American Journal of Islam and Society

With The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an,Andrew Rippin, an illustriousscholar in the field of Qur’anic studies, presents yet another impressivecontribution to previous collections of articles on the Qur’an that he hasedited: Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’an (OxfordUniversity Press: 1988); The Qur’an: Formative Interpretations (Variorum: 1999); and, with Khaleel Mohammed, Coming to Terms with the Qur’an: AVolume in Honor of Issa Boullata (Islamic Publications International: 2008),just to name a few. Gathering the works of scholars from leading universitiesthroughout the world, Rippin has constructed a volume that is designednot only for the general reader “who may have little exposure to the Qur’anbeyond a curiosity evoked by the popular media” (p. x), but also to scholarsspecializing in the Qur’an. The overall aim of this large volume, which comprisesthirty-two articles, is to guide the reader to “a well-advanced state ofunderstanding the complexities ...

JAOS, 2023

Muslim World, 2018

The book under review, The Qur'an (Norton Critical Editions), hereafter referred to as The Norton Qur'an, marks a new highwater mark in efforts to explore Qur'anic scholarship, and to offer fresh insight into the levels of meaning of the Qur'an itself. The author, Jane McAuliffe, is one of the leading North American authorities on all branches of Qur'anic interpretation, as evidenced by her editorial work on The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an (Leiden: 2001-6), and Cambridge Companion to the Qur'an (Cambridge: 2006). The centerpiece of The Norton Qur'an is a revised, updated version of the 1930 rendition by Marmaduke Pickthall: The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, regarded by many as the best available English translation of the Qur'an, despite its several competitors, to be discussed below. But what exceptionalizes The Norton Qur'an is the cornucopia of original essays-at once provocative and productive-that are included as the template within which to consult McAuliffe's revised rendition of Pickthall. They are arrayed as four supplements. Supplement 1 explores Origins in two subsets: Muhammad and the narrative matrix of the Qur'an. Supplement 2 offers Interpretations and Analysis, in five subsets: classical and modern commentary, intellectual amplification, the spectrum of contemporary scholarship, literary studies, and finally Qur'an and Bible. Even more far reaching is Supplement 3, where the reader is challenged to absorb Sounds, Sights, and Remedies within a Qur'anic worldview marked by 3 subsets: learning, reciting, and memorizing; pharmacology and fortune-telling; manuscripts, monuments and material culture. The final, and shortest, Supplement 4 looks at The Qur'an in America, from two perspectives, a 19 th century slave account and a recent book on Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an, the 18 th century rendition of Englishman George Sale, The Koran (1764). The myriad details, and acute analysis, of these several essays should not distract the reader from their underlying, and guiding, principle: in the long history of Qur'an interpretation, spanning centuries, continents and languages, there have emerged two paral

This review essay examines current trends in the field of Quranic studies, as expressed in recent introductory works on the Quran, which in turn reflect developments in more specialized publications. A prominent characteristic in this body of scholarship is an increased emphasis on approaching the Quran as a literary text, as conceived within the structures of textual criticism. Much of this work strives to bypass the autochthonous exegetical corpus developed by Muslim authorities and read the Quran on its own terms, as a text best situated within a sectarian milieu of late antiquity. Particular attention is given here to the configuration of literature as a secular category of analysis and the implications it bears for this growing field.

Ilahiyat Studies, 2012

First paragraph: This voluminous anthology, comprising one introductory chapter and twenty-seven essays, is devoted to Qurʾānic studies. It emerged from a conference in Berlin in 2004 and a summer academy in 2007 conceived and led by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx, all scholars specializing in Qurʾānic studies. The organizers re-appear as editors and contributors to this publication. It comes as no surprise, then that The Qurʾān in Context reflects the general outlook of the ‘Berlin school’ (Sinai has since taken a position at Oxford University), whose main instigator is associated with the work of professor Angelika Neuwirth. In addition to the majority of scholars with a German academic background, this perspective implies an emphasis on Late Antiquity and the emergence of the Qurʾān within this broad and multifaceted regional, chronological, and religious framework. Indeed, the twelve essays in the first part of the volume, titled The Qurʾan’s Historical Context, “address various general aspects of the Qurʾān’s political, economic, linguistic, and cultural context.” (p. 17) This includes archaeological, theological, and literary aspects. The now-obsolete opinion that the Qurʾān emerged in splendid Arab isolation is definitively abandoned in favor of a Qurʾān emerging and acting as a dynamic force-field in continuity (and polemics) with late antique milieus, texts, and discourses. Within this framework, the term ‘Qurʾān’ becomes the common denominator of both the chronological-dialectical processes of the three factors (Prophet, revelation, and community) as well as the edited and canonized text corpus, crystallizing into the postʿUthmānic and diacritical Qurʾānic muṣḥaf. Neuwirth and her affiliated peers tend to place special emphasis on the diachronic trajectories of the Qurʾānic text, especially its self-reflexive intertextual relations with and appropriations of Jewish, Christian, and Arab-pagan traditions.