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This chapter studies the notion of prophethood as the pinnacle of human perfection. Prophets being also Imams, the theoretical aspects the two roles have in common will be omitted from analysis. In the theory section, emphasis is placed on prophethood as the channel of divine assistance communicating sacred laws. Miracles pertaining to Murtaḍā’s occasionalist view on natural laws are discussed, and conflict between religious laws examined in light of the belief in the progressive revelation of God’s word. In the application section, the focus is on Murtaḍā’s peculiar view, heretofore unstudied, on the miraculous nature of the inimitability of Qurʾān. Finally, an exposé of his attempts to resolve contradictions between theory and application is provided. The chapter is divided into two sub-headings: Theoretical Model; Historical Disclosure.

This chapter explores Niʿmat Sidqi's literary and social vision of Islam through her writings. It looks at all her works but focuses mainly on Muʿjizat al-Qurʾan (Miracle of the Qurʾan) published in 1971. Her vision of the Qurʾan grounds religiosity in the human body and the sensory realm as the site in which faith is embodied, lived, and practiced. Sidqi uses words for “vision” (baṭar and baṭīra) that most strongly evoke the physical dimensions of spiritual seeing, more than words like shahāda (witnessing) or ruʾya (vision). In Sidqi, physical and spiritual seeing are deeply contingent.

Historians of religion often equate scripture in Islam solely with the Qurʾān. But if scripture is understood to include those texts for which a claim of divine inspiration is made by the Muslim community, other bodies of Islamic religious literature must be included. Scripture in Islam encompasses the Qurʾān, which is understood by Muslims to be God's actual word transmitted though Muhammad; the divinely inspired Hadīth (tradition literature); and, arguably, the Shariah (divinely revealed religious law) which is derived primarily from the Qurʾān and the Hadīth. This chapter explores key strategies employed by Islamic mystics from the 8th through the 14th centuries to interpret these various genres of Muslim scripture.

This chapter focuses on the writings of Andalusian sage Ibn al-ʿArabī, which combined the intuitive, mystical perspective of Sufism with the rational analysis of the experts in Kalam, in jurisprudence, and in other Islamic sciences. Later Sufis often referred to Ibn al-ʿArabī as al-shaykh al-akbar (the greatest master). Part of the reason for this was that his massive corpus of writings contained consistently erudite and profound expositions of the meanings of the Qurʾān that had few precedents and, indeed, no serious later challengers. Recent studies have brought out the intimate connection between his spiritual life and his understanding of the Qurʾān. For him, the Qurʾān was the vivifying word of God, an infinite ocean that constantly replenished his soul, a living presence that would embody itself to him and appear in visions. The dependence of his writings on the Qurʾān is obvious to careful readers, and he frequently reminds us of this fact.

This book is a study of the origins of the concept and application of warring defined now as “holy war” in the earliest period of Islamic history. It examines questions such as when and under what circumstances did the concept first appear in Islam and as the result of what historical, political, religious and social factors did it mature into classical expressions. It also examines its antecedents in pre-Islamic Arabian civilization. Part I centers on Arabia, particularly in the pre-Islamic period. Part II focuses on the Qurʾān as the earliest Islamic text and transition marker from pre-Islamic Arabian civilization to the religio-cultural civilization that became Islam. Part III looks on the tradition literature of Islam in the prophetic sunna and the biographical literature of Muḥammad.

This chapter analyzes the canonical Islamic reading of the Qurʾān on the origin of holy war based on early commentaries (tafāsīr) and early historical and analytical studies. It examines a field of Qurʾānic interpretation that adjusted the meaning of Scripture in order to convey a message more appropriate for an evolving worldview. As a result of the problem of contextualization, a genre of Qurʾānic analysis developed in Islam to provide historical contexts for revelations that would help Muslims understand the divine pronouncements. This is known as asbāb-al-nuzūl, or the “occasions of revelation”. The actual text of the Qurʾān was inviolable, but an extratextual hierarchy of versification could be established by the naskh works. Conflicting Qurʾānic verses cannot prove an evolution of the concept or sanction for religiously authorized warring in Islam.

This chapter offers a new reading based on a different method of analysis. Rather than categorizing verses according to where they fit in the traditional “evolutionary theory” of warring in the Qurʾān, it groups them according to the following: verses expressing nonmilitant means of propagating or defending the faith; verses expressing restrictions on fighting; verses expressing conflict between God's command and the reaction of Muḥammad's followers; and verses strongly advocating war for God's religion. Taken together, the verses in the four categories point out that pre-Islamic fighting was non-ideological and was conducted either for material gain or revenge. Fighting in the fully developed Islamic system became a highly ideological issue despite the added benefit of material gain in the form of spoils. The transition was difficult and not entirely successful.

The Introduction describes the way in which the volume originated and briefly surveys the chapters contained in it. Four chapters (by Joseph Witztum, Patricia Crone, Gerald Hawting, and Michael Cook) originate from papers delivered at the conference ‘Islam and its Past: Jahiliyya and Late Antiquity in the Qurʾan and Tradition’. The other four chapters (by Devin Stewart, Nicolai Sinai, Angelika Neuwirth, and Iwona Gajda) were not presented at this conference. All the chapters are concerned directly or indirectly with Islamic revelation, and for the most part with the Qurʾan. We live in a time when the study of the Qurʾan has been making a remarkable comeback after spending a generation on the backburner. This volume will give the interested reader a broad survey of what has been happening in the field and concrete illustrations of some of the more innovative lines of research that have recently been pursued.

This chapter considers the ways in which Western Islamic studies in general, and Western Qurʾanic studies in particular written by different scholars, including John Burton, Joseph G. Schacht, Richard Bell, William Montgomery Watt, John Wansbrough, and Andrew Rippin, among others, are received in the Muslim academy. It compares the promotion of Islamic Apologetics and the approaches taken by Christian theology programs in the West. It considers also if and, if so, how, the Qurʾān is read in light of science, technology, and biblical literature. Finally, it tries to describe how the Muslim academy attempts to set apart and keep separate their institutions and publications from those of Westerners.

Understanding the character of early jihād has been the focus of much scholarly effort. The relationship between those fighting and the political power of the caliph, the notion of the obligation and appropriateness of continued fighting and the role of the renunciant tradition among early fighters, especially those who become associated with the scholarly classes, are all issues that have drawn attention. 1 The challenges in tackling these issues are many and are primarily related to the limited number and nature of the early sources available to us to clarify the matter. Two early texts that focus on legal aspects of the Qurʾān comprise sources that have not yet been fully tapped in discussing these questions. One work is by Muqātil b. Sulaymān, who died in 150/767 and, while the text in question, Tafsīr al-Khams Miʾat Ā ya min al-Qurʾān al-Karīm, may have achieved its final form later in the second or even the third hijrī century, it represents some of the earliest Qurʾānic exegetical material we have available. The second work is by Abū ʿUbayd, who died in 224/838, and is devoted to abrogation in the Qurʾān (and, to a lesser extent, the Sunna), entitled Kitāb al-Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh.

This chapter explores how the Marīnid sultans expressed their authority to their subjects, especially those living beyond Fes, their capital city, during their first century of rule. The construction of palatine cities and madrasas were important marks of Marīnid authority in urban space but, as a dynasty ruling over a large rural tribal population, the Marīnids also needed to express their power and authority beyond the city. The chapter begins with analysis of the textual image of kingship presented in Marīnid chronicles and then considers how that image was disseminated to the population. It looks at Marīnid military progresses (ḥarakāt) between their fortresses and towns and Marīnid military engagements in the rural environment and shows how they used a number of symbols of monarchy, from the historically resonant Qurʾān of ʿUthmān to generic items such as drums and banners to make their power manifest.