The Qur'an in its historical context (pdf - Islam and Christian-Muslim ...

FRED M. DONNER
18 F.M. Donner, “From Believers to Muslims: Confessional Self-Identity in the Early
Islamic Community,” Al-Abhath 50–51, 2002–3, 9–53.
19 See the remarks in the preceding paragraph on Lüling’s theories. See also F. de Blois,
“Elchasai-Manes-Muhammad. Manichäismus und Islam in religionshistorischem
Vergleich,” Der Islam 81, 2004, 31–48, and idem, “Nasrani and hanif: studies on the
religious vocabulary of Christianity and Islam,” BSOAS 65, 2004, 1–30. De Blois’s
excellent articles, however, seem to continue the conspiracy of silence against Lüling’s
work; he makes the astonishing statement that “Arabists and students of Islam have
until now paid no attention to this question [of the similarity between Qur’anic and
Jewish-Christian concepts of prophecy] (“Elchasai..., 47), even though Lüling, whose
work he disparaged in passing in a review published in 2003 (see note 47 later), had
written substantively about this thirty years earlier.
20 “Licht ins Dunkel. Der Koran als philologischer Steinbruch. Ein Gespräch mit
Christoph Luxenberg,” in Ch. Burgmer (ed.), Streit um den Koran. Die Luxenberg-
Debatte: Standpunkte und Hintergründe, Berlin: Schiler, 2004, 18–19.
21 Angelika Neuwirth, “Qur’an and History,” 12–13.
22 For example, A. Dundes, Fables of the Ancients? Folklore in the Qur’an, Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2003; but although Dundes’s main point appears to be welltaken,
see the review by A. Rippin, BSOAS 68, 2005, 120–2, for the work’s severe
limitations.
23 D.A. Madigan, The Qur’an’s Self-Image. Writing and Authority in Islamic Scripture,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
24 See, for example, the review by M. Fakhry, Journal of Islamic Studies 13, 2002, 331–2.
25 For example, we might reconsider in this way the passages on Shu ‘ayb and the “four
gardens” theme, discussed by Wansbrough, Qur’anic Studies, 21–7.
26 Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition, 263, 316; eadem, “Du texte de recitation au canon
en passant par la liturgie,” Arabica 47, 2000, 194–229.
27 Qur’anic Studies, 27.
28 For example, Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Quduri, Matn al-Quduri fi fiqh madhhab
al-imam Abi hanifa, Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Khayriyya, 1324/1906, 10, lines 5–8;
G. Monnot, “Salat,” EI 2 8,928a.
29 On diacritics and other markings added to the rasm, see A.T. Welch, “al-Üur’an,” EI 2 .
5:404–9; N. Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script and Its üur’anic Development,
with a Full Description of the Üuran Manuscripts in the Oriental Institute, Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1939, 38–41; G.-R. Puin, “Observations on Early
Qur’an Manuscripts in San ‘a’,” in S. Wild (ed.), The Qur’an as Text, Leiden: Brill,
1996, 107–11. On the emendations by al-Hajjaj (or perhaps by his predecessor,
Ubaydallah b. Ziyad), see GdQ3, 103–4, and K.I.H. Semaan, “A linguistic view of the
development of the Arabic writing system,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des
Morgenlandes 61, 1967 (22–40) 36–7; B. Gruendler, The Development of the Arabic
Scripts, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993, seems to concentrate on the rasm and offers no
observations on the development of the diacritics.
30 E.J. Revell, “The diacritical dots and the development of the Arabic alphabet,” JSS 20,
1975, 178–90.
31 Vollers, Volkssprache und Schriftsprache im alten Arabien.
32 F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, “Die Anfänge der arabischen Schriftsprache,” in their Die
Araber in der alten Welt, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964–9, 2, 357–69. For more on the
orthography of Salat, see later.
33 H. Fleisch, Introduction à l’étude des langues sémitiques, Paris: A. Maisonneuve,
1947, 97–101; Blachère, Introduction au Coran, 156–69; Fück, ‘Arabiya.
Untersuchungen zur arabischen Sprach- und Stilgeschichte, 3. See discussion in
C. Rabin, “The Beginnings of Classical Arabic,” SI 4, 1955, 19–37.
34 For example, surat al-Shu ‘ara’ (26):195; cf. surat al-Nahl (16): 103.
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