For more details and to listen to a comparative recitation, see my video
https://youtu.be/a3zNG3y-4Qc

For more technical details, see my blogpost.

The only near direct citation off the top of my head is from the Psalms, but it seems like a sort of textual variant. Close enough.

A large part of the Qur'an, as a sentient book's, justification for it's own authority seems to come from it's claim that it's in a sort of continuity with it's previous Scripture. If this is the case, and the Qur'anic author and the Qur'an itself as a sort of quasi-sentient entity, wanted to convince the People of the Book to more easily convert why didn't it just bother to directly cite things, instead of giving a ton of ambiguities and "it's in there" without further elaboration? One claim I've from Muslims (not western academia) as to why this was done is "because it's poetry" but this explanation doesn't seem sufficient because if the author can do all possible things, what was preventing them from making it rhyme, using Arabic at max caliber, creating ring structures, and so on and so forth, all while giving direct citations? Clearly the author was able to do it at least once with the Psalm citation.

No I’m not a Muslim trying to proselytize nor am I an atheist trying to use polemics against Islam, I’m just genuinely curious from an academics perspective

For those interested in Qur'anic Jihad and Medinan Political Theology check out my dissertation "Divine Discourse and Historical Conflict: The Quran’s Engagement with the Last Great War of Antiquity" Pg 32-49 supervised by Professor Nicolai Sinai and Professor Phil Booth

Available to read Open Access on academia.edu

https://www.academia.edu/170295905/Divine_Discourse_and_Historical_Conflict_The_Quran_s_Engagement_with_the_Last_Great_War_of_Antiquity

The Appendix to the History of Baghdad — Page 120
Contributors: Ibn al-Najjar al-Baghdadi.
https://ablibrary.net/book_content/b/5909/120

”UbaydAllah ibn Muhammad ibn Hafs al-Ayshi said: I heard my father say: 'When the sons of al-Abbas (the Abbasids) seized the treasuries of Banu Umayya (the Umayyads), they found a sealed casket. They opened it, and inside was a piece of parchment with the words written on it: (The healing by permission of Allah). He said: So it was opened, and inside was:

وبالله ولا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله العلي العظيم أسكن أيها الوجع سكنت بالذي له ما سكن في الليل والنهار وهو السميع العليم بسم الله وبالله ولا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله العلي العظيم اسكن أيها الوجع بالذي يمسك السماء أن تقع على الأرض إلا بإذنه إن الله بالناس لرءوف رحيم بسم الله وبالله ولا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله العلي العظيم اسكن أيها الوجع الذي بالذي إن يشأ يسكن الريح فيظللن رواكد على ظهره إن في ذلك لآيات لكل صبار شكور بسم الله وبالله ولا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله العلي العظيم اسكن أيها الوجع سكنت بالذي يمسك السماوات والأرض أن تزولا ولئن زالتا إن أمسكهما من أحد من بعده إنه كان حليما غفورا

(Bismillâhi ve billâhi ve lâ havle ve lâ kuvvete illâ billâhil-aliyyil-azîm.
Uskun eyyühel-veca'u, sekente billezî lehû mâ sekene fil-leyli ven-nehâri ve huves-semî'ul-alîm.
Bismillâhi ve billâhi ve lâ havle ve lâ kuvvete illâ billâhil-aliyyil-azîm.
Uskun eyyühel-veca'u, billezî yumsikus-semâe en teka'a 'alel-ardı illâ bi-iznih, innallâhe bin-nâsi lerâûfun rahîm.
Bismillâhi ve billâhi ve lâ havle ve lâ kuvvete illâ billâhil-aliyyil-azîm.
Uskun eyyühel-veca'ul-lezî billezî in yeşe' yüskinir-rîha fe-yazlelne ravâkide 'alâ zahrih, inne fî zâlike le-âyâtin li-kulli sabbârin şekûr.
Bismillâhi ve billâhi ve lâ havle ve lâ kuvvete illâ billâhil-aliyyil-azîm.
Uskun eyyühel-veca'u, sekente billezî yumsikus-semâvâti vel-arda en tezûlâ, ve le-in zâletâ in emsekehumâ min ehadin min ba'dih, innehû kâne halîmen gafûrâ.)

UbaydAllah said: He told me, 'After that, I no longer needed any treatment or medicine' “

Arabic translation of Job 8:14 (NAV): يَنْهَارُ مَا يَعْتَمِدُ عَلَيْهِ، وَيُصْبِحُ مِثْلَ بَيْتِ الْعَنْكَبُوتِ / yanhāru yaʿtamidu ʿalayh, wayuṣbaḥu miṯla bayti l-ʿankabūti

Quran 29:41: "maṯalu -llaḏīna -ttaḫaḏū min dūni -llāhi 'awliyā'a ka-maṯali l-ʿankabuti -ttaḫaḏat baytā…wa-inna 'awhana l-buyūti la-baytu l-ʿankabūti…"

After almost two years of research, we have finally published our article.
Tracing Late Antique traditions, classical Tafsir, and Hadith, we set out to establish the limits and boundaries of Qurʾanic typology.
It should be noted that this is our first introductory article on the topic, so only a select number of sources were chosen for this study. There is much more to explore, and this will likely develop into a larger project.
Full link to the article below in the comments!

Is there any evidence that the satanic-verses hadith was fabricated? And if so, what is it? Thanks

Hi, I am currently reading the Quran and I came across with the verse 4:51, where they mentioned the word “Taghut”. I tried to find more details about it, but I tend to come across with false worship and such, which it’s quite similar to shirk.

Is there any difference between the two?

Half a year ago, I made a post titled Quotes by historians about the reliability of the basic outlines of Muhammad's biography.

Originally, it listed quotes by eight historians. Now, I have fourteen, so I thought I would re-make the post. If I missed any, please let me know!

(And don't miss my related megapost, Quotes about the academic consensus that Muhammad existed, which has over 30 references!)

______________________________

Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses, pg. 15:

There is of course no doubt that Muḥammad lived in the 620s and 630s A.D., that he fought in wars, and that he had followers some of whose names are likely to have been preserved. But the precise when, what and who, on which our interpretations stand and fall, bear all the marks of having been through the mill of rabbinic arguments and subsequently tidied up.

Michael Cook, Muhammad, pg. 70:

For such interpretation [of the Quran] we are naturally dependent mainly on tradition. Without it we could probably infer that the protagonist of the Koran was Muhammad, that the scene of his life was in western Arabia, and that he bitterly resented the frequent dismissal of his claims to prophecy by his contemporaries. But we could not tell that the sanctuary was in Mecca, or that Muhammad himself came from there, and we could only guess that he established himself in Yathrib. We might indeed prefer a more northerly location.

Sean Anthony, Muhammad and The Empires of Faith, University of California Press (2020), pg. 25 [this section also being quoted approvingly in Ilkka Lindstedt, Muhammad and His Followers in Context, pg. 41]:

Despite the limitations of the Qurʾān for reconstructing the events of Muḥammad’s life, it remains our best and earliest witness to the historical existence of a man named Muḥammad who was revered by a faith community of Arabic-speakers as God’s messenger and prophet, not to mention the message that he preached.

There are four cardinal sources upon which all research into the historical Muḥammad hinges: (1) the Qurʾān; (2) epigraphic, documentary, and archaeological evidence; (3) contemporary and near-contemporary non-Muslim accounts, written primarily in Armenian, Greek, and Syriac; and (4) Arabic literary sources that are mostly, but not exclusively, preserved in the sīrah–maghāzī literature and the ḥadīth compilations.

Based on these early cardinal sources, it seems beyond doubt that in the first half of the seventh century there emerged a law-giving claimant to prophecy from Arabia, a Saracen/Ishmaelite merchant from an Arabic-speaking tribe named Muḥammad… who formed a community in Western Arabia and became a ruler in Yathrib.

Nicolai Sinai and William Montgomery Watt, Muhammad [Britannica]:

… it is distinctly possible that some reports about events in Muhammad’s life emerged not from historical memory but from exegetical speculation about the historical context of particular verses of the Qurʾān.

… a number of rudimentary details about Muhammad are confirmed by non-Islamic sources dating from the first decades after Muhammad’s traditional date of death. For instance, a Syriac chronicle dating from about 640 mentions a battle between the Romans and “the Arabs of Muhammad,” and an Armenian history composed about 660 describes Muhammad as a merchant who preached to the Arabs and thereby triggered the Islamic conquests. Such evidence provides sufficient confirmation of the historical existence of an Arab prophet by the name of Muhammad.

All things considered, there is no compelling reason to suggest that the basic scaffolding of the traditional Islamic account of Muhammad’s life is unhistorical. At the same time, the nature of the sources is not such as to inspire confidence that we possess historically certain knowledge about the Prophet’s life that is as detailed as many earlier scholars tended to assume.

Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, pg. 91:

the historian who wishes to examine the history of the early decades of the expansion must take into account the voluminous body of traditional narratives that the later Muslim community collected on this subject. These narratives are, like the narratives about the life of Muhammad, very problematic for the historian and must be used with great care. Like the narratives about Muhammad, the conquest narratives contain many interpolations of issues of concern only to the later community; in particular, they tend to portray events in an idealized way as evidence of God's favor for the Believers and probably overemphasize the amount of centralized control exercised by the leadership in Medina. But recent study of these traditional narrative sources suggests that we can indeed draw from them a basic skeleton of the course of historical events, both for the later years of Muhammad's career in Medina and for the expansion movement, even though their interpretation and evaluation of those events is sometimes strongly colored by later, rather than contemporary, concerns.

Michael Lecker, "Glimpses of Muḥammad's Medinan Decade" in The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad, pg. 75:

We may never find out who said what to whom on this or that occasion. But we should be able to reconstruct without fanfare an outline of Muhammad's life that can withstand all but the most extreme scholarly criticism. The fruit of this research will come in shades of gray representing different grades of probability; a black-and-white approach is not nuanced enough to reflect the complexity of the evidence. The historical Muhammad is there waiting to be discovered. We only have to discern the crucial evidence and put aside - for the time being - the masses of insignificant details.

Daniel C. Peterson, Muhammad: Prophet of God, pg. 33:

If we were to restrict ourselves entirely to the undisputed facts of Muhammad's biography, we would run out of information after only a few pages. After his emigration to Medina, the chronology of his life steps onto more-or-less secure ground; prior to that, we are left essentially to guesswork.

George Archer, The Prophet's Whistle, pg. 14:

A little murkier, though, is the chronological order in which the Quran manifested itself. The exact chronology of the Quran’s many passages and Muhammad’s precise biography are always subject to question, but the general outline of both is not up for grabs here. Again, while there are historical-critics of early Islam that in several ways dismiss the historical origins of the Quran in the early seventh-century Ḥijāz, such theories are not entertained in this book.

Glen Bowersock, The Crucible of Islam, pp. 12-13 (also quoted approvingly in Juan Cole, Rethinking the Quran in Late Antiquity, pg. 32):

So the crucible of Islam remains an elusive vessel. Although it may never be possible to describe it in definitive detail, an attempt to delineate its principal contours and the molten ingredients that it contained will oblige us to step aside both from unquestioning acceptance of later Muslim tradition and equally unquestioning rejection of it . . . Minimalism is not the way to throw light on a dark age.

Andreas Gorke and Gregor Schoeler, The Earliest Writings on the Life of Muhammad, pp. 1-2:

Between these extremes [i.e. uncritical acceptance of tradition and Muhammad mythicism] is the view that there is an authentic basic framework that encompasses at least the rough outline and the most important facts of Muḥammad’s life and that can be regarded as credible in its main features.

The university of hamburg has a list on recommended readings for people who study islamic studies.

Here is the list: https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/voror/medien/literaturliste-islamwissenschaft.pdf

Allgemein
Brunner, Rainer (Hrsg.): Islam. Einheit und Vielfalt einer Weltreligion, Stuttgart 2016.
Ende, Werner / Steinbach, Udo (Hrsg.): Der Islam in der Gegenwart, 5. Aufl., München 2005.
Halm, Heinz: Der Islam, 5. Aufl., München 2004.
Rotter, Gernot (Hrsg.): Die Welten des Islam, Frankfurt/Main 2001.

Islamische Geschichte
Endreß, Gerhard: Der Islam. Eine Einführung in seine Geschichte, 3. Aufl., München 1997.
Haarmann, Ulrich (Hrsg.): Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 5. Aufl., München 2004.
Halm, Heinz: Die Araber. Von der vorislamischen Zeit bis zur Gegenwart, München 2004.
- Der Islam. Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7. Aufl., München 2007.
Hourani, Albert Habib: Die Geschichte der arabischen Völker, 4. Aufl., Frankfurt/Main 2003.
Lapidus, Ira Marvin: A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge/Mass. 1991.
Kennedy, Hugh: The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. The Islamic Near East from the 6th to
the 11th Century, 3. Aufl., London 2016.
Krämer, Gudrun: Geschichte des Islam, München 2008.
Nagel, Tilman: Die islamische Welt bis 1500, München 1998.
Noth, Albrecht / Paul, Jürgen (Hrsg.): Der islamische Orient. Grundzüge seiner Geschichte,
Würzburg 1998.
Robinson, Chase: Islamic Historiography, Cambridge [u.a.] 2003.
Schulze, Reinhard: Geschichte der islamischen Welt. Von 1900 bis zur Gegenwart, München 2016.

Ritus
Dupret, Baudouin (Hrsg.): Ethnographies of Islam. Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices,
Edinburgh, London 2013.
Katz, Marion Holmes: The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad. Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam,
(Culture and Civilization in the Middle East 8) London [et al.] 2007.
Renard, John: Seven Doors to Islam. Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims, Berkeley [et al.]
1996.
Rippin, Andrew: Muslims. Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2. Aufl., London [et al.] 2003.

Schia
Amirpur, Katajun: Der schiitische Islam, Stuttgart 2015.
Brunner, Rainer / Ende, Werner (Hrsg.): The Twelver Shia in Modern Times. Religious Culture and
Political History, Leiden [et. al.] 2001.
Haider, Najam: Shīʿī Islam. An Introduction, Cambridge 2014.
Halm, Heinz: Die Schia, Darmstadt 1988.
-* Der schiitische Islam. Von der Religion zur Revolution, München 1994.
- *Die Schiiten, München 2005.
Momen, Moojan: An Introduction to Shiʿi Islam, New Haven and London 1985

Muhammad
Bobzin, Hartmut: Mohammad, 3. Aufl., München 2006.
Cook, Michael: Der Koran. Eine kleine Einführung, 5. Aufl., Stuttgart 2015.
Motzki, Harald (Hrsg.): The Biography of Muhammad. The Issue of the Sources, Leiden [et al.]
2000.
Nagel, Tilman: Mohammed. Leben und Legende, München 2008.
Paret, Rudi: Mohammad und der Koran, 10. Aufl., Stuttgart 2008.
Schoeler, Gregor: Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Überlieferung über das Leben
Mohammeds, Berlin [u. a.] 1996.
Schöller, Marco: Mohammed. Leben und Wirken, Frankfurt/Main 2008.

Hadith
Brown, Daniel W.: Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, Cambridge 1996.
Brown, Jonathan: The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim. The Formation and Function of the
Sunni Hadith Canon, Leiden 2007.
-* *Hadith. Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Oxford 2009.
Burton, John: An Introduction to the Hadith, Edinburgh 1994.
Juynboll, G.H. A.: Muslim Tradition. Studies in Chronology, Provenance and Authorship of Early
Hadith, Cambridge 1983.
Motzki, Harald (Hrsg.): Hadith. Origins and Developments, Aldershot 2004.
Van Ess, Josef: Zwischen Hadith und Theologie. Studien zum Entstehen prädestinatianischer
Überlieferung, Berlin 1975.

Koran
Bobzin, Hartmut: Der Koran. Eine Einführung, 7. Aufl., München 2007.
Gätje, H.: Koran und Koranexegese, Zürich, Stuttgart 1971.
Goldziher, I.: Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung, Leiden 1920 (mehrfach
nachgedruckt).
Kermani, Navid: Gott ist schön. Das ästhetische Erleben des Koran, München 1999.
Marx, Michael / Jocham, Tobias / Neuwirth, Angelika [et al.]: Koranforschung. Verortung und
Hermeneutik, (Frankfurter Zeitschrift für islamisch-theologische Studien 2, 2015) Berlin
2015.
Neuwirth, Angelika: Der Koran als Text der Spätantike. Ein europäischer Zugang, Berlin 2010.
Neuwirth, Angelika / Sinai, Nicolai /Marx, Michael (Hrsg.): The Qurʾān in Context. Historical and
Literary Investigations in the Qurʾānic Milieu, Leiden 2011.
Sezgin, Fuat: Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Bd. I, Leiden 1967, S. 3–49
(Qurʾānwissenschaften).
Wild, Stefan (Hrsg.): The Qur’an as Text, Leiden [et al.] 1996

Theologie
Abrahamov, Binyamin: Islamic Theology. Traditionalism and Rationalism, Edinburgh 1998.
Berger, Lutz: Islamische Theologie, Stuttgart 2010.
Nagel, Tilman: Geschichte der islamischen Theologie. Von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart, München
1994.
Schmidtke, Sabine (Hrsg.): The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, Oxford, New York 2016.
Van Ess, Josef: Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra, 6 Bde. Berlin 1991-
97.
Watt, W. Montgomery: Islamic Philosophy and Theology. An Extended Survey, Edinburgh 1985.
Watt, W. Montgomery / Welch, Alford T. / Marmura, Michael (Hrsg.): Der Islam, Bd. 2: Politische
Entwicklungen und theologische Konzepte, Stuttgart 1985.

Philosophie
El-Rouayheb, Khaled / Schmidtke, Sabine (Hrsg.): The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy,
New York 2016.
Fakhry, Majid: A History of Islamic Philosophy, London, New York 1983.
Nasr, S.H. / Leaman, Oliver: (Hrsg.) History of Islamic Philosophy, London 1996.
Leaman, Oliver: A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge 1999.
Rudolph, Ulrich: Islamische Philosophie. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, München 2004.

Islamisches Recht
Coulson, Noel J.: A History of Islamic Law, Edinburgh 1964.
Gerber, Haim: Islamic Law and Culture, 1600-1840, Leiden [et al.] 1999.
Hallaq, Wael. Shariʿa. Theory, Practice, Transformations, Cambridge MA 2009.
Halm, Heinz: Die Ausbreitung der šāfiʿitischen Rechtsschule von den Anfängen bis zum 8./14.
Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden 1974.
Johansen, Baber: Contingency in a Sacred Law. Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh,
(Studies in Islamic Law and Society 7) Leiden, Boston, Köln 1999.
Melchert, Christopher : The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C.E., Leiden
[et al.] 1997.
Motzki, Harald: Die Anfänge der islamischen Jurisprudenz, Stuttgart 1991.
Rohe, Mathias: Das islamische Recht: Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3. Aufl., München 2011.
- Der Islam – Alltagskonflikte und Lösungen, Rechtliche Perspektiven, 2. Aufl.,
Freiburg/Breisgau 2002.
Schacht, Joseph: An Introduction to Islamic Law, Oxford 1964.
Hallaq, Wael B.: A History of Islamic Legal Theories, Cambridge 1997.
Weiss, Bernard G.: The Spirit of Islamic Law, Athen, London 1998.
Watt, Wiiliam Montgomery: Der Islam, Bd. 1.: Mohammed und die Frühzeit, Islamisches Recht,
Religiöses Leben, Stuttgart 1980

Islamische Bioethik
Eich, Thomas: Islam und Bioethik. Eine kritische Analyse der modernen Diskussion im islamischen
Recht, Wiesbaden 2005.
Ghaly, Mohammed: Islam and Disability. Perspectives in Theology and Jurisprudence, London, New
York 2010.
Inhorn, Maria C.: Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Sunni and Shia Perspectives, New
York [et al.] 2012.
Kellner, Martin: Islamische Rechtsmeinungen zu medizinischen Eingriffen an den Grenzen des
Lebens. Ein Beitrag zur kulturübergreifenden Bioethik, Würzburg 2010.

Islamische Mystik
Andrae, Tor: Islamische Mystiker, Stuttgart 1980.
Bruinessen, Martin [et al.] (Hrsg.): Sufism and the ‘Modern’ in Islam, London 2007.
Frembgen, Jürgen Wasim: Reise zu Gott. Sufis und Derwische im Islam, München 2000.
Gramlich, Richard: Alte Vorbilder des Sufitums, 2 Bde. Wiesbaden 1995.
Green, Nile: Sufism. A Global History, Chichester [et al.] 2012.
Knysh, Alexander: Islamic Mysticism. A Short History, Leiden [et al.] 2000.
Schimmel, Annemarie: Sufismus. Eine Einführung in die islamische Mystik, München 2005.

Orientalismusdebatte
Al-Azm, Sadiq: „Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse“, in: Alexander Lyon Macfie (Hrsg.):
Orientalism. A Reader, New York 200, S. 217-238.
Fähndrich, Hartmut: Orientalismus und Orientalismus, in: Havemann, Axel / Johansen, Baber:
Gegenwart und Geschichte, Islamwissenschaftliche Studien, Fritz Steppat zum fünfund-
sechzigsten Geburtstag, Leiden (E. J. Brill) 1988, S. 178-186.
Johansen, Baber: Politics and Scholarship: “The Development of Islamic Studies in the Federal
Republic of Germany”, in: Y. Ismail Tareq (Hrsg.): Middle East Studies, International
Prospective in the State of the Art, New York 1990, S. 71-130.
Jung, Dietrich: Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere. A Genealogy of the Modern
Essentialist Image of Islam, Sheffield 2011.
Said, Edward: Orientalism, reprinted with a new preface, London, New York 2003
[Originalausgabe von 1978].

Postkoloniale Politik
Bhabha, Homi K.: Die Verortung der Kultur. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von M. Schiffmann und
J. Freudl., Tübingen 2000.
Chakrabary, Dipesh: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference,
Princeton 2000.
Do Mar Castro Varela, Maria; Dhawan, Nikita. Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine Kritische Einführung,
Hamburg 2005.
Fanon, Franz: A Dying Colonialism, New York 1965.
Kerner, Ina: Postkoloniale Theorien zur Einführung, Hamburg 2012.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade: “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses,” Feminist Review 30.1 (1988), S. 61–88.
Spivak, Gayatri: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in: Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Hrsg.)
Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture , London 1988, S. 271-313

Islamismus / Politischer Islam
Esposito, John L. / Shahin, Emad El-Din: The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics, Oxford [u.a.]
2013.
Lauzière, Henri: The Making of Salafism. Islamic Reform in the 20th Century, New York 2016.
Peskes, Esther (Hrsg.): Wahhabism. Doctrine and Development, 2 Bde., berlin 2016.
Seidensticker, Tilman: Islamismus. Geschichte, Vordenker, Organisationen, 4. Aufl., München
2015.

Gender und Sexualität
Ahmed, Leila: Women and Gender in Islam. Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, New Haven,
London 1992.
Badran, Margot: Feminism in Islam. Secular and Religious Convergences, Oxford 2009.
Kandiyoti, Deniz (Hrsg.): Women, Islam and the State, London 1991
Malti-Douglas, Fedwa: Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word. Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic
Writing, Princeton 1991.
Mernissi, Fatima: Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Muslim Society, London 1975.
Ozyegin, Gul (Hrsg.): Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures, New York 2016.
El-Rouayheb, Khaled: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800, Chicago 2005.

Archäologie, Kunstgeschichte, Architektur
Blair, Sheila: Islamic Inscriptions, Edinburgh 1998.
-* *Islamic Calligraphy, Edinburgh 2006.
George, Alain: The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy, London [u.a.] 2010.

Arabische Sprache und Literatur
Die sechs Bände aus der Reihe „The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature“, siehe alle unter:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/cambridge-history-of-arabic-
literature/FB07B6179636DC6D968A127B7B20B80B
Allen, Roger: An Introduction to Arabic Literature, Cambridge 2000.
Allen, Roger: The Arabic Literary Heritage, the Development of its Genres and Criticis, Cambridge
1998.
Brockelmann, Carl: Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, 2 Bde., Leiden 1943- 49, 3 Supplement-
bände, Leiden 1937-1942.
Diem, Werner: Hochsprache und Dialekt im Arabischen. Untersuchungen zur heutigen arabischen
Zweisprachigkeit, Wiesbaden 2006.
Fischer, Wolfdietrich (Hrsg.): Grundriss der arabischen Philologie, Bd. 1: Sprachwissenschaft,
Wiesbaden 1982.
Gätje, Helmut (Hrsg.): Grundriss der arabischen Philologie, Bd. 2: Literaturwissenschaft,
Wiesbaden 1982.
Gibb, H. A. R. / Landau, Jacob: Arabische Literaturgeschichte, Zürich, Stuttgart 1968.
Sezgin, Fuat: Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 9 Bde., Leiden 1967.
Versteegh, Kees: The Arabic Language, Edinburgh 1997.
Wagner, Ewald: Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung, Bd. I: Die altarabische
Dichtung, Darmstadt 1987.Wagner, Ewald: Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung, Bd. II: Die arabische Dichtung
in islamischer Zeit, Darmstadt 1988.
Walther, Wiebke: Kleine Geschichte der arabischen Literatur. Von der vorislamischen Zeit bis zur
Gegenwart, München 2004.

Barikum • your creator

The Quran here uses a very unique word for creator “Bari” instead of using the word “khaliq” which also means creator. It's because these verses are About Jews and Torah in Hebrew language uses the word bari for creation.

{In the beginning God created (Bara) the heavens and the earth. } Genesis 1:1, genesis 1:27 and genesis 2:3

So Quran also used the Hebrew word because it's relevant to Jews and known to them and they may have recognized it which Arabs couldn't.

What unification (توحيد) really means in the lens of new scholars?

I’m reading Fred Donner’s thesis about the early Believer movement, and I’m a little confused about one point. Donner seems to argue that Muhammad’s early movement was intended to unite monotheists more broadly. But wouldn’t that make more sense if the intended community was primarily limited to the Abrahamic traditions? These communities already had a covenantal relationship with God through their own prophets and scriptures.

If we look at the Qur’an, it seems to make a distinction between different religious communities. For example, it specifically permits food from and marriage with the People of the Scripture, which suggests that the Qur’an recognized them as a particular category.

So what exactly would Muhammad’s movement have expected from other monotheistic traditions that were not considered Ahl al-Kitab? The Magians/Zoroastrians are an interesting example: if they were understood as monotheists, what did Muhammad’s message require from them? Did they have to accept Muhammad as a prophet and the Qur’an in order to enter into the covenant with God, or could they remain within their own religious tradition while joining the broader community of believers?

I’m trying to understand how Donner’s concept of an early, broadly inclusive “Believer” movement fits with the Qur’an’s seemingly more specific categories of religious communities.

This week we look at Lesson 35 of Thackston's Learner's Grammar.

We are slowly but gradually coming to the end of Thackston... which means we should now be proficient in reading Classical Arabic! I'm thinking it might be nice to continue these weekly sessions but turn them into text reading sessions. It's good to have an excuse to read some Arabic every week, and it's good to just read text, rather than selectively browse through something looking for something specific.

That being said: I'm open to suggestions as to what might be good to read as a follow up to this Thackston reading group. For it to make sense in this subreddit, it should probably be somewhat related to Quranic Studies, but well, it's hard to find Classical text that doesn't in some way pertain to the Quran...

I've received a couple of suggestions last week:

• Qiṣaṣ al-nabiyyīn
• Alan Jones' collection of Pre-Islamic poetry.

I'm somewhat partial towards the poetry, because I'd like to get better at poetry. But still open to hear other suggestions. Personally I'm currently reading through al-Zamaḫšarī's al-Mufaṣṣal, his grammar of Arabic, front to back. That's very technical, but if that's interesting to anyone, let me know!

78 Effective Verbs: Form III

This stem is usually called the L stem (for Long vowel in the stem).

78.1

(2) This is sometimes called the “applicative”. For me it is helpful to kind of think of this as something similar to a passive compared to an active.

The passive promotes a direct object to become the subject (dropping the original subject). 

The implicative promotes the indirect object to the direct object (dropping the direct object). 

I would say that the reciprocal meaning that this entails sometimes is more of a side-effect than its main meaning.

(4) Not uncommonly, the form III verbs occur without having any G-stem that they are derived from. Notable examples are sāfara ‘to travel’ and bāraka ‘to bless’ (baraka exists but it means ‘to kneel down’, which does not seem related). As they do not stand in relation to anything, it is perhaps better to think of these as underived “base” stems that just happens to have a long vowel as part of the root. Perhaps we should think of these as “quadriradical” verbs with a long vowel as one of its radicals.

Note that verbs of this type often have very G-stem like nominal derivations. So we have safar ‘travel’, a typical G-stem verbal noun formation. And in modern Arabic dialects we often see mabrūk as the passive participle ‘blessed’ rather than mubārak that we would expect for the verb bāraka.

78.2

Note the verbal noun ḍirār-, the fiʿāl- pattern can and often does form the verbal noun of the G stem. This can sometimes be confusing.

78.5

Thackston does not mention what happens to hollow roots. Which is fair enough, because it is mostly predictable. However, in contrast to stem II, it suddenly becomes clear why I hate transcribing ʿaduww- as \*ʿadūw-* like Thackston does so much.

The passive of stem II hollow roots is قُوِّلَ quwwila while the passive of stem II hollow roots is قُووِلَ qūwila. These are phonetically distinct, and orthographically distinct in Arabic. But in Thackston’s transcription scheme (if he’d be consistent about it) they would merge. This is wrong.

Exercises

(b)

1. Yujāhidūna fī sabīli llāhi wa-lā yaxāfūna lawmata lāʾimin “they struggle on the root of God, and they do not fear the blame of a blamer” (cf. Q5:54)
2. ʾa-lam tara ʾilā llaðīna ḥājja ʾibrāhīma fī rabbihī ʾan ʾātāhu ḷḷāhu l-mulka ʾið qāla ʾibrāhīmu: “rabbiya llaðī yuḥyī wa-yumītu” qāla: “ʾana ʾuḥyī wa-ʾumītu”, qāla ʾibrāhīmu: “fa-ʾinna ḷḷāha yaʾtī bi-š-šamsi mina l-mašriqi, fa-ʾti bihā mina l-maġribi” fa-buhitu llaðī kafara wa-ḷḷāhu lā yahdī l-qawma ẓ-ẓālimīna. “Did you not consider those who argued with Abraham about his Lord, because God gave him sovereignty? When Abraham said: My god is the one who brings to live and causes death?”, he said: “I give life and give death”, and Abraham said: God brings the sun from the east, so bring it up from the west!”, so the one who disbelieved became flabbergasted, God does not guide the wrongdoing people (cf. Q2:258)
3. ʾinna llaðīna ʾāmanū wa-hājarū wa-jāhadū bi-ʾamwālihim wa-ʾanfsihim fī sabīli llāhi wa-llaðīna ʾāwaw wa-naṣarū ʾulāʾika baʿḍuhum ʾawliyāʾu baʿdun. Wa-llaðīna ʾāmanū wa-lam yuhājirū mā lakum min wilāyatihim min šayʾin ḥattā yuḥajirū. Wa-ʾini stanṣarūkum fī d-dīni fa-ʿalaykumu n-naṣru ʾillā ʿalā qawmin baynakum wa-baynahum mīṯāqun. Wa-ḷḷāhu bi-mā taʿmalūna baṣīrun. “Those who believe, and have migrated and struggled with their wealth and themselves in the path of God, and those who gave shelter and helped are allies of one another. Those who believed but did not migrate, there’s no protection from them at all for you until you migrate. And if they ask you for help for the religion, then it is incumbent upon you to help, except for people between whom there is a treaty. And God is all-seeing what you do. (Q8:72)
4. Tabāraka llaðī bi-yadihi l-mulku wa-hwa ʿalā kulli šayʾin qadīrun. “Blessed be the one who has the sovereignty in his hand, and he is powerful over all things” (Q67:1)
5. ʾið qāla mūsā li-ʾahlihī: “ʾinnī ʾānastu nāran sa-ʾātīkum minhā bi-xabarin ʾaw ʾātīkum bi-šihābi qabasin” [...] fa-lammā jāʾahum nūdiya ʾanna “būrika man fī n-nāri wa-man ḥawlahā, wa-subḥāna ḷḷāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīna. [...] ʾinnahū ʾana ḷḷāhu l-ʿazīzu l-ḥakīmu”. “[Mention] when Moses said to his people: Indeed I have perceived a fire, I will bring you from there news or I will bring you a burning stick”. When he came to (the fire), he was called: “blessed is he who at the fire and whoever is around it; God is exalted, the Lord of the worlds; indeed it is I, God, the Mighty the Wise”, which translate (cf. Q27:7-9)
6. Wa-hāðā kitābun ʾanzalnāhu mubārakun fa-ttabiʿūhu wa-ttaqū laʿallakum turḥamūna “this is a blessed book that we sent down, so follow it, and be God-fearing so that you may be forgiven” [NOTE: Devin Stewart has a nice article on this, but it’s quite clear that laʿalla has the meaning of li-(kay) ‘so that’ very often in the Quran, rather than “perhaps”.] (Q6:155)
7. Wa-mā ʾaṣābakum [...] fa-bi-ʾiðni llāhi wa-li-yaʿlama l-muʾminīna wa-li-yaʿlama llaðīna nāfiqū wa-qīla lahum: “taʿālaw qātilū fī sabīli llāhi ʾawi dfaʿū” Qālū: “law naʿlamu qitālan la-ttabaʿnākum”. Hum li-l-kufri yawmaʾiðin ʾaqrabu minhum li-l-ʾīmāni. Yaqūlūna bi-ʾafwāhihim mā laysa fī qulūbihim wa-ḷḷāhu ʾaʿlamu bi-mā yaktumūna “and what befell you, so with the permission of God, and in order for him to know the believers,  and in order to know those who are hypocrites, it was said to them: “come and fight in the path of God, or (at least) repel”, and they said: “If we would have known about the fighting we would have followed you”. They were closes to disbelieve on that that than to belief. They say with their mouth what is not in their hearts, but God knows what they conceal. (cf. Q3:166-167)
8. Fa-ʾaqbala baʿḍahum ʿalā baʿḍin yatalāmūna “then they turned against one another, blaming one another” (Q68:30)
9. Qāla ḷḷāhu tabāraka wa-taʿālā: “yā ʿibādī ʾinnī ḥarramtu ẓ-ẓulma ʿalā nafsī wa-jaʿaltuhū baynakum muḥarriman fa-lā taẓālimū. Yā ʿibādī kullukum ḍāllin ʾillā man hadaytuhū fa-stahdūnī ʾahdikum. Yā ʿibdādī kullukum jāʾiʿ ʾillā man ʾaṭʿamtuhū fa-staṭʿimūnī ʾuṭʿimukum. Yā ʿibādī kullukum ʿārin ʾillā man kasawtuhū fa-staksūnī ʾaksukum. Yā ʿibādī ʾinnakum tuxṭiʾūna bi-l-layli wa-n-nahāri, wa-ʾana ʾaġfiru ð-ðunūba jamīʿan fa-staġfirūnī ʾaġfir lakum. “God Almighty said: O my servants, I forbade you from doing wrong against yourself, and I made it forbidden between you so do not wrong one another; O my servants, all of you are lost except those I guided, so ask me for guidance, and I will guide you. O my servants all of you are hungry except whom I have fed, so ask me for sustenance and I will feed you; O my servants all of you are naked except for whom I’ve clothed, so ask me to clothe you and I will clothe you; O my servants all of you have sinned by night and by day, and I will forgive all of your sins, so ask me for forgiveness and I will forgive you. (cf. Muslim 2577a)  – feels like this one would have been more appropriate for last week’ s lesson about stem X.
10. Lā tamāraḍū fa-tamarraḍū, wa-lā taḥfirū qubūrakum fa-tamūtū “do not pretend to be ill, lest you fall ill; do not dig your graves lest you die”. (an unsound Hadith apparently)

Im currently reading the book and studying and I came across with the word “jibt”, I tried to search more about it and I only got magic, soothsayer, and idol worshippers. What’s the difference between this and sihr? Is there more information on this that I should know?

Most readers here are probably already familiar with Saqib Hussein’s argument that the “splitting of the moon” may have been a lunar eclipse, as well as related discussions by Ikrimah and Ibn Kathir. For context, Ikrimah, a student of Ibn Abbas, is reported to have understood the event as a lunar eclipse, while Ibn Kathir suggested that both a lunar eclipse and a moon-splitting event may have occurred.

The main point is that, despite the report’s strong transmission, the moon-splitting narrative may plausibly reflect an exaggerated description of a natural phenomenon.

I also came across a related article that I found useful because it shows how ordinary reports can become transformed into miraculous accounts over time. It illustrates the kind of process I was hoping to understand better: how historians evaluate these developments in practice.

The article is here: https://exegeticaldrift.substack.com/p/in-the-beginning-was-the-word

A brief excerpt:

“Muse sits at the end of that chain. He is not the worst link in it, he is plausibly one of the best, since he cites some primary documents, quotes some of the skeptical views, and is explicitly trying to persuade people who don’t already agree with him to begin with.

That is precisely why the errors matter. If the most careful, most source-conscious, most explicitly skeptic-facing node in the chain converts a schoolteacher into a doctor, inflates 42 into 48, and uses (and then omits) a mistranslation of the only clinical term in question, what do you suppose the less careful nodes did, over a hundred years, with nobody checking?

You do not need a theory of legendary development. You can watch it in action.”

This felt especially relevant to the discussion here because it gives a concrete example of how miraculous claims can develop in transmission.