The Study of Islamic Origins

New Perspectives and Contexts

Mette Bjerregaard Mortensen, Guillaume Dye, Isaac W. Oliver, Tommaso Tesei, Mette Bjerregaard Mortensen, Guillaume Dye, Isaac W. Oliver, Tommaso Tesei

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783111258720
• eBook ISBN: 9783110675566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

The study of Islam's origins from a rigorous historical and social science perspective is still wanting. At the same time, a renewed attention is being paid to the very plausible pre-canonical redactional and editorial stages of the Qur'an, a book whose core many contemporary scholars agree to be formed by various independent writings in which encrypted passages from the OT Pseudepigrapha, the NT Apocrypha, and other ancient writings of Jewish, Christian, and Manichaean provenance may be found. Likewise, the earliest Islamic community is presently regarded by many scholars as a somewhat undetermined monotheistic group that evolved from an original Jewish-Christian milieu into a distinct Muslim group perhaps much later than commonly assumed and in a rather unclear way. The following volume gathers select studies that were originally shared at the Early Islamic Studies Seminar. These studies aim at exploring afresh the dawn and early history of Islam with the tools of biblical criticism as well as the approaches set forth in the study of Second Temple Judaism, Christian, and Rabbinic origins, thereby contributing to the renewed, interdisciplinary study of formative Islam as part and parcel of the complex processes of religious identity formation during Late Antiquity.

III Early Islam and the Qur’ān: Social, Political, and Religious Contexts

Q 2:102, 43:31, and Ctesiphon-Seleucia

New Insights into the Mesopotamian Setting of the Earliest Qur’anic Milieu

Gilles Courtieu

Université Jean Moulin Lyon III

Carlos A. Segovia

independent scholar

1 Introduction: Q 2:102, Babylon, and Ctesiphon

By Late Antiquity, the onetime center of the earth, Babylon had all but vanished. It was just a small village surrounded by mud, ruins, and dust.¹ Its memory, though, had been both persistent and recurrent in the Judaeo-Christian imagery, where in fact Babylon is never innocent – nor are the references to it fortuitous: there is always something wicked, something bad, something vile about it. There is surely little need to recall here, for instance, the famous verses of the Book of Revelation where Babylon is attacked as the source of every evil – the designation is no longer a metaphor but rather an archetype.²

Is this also the case – i.e., metaphorically – that we must also understand the reference to Bābil (i.e., Babel = Babylon) in Q 2:102? If so, how then are we to explain the simultaneous allusion, in the same verse, to a brace of Zoroastrian deities, Hārūt and Mārūt, whose presence is somewhat odd in what seemingly should be viewed as a para-biblical passage?³ And why, moreover, the reference to Babylon in a verse that mentions, at its very outset, the biblical figure of Solomon, with whom Babylon simply has nothing to do?

We would like therefore to open our article with a different hypothesis: might Q 2:102 be said to contain rather, an encrypted reference to the powerful but ill-famed city-complex of Ctesiphon (as we will call it for now, even if this is an oversimplification), later-forgotten due to the fame of Bagdad,⁴ which was still closely associated, in the 7th century, with Zoroastrianism, the contemporary Sassanian religion, as well as with the Sassanian Empire, since it was the latter’s administrative capital? Did the authors of Q 2:102, following the ancient and rather frequent assimilation of Ctesiphon with Babylon given the latter’s prestigious fame,⁵ which thereby became the almost-natural name for any big town in Southern Mesopotamia – as was the case with the Manichaeans?⁶

Indeed Ctesiphon had been the major town of the Near East for a long period of time: it had been a political capital, a monumental center, and a religious center for Jews,⁷ Christians,⁸ Mazdaeans,⁹ and Manichaeans¹⁰ alike,¹¹ as well as a crowded and rich metropolis to the north of the Arabia Peninsula. In fact, its influence, fame, and oppressive power marked the adjacent peninsula for centuries, both directly and through Hira,¹² in particular regarding the lifestyle of Arab elites, who were impressed by the court of the Persian Reichshauptstadt.¹³

2 Q 43:2-45, The Qur’anic Prophet, and His community

Yet Q 2:102 with its allusion to Babylon may not be the only reference to the capital of Sassanian Iran contained in the Qur’anic corpus. A careful analysis of Q 43:31, 33–5 proves revealing in this respect. But before examining these verses we must turn to the pericope where they belong, namely, vv. 2–45 in surah 43.

Q 43:2–45 may be divided into 7 thematic segments whose distribution follows a zigzagging binary model: (A₁) vv. 2–8 // (B₁) vv. 9–22 // (A₂) vv. 23–25 // (B₂) vv. 26–28 // (A₃) vv. 29–31 // (B₃) vv. 32–39 // (A₄) vv. 40–45, with all A-segments aiming at supporting the Qur’anic prophet in his mission, and all B-segments variously elaborating on the attitude of the disbelievers – be they real or imaginary – vis-à-vis prophecy and their punishment in both the present and the next life:

(A₁) ²By the clear book! ³Surely we have made it an Arabic recitation, so that you¹⁴ may understand! ⁴And indeed it is [contained] in the “mother” of the book [that is] with us, [which is] sublime and wise! ⁵Shall we take the reminder away from you because you are a wanton people? ⁶How many prophets have we sent to former people? ⁷Yet not one prophet came to them whom they did not mock! ⁸So we destroyed [those who were] stronger than them¹⁵ in power – thus the example of the [men] of old has gone [before them].

(B₁) ⁹If you ask them, “Who created the heavens and the earth?,” they will say, “The [all-]mighty, the [all-]knower created them.” ¹⁰[He is] the one who has made the earth as a cradle for you; and roads in it for you, so that you may be guided; ¹¹and the one who sends down from the sky water in due measure – then we revive with it a barren land, and in this way [too] you shall be brought forth [from your graves]; ¹²and the one who created the pairs, all of them, and made for you, from the ship[s] and the cattle, what you ride on, ¹³so that you may mount their backs, [and] then remember the blessing of your Lord when you are mounted on them, and say, “Glory to the one who has subjected this to us, as we [ourselves] were not fit for it. ¹⁴Indeed we will surely return to our Lord.” ¹⁵Yet they attribute to him a number of his own servants. Surely men are clearly ungrateful indeed. ¹⁶Or is it that he has taken daughters [for himself] from what he has created, and chosen for you sons [instead]? ¹⁷[But behold,] when one of them is given good tidings of [the birth of] what he has [thus] assimilated to the Merciful, his face turns dark and he is filled with grief. ¹⁸Then [there is] he who is brought up in luxury but lacks clarity in the [time of] dispute. ¹⁹Yet they have made [of] the angels – who are themselves servants of the Merciful – females. Did they witness their creation? Their testimony...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• I Early Islam and the Qur’ān: Methodological Considerations
• II Early Islam and the Qur’ān: Historical, Literary, and Cross-Comparative Analyses
• III Early Islam and the Qur’ān: Social, Political, and Religious Contexts