Mary in the Qur'an

A Literary Reading

Hosn Abboud

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415725682
• eBook ISBN: 9781317917779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Providing an analysis of the complete story of Mary in its liturgical, narrative and rhetorical contexts, this literary reading is a prerequisite to any textual reading of the Qur'an whether juristic, theological, or otherwise.

intertextuality between the Old Testament, New Testament and the Qur'an.

The Qur'an is an oral event, linguistic phenomenon and great literature. So the application of modern literary theories is essential to have full comprehension of the history of the development of literary forms from pre-Islamic period such as poetry, story telling, speech-giving to the present. In addition, there is a need, from a feminist perspective, to understand in depth why a Christian mother figure such as Mary was important in early Islam and in the different stages of the development of the Qur'an as a communication process between Muhammad and the early Muslim community.

Introducing modern literary theories, gender perspective and feminist criticism into Qur'anic scholarship for the first time, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers of Islamic Studies, Qur'anic and New Testament Studies, Comparative Literature and Feminist Theology.

1 Form of Sūrat Maryam

Middle Meccan, Sura 19
98 āyas, 89 rhyming; main rhymes: -iyyā/-ūn/-dā

This chapter will examine the inductive and literary analysis of the whole of Sūrat Maryam with special emphasis on the narrative portions. Particular consideration will be given to the sura’s rhyme sequences and narrative units. The first section displays the fixed sequences of formally and thematically defined verse-units that are distinctly separated by a change in rhyme or other clearly discernible, sometimes formulaic, markers of caesura (waqf).¹ The second section exposes these verse-groups for explanation and examines the links and connections between narrative units on the one hand, and polemic units on the other. The third section, focusing on form, discusses thematic features and the literary genre of the small units and of the whole sura. The fourth section investigates elements of structural unity and thematic coherence and draws a final conclusion about the redaction of the sura units, the coherence of the sura, and its function as a whole. Prior to beginning this inductive examination, some brief comments concerning the structure of the Qur’an as a whole are appropriate.

The beginning of every sura in the official Egyptian text of the Qur’an² lists the title, the number of verses, the place of revelation (Mecca or Medina), and its position in the chronology of the revelation.³ According to Nöldeke’s division of the Meccan suras,⁴ Sūrat Maryam belongs to the middle Meccan period⁵ and in the order of the ‘Uthmānic recension (al-tartīb al-‘uthmānī) lies between Sūrat al-Kahf (18) and Sūrat ṭaha (20).⁶ According to al-Suyūṭī, suras 17 (Banū Isrā’īl), 18 (al-Kahf), 19 (Maryam), 20 (ṭaha) and 21 (al-Anbiyā) seem to belong to one group of al- ’Itāq (early revelations).⁷ The basmalla at the beginning of the sura is merely a sura heading which marks the beginning and end of each sura.

The disconnected letters (al-Ḥurūf al-muqaṭṭa‘a fī fawātih al-suwar)⁸ open most of the Meccan and a few of the Medinan suras. Some occur as groups of letters, such as aliflām-mīm, aliflām-rā, hā-mī,, tā-sīn-mīm, followed by such patterns as dhikr a/-Qur’an or al-kitāb or al-dhikr al-Ḥakīm. The disconnected letters of Sūrat Maryam, kāf-hā-yā’-‘ayn-ṣād, are not followed by any formula on the Qur’an or tanzīl.⁹

1.1 A structural diagram of Sūrat Maryam

The structural diagram of Sūrat Maryam—laying its text out verse-by-verse— reveals the units of its syntactical-rhetorical structure. This format was an indispensable component of Angelika Neuwirth’s method in her pioneering form study of all the Meccan suras.¹⁰ The method clearly illustrates the literary and oral forms of the units. Following Neuwirth, the sura and the āya will be carefully examined as units selected by the Prophet as the formal communication of his revelation. Attention will also be paid to the thematic unit, a unit of revelation marked as such in the Qur’an. This independent verse group and form of speech is the unit that Neuwirth considers to be the building block of the sura.

Due to its specific significance in Qur’anic literary analysis, the colon of the āya will be examined.¹¹ This is a small unit of speech that makes sense independently of what precedes and follows it, and of which one particular type, the final colon or clause, is particularly significant.¹² Colometric analysis considers the natural unit of speech to be the sentence. However, in the case of a very short sentence, which forms a metrical unit, or in the case of a sentence with long structural parts, which are divided into more than one metrical unit, the colons become more or less numerous than the sentences. Following Eduard Norden’s method of colometric analysis in analyzing Greek and Latin texts, Neuwirth has applied similar principles to Qur’anic analysis. When Greek orators gave a convincing speech, their concern was to keep the speech units short enough so that they could express them in one breath, recite them loudly, and reach the next pause in the communication without running out of breath. As the Qur’an was intended for oral recitation, Neuwirth believes that it is also structured similarly.

Colometric division is not exactly like “the rules of pause and beginning” (al-waqf wa’l-ibtidā’), which divide the Qur’anic text into four basic types of phrases that are characterized by their syntactic and semantic independence or dependence on what follows. This set of rules differs from those of tajwīd, because it acts to preserve the clarity of the meaning rather than the accuracy of the sound.¹³ Sūrat Maryam displays a distinctly poetic style, the two-to-four colon structure ends up in a unique rhyme (-iyyā, or -ayyā) only from verse seventy-five onwards; consonants other than yā’ are admitted to constitute the rhyme, which thus turns into the lightened pattern of ā, ī, ū. The main rhyme-endings found within Sūrat Maryam are more difficult to stop at than other rhyme-endings, which are more common throughout the Qur’an.

Below is a transliteration of Sūrat Maryam.¹⁴ A description of the rhyme-endings -iyyā/-ūn/-dā (highlighted in bold type) is necessary for the analysis of the composition of the sura, since only a précis of all the rhymes figuring in the sura will allow for the isolation of rhyme sequences and the examination of their relation to semantically coherent groups of verses. The length of thematic units based on individual personalities will be indicated in parentheses at the beginning of a section. Demarcation lines separate independent units within the sura, indicating the organic units and separating them from later additions and commentaries. Sūrat Maryam appears in the appendix in Arabic.

bismi’llāhi ’l-raḤmāni 1-raḤīm

1 kāf hā’ yā ‘ayn ṣād

2 dhikru raḤmati rabbika ‘abdahu Zakariyyā

---

3 idh nāda rabbah nidā’an khafiyyā

4 qāla: rabbi

innī wahana l-‘azmu minnī

wa-shta‘ala r-ra’su shaybā

wa-lam akun bi-du ‘ā’ika rabbi shaqiyyā

5 wa-innī khiftu l-mawāliya min warā’ī

wa-kānati mra’atī āqirān

fa-hab lī min ladunka waliyyā

6 yarithunī wa-yarithu min āli Ya‘qūba

wa j‘alahu rabbi raḍiyyā

---

7 yā-Zakariyyā

innā nubashshiruka bi-ghulāmini smuhu YaḤyā

lam naj‘al lahu min qablu samiyyā

8 qāla rabbi

annā yakūnu lī ghulāmun

wa kānati mra’atī ‘āqirān

wa-qad balaghtu mina l-kibari ‘itiyyā

9 qāla: ka-dhalika qāla rabbuka

huwa ‘alayya hayyinun

wa-qad khalaqtuka min qablu

wa-lam taku shay’ā

10 qāla: rabbi

ij‘al lī āyatan

qāla: āyatuka allā tukallima n-nāsa thalātha layālin sawiyyā

11 fa-kharaja ‘alā qawmihi ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge studies in the Qur’an
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Foreword
• Introduction: Sources and methodology
• 1 Form of Sūrat Maryam: Middle Meccan, Sura 1998 āyas, 89 rhyming; main rhymes: -iyyā/-ūn/-dā
• 2 Maryam’s story: Stylistic and narrative analysis
• 3 Form of the verse units of the infancy story of Maryam in Sūrat Īl ‘Imrān (Q 3:1-63): Explication of the Polemic (1–30) and the narrative units (31–63) of Sūrat Īl ‘Imrān
• 4 Stylistics analysis of Maryam’s infancy, chosenness and annunciation scenes and ‘Isa’s apostleship and birth story (Q 3:31–54)
• 5 The infancy story of Maryam: Gender and narrative analysis and intertextuality between the Qur’an and the Protevangelium
• 6 Muslim classical and modern exegesis on the doctrinal issue of Maryam’s prophethood
• 7 Conclusion
• Appendix: Sūrat Maryam
• Bibliography
• Index
• Backmatter