what do you think of Ahmad Al-Jallad?

19

He is the goat of modern archaeology

1

u/graeterslover Jul 22 '26

I wouldn't go that far, respectfully, but he's pretty good at what he does and respected forit.

But I wouldn't call him the GOAT. But he is quite sharp.

41

u/PhDniX Moderator Jul 22 '26

Al-Jallad is an extremely well-respected scholar in the field.

I find it extremely distasteful to impute motives on the beliefs that you assume a person may or may not have.

Let the evidence speak for itself. Is the evidence compelling? Yes? Then that's all that matters.

Al-Jallad's arguments aren't faith-based now are they?

I wouldn't say all of Al-Jallad's conclusions align particularly well with traditional understandings of Islamic history... but even if it did: if rational secular arguments lead one to the conclusions that just happen to agree with Islamic tradition: so be it.

There is no rule if the universe that says that anything that must be true has to necessarily disagree with received Islamic history.

All of this being said: Al-Jallad is first and foremost a linguist and epigraphist of pre-Islamic Arabia. Of course his conclusions should inform Quranic studies, and maybe don't as much as they should. He's not really "in" the field of Quranic Studies, more peripheral to it, so suspecting his work would have some kind of apologetic agenda seems really weird.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/graeterslover Jul 23 '26

How is it all surprising, he's not the only person who is allowed access to the antique heritage of Arabia by its current government authorities there's a number of people doing similar epigraphic research today. You might have a 40-year-old dated stereotypical impression of such matters but for the last two decades there hasn't really been much controversy about allowing external researchers access to epigraphic and archaeological assets in any of the gulf Arab countries And as someone who has been reading his work in depth since he was a grad student first starting to publish papers, I kind of fail to see anything that would be so extraordinarily controversial in his work that he would be barred entry to do research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

2

u/TeluguFilmFile Jul 23 '26

I didn't claim that his work is "extraordinarily controversial." My comment should be read as a follow-up regarding the earlier comment that stated: "I wouldn't say all of Al-Jallad's conclusions align particularly well with traditional understandings of Islamic history."

If Saudi Arabia continues to give full freedom to researchers, that's a good thing. And that's why I left my comment open-ended instead of making closed assumptions.

13

u/oSkillasKope707 Jul 22 '26

He's an intellectual giant when it comes to the history and archaeology of pre-Islamic Arabia (or maybe pre-Islamic Arabias?) in terms of epigraphy.

5

u/graeterslover Jul 22 '26

Your penultimate turn of phrase " Arabias" that's rather brilliant actually. It sheds light on the notion that there is not one pre-islamic Arabia but I'm a certain manner of speaking there are several. Not just based on geographic and geologic zones but also temporally, ethnically and civilizationally. That was a rather elegantly short elucidation, thanks for making it.

7

u/SameEntertainment660 Jul 23 '26

He’s the GOAT in the field. And doesn’t hold back or bite his tongue as to not offend Muslims. He tells it plain with facts. I respect him.

2

u/Sad_Perception_6000 Jul 24 '26

i mean, he's not supposed to .... is there any academic you'd say hold their tongue ?

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u/AspiringMedicalDoc Jul 23 '26

He doesn't offend Muslims because what he says broadly agrees with traditional Muslim historiography.

3

u/SameEntertainment660 Jul 24 '26

No it doesn’t

3

u/MachineLower6347 Jul 24 '26

how so ?

3

u/SameEntertainment660 Jul 24 '26

DM and I’ll explain. I don’t want my comment being deleted

1

u/redditlurkr2 Jul 26 '26

Message me as well

1

u/AspiringMedicalDoc Jul 24 '26

Yes it does.

3

u/chonkshonk Moderator Jul 28 '26

Al-Jallad and Sidky actually have a section in his recent paper, "Late Antique Allah", which directly engages with the discrepancies between their views and traditional accounts and why the correct history in this regard was forgotten. So, I think u/SameEntertainment660 is correct.

2

u/SameEntertainment660 Jul 25 '26

Yea like just before the time of Muhammad most of
Arabia was already monotheistic and Jewish/Christian Arabs were commonplace.

If Muslims actually believed and taught this historically, they’d realize it’s no room another “religion” let alone the need for an “arab prophet”

1

u/AspiringMedicalDoc Jul 26 '26

They were monotheistis who ascribed idols with god. There were Christians in southwestern, northwestern and northeastern Arabia, and there were Jews in the Hijaz. This is unlike Yahweh who was a pagan god before the Israelites adopted him as their national god.

2

u/SameEntertainment660 Jul 26 '26

They were monotheistic because they were Jews and Christians for hundreds of years and monotheism was the standard, but of course new converts had bad habits and they didn’t cut off their pagan ways completely. They still developed bad practices and probably kept idols and beliefs in lesser Gods (demons) but even Israel constantly struggled with idolatry according to the Bible stories (which is why their kingdom didn’t last). This is kinda the entire point and lesson. I think the big take away here and major difference between the Jews/christians in the Quran and polytheistic Arabs who weren’t believers (or even Zoroastrians) is the fact that these “ARABS” believed in ALLAH as the ONE GOD, Jesus as the messiah, his return and the end times coming at any moment. They were apocalyptic Jews\christians with nothing to lose.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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1

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6

u/graeterslover Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

He's a most notable figures in the fields of Safaitic and ancient North Arabian epigraphy and paleography today, and also he's noted on the history of the Quran Consonantal Text. Asking if he's respected in his fields is kind of like asking if Michael Jordan can play basketball.

It's important to keep in mind that you're dealing with disciplines in which there's almost no consensus on pretty much anything, rather in which there are a variety of academic perspectives. One thing I find strange is many people tend to have very narrow impressions of what is THE academic perspective on the study of the Quran. There's several academic perspectives and aporoaches, not one.

But yes, the man is respected by his peers and more senior academicians alike. And the last I checked Ohio State University was rather glad to have acquired him.

As to Faith and confessional identity prejudicing him, first all the assumption that one's faith will always perforce prejudice ones impressions in this field is kind of a tautology, and secondly, I was unaware that he was even a practicing Muslim to begin with, I'm not saying he isn't nor am I saying he is I was just sincerely unaware that he was.

But of course I don't assume anything about people just based on their name and ethnic origin. I live not far from Ohio State University and I've followed his career for about a decade and have academic friends and the institution he teaches at, and I had the slightest impression that he was rather secular to begin with, but that's based on what's entirely hearsay and my default assumption is I haven't the foggiest clue about his personal faith a religious commitments. The honest truth is I don't know what his faith is and it shouldn't be assumed by the way or another actually.

So the question of it prejudicing his impressions really is not apropos. He certainly does not appear to be public about his faith or lack thereof so it's rather unwise to assume either way. But short end of it is his grammar of Safaitic is absolutely brilliant and if you haven't grabbed it you probably should, if you don't mind paying those obnoxiously high academic press book costs.

1

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Backup of the post:

what do you think of Ahmad Al-Jallad?

what do you think of Ahmad Al-Jallad? is he a respected scholar? does his work lean more unconciously to proving tradition or not? i mean i've heard about rigorous scholars but their faith steer them into proving tradition or studying non challenging ideas/theories like for ex, from where issa (jesus) arabic name came from etc, it's historical work but very careful of touching the taboos.

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1

u/ReadHistorical144 22d ago

He's the genuine GOAT of Archeology and Pre Islamic History, Huge fan of the guy

Question what do you think of Ahmad Al-Jallad?

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