entitled
“Why study religion in the 21st Century?” (2012), you described Harvard
Divinity School “as an intellectual meeting ground where persons of differing
religious faiths and traditions do not work on each other or each other’s faith,
but instead work together on some tertium quid, some third thing, a problem
or issue or topic about which both are passionate and concerned, or by which
both are intrigued.”2 In other words, the key work of students is to work
together on common human problems. Where was that happening at HDS?
Was it happening, or was that an aspiration?
WAG: It’s certainly always an aspiration, and perhaps one that can never be real-
ized fully. However, I think it was happening by the time of that 2012 talk
in the sense that people having to study together in the same classes as Bud-
dhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Christians had to operate, I like to think,
on a generally level playing field in terms of the privileging of one religious
orientation over another. Then (and now, I hope), the class would be focused
on whatever the content of the course might be. But by working on it together,
there is always an implicit possibility, if not probability, that they’re going to
learn from working on that third thing (the course subject matter) and at the
same time seeing other persons who are so different from them (and who
may even seem bizarre and strange), yet who are grappling with the same
things they are. Such experience can ideally lead to recognition of our shared
humanity across all boundaries of religious faith and tradition. It’s that kind
of reckoning, which I think I might call “fellow recognition,” that happens
when you have scholars working on the same problem or topic from very
different viewpoints and presuppositions. I think good things happen in such
situations, if only because the varied students involved challenge each other
to make sense of different takes on a common issue. At the least, one may
hope such shared work will stretch the individual Blickwinkel, the field of
vision, of each participant beyond where it was before, enlarging his or her
horizon in new ways. And I do think that happens when you begin throwing
people together in these shared courses in which differing faith stances are

2 https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/summerautumn2012/why-study-religion-twenty-
first-century.
320 Raquel M. Ukeles
respected and accepted but not beyond discussion and comparison. This kind
of study is different from interfaith dialogue; it is not the fellow interlocutor
of some “other” tradition who is the object of one’s efforts to understand but
a shared “tertium quid,” a third thing, the subject of the course or class that all
participants in the exercise are focused on. Together, as fellow investigators,
students can learn from each other without having to focus on each other as
subjects of study.
RMU: I have to say that sounds very similar to the method you described of doing
comparative scholarship. The language of juxtaposition, of challenging one’s
field of vision, and leading to more fertile ways of thinking about things.
WAG: And making more complexified, more sophisticated, more self-conscious
the vocabulary one uses to tackle a subject. You can’t just throw around too
easily a religious term of importance when you’ve got five people from other
religious traditions in the room listening and responding.
RMU: I did find it powerful that there are Buddhist students or Muslim students
who are studying to become Buddhist and Muslim professionals alongside
Christians because that does even the playing field. Even though this is a
twenty-first-century institution with a Christian legacy or history, if I can for-
mally study myself with the requirement to study others or to work on these
general topics as a part of that study, I—with my two feet on the ground—can
then be part of a conversation where I bring to bear my whole background.
That’s a more stable environment for more productive conversation.
WAG: A lot of what we do and have done goes back, as I have indicated earlier,
to Wilfred [Cantwell Smith]. This is what he did with the Islamic Institute at
McGill. He insisted that they have both Muslims and non-Muslims in every
seminar, in the faculty, and in the student body. His Islam and Modern His-
tory, which was the first thing he wrote while he was at McGill, a country-
by-country study, followed the model: every chapter was read and critiqued
in a faculty seminar that was half Muslim and half non-Muslim. And he got
readings on that before he finished the book. He was trying to make the insti-
tute at McGill into that kind of safe space, but also a hermeneutical space in
which you couldn’t get away with statements that were not tested by persons
inside and outside the Muslim tradition.
RMU: Doesn’t Smith have an article where he says before you make any assump-
tions about how this works in Islam, ask a Muslim? Now it sounds very
romantic, but back then it probably was real.
WAG: That it was, and people often miss the point about Smith. They often
assume that he was a parochial Christian minister trying to promote interreli-
gious dialogue. He would have definitely said absolutely not. He held that in
order to understand intellectually a concept or a problem or a phenomenon in
another culture, you’ve got to be in discussion with people who actually have
experienced it on the ground and who live it. Because it’s the only way you’re
going to ever come close to understanding what it means or meant in context.
You are never going fully to understand what’s going on, but you might in
this way come closer. This seems to me a fundamental fact of any historical
study, religious or not. For Smith, the study of religion was fundamentally
 William A. Graham’s Approach 321
a rationalist intellectual project, not a faith project of some kind that was
somehow religious in nature. I think he thought it had to be as rational as any
other kind of study, in any disciplinary framework. Wilfred was the ultimate
rationalist in many ways. He just would accept nothing that could not be
rationally explained, discussed, and argued; that was, for him, the bedrock of
scholarly study.

Comparative religion and interfaith dialogue

RMU: When I was your doctoral student, I remember several conversations on
how to do comparative religion effectively. We concurred and even commis-
erated that there was a lot of poor comparative work out there and that some-
times academics slipped into “interfaith dialogue” where comparisons were
sloppy or even polemical and not based on a deeper understanding of the way
a concept or idea functions in a particular tradition and with little recognition
of the dynamic changes of that concept over time. I was struck by your criti-
cal reference to “interreligious dialogue” again in your speech “Why study
religion . . . ?” It seems to me that the line between interreligious dialogue and
the project of joint work on common problems can become blurry at times—
especially if the project is underscored by our common humanity. Was this an
issue at HDS, and how was it handled?
WAG: I’m not sure whether it was, or is, an issue at HDS, but I have always been
and remain a bit diffident and ambivalent about interfaith “dialogue,” since
I have seen many attempts at this either be mindlessly irenic and produce lit-
tle of substance or simply two monologues speaking past each of the speak-
ers. However, in honesty, since I do not see myself as firmly situated in a
single religious tradition and faith but more of a “mongrel” person of faith
drawing on my own inherited Protestant Christian tradition and all of those
others I have studied (especially the Buddhist, I think), it would be rather pre-
sumptuous of me to try to engage in “dialogue” as a representative of Chris-
tian tradition, for example. So my hesitancy about interreligious dialogue is
not only about my scepticism about its lasting results (I must note that I am a
great proponent of “tolerance” for, and open-mindedness about, all religious
traditions and faiths; those attitudes seem to me most important, and if inter-
religious dialogue can make such attitudes possible, I am all for it), but my
feeling that I do not have the personal-faith ground to stand on to make real
contributions to such dialogue.
    I was always happy to see efforts at such dialogue pursued at HDS, even if
I was not an active participant. Most of all, I wanted to see open-mindedness
and a modest, intellectual epoché cultivated with regard to other persons’
faith and tradition.

Conclusions
The interviews highlight a number of common themes between Graham’s schol-
arly method and his higher education administrative work. His approach to
322 Raquel M. Ukeles
religion as an ongoing dialectical process grounds both his comparative scholar-
ship and the changes that he ushered in both in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
and at HDS. During his tenure as HDS dean, Graham strengthened the academic
standards of both master’s programmes by creating the conditions to attract and
support higher-calibre students. At the same time, he led the dramatic expansion
of the faculty, especially in non-Christian fields, and the development of new
programmes for Buddhist religious professionals and increased learning oppor-
tunities for Muslims and Hindus. In other words, Graham worked as dean both
to strengthen the study of particular traditions and to broaden the field of com-
parison for HDS students. His administrative work put into action his approach
to studying religion—as a dynamic process of moving between the particular and
the general, and of challenging students to expand the field of vision and develop
more fertile ways of thinking.
While Graham describes himself modestly as the convener or facilitator, his
aspirations are monumental. For Graham, the goals of comparative religion,
whether in scholarship or teaching, are to educate people for the multireligious
world of the twenty-first century and to foster a deep recognition of others’ innate
humanity.
Index
Note: Page numbers in italic indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on
the corresponding page.
Abraham 28, 34, 47 – 49, 52, 54, 56, 80,
127, 144, 187, 241 – 243, 248 – 249
Abū Nuṣayr 130 – 134
Abū Ṣāliḥ 130, 135 – 138
adhān, 231 – 234
administrative work 310, 314 – 317,
321 – 322
ahl al-kitāb 9 – 10, 18n52, 141, 232 – 234
Akhtar, Shabbir 63
Aṣḥāb al-Kahf 73 – 74
“aspects” of the Qurʾan, see wajh
Auerbach, Erich 45 – 52, 54 – 57, 59, 61 – 65;
Azhar, al- 106 – 107
basmala 96, 265
Bible 13 – 15, 44 – 46, 50 – 51, 58 – 64,
78 – 79, 144 – 145, 148 – 149;
Deuteronomy 14; Ezekiel 3:12–15
238; Genesis 14, 46, 49; Genesis 1:3
143; Genesis 22:1 47; Genesis 22:7 52,
56; Genesis 37:34–36 54; Exodus 14;
Exodus 15:11 125 – 126; Exodus 20:15
126; Hebrews 1:1–2 141; Isaiah 10:13
126; Isaiah 48:13 126; Isaiah 66:1 246;
Jeremiah 12:7 228; Jeremiah 31:15–16
54; John 145; John 1:14 145; John
1:29 146; John 2:17 228; John 14:28
151; John 20:17 151; John 21:25 112;
Leviticus 14; Luke 1:5 230; Luke 1:27
230; Luke 3:23–28 230; Luke 13:34
228; Matthew 111; Matthew 20:1–16
110; Matthew 23:37 228; Matthew 24:2
228; Numbers 14; Psalms 126 – 128,
140, 149; Psalm 29 126 – 127; Psalm
62:12 126; Psalm 68:12 124; Psalm 69:9
228; Psalm 90:12 230; Psalm 102:14
233; Psalm 115:5 125; Psalm 150 127; 1
Samuel 2:2 233; Song of Songs 2:7 127;
2 Timothy 3:16 148
Caliph, caliphate, codification 93 – 100,
106 – 107, 250
community: peripheral 236 – 240; practices
96 – 97, 102, 107
comparative religion 309 – 310, 321 – 322;
Graham’s approach to 310 – 314;
Graham’s deanship at Harvard Divinity
School 317 – 321; higher-education
administrative work 314 – 317; and
interfaith dialogue 321
Dānī, al- 93, 101 – 105, 116
data 300 – 302
deanship 317 – 321
Dome of the Rock 234–235, 243–247,
244–245
everyday life 56, 232 – 234
exegesis 4 – 6, 16 – 20, 28 – 29, 50 – 51,
60, 81 – 82, 88 – 89, 100, 108 – 140,
153 – 168, 192, 198, 202, 230, 238,
240
Five Pillars 248, 252 – 257
Graham, William A. 309 – 310, 321 – 322;
approach to comparative religion
310 – 314; Beyond the Written Word x–xi,
20 – 21, 24, 68, 177, 192, 282, 310 – 313;
as colleague 305 – 308; deanship at
Harvard Divinity School 317 – 321;
higher-education administrative work
314 – 317; and interfaith dialogue 321;
“Islam in the Mirror of Ritual” x, 68; on
orality 20 – 21, 68, 310 – 311; publications
xv–xix; on the Qurʾan 20 – 21, 24,
44 – 45, 67 – 72, 83 – 84, 194 – 195, 205,
310 – 311; “Qurʾan as Spoken Word” 67;
“Reflections on Comparative Study in
324 Index
Religion” 44, 311; on scripture 306 – 308,
310 – 313; “Scripture and the Qurʾan”
195; “Traditionalism in Islam” 257, 258,
282 – 283; “Transcendence in Islam”
205; Vita xiv
Hadith 36 – 38, 67, 100, 103, 114 – 123,
130 – 133, 136 – 137, 142 – 144, 168, 179,
206 – 207, 236, 248 – 257, 283 – 292,
295 – 298, 301
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) 68, 308,
315 – 322
Ḥirz al-Amānī 93, 102 – 104
holiness 195 – 196
“House,” the (the Jewish Temple) 234 – 236
Ibn ʿAbbās 122, 133, 135 – 138
Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr 263 – 266, 269 – 271,
273 – 274
Ibn al-Jazarī 93, 104 – 106, 114
Ibn ʿAsākir 288 – 298, 300 – 302
Ibn Khaldūn 102 – 103
Ibn Mujāhid 100 – 101
idols 74 – 81
iḥsān 194, 197, 200, 206 – 212
iʿjāz 60-61, 201 – 205, 211
imaginaire 108 – 114, 129n118, 139, 225
Imāmī Shīʿa 128
interfaith dialogue 321
Isaac 28, 47 – 48, 52, 56, 127, 241
isnād 283 – 302, 288, 291, 293
isnād paradigm 258 – 259, 283
isrāʾ (Muhammad’s Night Journey)
81 – 83, 246
ittiṣāliyya 282, 284, 289 – 297, 300
jamāʿat khānas 181, 185, 188 – 189
Jerusalem 41, 73 – 76, 81 – 83, 217,
225 – 247, 227, 229, 235, 244 – 245
Kalbī, al- 135 – 138
liturgy 188 – 189
Masjid see Mosque
Māturīdī, al- 153 – 168
Mecca 4, 6 – 7, 9, 19 – 20
Moses 5 – 8, 10 – 12, 16 – 17, 21, 55, 61, 81,
124, 148 – 149, 187, 196, 217, 247, 249
Mosque 39 – 43, 66 – 90, 103, 235 – 238,
241, 254 – 255, 263, 265, 273 – 274,
276 – 278
Muhammad 4 – 12, 17, 20 – 22, 31 – 42,
56 – 59, 62 – 65, 71 – 89, 95 – 99, 104,
107, 108 – 122, 126 – 138, 140, 141 – 142,
147 – 152, 156 – 157, 167, 171 – 173, 186,
194, 197 – 202, 205, 210 – 211, 217 – 218,
220, 225 – 247, 248 – 257, 279 – 280,
282 – 283, 311
Mujāhid b. Jabr 19, 88, 93
mulk 158 – 162
muqaddasa 196 – 197
muṣannaf collections 253 – 256
muslim as Qurʾanic term 248 – 250
Mustaʿīn, al- 259 – 261, 272 – 276, 279
Muʿtazilism 153 – 168
Mutawakkil, al- 259, 267 – 268, 277, 295
Muwaṭṭaʾ 253 – 255
Naipaul, V.S. 63
Noah 52 – 54, 150, 187, 255
Nuwayrī, al- 298 – 299, 300
olfaction 24 – 30, 32 – 33, 35 – 36, 41 – 42
OpenITI corpus 286 – 289, 297, 300 – 301
oral versus written word 3 – 4, 10 – 15,
20 – 22, 177, 282 – 284, 310 – 312
Otto, Rudolf 195, 223
pagans 5 – 13, 16 – 22
paradox 74 – 81, 83 – 84
political decrees 93 – 94, 99, 102, 105
principles of exegesis 134 – 135
Qirāʾāt 4, 95 – 97, 100 – 107
quddūs 196, 216 – 217
Qurʾan Q 1 51, 95; Q 1 51, 95; Q 2:3 198;
Q 2:30 196; Q 2:32 146; Q 2:37
146–147; Q 2:38 147; Q 2:49 204;
Q 2:62 149; Q 2:79 204; Q 2:82 206;
Q 2:86 219; Q 2:87 196; Q 2:91 198;
Q 2:101 198; Q 2:125–127 78;
Q 2:128 242; Q 2:136 249; Q 2:140 204;
Q 2:142–145 81, 241, 243; Q 2:177 206;
Q 2:217 85; Q 2:218 86; Q 2:253 196;
Q 2:258 159–160; Q 3:7 50, 122 – 123;
Q 3:26 147, 158 – 160; Q 3:33 150;
Q 3:37 208; Q 3:45 144, 151 – 152;
Q 3:49 150; Q 3:59 144; Q 3:64 149;
Q 3:71 204; Q 3:78 204; Q 3:84 198,
249; Q 3:95 249; Q 3:97 234;
Q 3:120 208; Q 3:132 249; Q 4:43 254;
Q 4:46 204; Q 4:48 149; Q 4:51 17;
Q 4:59 249; Q 4:136 198; Q 4:158 152;
Q 4:171 151–152; Q 4:172 152;
Q 5:6 254; Q 5:13–14 204; Q 5:15 204;
Q 5:17 151; Q 5:21 196, 217;
Q 5:43–47 25, 249; Q 5:44–48 249;
Q 5:68 198; Q 5:73 151; Q 5:82–85 149,
199, 202; Q 5:92 249; Q 5:110 196;

Q 5:115–118 151; Q 6:6 198; Q 6:7 10,
21, 198; Q 6:91 3 – 22; Q 6:112 148;
Q 6:155 198; Q 6:159 280; Q 7:23 147;
Q 7:53 204; Q 7:137 209; Q 7:143 55;
Q 7:145 10; Q 7:162 204; Q 7:172–173
147, 237; Q 8:39 280; Q 9:7 76; Q 9:
17–18 84; Q 9:19 77; Q 9:28 87; Q 9:
31–35 87, 146; Q 9:93 199; Q 9:107–108
88; Q 10:15 199; Q 10:26 208; Q 10:
37–39 197–198; Q 10:94 141, 198;
Q 10:98 58; Q 11 52, 54; Q 11:7 207;
Q 11:42–43 52 – 53; Q 11:45–47 53;
Q 11:75–76 54; Q 12 57; Q 12:18
54; Q 12:23 119; Q 12:94 27; Q
12:96 27 – 28; Q 13:16 165, 210;
Q 13:36 199; Q 13:39 143; Q 14:16
26; Q 15:85 207; Q 15:86 210;
Q 15:89 199; Q 16:5–6 207; Q
16:43 141; Q 16:68 148; Q 16:89
139; Q 16:101 198; Q 16:102 196;
Q 16:103 199; Q 16:123 249; Q 17:1
81, 238, 246; Q 17:2 81; Q 17:4–8 82,
239; Q 17:45 199; Q 17:47–48 198;
Q 17:104 240; Q 18:9–26 62, 74;
Q 18:109 112, 143; Q 18:110 148;
Q 19:34 145; Q 20:8 210; Q 20:12 196;
Q 20:133 198; Q 21:3 198; Q 21:5 198;
Q 21:7 141; Q 21:69 144; Q 21:71 237;
Q 21:87–88 55; Q 22:25 86; Q 22:30–31
79; Q 22:37 34, 78; Q 22:40 72;
Q 23:14 210; Q 23:91 165; Q 25:4 198;
Q 25:7 198; Q 25:32 10, 198; Q 26:
60–68 61; Q 26:197 198; Q 28:7 148;
Q 28:48 11; Q 29:8 207; Q 29:46
142, 149; Q 29:48 199; Q 29:68 207;
Q 29:50 198; Q 30:27 164; Q 31:27
112; Q 32:4–7 209; Q 33:21 249;
Q 33:28 207; Q 33:40 249; Q 33:49 207;
Q 33:56 244; Q 34:31–33 199;
Q 34:43 198–199; Q 36:77 164;
Q 36:81 210; Q 36:82 143; Q 37 52;
Q 37 49; Q 37:62 26; Q 37:64 26;
Q 37:102 52, 241; Q 37:103–109 49;
Q 37:148 58; Q 38:7 12; Q 39:23 197,
199, 202, 211; Q 39:62 210;
Q 40:26 280; Q 41:31 219; Q 41:53 143;
Q 43:22 199; Q 43:31 198; Q 43:32 219;
Q 44:43 26; Q 45:22 208; Q 45:32 199;
Q 46:7 198; Q 46:9 12; Q 47:25 199;
Q 51:65 144; Q 52:33 198; Q 56:42 26;
Q 56:52 26; Q 56:77 196; Q 56:79 143;
Q 56:88 29; Q 57 111; Q 57:11 208;
Q 59:21 142; Q 59:23 196; Q 59:24 210;
Q 60:4 84; Q 61:6 198; Q 62:1 196;
Q 67 168; Q 67:1 158 – 162; Q 67:2
Index 325
162 – 167; Q 67:3 163; Q 67:11 163;
Q 67:12 163–164; Q 67:14 167;
Q 67:19 164; Q 68:15 198; Q 69:36 26;
Q 73:10 207; Q 76:2 25; Q 79:16 196,
217; Q 83:13 198; Q 85:21–22 142 – 143;
Q 92:1 34; Q 93:2 34; Q 98 60; Q 98:5
60; Q 103 111; Q 113 95; Q 114 95
Quranization 184 – 186
re-odorization 37 – 42
righteousness 205 – 206
ritual 232 – 234
riwāya 101, 105, 131, 296 – 297
Rodinson, Maxime 65
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 251 – 257
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 206, 252, 254 – 257
sanctity 242 – 243
Satpanth 170 – 174
scripture 10 – 12, 44 – 46, 50 – 51, 62 – 63,
109 – 112, 139 – 143, 148 – 151, 169 – 170,
172 – 173, 177 – 183, 192 – 199,
306 – 308, 310 – 313
senses 23 – 26, 26, 33
seven canonical Readings 96, 100 – 102
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus see
ahl al-kahf
shahādatān 248
Shāṭibī, al- 93, 101 – 106, 222 – 223
Smith, Jonathan Z. 89 – 90
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 67 – 68, 305 – 306,
310 – 312, 320 – 321
Sunan collections 256 – 257
Ṭabarī, al- 4 – 6, 19 – 20, 28 – 29, 109 – 110,
117 – 123, 137, 140, 147, 153 – 160,
262 – 267, 269 – 279, 288
tawātur 94 – 97, 105, 107
Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān 154 – 155, 158,
160 – 164
Taysīr, al- 102 – 105
Temple 234 – 236
text reuse alignments 285, 291, 302
Taʾrīkh Madīnat Dimashq (TMD)
289 – 292, 294 – 297, 302
Torah 3 – 22, 81, 109, 117, 125 – 127, 134,
148 – 149, 182 – 183, 194, 202 – 204, 230,
233, 240, 249
typology 56 – 59
ʿUthmān 97 – 100
wajh 129 – 138
Zwettler, Michael 58 – 59