Religious Studies 584: The Qurʾān as Literature

Prof. Rodrigo Adem

radem@email.unc.edu

Course Description: This class is an introduction to Qurʾānic studies, a field rather

distinct from the study of Islam as religion per se; rather, it focuses on the Qurʾān as
human artifact and the myriad of forms with which it is engaged, whether as sacred
history, as part of oral or even visual performance, as codified text, as document of
religious community formation in late antiquity, or as site of Muslim hermeneutical
activity.

Expectations: Students will be expected to attend class lectures, take notes, and
participate in class as is appropriate.

Requirements:

Grading:

1. Midterm take-home quiz (20%). This quiz is designed to reinforce key terms, names,
events, and themes taken up in the readings and lectures. If you attend class diligently
and keep up with the readings, you should pass easily.

2. Weekly readings and lectures are to be the subject of a 300 word/1-2 page response
paper, typed and double-spaced, demonstrating both reading comprehension and
reflection on themes covered in lecture. The number of weekly responses expected from
you by the end of the semester for full credit will be 11 in total. (30%)

3. A final research paper of 10-15 pages, on a subject to be worked out in consultation

with the instructor (40%), DUE MIDNIGHT, THURSDAY, MAY 5 – No Extensions!

4. Attendance/Participation (10%)

A Few Suggested Themes for the Final Paper:

1. What does the Qurʾān as a “recitation” teach us about Islamic devotional practice?
2. Between “recitation” and “codex,” what is the Qurʾān, historically and now?
3. How does one study the Qurʾān as poetry, literature, or art?
4. What are the main scholarly views concerning the codified Qurʾān?
5. What does a chronological reading of the Qurʾān impart to us?
6. What can the Qurʾān’s biblical subtext tell us about its historical context?
7. What do the traditional exegetical schools of the Qurʾān convey to us about Muslim
historical development?
8. Is it true that modern exegesis of the Qurʾān is primarily concerned with “context?”
How does this factor into political or reformist trends in the Muslim world?

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Course Texts:

The Qurʾān, translation MAS Abdel Haleem (preferred).

Other readings will be posted on the course website for downloading.

Other resources:

EI2 = The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd Edition

EQ = The Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān
www.tanzil.net = online searchable Qurʾān with multiple translations

The Qurʾān in Muslim Religious Life

Week 1: The Qurʾān and Islam

Tuesday, Jan. 12
Tamara Sonn, “Introducing,” The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, ed. Andrew Rippin
(Malden: 2006), pp. 3-17

Christopher Buck, “Discovering,” The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, pp. 18-35

Ingrid Mattson, “God Speaks to Humanity,” Chap. 1 of The Story of the Qurʾān, 2nd ed.
(Malden, MA: 2013) pp. 1-22

Thursday, Jan. 14
Ingrid Mattson, “The Prophet Conveys the Message,” Chap. 2 of The Story of the Qurʾān,
pp. 27-74

Week 2: The Qurʾān as Recitation

Tuesday, Jan. 19
Ingrid Mattson, “The Voice and the Pen,” Chap. 3 of The Story of the Qurʾān, pp. 79-139.

Ijāza session in Morocco:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTq0m_xqSX0&spfreload=10

Fātiḥā ijāza session in Malaysia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6CmL_AdR-w&spfreload=10

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Thursday, Jan. 21
Anna M. Gade, EQ, “Recitation of the Qurʾān”

Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qurʾān, trans.
Hamid Algar, Michael Schub, and Ayman Abdel Haleem (Reading: 2011), chaps. 34, 35.

Watch:

Moroccan Reciters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKuF3CjpNOI

ʿAbdul Bāsiṭ in Egypt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvvPlILPZX0

Somalian reciter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWRIY8euJ_0

Iraqi reciter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyaJ5MeZo-w

Saudi reciter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKlwWUm0oLE

Malaysian reciter (female): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgRn6EclOg

Turkish reciter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_21PHZ7mF0

Week 3: The Qurʾān’s Aesthetics

Tuesday, Jan. 26
Navid Kermani, Chap. 3 “The Sound,” from God is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the
Qurʾān, trans. Tony Crawford (Cambridge: 2015), pp. 133-184.

Watch:

Maryam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euqv3p0HFYs

Al-Raḥmān: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiRKjuM1uoM

Al-Wāqiʿa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ImxRVh44s

Thursday, Jan. 28

Wadad al-Qāḍī, EQ, “Literature and the Qurʾān,”

Navid Kermani, “The Text,” from God is Beautiful, pp. 67-132.

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Week 4: The Qurʾān and Muslim Culture

Tuesday, Feb. 2
Franz Rosenthal, EQ, “History and the Qurʾān”

Thursday, Feb. 4
Priscilla P. Soucek, EQ “Material Culture and the Qurʾān”

The Qurʾān as Historical Document

Week Five: The Qurʾān’s Authorship

Tuesday, Feb. 9
Marco Schöller, EQ, “Post-Enlightenment Academic Study of the Qurʾān”

Thursday, Feb. 11
Fred Donner, “The Qurʾān in recent scholarship: challenges and desiderata,” from The
Qurʾān in its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel S. Reynolds (New York: 2007), pp. 29-49.

Harald Motzki, “Alternative accounts of the Qurʾān’s formation,” The Cambridge

Companion to the Quran, 59-78.

Week Six: The Codification of the Qurʾān

Tuesday, Feb. 16
Nicolai Sinai, “When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part I,”
Bulletin of SOAS, 77.2 (2014), 273-292.

Thursday, Feb. 18
Nicolai Sinai, “When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part II,”
Bulletin of SOAS, 77.3 (2014), 509-521.

Week Seven: Recent Observations on Extant Qurʾānic Manuscripts

Tuesday, Feb. 23
Behnam Sadeghi, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet and the Qurʾān of the
Prophet,” Arabica 57 (2010), pp. 343-436

Thursday, Feb. 25
Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi, “Ṣanʿāʾ 1 and the Origins of the Qurʾān,” Der
Islam, no. 87, pp. 1-36.

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See index of Qurʾānic manuscripts:

http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/

Week Eight: Debating Muslim Narratives on the Codification of the

Qurʾānic Text

Tuesday, March 1
Read from one of the two groupings:

*Motzki, “The Collection of the Qurʾān: A Reconsideration of Western Views in Light of

Recent Methodological Developments,” in Der Islam, no. 78, pp. 1-34.

*Gregor Schoeler, “The Codification of the Qurʾan: A Comment on the Hypotheses of

Burton and Wansbrough,” from The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into
the Qurʾānic Milieu, eds. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, Michael Marx (Boston: 2010),
pp. 779-794.

**Al-Sayyid Abū al-Qāsim al-Mūsawī al-Khūʾī, “The Collection of the Qurʾān,”

from Prolegomena to the Qurʾān, trans. Abdulaziz A. Sachedina (New York: 1998), pp. 163-
177.

**Farīd Esack, “Gathering the Qurʾān” from The Qurʾān: A User’s Guide (Oxford: 2005),
pp. 78-99.

Thursday, March 3
Yasin Dutton, “Orality, Literacy and the ‘Seven Aḥruf’ Ḥadīth,” Journal of Islamic
Studies, 23:1 (2012), pp. 1-49.

TAKE HOME QUIZ

Week Nine: The Canonization of Qurʾānic Recitation

Tuesday, March 8
Shady Hekmat Nasser, “Ibn Mujāhid and the Canonization of the Seven Readings,”
chapter two of The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and
the Emergence of the Shawādhdh (Boston: 2013), 35-79.

Optional: Al-Sayyid Abū al-Qāsim al-Mūsawī al-Khūʾī, “An Examination of the

Readings,” from Prolegomena to the Qurʾān, 105-118.

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Thursday, March 10
Shady Hekmat Nasser, Ḥadd al-Qurʾān and the Tawātur of the Canonical Readings,
chapter two of The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and
the Emergence of the Shawādhdh, 79-116.

SPRING BREAK March 11 - 20

The Qurʾān as Composition

Week Ten: Formal Analysis of the Qurʾān’s Composition

Tuesday, March 22
Gerhard Böwering, EQ, “Chronology and the Qurʾān”

Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qurʾān, chapters
8, 9.

Neal Robinson, “Western Attempts at Dating the Revelations,” chap. 5 of Discovering the
Qur'an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text, 2nd ed. (Washington D.C.: 2003), pp. 76-96.

Thursday, March 24
Choose one to read for class:

*Angelika Neuwirth, “From Recitation through Liturgy to Canon: Sura Composition and
Dissolution during the Development of Islamic Ritual,” from Scripture, Poetry and the Making
of a Community: Reading the Qurʾān as a Literary Text, (Oxford: 2014), pp. 141-163

**Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾan as Process,” from The Qurʾān in Context, pp. 407-439.

Optional: Angelika Neuwirth, “Neither of the East nor of the West: Locating the Qurʾān
within the History of Scholarship,” from Scripture, Poetry and the Making of a Community, 3-52.

Week Eleven: The Qurʾān’s Biblical Subtext

Tuesday, March 29
Griffith “The Bible in Pre-Islamic Arabia,” from The Bible in Arabic: The Scriptures of the
‘People of the Book’ in the Language of Islam, (Princeton: 2015), pp. 7-53.

Thursday, March 31
Griffith, “The Bible in the Arabic Qurʾān,” The Bible in Arabic, pp. 54-96.

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Week Twelve: Semantic Analysis

Tuesday, April 5

Toshihiku Izutsu, “The Method of Analysis and Its Application,” Ethico-Religious Concepts
in the Qurʾān, (Montreal: 1966), 24-41.

Ibid., “The Pessimistic Conception of the Earthly Life,” chapter three of Ethico-Religious
Concepts in the Qurʾān, 45-54

Ibid., Chap. 4, “The Spirit of Tribal Solidarity” Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān, 55-
73.

Optional: Thomas Bauer, “The Relevance of Early Arabic Poetry for Qurʾānic
Studies,” The Qurʾān in Context, 699-732

Thursday, April 7

Claude Gilliot, EQ, “Exegesis of the Qurʾān: Classical and Medieval”

Exegesis of al-Fātiḥa and first 16 verses of al-Baqara, The Commentary on the Qurʾān by Abū
Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Ed. Madelung, A. Jones, pp. 53-140

Optional: Andrew Rippin, “The Contemporary Translation of Classical Works of Tafsīr,”

in Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre, (Oxford: 2014), pp.
465-487.

The Qurʾān’s Interpretive Traditions

Week Thirteen: Classical Interpretive Methods

Tuesday, April 12

“Introduction/The Commentators and their Commentaries,” from An Anthology of Qurʾānic

Commentaries vol. 1, eds. Feras Hamza, Sajjad Rizvi, and Farhana Meyer, (New York:
2008), 1-65. Read introduction, then choose two commentators to learn about (these are
brief biographies).

Read the exegesis of those two commentators for the following sections (again, they are
brief):

“Incumbent Mercy (Q 6:12),” Chap. 3 of An Anthology of Qurʾānic Commentaries, pp. 299-346

“Light of the Heavens and the Earth (Q 24:35),” Chap. 4 of An Anthology of Qurʾānic
Commentaries, 347-454.

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Thursday, April 14

Rotraud Wielandt, EQ, “Exegesis of the Qurʾān: Early Modern and Contemporary”

Paul Heck, EQ, “Politics and the Qurʾān”

Week Fourteen: Modern Interpretive Frameworks and the Political Turn

Tuesday, April 19

Read one of the following for discussion in class:

* Sayyid Quṭb, exegesis of Surat Barāʾa from In the Shade of the Qurʾān

** ʿAlī Sharīʿatī, “Sūrah al-Rūm (“The Romans”): A Message to Enlightened Thinkers,”

from What is to be Done: The Enlightened Thinkers and an Islamic Renaissance, trans. Farhang
Rajaee (Houston: 1986), pp. 71-101.

Thursday, April 21

Abdullah Saeed, “Fazlur Rahman: a framework for interpreting the ethico-legal content
of the Qurʾān,” from Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʾan, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki, (New
York: 2004), 37-65.

Asma Barlas, “Amina Wadud’s hermeneutics of the Qurʾān: women rereading sacred
texts,” from Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʾan, 97-123.

Week Fifteen: Reformist Tendencies

Tuesday, April 26
Navid Kermani, “From revelation to interpretation: Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd and the
literary study of the Qurʾān,” from Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʾan, 169-191.

Ursula Günther, “Mohamad Arkoun: towards a radical rethinking of Islamic thought,”

from Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʾan, 125-168.

Final Paper Due Midnight, Thursday, May 5th – No Extensions Possible