Routledge Handbook of Islamic Ritual and Practice

Oliver Leaman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367491239
• eBook ISBN: 9781000583908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Ritual and practice are one of the most distinctive features of religion, and they are linked with its central beliefs. Islam is no exception here, and this Handbook covers many aspects of those beliefs and practices. It describes the variety of what takes place but mainly why, and what the implications of both the theory and practice have for our understanding of Islam. The book includes accounts of prayer, food, pilgrimage, mosques, and the various legal and doctrinal schools that exist within Islam, with the focus on how they influence practice.

The volume is organized in terms of texts, groups, practices, places, and others. An attempt has been made to discuss the wide range of Muslim ritual and practice and provide a sound guide to this significant aspect of the religious life of one of the largest groups of believers in the world today.

Part I Texts

1 The Qur’an Ritual, Practice, Embodiment, and Culture

Natana J. DeLong-Bas

DOI: 10.4324/9781003044659-3

Introduction

Revered by Muslims as the Word of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century CE, the Qur’an occupies a central location in the lives of believers as a source of guidance, an orientation for life and the afterlife, and an ongoing connection to God and the broader Muslim community across time and space. Because Islam is a global faith tradition that has spread to all corners of the earth, expressions of ritual and practice share some points in common while also showcasing a rich diversity of interpretations and customs with local, regional, and sometimes national and international articulations in textual, visual, aural, and embodied forms. At the heart of these varied expressions is the Qur’an, today often thought of as a sacred text, but initially transmitted orally and thus aurally, recited, not merely read. Study of how the Qur’an is used for ritual and practice, as well as embodied by believers, is essential for moving beyond simplistic notions of the text simply as text or law in order more fully to engage its use in defining and living a Muslim life. It is precisely these lived practices and rituals surrounding the Qur’an that are the focus of this chapter, giving voice to the ways in which Muslims, scholars and ordinary believers alike, have found meaning, beauty and utility for the Qur’an as text, embodied revelation, and symbol.

Background and History

Throughout history, recognition as an Islamic scholar has been rooted in the knowledge of the Qur’an. Recovery of the history of ritual and practice related to the Qur’an has therefore tended to focus on high-level scholarly theologies (kalam), placing it within a series of texts, including hadith, legal literature (fiqh), and biographies of Muhammad (sira), and focusing on matters such as God’s attributes, the relative role of rationalism and the created or uncreated nature of the Qur’an (Siddiqui 2020), as well as its relationship with other scriptures and religious sources, particularly the Bible and other Christian and/or Jewish sources, such as isra’iliyyat (Reynolds 2007; Reynolds 2010; Reynolds 2012; Kaltner 2011). Scholars have also given attention to the development and potential redaction of the text over time (Amir-Moezzi 2011) and the challenges of dating various of its passages (Sinai 2017), particularly through careful analysis of manuscript evidence for textual variants and errors (Small 2011) and study of palimpsests (Hilali 2017), even as overall consistency in Qur’an manuscripts over time remains the dominant finding, suggesting parallel oral and written transmissions simultaneously and synchronously, rather than sequentially (Mattson 2008).

For Muslims, context has always been critical to discerning the meaning of any given verse. Consequently, there is a long history of works addressing the chronology of the Qur’an, including questions about passages within surahs that generally, but not exclusively, date to one time period because of the nature of the text as an ongoing revelation during Muhammad’s lifetime (Mattson 2008). Identification of verses as Meccan or Medinan was reportedly first undertaken by and attributed to ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abbas (d. 688) (Guezzou 2007), placing chronological approaches to Qur’an interpretation within 60 years of Muhammad’s death through a Companion reportedly raised in the same household as Muhammad and respected as an important teacher and advisor by the first four caliphs. This chronological order of the chapters of the Qur’an became widely accepted after 1924, despite its inclusion of various isra’iliyyat stories that additionally offered insight into the circulation and exchange of popular ideas between Islam, Judaism and Christianity during the formational period.

Traditionally, the suras of the Qur’an are divided into Meccan and Medinan chapters, with some parts reflecting both the changing needs and circumstances of the community at the time of their attributed revelation. Western scholars have further sub-divided the Meccan chapters into early, middle and late as historical-critical methodologies developed for the Bible began to be applied to the Qur’an, beginning with Gustave Weil (d. 1889) and then refined by Theodor Nőldeke (d. 1930).

Scholars have noted certain themes highlighted in each, such as outlines of the basic belief system of Islam – belief in one God, prophets, Muhammad’s prophethood, resurrection, and judgment – in the Meccan suras, while civil, criminal, international legal, and military commands tend to be considered Medinan (Abdel Haleem 2011). Meccan verses are generally shorter and direct, calling individuals to repentance and awareness of the looming Day of Judgment. Medinan verses are longer and are structured around the needs of a growing community working to institutionalize the revelation’s values. Biblical traditions appear more frequently in Medinan verses, likely because of contact with Jewish tribes there (Mattson 2008). About two-thirds of the Qur’an is believed to have been revealed during the 12 years in Mecca, compared to one-third during the 10 years in Medina.

Building on methodologies developed for biblical studies, some Western scholars have challenged the traditional division into Meccan and Medinan verses, beginning with Richard Bell (d. 1952), who proposed alternative dates for smaller sections and individual verses. Although often criticized for the incoherence of his methodology, Bell’s work continues to be influential due to the questions raised about the complex nature of the Qur’an’s formation and transmission (Kaltner 2011). Firestone has noted the difficulties associated with surahs 2, 3, 8, and 9, in particular, as the final form of the Qur’an appears to join together passages from different times because of shared themes, a process he attributes to final editing and compilation of the Qur’an intended to provide cohesion and coherence to verses that were originally obscured in their separate origins and contexts. He further contends that the conflicting messages about permissibility of warfare were not due to changing attitudes over time, but to views of different factions within the community that were ultimately closed out by more militant voices dominating the conversation. He sees the continued presence of more peaceful and passive groups in those Qur’an verses calling for nonviolent responses, as opposed to a decisive change in attitude between the Meccan and Medinan periods (Firestone 1999).

There are also numerous scholarly debates related to writing down the Qur’anic text, ranging from the very early – during Muhammad’s lifetime – posited by John Burton (d. 1929) – to two centuries after Muhammad’s death as the product of Jewish, Christian, and other sources that took considerable time to reach their final form – posited by John Wansbrough (d. 2002). Although these works are influential in certain Western scholarly circles, they have not been broadly adopted by Muslim scholars, largely due to their rejection of important portions of the Islamic historical tradition because of its mainly oral nature during the first two Islamic centuries.

Interpretation

Classical modes of interpreting the Qur’an included attention to the “occasions of revelation” (asbab al-nuzul), most comprehensively compiled by al-Wahidi (d. 1075); consideration of nasikh al-mansukh (“the abrogating and the abrogated” – the title of a work by al-Qasim ibn Sallam (d. 838)); ‘ulum al-qur’an (sciences of the Qur’an), which includes lexicography, grammar, rhetoric, philology, and exegesis; tafsir al-qur’an (exegetical interpretation or explanation, typically offering a single meaning); and ta’wil al-qur’an (returning or going back to the Qur’an as the starting point, generally offering several possible meanings for a text). Classical scholars also had an understanding of nature as the “second book” of revelation, such that observations in the natural world are intended to point human beings to the Creator as signs (ayat, the same term used for the verses of the Qur’an), particularly through use of their senses (Gade 2019). The use of these “two books” of revelation together suggests a deeper meaning to the Qur’an than can be conveyed in words and encourages a dynamic interplay and relationality between intellect and observation, knowledge and experience, and sensory perception and internal discernment.

The scholarly tradition of tafsir was so important to Muslim identity that voluminous encyclopedic commentaries date to the 10th century, expanding into a base of commentaries analyzing and commenting upon commentaries (hashiya) by the 12th and 13th centuries with attention to creating networks of scholarly discourse in which Qur’an interpretation was multi-vocal and polyvalent, rather than necessarily trying to determine a single “right” answer, a phenomenon Pink refers to as a “genealogical tradition of tafsir” (Pink 2019).

One of the first and most important and expansive works of tafsir was al-Tabari’s (d. 923) verse-by-verse analysis which examined the Qur’an’s grammar, philology, rhetoric, and meaning. Other important commentaries include those by al-Zamakhshari (d. 1144), Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210), Nasr al-Din al-Baydawi (d. 1315), Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), Imad al-Din Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), Burhan al-Din al-Biqa’i (d. 1480), and Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505). In the modern era, the work of al-Shawkani (d. 1834) has come to hold high status for its exegetical methodology, while al-Qarni (b. 1959) is considered in many places to be the most accessible commentary for beginning students, favoring clarity over heavy academic and technical discussions and the complexities of the polyvalence of the text historically (Al-Qarni 2006). Sayyid Qutb’s (d. 1966) commentary Fi Zilal al-Quran also retains popularity, marking an expansion of authority beyond formally trained scholars. In the contemporary era, favor has been given to works promoting singular clarity, rather than the rich heritage of polyvalent understandings. Historically, the works of al-Zamakhshari and al-Baydawi were used to introduce students to major exegetical debates and Al-Razi was considered possibly the greatest exegetical authority. However, today, both al-Zamakhshari and al-Razi have fallen out of favor due to concerns about their philosophical orientations, while Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Kathir, who were marginal exegetes historically, have taken center stage, because of the perceived clarity of their methodology. Ibn Kathir’s multi-volume commentary has been re-released in shorter, edited versions, often reflecting the particular agendas of the locations of production and publication (Pink 2019).

Classical exegetical methodologies were connected to two key concepts: attention to context (maqam) and examination of internal relationships in which some parts of the Qur’an are used to explain others (al-Qur’an yufassir ba’duhu ba’da), as developed by al-Suyuti, Abd al-Qadir al-Jurjani (d. 1078), al-Zamakhshari, al-Razi, Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Musa al-Shatibi (d. 1388), and Ibn Taymiyya. Al-Shatibi particularly highlighted the science of meaning (maʻani) and factual and figurative expression (bayan) for knowing the situation during a discourse from the point of view of the discourse itself, such that many passages can only be properly understood in light of explanations from other verses, rooted in “what the situation requires” (muqtada al-hal), resulting in potentially different ways of understanding a story depending on who is being addressed (li-kull maqam maqal and li-kull kalmia ma’ sahibatiha maqam). Similarly, al-Suyuti used internal relationships between Qur’an passages to expand and clarify words that might appear in a limited way in one location, but more expansively in another (al-iqtisa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Boxes
• Acknowledgements and Editorial Comments
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Texts
• Part II Groups
• Part III Practices
• Part IV Places
• Part V Others
• Index