Approaches to the Qur'an

G. R. Hawting

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134932924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In recent years, the study of the Qur'an and its interpretation has expanded to incorporate insights gained from historical, biblical, literary and critical studies. A variety of approaches to the Qur'an and the Muslim exegetical tradition are currently available. Approaches to the Qur'an consists of thirteen essays by leading scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslim, in the fields of qur'anic studies and Islamic studies. Taken together, they offer a sample of the aims, methods and topics of enquiry now being pursued. Each study has a full critical apparatus, and the book includes a consolidated bibliography which will be of great value to students and specialists.

Part I

Aspects of the style and content of the Qur’ān

1 Images and metaphors in the introductory sections of the Makkan sūras¹

Angelika Neuwirth

INTRODUCTION

It is a well known fact that the introductory sections of literary compositions often carry a significance in addition to their merely informational value; within Arabic literature this fact has been acknowledged in regard to the most prominent poetical genre, the qaṣīda, for a long time. Its fairly stereotypical introductory section (nasīb) has been closely studied by several scholars.² A recent study especially, based on a psychological approach, has shown to what extent this introductory section constitutes the clue to an adequate understanding of the interior structure of the entire composition, since it represents, more than any other part of the qaṣīda, a poetical expression of both the psychical condition of the ancient Arabian poet as well as of his audience and their spatial and temporal localization.³

On the other hand the particular importance of the introductory sections of the quranic sūras for the entire composition has never been discussed on any systematic basis.⁴ This is not to say that the introductory sections did not arouse any attention at all. On the contrary: observations concerning the beginning of the sūras even led to very far-reaching hypotheses about the special type of Muḥammad’s prophethood, that in subsequent scholarship were widely taken for granted: i. e., that the early sūras betray a close relation to the utterances of the pre-Islamic Kuhhān, that the sūras may even be considered as the most reliable evidence for kuhhān speech itself.⁵ Now, the specimens of kuhhān sayings that have been transmitted in early Islamic literature are not always assuredly genuine, the sparse materials furthermore have never been studied systematically as to their literary form. Theories about their relation to quranic speech therefore still lack a methodical foundation.⁶ The present study is intended as a preliminary contribution to the solution of the problem of the relationship between kāhin expression and the early sūras. It will concentrate on those groups of introductory sections that in western scholarship usually are treated as the most evident examples of kāhin influence on quranic speech and therefore are considered to be dark, obscure, enigmatic,⁷ namely the introductory oaths of a series of early Makkan sūras.⁸

THE INTRODUCTORY OATH CLUSTERS

General observations concerning the type of ‘oath’

The oath – in its original legal context – is no more than the verbal aspect of, or the oral pronouncement within, a procedure composed of speech and particular symbolic acts.⁹ Oaths still bearing traces of legally binding commitments are to be found in the Qur’ān sporadically, mostly appearing in the context of solemn pronouncements evoking God as witness for the truth of a statement.¹⁰ In our present study, however, we shall devote our attention to a group of oaths completely devoid of legal connotation, to clusters of oaths (Schwurserien)¹¹ that exclusively serve as a literary device. Several formal characteristics lead us to this understanding of the passages in question, the most striking being the multiplicity of the formulae. A second characteristic is the limitation of the oaths to the standard formula wa-X or lā uqsimu bi-X followed by an assertion, a ‘statement’, usually worded inna X la-Y, not implying any allusion to a legally binding commitment of the speaker. What do, then, these literary oaths have in common with genuine oaths? Both kinds of oaths owe their convincing force to their reference to a distinct range of ideas. The speaker who swears an oath usually does not refer to phenomena, to ‘subjects’, from the immediate context of his discourse, but instead to phenomena of a different, in most cases superior, kind. He thus creates a clear bipartite structure made up of an oath formula semantically distinct from the context and of an emphatic statement, a statement that is an integral part of the discourse itself.

In the present study all sūras starting with oath clusters will be surveyed.¹² With one exception (sūra 37) these sūras belong to the first Makkan period according to Nöldeke’s chronology.¹³ They may be classified as follows:

1 oath clusters of the type wa’l-fā‘ilāt: 100,79,77,51,37.

2 oath clusters alluding to particular sacred localities: 95,90,52.

3 oath clusters resorting to cosmic phenomena and certain time periods of the day and the night: 93,92,91,89,86,85. Oath clusters of this particular type, appearing in a few instances, without prominent introductory function, in the interior sections of early Makkan sūras will also be considered.

All the quranic passages to be discussed in this chapter will be presented in a list in section 3.1.

Oath-clusters of the type wa’l-fā‘ilāt

We shall at first turn to those oaths that have been considered to be the most intricate both by Islamic exegetes and by western scholars, i. e. those oaths that do not explicitly name the objects they refer to, but only allude to them by qualifying them as being moved (with the exception of one later sūra, moved rapidly) in different successive motions. Oaths of this kind also occupy an exceptional position in the Qur’ān insofar as they apply a metaphorical language distinctly different from that of the rest of the corpus. They have become known as particularly enigmatic,¹⁴ less because of the few undeniable lexical and grammatical ambiguities that they present than because of a more fundamental difficulty: their pronouncedly profane imagery which may be found little consistent with the general purport of the sūras as documents of religious discourse.

Sūra 100: Al-‘Ādiyāt. Translation: Bell (1939), slightly modified

1 By the panting runners,
2 Striking fire in sparks,	(fa-)
3 Storming forward in the morning,	(fa-)
4 Their track a dust-cloud,	(fa-)
5 (That finally) appeared in the centre of a crowd,^15	(fa-)

6 Verily man is to his Lord ungrateful.

7 Verily he to that is witness,

8 And verily he for the love of good is violent.

9 Does he not know? When what is in the graves is ransacked,

10 And what is in the breasts is extracted,

11 Verily, their Lord that day will of them be well informed.

The five verses containing oaths depict a kind of ‘tableau’: they present one and the same subject viewed in several successive stages of a continuous and rapid motion: a group of horses, whose riders (Ṭabarī: bi-rukbānihā) are carrying out a raid, ghazwa, (v.3: mughīrāt, v.5: wasaṭna jam‘ā: Ṭabarī: ghazwa). The progression of their movement (v.1: ‘ādiyāt) which in the end comes to a sudden standstill at its destination, in the camp of the enemy, is expressed by the particle fa-implying progress.¹⁶ The movement, explicity qualified as ighāra (v.3 fa’l-mughīrāti ṣubḥa), is directed towards a fixed aim: to overcome the enemy by surprise, perhaps even while still asleep (ṣubḥan).¹⁷

The ensuing statement (v.6) resorts to a different range of ideas, blaming man as ungrateful, or more precisely obstinate, and greedy (kanūd, li-ḥubbi ’l-khayri la-shadīd). These two vehement human psychical movements may be heard as a kind of echo of the violent movements of the horses. We will refer to this particular force of reproduction of images effected by the oath cluster as a ‘matrix of images’ (Bildmatrix); it will reappear in the longer texts treated below where it is much more productive than in the short sūra discussed here.

In the present text, however, we have to turn to other evidence in order to find the clue to the structural coherence between the different parts of the sūra. Looking closely at the oath cluster we find the tableau depicted there left incomplete, its immanent tension unresolved: the description is interrupted at the very point where the attack on the enemy camp was expected to start. Instead, a general statement about man’s ingratitude to God is made, leading up to a rhetorical question about man’s knowledge of his eschatological fate: v.9ff., which again extends into a description of the psychic situation of man on that day. At this point the reader is surprised to find the imagery of the interrupted tableau of the ghazwa continued: the ‘eschatological scenery’ passage (idhā fu‘ila X)¹⁸ presents a picture that precisely presupposes a violent attack leading to the overturn of everything, since it portrays devastation, the dissipation of the groups (v.5: jam‘), the emptying of the most concealed receptacles (v.10: mā fi’l-ṣudūr). It appears that the attack presupposed here has ‘prototypically’ already been presumed by the tableau of the ghazwa-riders portrayed in the oath cluster. Thus the tableau of bedouin attackers taking the enemy by surprise after a rapid and violent ride serves as an image, easily understandable for the listeners since deriving from genuine social experience,¹⁹ as a prototype for the as yet unexperienced incidents leading up to the Last Judgement.

Sūra 79: Al-Nāzi‘āt, vv.1–5;6–14. Translation: Bell, vv.1–5 modified

1 By those that pull (their reins) vehemently,
2 And move forth lively,	(wa-)
3 That swim serenely,^20	(wa-)
4 Then strive to be foremost,	(fa-)
5 And (finally) direct the affair!	(fa-)

6 On the day when the quake shall come

7 That which rides behind following it

8 Hearts that day will be throbbing,

9 With looks downcast,

10 Saying: ‘Are we verily brought back as we were before?

11 When we are bones decayed?’

12 They say: ‘That is then a losing turn’.

13 But it is only one scaring shout.

14 And there they are wide awake.

(There follow vv.15–33 retribution legends, vv.34–46 eschatological topics.)

There is no consensus among th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• List of abbreviations
• Aspects of the style and content of the Qur'ān
• Images and metaphors in the introductory sections of the Makkan sūras1
• The Quranic presentation of the Joseph story Naturalistic or formulaic language?
• Context and internal relationships: keys to quranic exegesis A study of Sūrat al-Raḥmān (Qur'ān chapter 55)
• Aspects of the traditional and modern exegesis of the Qur'ān
• Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr Problems in the description of a genre, illustrated with reference to the story of Abraham1
• Exegesis and Ḥadīth The case of the seven Mathānī
• An analytical survey of al-Ṭabarī's exegesis of the cultural symbolic construct of fitna1
• Akhbārī Shī‘ī approaches to tafsīr
• The sūra as a unity A twentieth century development in Qur'ān exegesis
• Muḥammad ‘Izzat Darwaza's principles of modern exegesis A contribution toward quranic hermeneutics
• The Qur'ān and its exegesis in a wider context
• Interpreting the Bible through the Qur'ān
• Two citations of the Qur'ān in ‘historical' sources for early Islam
• Law and exegesis The penalty for adultery in Islam
• The impact of the Qur'ān on the epistolography of ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd
• Bibliography
• Index