The Qur'an: Text and Commentary, Volume 1: Early Meccan Suras: Poetic Prophecy 9780300265545

Citation preview

The Qur’an Tex t a nd C om me ntary

This page intentionally left blank

The Qur’an T ex t a n d Comm e ntary Volume 1 E a r ly M e cc a n S u r a s Poetic Prophecy

An g e l i k a N e u w i rt h

Translated from the German by Samuel Wilder

  New Haven and London

The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International—­Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint i­ nitiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting ­society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & ­Booksellers Association). Copyright © 2022 by Yale University. Originally published in German as Der Koran, Band 1: Frühmekkanische Suren, Poetische Prophetie © Verlag der Weltreligionen im Insel Verlag Berlin 2011.All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or sales@yaleup. co.uk (U.K. office). Set in Granjon LT Std 11/13 type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948027 isbn 978-0-300-23233-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

C O NT E N TS

List of Abbreviations

ix

Introduction 1 Sura Group I SUBGROUP A

37 37

Q 93  al-d∙uh∙a¯  The Bright Morning

37

Q 94  al-sharh∙  The Widening

44

Q 97  al-qadr Determination

49

Q 108  al-kawthar Abundance

56

Q 105  al-fı¯l  The Elephant

60

Q 106  Quraysh Quraysh

64

SUBGROUP B

67

Q 102  al-taka¯thur  The Striving for More

67

Q 107  al-ma¯ʿu¯n Assistance

73

Q 111  al-masad  The Palm Fiber

77

Q 104  al-humaza  The Backbiter

81

SUBGROUP C

87

Q 103  al-ʿas∙r  The Afternoon

87

Q 99  al-zalzala  The Quake

89

vi

Contents Q 100  al-ʿa¯diya¯t  The Runners

94

Q 101  al-qa¯riʿa  The Smiting

101

Q 95  al-tı¯n  The Fig Tree

105

Sura Group II

113

Subgroup a 113 Q 89  al-fajr  The Dawn

113

Q 91  al-shams  The Sun

124

Q 92  al-layl  The Night

130

Q 90  al-balad  The Town

137

Subgroup b 147 Q 87  al-aʿla¯  The Highest

147

Q 96  al-ʿalaq  The Clot

154

Subgroup c

164

Q 82  al-infit∙a¯r  The Splitting

164

Q 81  al-takwı¯r  The Rolling Up

171

Q 84  al-inshiqa¯q  The Rending

183

Q 86  al-t∙a¯riq  The Night Appearer

191

Q 85  al-buru¯j  The Constellations

196

Sura Group III

207

Subgroup a 207 Q 73  al-muzzammil  The Enrobed

207

Q 74  al-muddaththir  The Cloaked

215

Q 80  ʿabasa He Frowned

227

Q 79  al-na¯ziʿa¯t  The Pullers

237

Subgroup b Q 75  al-qiya¯ma  The Resurrection

251 251

Contents

vii

Q 70  al-maʿa¯rij  The Step Ladder

261

Q 78  al-nabaʾ  The Tidings

274

Q 88  al-gha¯shiya  The Covering

289

Subgroup c

295

Q 83  al-mut∙affifı¯n  The Skimpers

295

Q 77  al-mursala¯t  Those Sent Out

305

Sura Group IV

321

Subgroup a 321 Q 51  al-dha¯riya¯t  The Whirling

321

Q 69  al-h∙a¯qqa  The Arriving

337

Q 68  al-qalam  The Pen

349

Subgroup b

362

Q 55  al-rah∙ma¯n  The Merciful

362

Q 56  al-wa¯qiʿa  The Occurring

384

Q 53  al-najm  The Star

399

Q 52  al-t∙u¯r  The Mount

426

Appendix: Secondary Additions to the Early Meccan Suras

443

BIBLIOGRAPHY 447 Index of Citations 469 Index of the Suras in the Traditional Sequence 473 Subject Index 475

This page intentionally left blank

Abb r e v iat i ons

BEQ

Heinrich Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran, Gräfenhainichen 1931 [1935] BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies EQ Jane McAuliffe (Hg.), Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾa¯n, 6 Bde., Leiden 2001–2007 1 Enzyklopaedie des Isla¯m. Geographisches, ethnographisches und EI biographisches Wörterbuch der muhammedanischen Völker, 4 Bde., Leiden und Leipzig 1913–1936; diverse Supplemente zwischen 1934–1938 2 Encyclopedia of Islam, 2. Auflage, diverse Herausgeber, 11 Bde., EI Leiden 1975–2002; Ergänzungsband 2004 FVQ Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary in the Qurʾa¯n, Baroda 1938 Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorâns, Göttingen 1860 GdQ1 2 Theodor Nöldeke, Friedrich Schwally (editor), Geschichte des GdQ Qorans von Theodor Nöldeke. Completely reworked by F. S., Part I: Über den Ursprung des Qorans, Leipzig 1909 (printed Hildesheim 1961); Part II: Die Sammlung des Qorans, mit einem literaturhistorischen Anhang über die muhammedanischen Quellen und die neuere christliche Forschung, Leipzig 1919 (printed Hildesheim 1961); Gotthelf Bergsträsser, Geschichte des Qorans, Teil III: Die Geschichte des Qorantexts, Leipzig 1938 (printed Hildesheim 1961). GVGS Carl Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, 2 Bde., Berlin and New York 1908–1913 (Nachdruck Hildesheim 1961) HThR Harvard Theological Review HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual IOS Israel Oriental Studies JAL Journal of Arabic Literature JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society

x

A b b r e v i at i o n s

JbTh Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient JQS Journal of Qurʾanic Studies JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam KKK Rudi Paret, Der Koran, Kommentar und Konkordanz, Stuttgart 1971 KU Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, Berlin 1926 KÜ Rudi Paret, Der Koran, Stuttgart 1966, 92004 MIDEO Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales du Caire MIO Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung OLZ Orientalistische Literaturzeitung QLA Angelika Neuwirth, The Qur’an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage, Oxford 2019 SEAP Albert Arazi, Salman Masalha, Six Early Arab Poets. New Edition and Concordance, Jerusalem 1999 SKMS Angelika Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren, Berlin and New York 1981, 22007 WKAS Wörterbuch der Klassischen Arabischen Sprache, Volume I (1957–). ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

I N T RODU C T IO N

POETIC PROPHECY The first volume of the hand commentary, which is presented here, attempts to present the Qur’an for the first time as the ‘transcript of a proclamation.’ Unlike the commentaries presently available, it detaches the Qur’an text as rigorously as possible from the Islamic tradition, and thus also from the sequence of events in the life of the prophet, in order to make the text recognizable as the mirror of a communication process that remained open-ended until its close. The hand commentary thus assumes a perspective essentially different from that of the Islamic exegetical tradition, which reflects a later stage of development. The exegetical tradition understands the victory of the new religious movement—not only over the established political powers of the environment, but also over the theological positions of the older religious traditions—as the necessary result of the prophetic proclamation, and thus views itself as justified in reading the Qur’an ‘teleologically’ on the way toward this victory. With our assumption of an initially open-ended process of emergence, the Qur’an loses this thrust that has been traditionally assigned to it; in its place enters a historical view toward the text, which now requires a chronological reconstruction. For this reason, the traditional ordering of the suras within the textual corpus cannot be binding for the hand commentary: it thus does not begin with the first sura of the Qur’an. For what is relevant here is not the canonical text corpus that is now materially available, and which was established in the first Islamic century, but rather a virtual corpus, the sequence of the texts spoken out by the prophet Muhammad. This sequence—which is suggested by form- and genre-critical i­ nvestigation— would have begun with the consolation and praise suras Q  93 (al-d∙uh∙a¯), 94 (al-sharh∙), 97 (al-qadr), and 108 (al-kawthar); these texts therefore form the beginning of our commentary. The commentary covers in essence the suras of the first Meccan period as delimited by Theodor Nöldeke,1 without, however, adopting the sequences of texts that underlay his discussion. In any case, and as

2

INTRODUCTION

Nöldeke himself emphasizes, these sequences were not intended as any “precise chronological ordering,”2 but rather at best they resemble sequences of development. An approximately “precise chronological ordering” of the suras does seem to us—and this is a decided novelty of this commentary—to be thoroughly reconstructable if one takes the orality of the Qur’an seriously, and thus proceeds from the assumption, not of literary unities that reflect the changing style of an author, but rather of the respective new stages of a proclamation that each in turn unfolds further that which has already been communicated. One must take the stylistic criteria foregrounded by Nöldeke and combine them with discursive criteria, in order to detect in the individual suras the traces of the respective new developmental stages of the ideas already presented. With this approach, a transition becomes evident from texts that are wholly concentrated on the proclaimer to texts that are directed collectively, which gradually come to articulate moral critique, then gradually develop an interest in eschatology that is bound up with creation theology. This development culminates finally in texts that employ the new self-authorization of the message by ‘scripture’—which is first pervasive in the middle of the early Meccan period—to depict the shift of the proclaimer’s group of dependents from an ascetic-missionary movement to a community of believers standing in the monotheistic scriptural tradition. The new sequencing of this hand commentary thus attempts to strengthen the thesis that the individual suras ‘develop from one another’; value is therefore placed on a continuous referencing back to earlier suras, where ideas are taken up and developed further in an individual text. Occasionally also, where a thought figure is under discussion, attention is given to its full, later unfolding in later texts. A testing of the ‘developments’ of individual themes that we assume here, undertaken with the help of the concordance and following the sequence of suras deployed in the hand commentary in order to check for possible reversibility or other convincing alternatives, has also provided a (negative) confirmation of the viability of this sequence. That with the earliest suras we are dealing with poetic texts is not controversial in the research—although the particular poeticity of the early Qur’an has received widely divergent evaluations.3 The particular verbal marking of the text, which supports the notion of the aural performance of the texts with cantilena has imbued the early suras with the rank and role of a partial corpus of liturgical ‘usage texts,’ comparable to the Psalter in the Jewish and Christian tradition. Thanks to the redactional ordering of the suras following the criterion of length, the early proclamations, which are as a rule short, stand together in the canonical text codex: it is roughly these suras4 that the redaction process, beginning shortly after the death of the proclaimer, assigned as the “last thirtieth”5 in its arrangement of the Qur’an corpus, setting them at the end of the textual collection. This partial corpus, which circulated from the beginning as a special compilation apart from the entire Qur’an, and which continues to circulate in

INTRODUCTION

3

separate printings, survives to today as a selection of texts for recitation given preferential application in ritual prayer. Just like the Psalter, this corpus, which reflects the earliest and uniquely intimate dialogue of the proclaimer with his God, is ideally suited for contexts of meditation and prayer. At the same time, it brings the believer closer, to a special degree, to the person of his prophet, whose reception of revelation the worshipper undertakes to reenact in the rite even through mimesis of his outer actions.6 This self-­ identification with the prophet that is enabled by the recitation is supported by the exegetical attribution of certain short suras to personal crisis situations ascribed to the proclaimer in the biographical tradition, for example, his initiation into the prophetic office, which is connected to Q 104, or his experience of liberation after the temporary absence of revelations, which is connected to Q 93. Although these attributions do not correspond to historical pronouncements in the text, they nonetheless attest to the later community’s close personal connection to their prophet, which has an analogue in the Jewish approach to the Psalms of David. Margaret Daly-Denton, who has studied the traditional image of David as the poet of the Psalms, asserts: “Formative for the conception of ‘David the Psalmist’ was the production of a connection of certain Psalms to particularly fateful situations of his life, which were thus set as historical ‘superscripts,’ so to speak, on certain Psalms. This exegetical technique opened to prayerful Jews a personal approach to David as their model in piety.”7 That this close connection of particular Psalms or Psalm verses to David and the crisis of the Israelite kingdom not only became part of later religious and political debates in the rabbinic tradition but also, as Daly-Denton shows, was deployed in the earliest Christian tradition, by way of allegory, to support the central theologoumenon of Christ as end-times king, only follows from this. Certainly, in the Islamic understanding of the early suras, in contrast to messianic Judaism and Christianity, no vision of the end-times takes shape wherein the prophet as reflected in the suras might play a role. The historically specific relevance reclaimed by the Islamic tradition for the pronouncements of the suras remains limited to the time of the prophet himself. Indeed, both text corpora are subject to the same process of ‘dehistorization’: quite in analogue to the Jewish and Christian usage of the Psalter, the suras are understood in liturgical usage as equally important parts of an ahistorical textual continuum. The concrete accentuations of the individual textual compositions, and their particular treatments of the traditions of their environment—that is to say in short, the development of the proclamation that is recorded in them—vanishes from sight. This understanding of the Qur’an as a textual continuum is not limited to the Islamic tradition, but is also characteristic of the approach to the Qur’an in Western research. It is something quite different from this, then, to attempt to reconstruct that chain of mutually enmeshed proclamations by means of which the proclaimer,

4

INTRODUCTION

in engagement with his hearers, developed a new image of God, humanity, and the world. Although we cannot delimit the beginning of this process precisely in time, a series of successively unfolding arguments can be named, proceeding one from another, becoming more and more concretized or modified, thus becoming recognizable as a blueprint, so to speak, of the developing series of ideas of the proclamation. In this way, we would not marginalize the prophetic character of the Qur’an, which is already manifest in the first suras, recognizable in emphatic, mantic discourse forms and, from Q 105 on, in speeches aimed at the collective. But it should not be overlooked that the Qur’an increasingly becomes an exegetical text over the course of its development, beginning already in early Mecca. Yet it is no ‘author text;’ its development follows no linear movement directed by an ‘author’ or compiler, but rather takes a zig-zag course conditioned by various factors. This becomes evident especially clearly in the frequent later modifications of earlier pronouncements, which are documented in later additions. If one follows the historical approach, a panorama becomes perceptible, which first portrays divine providence, then introduces ideas of judgment, first through allusion and then explicitly, and then only later speaks of the judgment as an ineluctable eschatological recompense. Although the judgment is certainly the groundbreaking message of the early Meccan suras, its penetrating power is based not on its communication as such, but rather on its interweaving into a creation theology that develops with it simultaneously. Alongside these two elements, a new understanding of the world and a new promise of judgment increasingly bound up to time, there is a third: the new discovery of an anchoring of both, the created world and the spoken word, in ‘scripture,’ and hence the feedback of the emerging community of hearers into the older religious traditions. This is all accomplished through poetic discourse, not in the sense of metrically consistent poems bound together by monorhyme, but instead in mostly short-membered verses marked by rhyme-like assonance, the so-called sajʿrhyme, which show themselves to be poetic discourse through metaphorics and, frequently, rhetorical tropes. The innovation achieved here for Arabic scriptural and literary language, the dressing of argumentative and narrative discourse in a poetic form that does not hinder but rather supports the flow of ideas in the presented material, can scarcely be underestimated. While there are some precedents for the shaping of argumentation and narratives in individual long poems, above all among Christian poets,8 the metrically linked form of the long poem, restricted by monorhyme, indeed proves much less flexible in comparison to the sajʿ-discourse of the Qur’an, which allows for strophic structure— an argument that did not escape the classical Islamic critics9—and ultimately proved to be a dead end in relation to the new and increasingly complex religious matters: poetry in the strict sense of metrically linked monorhymed dis-

INTRODUCTION

5

course would scarcely be well suited to cope with the later development, which brings the suras closer to fully formed rhetorical speeches. This poetic form of the early suras has remained largely unexamined in explanations of the Qur’an up to now, a desideratum that pertains not only to the description of the form but also to the recording of poetic intertextuality, i.e., the treatment of older poetic texts and formal traditions in the Qur’an. A first step in the direction of a poetic analysis of the suras was undertaken by Michael Sells, who, working on a few selected texts, successfully made recognizable the still largely unexamined aesthetic potential of ‘qur’anic poetry.’10 Sells’s readings, which concentrate on the acoustic, emotive, and gender-specific dimensions of the texts, are confined, however, to the synchronic analysis of the text, and therefore must ignore its intertextuality and topics, so that important dimensions of the poeticity remain unnoticed. Sells himself first tested his method on a very limited text corpus, no more than three complete suras, but in doing so he drew attention to a significant gap in research. Even if the previously neglected cannot be systematically treated in the hand commentary, since the present frame does not afford the space for a microstructural, phonologically oriented reading following Sells’s process, nonetheless the poetic diction of the early texts will receive particular attention. We will thus occasionally point out the functionality of phonetic phenomena that create coherence within suras. Above all, however, we will trace back noticeable allusions to the topoi and images of ancient Arabic poetry. A useful helping tool for the tracing of qur’anic lexemes back to ancient Arabic poetry is the concordance compiled by Albert Arazi and Salman Masalha of the ‘Six Ancient Arabic Poets’,11 which allows one to connect the Qur’an back to older or at least contemporary literary texts of a pagan provenance.

GOAL AND PURPOSE: NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCH ON THE TEXT In this first volume of the historical-literary critical hand commentary on the Qur’an, the first attempt is made to describe the Qur’an as an ongoing proclamation, and thus to interpret it as a textual precipitate of a community formation that occurred through a new reflection on older biblical and postbiblical traditions and the ancient Arabic poetic heritage. This process, which allowed a growing hearership to position itself as a new belief community in relation to these traditions, and ultimately even to ‘enter into’ this developing text, occurs in the genre of the ‘sura,’ which is reserved for the Qur’an alone. This process has been sketched out in its basic outlines already with the help of literary critical criteria in the introductory volume The Qur’an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage [Der Koran als Text der Spätantike],12 and should now,

6

INTRODUCTION

with the ­appearance of the hand commentary, be traced in more detail. This hand commentary is planned to be the pilot project of a more extensive commentary project, which will be published online in the frame of the project Corpus Coranicum—­Textdokumentation und historisch-literaturwissenschaftlicher Kommentar, which has been underway since 2007 in the frame of the BerlinBrandenburg Academy of Sciences.13 Alongside the evaluation of the textual variants, this more comprehensive project will above all discuss the great mass of neighboring traditions viewed as the background of the emergence of the Qur’an, of which only the most striking, i.e., those debated more or less controversially in the Qur’an, will be mentioned here. A systematic introduction to the state of knowledge regarding the cultural milieu of the Qur’an’s genesis and the historical, religious, social, and linguistic preconditions for the emergence of the Qur’an is offered in the 2010 volume by the working team of the CorpusCoranicum project, entitled The Quran in Context. Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’anic Milieu.14 Although the first volume of the hand commentary appeared shortly after the introductory volume, an important step forward in qur’anic research has been made in the meantime, which on the one hand justifies the ʿuthma¯nic text that is available to us as the ideal basis for historical Qur’an research, and which on the other hand reconfirms the text unit of the ‘sura’ as a basis for discussion. Behnam Sadeghi (Stanford University), in a study that treats research on the history of the text up to now,15 and employing both new technologies of material analysis alongside text-critical philology, has arrived through systematic comparison of the oldest textual witnesses of the Qur’an to the thesis that the so-called ʿuthma¯nic text does not present us with a hybrid text competing with other transmitted texts, but rather with the direct descendent of an archetype of the Qur’an dictated by the prophet himself. Francois Déroche had previously shown that the text mass transmitted to us as a textus receptus, with its division into suras, can already be presupposed for the second third of the seventh century.16 Thus, all speculations that were still in circulation about an initially gradual development of the Qur’an text, or about the uncertain authenticity of individual texts thought to have been first rewritten by the later community or attributed first in a later age to an imagined prophet, have been shown to be baseless. The conclusion implied by Sadeghi’s thesis, the derivation of the available Qur’an from a single forming hand, coincides with the results of literarycritical testing. It is of no small significance here that the sura, which is firmly established as a textual unit in the ʿuthma¯nic text, is already included in the text mass left behind by the prophet, and as follows it must be the sura that forms the basis of every historical-literary critical study. But at the same time, the new thesis raises new problems. The ʿuthma¯nic text that Sadeghi stipulates as the oldest text form is already a final shaping of the proclamation, which has now become static, thus marking the end point

INTRODUCTION

7

of a development whose dynamics, which were in flux for over two decades, still appear in many suras: the persistent treatment of local pagan and postbiblical traditions and the constant ‘correction’ of self-positionings of the emerging community. The end form of the text as it is available to us—whether or not it might be the dictation of the prophet, as Sadeghi estimates—freezes the preceding dialogic process, so to speak, insofar as it presents text units of differing origin-times within a genetically undifferentiated continuous text. We must attend to this point if we wish to take the Qur’an text into view as the mirror of dialogues and a polyphonic text. For its unique monumentality in relation to biblical texts consists in this: differently than those texts, the Qur’an is not only a scripture that refers to older texts, but is itself a mirror of a confrontation with these traditions, occurring through a process that marks out a kind of zig-zag motion. To put this somewhat strongly, it can be compared to a kind of telephone conversation in which only one voice can be heard, but for which other voices, referenced or cited in the audible speech, provide the raison d’être of the speech that we hear, above all as opposing voices on the other side. This ‘dialogicity’ of the Qur’an can be made perceptible through literary-critical study; it cannot be recognized immediately from the trusted textual transmission as such. Likewise, from the reconstruction of the textual transmission in writing, we learn nothing specific about the dictation assumed as a basis by Sadeghi; its when and how remain obscure.17 Here, text-historical and literary-critical investigations must complement each other: thus, on the basis of textual analysis we can establish that the suras could not have been recorded in their initial recitation, but rather, in the many cases where we see successively expanded texts, they were clearly recorded during a later recitation, i.e., for some early Meccan suras, this occurred first in Medina. Since early Meccan suras are easy to memorize, in many cases operating with mnemotechnic devices and thus showing themselves to be intended as aural texts, their recording of them when it was finally achieved must have originated from a systematic initiative. One can already assume a writing initiative from the middle Meccan period, wherein the evocation formula bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m (in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful), a text element introducing the piece of scripture, seems to refer to the written form of texts that have in the meantime become less easy to memorize.18 But the final redaction, not only of the entire corpus, but also of individual long suras, should be assigned first to the period after the death of the prophet. If, with Sadeghi, one assumes the fixing of entire texts during the lifetime of the prophet, then, in view of the many successively expanded suras, one would have to assume several writing initiatives. This hypothesis sheds new light on the still-open question of the relationship between orality and written form, especially for the complex later suras, where not only the question of oral or written transmission but also that of oral or written composition is particularly relevant.

8

INTRODUCTION

For the early Meccan suras, which are the object of this volume, the texthistorical situation is on the other hand comparatively uncomplicated. Here, in view of the structures that draw from a relatively fixed inventory of form elements, we can continue to assume oral composition; in view of the often heterogenous building blocks, we should also assume a process of recitation that involved the repeated revision of texts, only later leading to a writing-down of the texts. Thus, the Qur’an long remains an open text. We will therefore have to focus on two dialogical processes: the incremental handling of older traditions in the process of the growth of the sura corpus, and the self-referential rereadings of previously proclaimed texts in the light of a progressing worldview in later phases of community formation. These two aspects, which are of substantial significance for the grasping of the Qur’an as a polyphonic text, have played no role in Western works of commentary up to now. In this research, traces of older traditions have generally been considered to be indices of the Qur’an’s epigonality,19 while the rereadings of earlier proclamation texts in in new suras have been almost always been viewed as redundant repetitions. In order to adequately account for the Qur’an’s autonomy, which lies in its polyphony and its persistent self-reflection, the hand commentary must break new ground in relation to the available commentaries. This may seem to set the goal quite high—but the consistent reading of the Qur’an as a continuous proclamation must work toward a reconstruction of the sequence of all texts, even if in some cases no certain decision can be reached about the position of a sura.

THE COMMENTARIES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Rudi Paret (1901–1983), who can be credited with the most detailed scholarly commentary to date,20 treats the Qur’an as an ‘author text,’ as a scripture composed by the prophet21 that indeed may have emerged in different places, in Mecca and later Medina, but whose expressive intention is considered largely invariant in view of the unchanging ‘composer.’ Only this can explain the fact that in his commentary, Paret maintains the redactional sequence oriented to the length of suras, and that his statements are underlaid by an anachronistic conception whereby, following the structure of the codex, he delays the explanation of the early Meccan suras, referring their explanation back to later texts that pertain to quite other discourses. Over a hundred years after the appearance of Nöldeke’s foundational sura chronology, Paret turns the situation on its head again, and opens the gate to a reduced reading that erases the tension between individual texts. He ignores the fact that the late texts often consist of revisions of earlier ones, and, above all, that they engage dialogue partners and opponents who were previously entirely unknown, making them unsuited to serve as the basis for the explanation of the earlier texts. Paret’s procedure is even more difficult to comprehend, in that he himself often goes into detail about the confrontations

INTRODUCTION

9

with various opponents that are reflected in the late suras. His basis, however, is the static canonized text, which he, in the manner of the traditional Islamic commentaries, refers to from the very beginning to clarify problematic passages. The dialogical element in the text is not perceived as a process, but rather viewed as a ‘report about’ a confrontation; the change in the thrust of an argumentation that is reflected in revisions expressed by later additions, often within one and the same sura, remains outside his field of vision. Paret’s great service consists, however, in his systematic collection and critical discussion of Qur’an research up to the 1960s, which he conveniently makes available to the reader, often with critical review. In doing this, however, he builds uncritically on research that, for its part, following the erasure of the historical-critical tradition of the scholarship of Judaism,22 perceived the Qur’an statically, and thus did not adequately attend to the important results of older Qur’an research.23 His concordance, which was intended to accompany the commentary but is arranged mechanically, in that it lists parallel quotations according to their numerical sequence without chronological differentiation, was made dispensable by the much more practical concordance by Fuʾa¯d ʿAbd al-Ba¯qı¯,24 which transcribes the quotations in detail and thus makes the spectrum of formulations visible on first view. Adel Theodor Khoury (born 1930) provides a running verse commentary for the entire Qur’an,25 in which, however, he gives voice above all to the Islamic tradition. With its treatment of “general . . . questions treated by the respective suras, such as sura names, dating, structure, particular contexts, and statements about the virtues of the sura,”26 and the adjoining semantic explanations, it is based on model of a traditional commentary, and would clearly make usage of indigenous exegetical works in the original languages indispensable. No differently than Paret, he thus proceeds synchronically, following his traditional models, so that references to “later quotations” consist not in attestations of “texts proclaimed later” but rather simply in appearances at a “later part of the text corpus” according to the sura numbers. Going beyond Paret, however, he offers selected (alternate) readings in transcription and translation, an important detail in itself, even if these stand in service of the traditional reading in his work. Like the classical Islamic exegetes, Khoury cites selected alternate readings without discussing them systematically for the qur’anic context. Their evaluation is left up to the reader, who must possess an understanding of the text that is not communicated by the commentary itself in order to check the readings critically and apply them meaningfully. In order to use Khoury’s commentary meaningfully, one needs an initiation into the hermeneutics of inner-Islamic exegesis, which is in fact an urgent desideratum. In the hand commentary, however, we seek to offer a hermeneutically consistent and historically and literary-critically oriented discussion that consciously foregoes a selective reference back to the traditional exegesis. A systematic juxtaposition of the two hermeneutic approaches is still lacking. It remains an urgent task for the future.

10

INTRODUCTION

Khoury’s citation of selective readings is also of only limited use in terms of the history of the tradition. If, with Sadeghi, we give pride of place to the ʿuthma¯nic text as the basis for the text form of the Qur’an, then the nonʿuthma¯nic readings classified by the tradition as ‘isolated’ and ‘noncanonical’ (qira¯ʾa¯t sha¯dhdha) are significant primarily as triggers for thought, being problematizations of the transmitted text.27 For deciding about specific traits of the text form, we should thus concentrate primarily on the canonical readings, i.e., those that pertain to the vocalization of the ʿuthma¯nic consonantal text. These ‘canonical readings’—literally, “readings continually transmitted (in numerous ways) (qira¯ʾa¯t mutawa¯tira)”—that pertain not only to the vocalization but also, in cases of ambiguous graphemes, to the identity of the consonants, can hardly be overestimated in their importance for the transmission history of the Qur’an. They charge the text with a not-insignificant degree of semantic ambiguity, and were long decisive in the text’s reception as a ‘nonunitary text’ that admitted various interpretations.28 They were referred back to the authorities of the eighth century from the learned centers of Damascus, Kufa, Basra, Mecca, and Medina, whose reading traditions were elevated to the status of canonical readings in the tenth century.29 Working them out is an important part of the Corpus Coranicum project, one of whose three subdivisions is concerned with the transmission of the text.30 In the present hand commentary, for reasons of the distribution of work, they will only be discussed in the cases of the previously recognized problematics of a textual citation. A provisional justification for this abdication is offered in the analysis of the Cairo edition of 1924/25, which serves as our textus receptus, by Gotthelf Bergsträsser,31 who demonstrated that the text, which in the Kufan tradition of H ∙ afs∙ (d. 180–796), after the transmission from ʿA¯s∙im (d. 127/745), is sufficiently historically secured to serve as a basis for literary-critical scholarly analysis. The systematic discussion of the canonical readings in full, which is still outstanding, and which—differently from the traditions of the verse divisions—do not as a rule pertain immediately to the structure of the suras that interest us in the hand commentary, can with some justification be left to the Academy commentary. Richard Bell’s (1876–1952) posthumously published commentary,32 consisting of remarks on his translation that he collected over decades and later edited, was intended as an accompanying volume to his translation. The commentary is essentially limited to problematic text citations, and scarcely goes beyond the clarification of particular words and points of fact. It complements, but by no way replaces, the explanations already added by the author to his translation in the 1930s,33 which attest to his rigorously historical reading. However, in his decomposition of the text into smaller text elements treated as heterogenous— in the tradition of source analysis in biblical scholarship—Bell goes far beyond Theodor Nöldeke’s historical analysis.34 Above all, he remained beholden to the preconception of the Qur’an text as the result of a redaction of scattered written

INTRODUCTION

11

records, and was thus unable to perceive the oral composition of the text and hence its polyphony. But in his translation choices and explanations of concepts, Bell nonetheless made important contributions to the understanding of cryptic passages. Régis Blachère35 (1900–1973) too, in his translation, undertakes a new ordering of the suras, and contributes relevant individual clarifications to passages of the text. Finally, in the new Encyclopedia of the Qurʾa¯n (2001–2007),36 edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, an indispensable collective work is now available, whose individual articles cover the most diverse aspects of the Qur’an. It includes a sura index that enables a quick overview of the articles relevant to a particular sura. Even if the articles as a rule are less concerned with the pronouncements of the Qur’an itself and more with their exegetical understanding, nonetheless the treatment of the themes reflected in the Qur’an in overview articles represents an advance in research that can hardly be overstated. Here, wherever it is found suitable, the commentary will refer to the insights in the older commentary works, as well as to the reference works of Josef Horovitz,37 Arthur Jeffery,38 Hartwig Hirshfeld,39 and Heinrich Speyer,40 and to the contributions by Theodor Nöldeke,41 August Fischer,42 Jakob Barth,43 Uri Rubin,44 and other available interpretations. Commentaries on individual suras that were made available to me through friendly communication with Nicolai Sinai, and which are planned to be published in the Academy Commentary, have also been included in the commentary, marked as such. Michel Cuypers has also produced a commentary on a great number of early suras. But since he views the suras as written compositions and handles them synchronously, the integration of his explanations in the hand commentary was not readily possible. His relevant contributions respective to the individual suras have, however, been noted in the bibliographies. What is still lacking after all of these earlier works is a commentary that on the one hand treats the particular literary character of the Qur’an as a scripture that emerged from a process of exposition, while at the same time accounting for its significance as a ‘transcript’ of a community formation. The hand commentary should fulfill this task, in that it follows the textual confrontation with older traditions by way of diachronic readings that proceed from sura to sura; above all, it sketches the “canonic process,”45 the self-referential construction of back-references, and hence the successive construction of a consensus text. In doing this, the commentary dedicates particular attention to the interaction of speakers and hearers reflected in the text, since this above all reflects the gradual formation of consensus within the community. In addition to the evidence of the explicit address to present hearers, the speaker-hearer interaction can also be detected through particular rhetorical stylistic devices, wherein the authorization strategies used to apply the proclamation require particular attention. It is self-evident that the commentary should also simultaneously undertake to

12

INTRODUCTION

e­ xplain words and expressions that are not immediately understandable to today’s readers. Above all, though, it should provide what has not yet been given central place, either in Islamic exegesis or in the Western commentaries: the interpretive reading of entire suras. In its status as a text determined for public performance, the sura has rightly been compared to the pre-Islamic poetic genre of the Qas∙ı¯da; its determination for declamation, i.e., its structure and self-­ authorization, has been wrongly neglected by way the concentration up to now on the semantic message. The sequence of the suras, too, has so far been wrongly left in the shadows; the hand commentary should demonstrate that in the suras we have before us the evidence of a discursive development: every sura builds on earlier suras, even frequently linking itself unmistakably to certain texts already proclaimed. The reconstruction of the sequence of suras is therefore indispensable for the understanding of the ‘logic’ of the course of the proclamation.

STRUCTURE OF THE HAND COMMENTARY This complex program is carried out by way of a sequence of five rubrics deployed for each sura, wherein a loose orientation to the Psalm commentary by Erich Zenger and Frank-Ludwig Hossfeld46 has proven useful. At the beginning stands a transcription of the Arabic text of each sura. This is indispensable, since the poetic character of the early Meccan suras is no longer visible in the running text of the printed Qur’an, although this structure comprises an essential strategic element of the proclamation. While the Muslim reader who realizes the Qur’an in cantilena, i.e., in liturgical performance, recognizes the text spontaneously as a structured discourse clearly elevated above everyday communication, the distanced Western reader must rely on the written form that maps its structure, in order to perceive the special linguistic character of the Qur’an. This written form makes recognizable the changes in rhyme, and thus the audible signals of ‘textual progressions.’ The transcription is accompanied by a new translation, which, although taking care to preserve poetic structure, does not aim primarily for literary quality, but whose highest priority is instead to render as faithfully as possible the Qur’an as a text of Late Antiquity—­without influence from later exegetically informed readings. A literary-critical discussion of the sura follows as a second unit. Here, employing the relevant research literature, the text is checked as to its structural unity or for possible breaks that might indicate a secondary compilation. At the same time, the functionality of the rhyme structure of the sura is investigated. Some formulization is required for this purpose. The representation of the rhymes follows the common practice for transcription in classical Arabic poetry, as has already been employed in Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren: long-u and long-i, but not long-a, are considered to rhyme with one another. Thus, in the rhyme notation, both long-u and long-i are indicated

INTRODUCTION

13

with the sign 2 (= u¯ or ı¯), while a¯ is given its own separate notation. The short consonants u, i, and a within words are not relevant to the rhyme, and can thus be presented with the sign 3 (= u, i, or a). In the form of rhyme used both in the poetry and in the Qur’an, final consonants, as well as any following vowel, must both be identical. The preceding consonants that are not relevant to the rhyme can be noted simply with C (“consonant”), and two consonants following each other as CC. Rhyme words that are not stressed on the ultimate syllable, such as aba¯bı¯l (2l), correspond to each other also in their rhythmic structure, and are therefore to be formalized according to the syllable that carries the accent, as Mu¯sa¯ (2sa¯), mustabshirah (3CC3Cah). While in poetry the rhymes remain identical over the entire poem, qurʾanic discourse in the early Meccan suras as a rule shows a variation of rhyme schemes that follows the semantically delimited units of sense. In this, it opts for representative strategy that is well suited to make recognizable to the hearer acoustically the frequent change of trains of thought within the text. The noting of rhyme structures is therefore of substantial significance for the recognition of the intension of qur’anic forms. At the end of the “literary criticism,” a short rhyme overview gives a precise report of the correspondence of rhyme schemes to semantic sense breaks. The literary criticism also contains the discussion of the verse divisions as they diverge in the traditions of the major schools (Damascus, Kufa, Basra, Mecca and Medina, and additionally Hims),47 which is based on the results already presented in Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren. Indeed, the ¯ Kufic tradition, which provides the basis for the H ∙ afs∙-ʿan-ʿAs∙im reading chosen as the basis for the text, does not always reproduce the division of verses that should be assumed based on the literary form of the Qur’an. Although all the transmitted divisions have been considered, none of these options is necessarily adopted; rather, on structural grounds, individual verses require a division independent from the tradition. The third section, a short presentation of the sura structure based on the formal and semantic building-blocks constructed in Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren, makes it possible to review the composition in a brief overview. The priority is given therein to the identification of text elements with certain text sorts postulated for early Mecca. This criterium makes it possible to follow the text sorts established early in the proclamation process through the course of their later modifications. It also makes it possible to demonstrate the increasing complexity of the sura structures, a feature of development that is essential to the sura chronology applied in this volume. The composition of the suras out of an assemblage of building elements such as verse groups, passages, and major parts is thus made perceptible through the specification of the number of verses of each building element—not only when there are clear proportions between them, as are used in many suras as mnemotechnical means. A ‘structural formula’—as Nicolai Sinai has also presented for his specimen of

14

INTRODUCTION

sura analyses48 and which also formed the basis of the proportions of passages and main partis in Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren—thus closes the Composition section. The fourth unit forms the actual backbone of the project, consisting of a running verse commentary. Here, every verse of the sura is given as a lemma and, where necessary, provided with a discussion of lexical or grammatical problems. At the same time, in the cases of intertexts from older traditions, these are adduced and their qur’anic rereadings are illuminated. Above all, for the respective verse, recognizable sharpenings and possible reinterpretations of previously proclaimed texts are pointed out. As a fifth and last step, an analysis and interpretation of the sura is offered. This summarizes the results of the running verse commentary. Since it is the progressively self-renewing discourses that stand at the center of the hand commentary, the interpretation begins with an attempt at a relative ‘dating,’ i.e., a chronological placement of the respective sura in its wider context and an explanation of the innovation achieved by it in relation to the preceding texts. The suras are identified, as far as it is possible, in their unique position within the text corpus—not only as a part of a “development sequence” that cannot be further chronologized, as in Nöldeke, but rather as ‘stages of the proclamation.’ Although this attempt cannot lead to an entirely secure result in all cases, nonetheless it brings to light notable new insights about the inner connection between sura sequences. In the case of a later expansion of the sura—as is in evidence in approximately a third of the early Meccan texts (see “Additions” in the index)— both stages of development, the ‘core text’ and the expanded sura, are discussed separately. The detailed description of the structure and pronouncements of the sura that follows this then inquires into the coherence of the argumentation, and the paraenetic, apologetic, or polemical thrust that is recognizable in the text: To which challenge from older traditions or conditions in the life of the community does it respond, and what stage does it reflect in the overarching discourse? This discussion can at the same time reinforce the assignment of the text within the chronological sequence of the suras that is assumed heuristically in the commentary. A separate final section then treats observations on the speaker-hearer interaction and the changing strategies of authorization of the proclamation as well as the progress in the ‘canonic process’ shown by any later additions in the sura.

SEQUENCE OF SURAS AND INNERTEXTUAL CHRONOLOGY While the commentaries up to now read the Qurʾan synchronically, a strictly diachronic reading will be carried out here. It is self-evident that the ‘circumstances of the revelation’ (asba¯b al-nuzu¯l) that are transmitted in the Islamic

INTRODUCTION

15

tradition must be left out for methodological reasons. With its privileging of the transmitter’s authority above criteria related to content, as well as its orientation toward the biographical constructions of the life of the prophet, this literature belongs to another discourse, and should be treated in a separate investigation. For the reconstruction of the sura chronology, the suras have to first be released from the traditional sequence and placed into a new order. The new sequence still roughly follows the findings of Nöldeke,49 who distinguishes between three Meccan ‘periods’ and one Medinan; but as Nicolai Sinai has shown,50 detailed recent studies of individual suras suggest the grouping together of new ensembles. The foundations for a revised sura chronology based on the rough Nöldekean “development sequences” have been laid in a study by Nora Schmid,51 who, on the basis of the quantitative criteria of verse length and syllable count, arrives to a more precise subdivision of the Nöldekean periods, in an evaluation of the results by Nicolai Sinai,52 who adds “structural complexity” as a further parameter for the chronological sequencing. The results can be expressed in “structural formulas,” i.e., notations of the number of verses that make up the clearly distinguished verse groups, “sentences,” and “main parts of suras.” On the basis of these three parameters, Sinai arrives at a fundamentally new division of the early Meccan suras into four distinct subgroups, which are then ordered internally, in a second step, on the basis of thematic points of emphasis. He himself accomplishes this step summarily for the first group. His Group I contains—in agreement with the criterium of length that stands as the basis of the official redaction—the suras 93–95, 97, 99–102, 104–8, and 111. Thus he excludes all of the suras between 93 and 111 that have been identified as later through criticism both by Nöldeke and later authors: sura 96, which is traditionally placed at the start of the Qur’an solely on the basis of its introductory verse, along with 98, 109–10, and 112–14. The case is similar with Group II, to which belong Q 73–92: here suras 74–80 and 83 are excluded as later compositions, while only sura 96 is added. Group IIIa includes the suras 53, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, and 80. Group IIIb contains suras 51, 52, 55, 56, 68, 69, 70, and 83, which now show more complex verse structures.53 It is crucial here to note that Nora Schmid and Nicolai Sinai do not proceed solely on the basis of the transmitted sura unities, but rather they separate the later additions shown by criticism, which as a rule can be clearly distinguished from the core text from their structure, so that for example sura 53 with its long additions is assigned into the fifties-group in its transmitted form, but its core text should appear in Group IIIa, i.e., among the seventies. These quantitatively and structurally determined blocks are to be ordered according to further formal, and above all discursive, criteria, so that a sequence of suras is yielded that reflects the actual development of the proclamation. We can no longer simply accept as given Nöldeke’s determination of development sequences, which for the first periods is based on general observations of the

16

INTRODUCTION

qur’anic levels of style,54 but which are also oriented above all to a number of transmitted prophetic-biographical traditions that are submitted to critical revision. His work is lacking in literary criticism, a methodologically consistent investigation of the individual suras as to their unity, this being supplanted in the main by his discussion of the extratextual questions raised by the traditional exegetes, so that in the end he produces not so much the textual description of a sura, but rather a critically filtered presentation of its inner-Islamic reception. Indeed, in his consistent argumentation and linguistically supported criticism, Nöldeke goes decisively beyond his predecessors such as Muir,55 Sprenger,56 Grimme,57 Buhl,58 and Hirschfeld,59 yet by dismantling the suras into the individual parts that were already isolated by the tradition, without going into the pronouncements of the entire text, he ultimately neglects the forms that result. What is wholly lacking is an argumentative justification for his positioning of individual suras before or after one another; it seems in principle to follow inner-Islamic models,60 even as their information is viewed critically. We are thus faced with the task of redefining the sequence of suras within the first period. Nöldeke’s still ‘impressionistic’ criteria must be refined and formulated more sharply, and above all they must be placed in the context of the oral proclamation of the suras. The foundations for a structural treatment of the suras, i.e., the delimitation of their verse groups, sentences, and major parts, has already been produced for the Meccan texts in Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren: it is now a matter of treating the recognized structural elements in their development, and placing them in a shared context with the semantic discourses that developed along with them, which have been presented roughly already in The Qurʾan and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage [Der Koran als Text der Spätantike]. Nöldeke’s procedure can be further corrected61 if one also takes into account additional historical and religion-phenomenological criteria. Thanks to Uri Rubin,62 we know that an important landmark in the development can be placed within the early Meccan period, namely, the early community’s alteration of the prayer times, and hence its ‘secession’ from the cult that was held in common with the pagan Meccans up to that point. We must therefore consider the signs of this ‘turn,’ i.e., the traces of this conflict, in the suras. Through religion-phenomenological means, Gottfried Müller63 arrives at a similar bipartition of the early Meccan suras: he assumes that the earliest suras were still marked by the consciousness of divine providence, and that the more conflictual ‘withdrawal of divine providence’ became an object of the proclamation only later, in the apocalyptic theme of the dissolution of the cosmos and the accountability of humanity. While Rubin and Müller are not interested in a systematic reconstruction of the sequence of the proclamation, Sinai, on the basis of Schmid’s quantitative study, undertakes a subdivision of the early Meccan suras into several subgroups,64 which also reflect semantically a multileveled development. In his ex-

INTRODUCTION

17

emplary analysis of Group I, he establishes as Subgroups (a) the two suras 105 and 106, which reflect an initial collective experience of providence, followed by (b) suras 95, 102, 103, 104, and 107, which are filled with announcements of the judgment. A further Subgroup (c) of suras 99, 100, 101, and 111 he considers to be a filling-out of the eschatological references merely alluded to in (b). This is followed by (d), the so-called consolation suras Q 93, 94, and 108, which are oriented directly toward the proclaimer. Finally, according to Sinai, sura 97 then follows at the close of Group I, anticipating already the later text sort of the ‘revelation confirmation.’ His explication of the other groups, II, IIIa, and IIIb, still awaits to be published; it will serve as the basis of the presentation in the Academy commentary.

THE SURA GROUPS OF EARLY MECCA AS DELIMITED IN THE HAND COMMENTARY Sura Group I The sequence chosen for the hand commentary also assumes the four sura groups that have been defined quantitatively and structurally by Schmid and Sinai. The suras of consolation and praise stand at the start of the first group (I) of 15 suras. For divine providence first had to be perceived, before its withdrawal could be threatened, as a punishment. A linguistic argument also speaks for the same ordering: these same suras that show an unmistakable nearness to the Psalms,65 imbuing new formulations to psalmic images and thoughts. This is hardly surprising, since the prophet is faced with the task of first developing a language for the new experience of his role as a prophet: a recourse to the already available liturgical language of the Psalms offered the requisitely high stylistic register and provided an appropriate metaphorics. Furthermore, if one recalls that the first texts may not yet have been public proclamations but rather reflect ‘conversations’ between the divine interlocutor and the prophet still overwhelmed by his experience of calling, then the suras directed exclusively to a singular ‘you’ again appear likely to be among the first suras. Suras 93, 94, 97, and 108 are just such ‘prekerygmatic’ suras, employing psalmic language to express a personally experienced unburdening following a distressed experience of crisis, or an experience of spiritual fulfillment. A further characteristic of these texts is that within them, inner-worldly situations of lack, such as the fate of an orphan, neediness, and distress, are ‘lifted’ by way of the provision of divine favor; these lacks gain an additional spiritual dimension through the divine nearness that compensates for them, so that their significance seems to oscillate between real and spiritual situations of lack. In Q 97, where what is at issue is the sending-down, also communicated in first-person plural speech, of the power to communicate the word of God, the unburdening transforms from

18

INTRODUCTION

the spiritual lifting of lack into a perception of triumph in view of the newly granted communication across the borders between heaven and earth. These suras are followed by the assurances of providence, no longer exclusively oriented toward the individual, but now also to the collective, in Q 105 and 106, the former of which shows a Psalm reference. Q 93, 94, 97, 108, 105, and 106 thus make up a subgroup, (a). Q  102, 107, 111, and 104 (Subgroup b) form a group of suras that already shows a critical relationship to the behavior of the contemporaries, and which also seems to already presuppose a sura performance in public, in any case before outsider hearers. While those blamed in Q 102 and 107 still remain anonymous, addressed simply with “you” or reproved as “they,” they become the focus in those suras that recall ancient Arabic invective poetry (hija¯ʾ), individually in Q 111 and as a particular type in Q 104. Among the reproachable behaviors of the contemporaries, at this phase only the most striking ones are submitted to criticism: the exaggerated valuation of family prestige (Q 102) and possessions (Q 104, 111), and superficiality in the accomplishment of cultic practices, which in Q 107 is paired to denial of the judgment in the hereafter (dı¯n). In Q 103, 99, 100, 101, and 95 (Subgroup c), we have for the first time eschatologically marked suras, each with a poetically marked beginning: sura 103, which due to its brevity only allows hypothetical conclusions, begins similarly to Q  93, with an oath by a liturgically deployed time, here ʿas∙r, followed by a rebuking pronouncement about humanity (insa¯n) as a religiously unmoved creature, a rebuke that can only be understood with an eschatological aspect. Q 100 begins with an essentially more extensive, poetically forceful oath tableau, wherein the oaths also transition into a rebuke of humanity. The two purely eschatological suras 99 and 101, which show humanity in its precarious situation in the hereafter, share the image of the scales; Q 99 also thematizes humanity (insa¯n) individually, while Q 101 speaks collectively of al-na¯s. While Q 99 and 100 culminate in the disclosure of the balance of deeds on the Final Day, sura 101, which for the first time is introduced by a teaching question, already refers to the recompense of the judged that results from their deeds. Q 95—again beginning with an oath series, but one that points to divine primordial provision creation and teaching instead of eschatology—offers a synthesis of the proclamations delivered up to this point. For the first time, it is possible to unite the central notions—the founding of the Meccan sanctuary (cf. Q 105), the divine accompaniment of the human lifetime and humanity’s (insa¯n) lack of insight into his condition—into a new creation theology, which culminates in the eschatological redemption of the deposit received in the creation and teaching. It is notable that the sura, which already alludes to the communication of divine teaching, still does not contain a reference to the authorization source of ‘scripture,’ which is discovered for qurʾanic discourse shortly later.

INTRODUCTION

19

The strongly rhythmic and tightly structurally composed text-introductions established in these suras (oath series, idha¯-series, teaching questions) are a significant poetic novelty, introduced by the Qur’an into the Arabic literary language; they are applied throughout the entire first period. One notices without difficulty that two literary traditions here meet each other: the first is nourished by ancient Arabic poetic knowledge and operates in analogue to poetic invectives (hija¯ʾ poems), with rhythmic speech units and plastic images, while the other relies on the hymnics of the monotheistic religious traditions and depends more on symbolic allusions to sacred history than on the local literary tradition in order to ‘carry through’ a discursive argument. These two dialectically related reference-points and stylistic conditionings are also already attested, although separately, in the poetry, with the latter—the hymnic monotheistic tradition—being confined to Christian poetry. However, in the Qur’an they occur in a shared context for the first time, evincing a polyphony of forms, often within a single composition, that was heretofore unknown in Arabic literature. Although the consolation suras assigned as the very earliest, (a) Q 93, 94, 97, and 108, stand particularly close to the type of the hymnically marked texts, and those suras that work with longer oath series stand farther from them, one should not therefore draw a fine distinction between the two markings as a criterium for the chronology—because of their early interaction in the same texts. The main criterium should rather be the progressive development in thought of the contents of the proclamation. According to this aspect, it is striking that in all the very early suras in the first Subgroup (a), there is not yet any interest in the recompense in the hereafter, in the sense of collective punishment or collective reward. Eschatology does not yet bear its later central edificatory function, but is at first alluded to only sporadically—for the first time overall in Q 107. The hellfire itself (na¯r, Q 104; jah∙ı¯m, Q 107) here stands in the context of wider, heterogenous, but clearly symbolic image-complexes such as the depiction of approaching horse-riders (Q 100) or a cosmic birth process (Q 101), so that the place of punishment in the hereafter initially seems to be no more than a part of a symbol world. Only later do paradise and hell assume a degree of reality beyond the symbolic, as places describable in detail. What the very early suras do positively reflect, however, is the sense of judgment scenario—already established beyond the scenery of reality—in which judgment will be held over the ‘false value’ of the worldly oriented and, above all, materialistic contemporaries, the projection of an already ‘eschatological situation of being.’ The image of the scales already pictured in Q 99 and 101 is emblematic here. Already in the earliest suras, this process of the administration of justice culminates in the assertion of God’s wisdom regarding human lapses (Q 100) and their disclosure to those who are affected (Q 99), but not in the punishment of humanity, although a catastrophic end is announced in Q 102 and 101, and even projected

20

INTRODUCTION

with high poetic expression in Q 106 and 111. In the last two mentioned suras, it remains as a part of what is received by the hearers as hyperbolic invective (hija¯ʾ). It is fitting to this threat against the blamed, which is perceived primarily as a provocation, that there is not yet any listing of their offences, but rather their possessiveness and arrogance are denounced generally; the rejection of the message—mentioned in Q 102 as one offense among several—does not seem to play a central role here. At this point, there is still no talk of reward in the hereafter. There is also not yet any reference to the written register of deeds, which will later become central to the administration of justice, thus unambiguously elevating the heavenly writing up to the highest authority. The suras that we collect as Group I, (a) Q 93, 94, 97, 108, 105, 106; (b) 102, 107, 111, 104; and (c) 103, 99, 100, 101, 95, coincide in their text masses to the Group I defined by Schmid and Sinai on the basis of quantitative and structural criteria. However, the sequence within the group differs in many cases from that set out elsewhere. It is based on the discursive observations sketched above, as well as intertextual considerations, which are presented in detail in the hand commentary on each individual sura in the section “Analysis and Interpretation: Placement within the History of Development.” The sequence established here is proven out above all by a view to the tracing of the gradual ‘discovery’ of eschatology as a major oppositional scenario to inner-worldly reality, which according to Gottfried Müller was the decisive developmental leap marking the proclaimer typologically as a prophet. Beyond this, it is also proven true in view of debates that can be perceived being carried out across the ends of suras. An example can illustrate this: in the ‘consolation sura’ Q 108 (al-kawthar) discussed among (a), an opposing insinuation is rebuffed apologetically, which— according to the most plausible interpretation—targets the proclaimer as “cut off” (abtar) because of his isolation from a family clan. Apparently, the embedding within tribal and family structures, and even pride in one’s ancestors and defense of individual genealogy (nasab), represent an important element of social valuation, which also plays a role in disputes over religious self-positioning. In the shortly later sura 102 (al-taka¯thur)—which is already directed to a public “you” and therefore assigned to group (b)—the speaker fights back with a polemic speech. The pagan addressees for their part—so this text alleges—assume a questionable position on nasab: they are so “held in fascination” (alha¯kum) by their obsession with “increase” of their family bonds (and thus also with the elevation of their reputation, h∙asab) that they perform ancestor worship as a means of self-elevation. Through their reactionary commemoration of their fathers, they cut themselves off, however, from the wisdom that would be required for them to recognize their fateful future. It hardly seems an accident that each of the two suras, which are closely connected in time, operates respectively with a striking derivation from the root KThR (kawthar, taka¯thur). A wordplay reach-

INTRODUCTION

21

ing across the boundaries of suras seems to mark the dialectical relationship between the two proclamations. The orientation toward the strength and reputation of the family clan that is reprimanded here as a mental blockage, as an ‘obsession,’ is made present again and again—in the image of the individual set entirely on his own in the Final Day—throughout the first period, and referred to as a dead end. Sura Group I thus contains (a) Q 93, 94, 97, 108, 105, 106; (b) 102, 107, 111, 104; and (c) 103, 99, 100, 101, 95.

Sura Group II The eleven suras66 included by quantitative considerations in Group II are to be divided further according to particular foundational ideas that are newly introduced: Subgroup (a), Q 89, 91, 92, and 90, documents a new interest in systems of ordering such as numbers and pairs of opposites in creation, and even urban structures that resemble the physical symmetries presented in creation. In Q 91:11, for the first time, the idea of a dichotomy between acceptance and rejection, of “denial” (kadhdhaba) of the proclaimed truth, is introduced programmatically. As the Bible construes the Egyptians as an emblem of enmity toward religion, so does the Qur’an establish a standard group of ‘insubordinate peoples’ in its historical examples of denial of the truth, who in Q 91 are represented by Thamu¯d alone, but to which further peoples are added already in Q 92. The hymnic suras 87 and 96, which both begin with a personal address to the proclaimer, who is further thematized as an actor in the respective sura contexts, can thus make up their own Subgroup (b). It is these suras that introduce for the first time, and represent exemplarily, the idea of ‘scripture’ as a source of authority for the ‘recitation’ of the proclaimer, who virtually ‘dictates,’ so to speak, from a written template in his recitation. They form a hinge, in a sense, between the hymnically marked sura 90, which closes Subgroup (a), with its praising of the divinely supported social coherence of the organizational form of the ‘city,’ and the idea carried further in Q 82 (beginning of Subgroup [c]) of unavoidable human responsibility, which attributes to the physical creation of humanity a causal role for his societal duties. Q 82 already begins with an idha¯ series that includes four verses about the cosmic dissolution, which offer an counterimage to the Christian image of the eschatological vision of the coming of the Son of man, Matthew 24:29–31, Mark 13:24–26, Luke 21:25–27. But the theme of the dissolution of the cosmos already quite quickly becomes a qur’anic topos, unfolded in more detailed image series in suras 81 and 84; in all three suras the proclaimer or his performance receive special attention. Above all, however, we see in Group II—beginning with Subgroup (b)—the first appearance, in various forms, of the idea that will be of decisive i­ mportance

22

INTRODUCTION

for the further development of the Qur’an: the idea of ‘scripture’ as a heavenly manifestation of the will of God and thus the decisive authorization of the message. Already in Q  87:18–19, the proclamation is authorized through reference to the ‘first scriptures’: inna ha¯dha¯ la-fı¯ l-s∙uh∙ufi l-u¯la¯ / ∙suh∙ufi Ibra¯hı¯ma wa-Mu¯sa¯ (“that is in the oldest scriptures, the scriptures of Abraham and Moses”), wherein the qualification as ‘first’ does not yet offer more than an indirect reference to the transcendent origin. At first sight it is the identity of what is communicated with that which earlier prophets had already proclaimed, and thus a first reference to an emerging consciousness of nearness to the biblical tradition. Indeed the sura also contains the first designation of the recitation performance as a “reading” (Q 87:6: sa-nuqriʾuka fa-la¯ tansa¯, “we will have you read, so that you do not forget”), although the ‘reading template’ still remains here unnamed. The following sura 96 then fills in this gap in knowledge for the first time, adding the idea of the ‘scripture’ as a source of authority for the ‘reading’ of the proclaimer, who ‘dictates’ virtually, so to speak, from a heavenly template, in a way that is exemplary for the following suras. Here, the praising of God as he who “teaches with the pen” (Q 96:4–5): (alladhı¯ ʿallama bi-l-qalam / ʿallama l-insa¯na ma¯ lam yaʿlam) is preceded by the injunction to the proclaimer to undertake a ‘reading.’ In connection with this, Sura 82 adds the idea of the heavenly scribes (v. 10–12), who watch over humanity as “guardians” and draw up a register of deeds. The immediately following Sura 81 evokes (v. 10) heavenly judgment papers, which exist already as a fait accompli, that are presented on the Final Day; sura 84:7–12, which connects to this passage, speaks already of an individual register book that is handed to each individual on the Final Day. ‘Scripture’ is thus perceived at the same time in two different functions: in the sense of Arthur Jeffery’s inventory book, the book of divine knowledge from which the proclaimer is instructed to “read,” and also that of the record book, a writing produced by the heavenly scribes that records the deeds of humans.67 The conception of the heavenly checking of the deeds of humans, which replaces the symbolic conception of the weighing of the deeds on the Final Day (Q 101), is taken up again in Q 86 and 85. In Q 86:1–4, the heavens appear brightly illumined around the “watchers,” and in Q 85 finally the heavenly scripture itself—now clearly in the sense of the ‘book of divine knowledge’— presents itself as “preserved” (mah∙fu¯z∙): Q 85:21–22: bal huwa qurʾa¯nun majı¯d / fı¯ lawh∙in mah∙fu¯z∙ (“indeed it is a glorious reading—on a preserved tablet”). The message of the proclaimer is none other than the recitation from the heavenly scripture. The polemical instrument of the ‘scripture’ connected to the “guardians” who produce the register is already complemented and surpassed by the conception of a heavenly scripture from which the proclaimer “dictates.” The two manifestations of the heavenly scripture are not differentiated terminologically or hierarchically in the early Qur’an. Together, however, they manifest the

INTRODUCTION

23

already emerging transition of the early community from a ritual to a textual coherence. Group II thus contains (a) Q 89, 91, 92, 90; (b) 87, 96; and (c) 82, 81, 84, 86, 85.

Sura Group III68 In Group III, themes already introduced are unfolded in more detail, but in part are provided with a new thrust: the actor role of the prophet, the behavior demanded or enjoined from him, stands as the center point of the first three suras of Subgroup (a), which in their introductory parts directly address the proclaimer as the recipient of the message within the situation of a cultic act (Q 73 and 74), or criticize him because of a discriminatory action toward the hearers (Q 80). The central theme here of the warning (tadhkira) available to all also remains the focus of the following sura 79, where in verse 45 the proclaimer is confirmed in his role as “warner” (mundhir). Sura 79 is also closely connected to the preceding sura 80, through its working out of the theme of the status of humanity, which is set out in Q 80:18–19. The creature ‘human’—brought out by God from nothing—is in Q 79:27–29 set polemically into connection with the creation of the world, and must now measure himself against the standard of the cosmic creation. The following suras 75, 70, 78, and 88 should be considered a new Subgroup (b), in that the discussion opened in (a) about the status of the message and the proclaimer gains a new point, in the foregrounding of the opponents’ challenging question about the point in time when the predicted will occur. This not only raises the problem of the scope of the prophetic competence of the proclaimer. Above all, a gap now opens that will henceforth separate the proclaimer, who visionarily perceives the life-world’s integration into eschatology, from his opponents, who wish to reify this visionary dimension into an historical reality: in Q 75, the introductory oath sentence culminates in the assertion: yasʾalu aya¯na yawmu l-qiya¯mah (“He asks: when is then the day of the resurrection?”). The following suras also begin with this question: Q 70:1: saʾala sa¯ʾilun bi-ʿadha¯bin wa¯qiʿ (“An asker asks: when will the punishment occur?”), and similarly also Q  78:1–2: ʿamma¯ yatasa¯ʾalu¯n / ʿani l-nabaʾi l-ʿaz∙ı¯m (“What do they ask each other about? / about the tremendous tidings”). Q 88:21–22 summarizes the proclaimer’s position as a warner rather than an “overseer” (mus∙ayt∙ir) that is responsible for them. Sura 70, which according to formal criteria would be assigned to Group IV, must then stand in III because of its inner-qur’anic intertextuality.69 These suras, however, are also closely connected to the Subgroup (a), whose striking focus on the situation of humanity on the Last Day they carry forward into drastic images. By this means, a person’s separation from their clan is put into focus as a particularly decisive lack, as already in Q 80:33–36 and 70:11–14,

24

INTRODUCTION

and emphasis is placed the pained facial expression of the judged, as already in Q 80:40–42 and 79:8–9, and also in 75:24–25 and 88:2–7. Some suras of Subgroup (a) such as Q 80:38–39.40–42 and Q 79:37–39.40–41 already attest a contrast of the fate of the damned to that of the righteous in the hereafter, although here these fates remain ‘imageless.’ Differentiated doubled images are not yet found here, but rather first occur in Subgroup (b) with Q 75:22–23.24–25, 78:21– 26.31–36, 88:2–7.8–16. They thus go beyond the exclusive focus, up that point, on blame against the lacking behaviors of contemporaries, to also assign a place in the afterlife to the righteous; Q  78 initially depicts this place as a scene of feasting (v. 31–36). The description is filled out in more detail in Q 88:8–16. It is preceded—as already in Q 78:21–26—by a mirroring negative presentation of the place of the damned (v. 1–7). The breakthrough, first achieved in Q 78 and then undergirded by Q 88, toward a new conception of paradise that is no longer imageless, but rather linked back to late antique predecessors such as the conception of a “lovely place,” a locus amoenus, requires us to incorporate sura 8870—which on quantitative and structural criteria is assigned to Group II—in the sequence Q 75, 80, 78, and 88. In the majority of the suras, the polemical tone, which also defines the beginning and end of Q 88, remains dominant. Suras 83 and 77 thus form Subgroup (c), since they are interwoven by exclamations of woe. Sura 53, which according to its quantitative and structural qualities would belong to Group III,71 must be placed in Group IV due to its intertextual connection to a later sura. Group III thus contains (a) Q 73, 74, 80, 79; (b) Q 75, 70, 78, 88; and (c) Q 83 and 77.

Sura Group IV72 The seven suras of this group can best be divided into two Subgroups: (a) Q 51, 68, and 69; and (b) Q 55, 56, 53, and 52. The differentiation of Group IV, initially on quantitative grounds, from the preceding is confirmed through striking stylistic, genre-specific, and discursive innovations. Although sura 51 is closely connected to sura 77 by a thematically related oath-tableau, and is also connected to suras from Group III by repetition of the provoking question about the point in time of the judgment, it nonetheless shows itself to stand in a new context. It reflects cultic characteristics that have already been achieved, such as the clear establishment of nightly and early-morning worship; beyond this, it reflects through its structure, which centers a narrative as its central part, the forms of worship of the older religions, wherein the ‘reading’ of a biblical narrative stands in the middle point. Sura 68, which is entirely dominated by polemic about the proclaimer and the proclamation, shows in its middle part a (parable) narrative. It likewise reflects cult actions carried out collectively (v. 43). Beyond this, it introduces a catalogue of points of conflict, without, however—as is com-

INTRODUCTION

25

mon in the suras after Q  53—adducing the gender argument against the assumption of the daughters of God; it thus belongs to Subgroup (a). Q 69, still marked by the theme of the “erupting” that is unfolded in Q 77, has no narrative in the middle part and instead builds in its introductory part on the catalogue of punishment legends introduced in Q 51, to which now a new, positive turn is given. Q 69 shows for the first time the ‘confirmation of revelation’ that will later be characteristic of the closing parts. While the suras of Subgroup (a) Q  51, 68, and 69 are still recognizable as elaborations of ideas thematized earlier, with Q 55 on the one hand, and 53 on the other, new reference texts come into view. These suras, along with suras 56 and 52 that build on them intertextually, can be viewed as their own Subgroup (b). Q 55 contains the most detailed and formally consistent description of paradise in the entire Qur’an, to the details of which the following suras 56 and 52, as well as yet later suras, will connect back. A particularly enduring novelty of the sura is the introduction of the maidens of paradise as h∙u¯r (“blackeyed”)—in Q 55:72, still only an adjectival qualification of the immediately previously named “beautiful young women” (Q 55:70). H ∙ u¯r—from which ‘houris’ is ­derived—will later become, quite in analogue to the poetry, a metonymic designation of the young maidens themselves, accompanied by ʿı¯n (“large-eyed”), which is also used to refer to the eyes of wild cows, as already in the slightly later suras 56 and 52. Furthermore, the poetic doubling of the description of paradise in sura 55 is taken at its word, so to speak, in the following sura 56; the particular ranking of a group of the blessed as al-muqarrabu¯n (“those standing near”), already alluded to in Q 83:21.28, is now concretized in Q 56. Q 56 also imbues the text-sort ‘creation-a¯ya¯t,’ the ‘signs’ set out in creation, with a new systematics, in that alongside the ‘status of a human as a creature,’ which was already a topos, it draws three of the four elements into the debate. With its argumentatively elaborated confirmation of revelation, Q  56 substantially enriches the formal inventory of the concluding parts in use up to that point. Sura 53, the only qur’anic text that contains an explicit goddess polemic, introduces arguments into the confrontation with pagan opponents that will also mark later texts (such as Q 52 already in early Mecca), in particular with its gender-specific criticism of the acceptance of feminine beings into the divine court. The suras of Group IV can therefore be worked out into the following sequence: (a) 51, 69, 68; (b) 55, 56, 53, 52.

COMPARING RECONSTRUCTIONS In our attempt to arrange the sura groups defined by quantitative and structural criteria into a discursively plausible sequence, it has been possible to maintain in essence the quantitatively determined text blocks. The development of textual production—here traced on the basis of semantic criteria—was t­herefore

26

INTRODUCTION

carried out within defined structural frames that were achieved early on and that long remained unchanged (Groups I and II) until they were gradually expanded and assumed looser forms with the necessity of forming more complex arguments (Groups III and IV). Yet also, as the late deployment of short-­ membered suras such as Q 55 shows, the persisting application of the ‘old’ poetic models must also be accounted for in the late phases. The most crucial element for the positioning of a sura is ultimately a secure reference to a preceding text, which can preclude a reversed sequence, or at least making it improbable. Thus, the argument that daughters should not be attributed to God, when in reality those addressed do not wish for them, clearly indicates for Q 53 where it stands in relation to a concrete factual situation. Later employment of the argument outside of the goddess conflict can only be understood as a ‘citation’ of this confrontation, and for that reason indicates a positioning of the concerned sura after Q 53. The criterium of length, together with the coherence of the composition and its discursive relations, allows some further conclusions about the ‘setting in life’ of a sura. The suras of the first Meccan period should, on the basis of detailed analysis, be treated as integral performance units, since their intratextual linkings between individual sentences and main parts would otherwise be functionless. The suras build on one another argumentatively, giving rise over time to a proclamation that dedicates itself increasingly to a growing number of themes present in its environment, remaking these innovatively and casting them in previously unfamiliar text sorts. In later texts, these text sorts are expanded and increasingly implemented paraenetically. Out of what may at first be spontaneous praisings of God come arguments for his power to resurrect. While the short-membered, i.e., strongly rhythmic, suras can best be understood as easily memorized performance texts to be recited by the pious, either individually or collectively, the long-membered suras, which already employ hypotactic constructions to formulate their more complex arguments, seem rather to reflect performances by the proclaimer alone. At the end of the first Meccan period, and in the immediately following period, they already correspond roughly to the scheme of a monotheistic prayer service (see QLA, 192–196). Our attempt at reconstruction of the sequence of the proclamations yields the following for the early Meccan suras: Group I. (a) suras providing consolation and assurance of providence: Q 93, 94, 97, 108, 105, 106; (b) suras criticizing pagan forms of life: Q 102, 107, 111, 104; (c) eschatologically marked suras: Q 103, 99, 100, 101, 95. Group II. (a) suras attesting to the structures and symmetries of creation: Q 89, 91, 92, 90; (b) hymnic suras, which introduce the image of the ‘reading’: Q 87, 96; (c) suras that focus on the scribal angels and their register: Q 82, 81, 84, 86, 85/

INTRODUCTION

27

Group III. (a) suras that focus on the role of the proclaimer: Q 73, 74, 80, 79; (b) suras with detailed double images: Q 75, 70, 78, 88; (c) suras with exclamations of woe: Q 83, 77. Group IV. (a) suras with new text sorts: Q 51, 68, 69; (b) suras with new guiding themes: Q 55, 56, 53, 52. The sequencings that have been attempted previously should be cited here for comparison. Nicolai Sinai divides the sura Group I as follows:73 (a) “Meccan surahs”: Q 105, 106; (b) “announcements of judgment”: Q 95, 102, 103, 104, 107; (c) “brief eschatological images”: Q 99, 100, 101, 111, (d) “solace surahs”: Q 93, 94, 108; (e) Q  97. Nöldeke’s sequencing74 should also be recalled here, whose leading chronological criterium, the increasing length of suras and verses, has been maintained, although his individual decisions must be reversed in most cases on the basis of observations of the intertextuality between the suras: Q 96, 74, 111, 106, 108, 104, 102, 105, 93, 90, 94, 93, 97, 86, 91, 80, 68, 87, 95, 103, 85, 73, 101, 99, 82, 81, 53, 84, 100, 79, 77, 78, 88, 89, 73, 83, 69, 51, 52, 56, 70, 55, 112, 109, 113, 114, 1. His most important decision, however, the distinction between the first period and all the texts that follow, can be maintained. In order to submit to testing the thesis we have just laid out, that of the qur’anic genesis throughout successively emerging discourses, we will refer, wherever the argumentation is chronologically relevant, to parallels and comparative texts in the early Meccan suras in their developmental historical sequence. In references to preceding suras, the sequence established in the introduction will be followed, and references to early Meccan suras that come later will be marked with the notation “somewhat later.” In this way, anachronistic conclusions can be avoided and the plausibility of the sura sequence worked out here can be checked case by case.

INTERTEXTUAL GROWTH: REFLECTIONS OF LATER RECITATIONS IN ADDITIONS But the qur’anic chronology must not only give account of a new, structurally and semantically grounded sura sequence that diverges from the canonical Qur’an text. No less important for the reconstruction of the development is the frequently required intertextual differentiation between a core text and its later expansions. More than a third—that is, 16 of the 43 early Meccan suras—have been ‘increased’ through one or more additions (see the index). These additions75 have generally been viewed disparagingly in the research up to now—if they are perceived at all—as expansions that break the textual flow of a sura, without acknowledgement of their relevance for the tracking of the ‘canonic process,’ i.e., the gradual textual growth of the suras. Yet they reflect a process of updating that opens up important insights into the communal reception of the apparently

28

INTRODUCTION

continuous liturgical application of the early suras.76 Numerous early Meccan suras have undergone decisive growth processes in the course of their repeated recitation at later points. Suras were commented on, often with a view toward a less harsh understanding for later hearers, usually at a slightly later time, as for example in Q 79:40. Apparently, care was taken initially that the additions would create no breakage in the poetic structure of the suras. In other cases, texts were ‘updated,’ i.e., conceptual connections were produced, for example, in relation to themes central to the middle Meccan period, such as the role of angels; one thinks here for example of Q 97 and 70. In one case, an exhortation spoken toward the proclaimer in the core text, which apparently was deemed by the hearers as collectively binding, is modified interpretatively by an addition, so that new freedom of action is opened up: not a half night, but rather a span of time that is reasonable to the circumstances, should be spent in vigil (Q 73:20). The sura gains a detailed prose addition on this point, which clearly reflects conditions in Medina, both in its naming of special social conditions and above all in its reference to strugglers among the dependents of the community. In the case of sura 53, which has undergone several expansions, the new state of the discussion regarding the theme of ‘feminine divinities’ is now added as a supplement by way of longer additions to the text, now formed in prose. Most frequently, however, additions occur that were apparently inserted out of considerations for the community, largely a matter of stereotyped formulae of restriction that offer exceptions for the pious, i.e., for the increasingly self-conscious community, from the rigorous verdicts against humanity that are characteristic of the early suras, as already in Q 103. These additions are most likely due to the objection of the community to the pessimistic view of humanity that was initially articulated, which did not give consideration to their later-achieved status as a newly elected people of God. These ‘verdict’ softenings appear as expansions in nearly all relevant early Meccan quotations, with great consequence, and thus seem to express the emergent communal consensus. Related to them are the additions of ‘explanations’ built on misunderstandings, such as Q  79:40–41, where the object of the “fear” demanded of the pious is made explicit: wa-amma¯ man kha¯fa (maqa¯ma rabbihi) wa-naha¯ l-nafsa ʿani l-hawa¯ / fa-inna l-jannata hiya l-maʾwa¯ (“except he who fears [addition: the rank of his Lord] and has forbidden his soul capriciousness, the garden will be his abode”). That a breakage of the precisely composed parallelism is accepted as part of the bargain shows the urgency of the additional disambiguation. All of these additions77 have so far been left entirely unappreciated78 in their function as stations in a canonical process,79 even as they represent a crucially important index for the continual reception of suras after their initial formulation. Above all, they often give an entirely new thrust to the expanded suras, thus providing highly relevant evidence about the development of the theologi-

INTRODUCTION

29

cal discourses taking place within the community. All additions are indicated— classified according to where they belong chronologically—in a separate index.

INTERTEXTS: BIBLICAL TRADITIONS AND ANCIENT ARABIC PAGAN POETRY This development can be discerned not only through inner-textual observations; it also becomes evident from the changing intertexts that play formative roles in various times and in phases of the proclamation. The nearness of the Qur’an to the Bible has long been emphasized, but there has never been a systematic attempt to trace the biblical traditions throughout their qur’anic development.80 It is unknown which biblical books, and above all which exegetical readings of biblical texts, stood in the foreground during the respective periods of the communal development. A systematic synoptic reading of the Qur’an and the Syriac homilies that were crucial for the intervening exegetical stage is likewise a desideratum,81 and is being undertaken at the present time in the project Corpus Coranicum. A corresponding state of affairs obtains for the reading of the Qur’an and rabbinic literature. Heinrich Speyer’s (1896–1935) important collections have not yet been checked against their rereadings in the Qur’an, but rather stand as unworked intertexts alongside the text. The overview of the relations between the Qur’an and the Bible82 offered in Late Antiquity and the Qur’an was necessarily grounded in a selective reading, and can thus only be considered a rough sketch. The striking predominance of the Psalms among the biblical reference texts is reflected in the hand commentary by the supplying of a transcription of the Hebrew original text. It should not be assumed from this, however, that the qur’anic community was familiar with the Psalms in the Hebrew wording, since in fact no clear decision can be reached as to whether the translations available to them might more probably have been either Greek or Syriac. The supplying of the Hebrew original for the Psalm references is meant to give an impression of the poetic form of these intertexts, which would necessarily be obscured somewhat in a translation alone. An even more egregious neglect has been shown to the Qur’an’s relationship to the second great textual canon of Arab late antiquity, ancient Arabic poetry. The fact that it has been almost completely left out in Qur’an research up to now83 is due not only to the often-cited prejudice that poetry had nothing to say about religion and was irrelevant to the Qur’an. The relation of the Qur’an to poetry does indeed raise some problems that are more difficult to solve than those raised by the relationship to the Bible. While there is a great number of biblical and postbiblical texts of which one can very probably presuppose a widespread propagation in Near Eastern late antiquity, and there

30

INTRODUCTION

are frequent stylistic and image-specific indications of the qur’anic reception of a quite determined text or a determined tradition,84 the same is not guaranteed in the case of the poetry. Here, one cannot assume with certainty that such famous poems as the Muʿallaqa¯t were present among the community in their exact wordings. Rather, one can at best identify in the Qur’an certain elements of the heroic ethos that is given shape in ancient Arabic poetry. Although terminology familiar from Christian poetry recurs in the Qur’an (one thinks here of the word for sin, khat∙ı¯ʾa, which occurs for example before the Qur’an in the works of the poet ʿAdı¯ ibn Zayd85), it nonetheless remains an open question whether such central Christian concepts are actual traces of the poetry or whether they might not rather stem directly from biblical or later oral transmission or theological discussions. The procedure of Toshihiko Izutsu (1914–1993) to bring together Qur’an and poetry in his monograph86 in order to set the new qur’anic world image into relief, although it is to be acknowledged highly as a pioneering work with many important comments, can only offer limited further help, since Izutsu is not particularly interested in the origin and thus the further context of the poetic citations, and above all because he reads the Qur’an purely synchronously, so that the developments that concern us do not come into his field of vision. Indeed, in the case of a text as poetic as the Qur’an, poetry is always to be kept close in mind, even if for the purpose of drawing a contrast. For it is not only the close affinities, but also the divergences, between poetry and the Qur’an that are striking. Indeed, that which modern critics87 still recognize as a central characteristic of ancient Arabic poetry, and which was particularly prized in this poetry by the inner-Arabic poetic critics from early on,88 its ‘molecular structure,’89 i.e., the abandonment of larger compositions in favor of concentration on individual verses as the goal of artistic composition, is inverted in the Qur’an, so to speak. Here, there can be no talk of ‘atomistic’ or ‘molecular’ form. As has been demonstrated for the entire corpus of the Meccan suras in Studien zur Komposition der Mekkanischen Suren, suras are larger or smaller complete compositions, the coherence of which did not elude the inner-Islamic literary critics,90 even if Islamic exegetes for their part treated them as sequences of individual verses, following the model of the poetry scholia. The sura structures must then assume an important place in the discussion. Likewise, one must take note of poetic topoi and metaphors. It is in the reinterpretation of these topoi and metaphors that the divergence can best be traced between the pagan and the scripturally marked perceptions of the world. In view of the manifest lack in the Qur’an of the central themes of poetry, Thomas Bauer has rightly spoken of a “negative intertextuality,”91 but numerous traces of the poetry still remain positively recognizable in the Qur’an. Above all, poetic topoi and metaphors establish the image horizon against which the proclaimer’s hearership could locate the message. For that reason, in the hand commentary,

INTRODUCTION

31

not only will clear poetic intertexts receive attention but attention will also be drawn to those poetic topoi that have only a loosely related counterpart in the Qur’an, such as the motif of the sleepless night. That the poetic topoi in the Qur’an cannot be discussed systematically is due to the current state of research; ancient Arabic poetry has still not been provided with adequate specialist lexical works or motif indices. The aid of the concordance of the ‘Six Poets’ is a beginning,92 but it includes only a small corpus of texts and its alphabetical ordering of verses represents only a still-unworked collection of materials.

‘PROCLAMATION’ INSTEAD OF ‘TEXT CORPUS’ The hand commentary understands itself as a philological commentary that dedicates particular attention to the linguistic and literary structure, without which the intended statement to be communicated cannot be recognized. It is not only difficult-to-decipher textual passages that should be explained, but rather the text as such. The commentary is meant to draw serious consequence from the fact that the Qur’an did not first enter history as a literary fait accompli, but rather it had a ‘prelife’ that was decisive for its deeper understanding, already before it was gathered and brought together into the codex that exists today. This ‘prelife’ gives rise to its dialectical structure, which distinguishes it from the other holy scriptures; as a long-open text it was able to absorb the newly won convictions of the community, and even to take these into itself as immediate replicas, sharpenings, and deepenings of texts that were already formed and in circulation. This unique structure in the history of religions cannot be explained entirely based on the particular social conditions of the Qur’an’s genesis, which involved a plurality of hearers, dependents, and opponents of the new movement. Rather, this structure expresses also a new theologoumenon that developed already in the Meccan period, the qur’anic ideal of the ‘oral scripture.’ Daniel Madigan93 already drew attention to the lack of an intention, reflected in the Qur’an itself, to constitute a holy scripture based on the already widespread Jewish and Christian model. Nicolai Sinai’s investigation of the concept of tafs∙ı¯l, “exposition, interpretation,”94 has also positively identified the decision reached in the Qur’an in favor of an oral rather than written manifestation of the word of God within qur’anic debates. Such confrontations between speakers and hearers that are reflected in the text are the key to the most broadly secured historical understanding of the Qur’an—as will also be shown also in the present commentary. What is intended is an understanding of the Qur’an that does not simply accept the premade textual phenomena as given, or as due to the rationally inaccessible communication procedure of the revelation, but rather—as would be self-evident from a critical reading of the Bible—attempts to explain them in relation to the complex circumstances of emergence, which in our case are to be sought in the living debate cultures of late antiquity.

32

INTRODUCTION

Once this view toward the Qur’an is opened, we can begin to view the actual revolution that occurred in the qur’anic proclamation for the society of the late antique province of the Arabian peninsula, which is already evident in the early Meccan suras: the transition from ritual to textual coherence as described by Jan Assmann.95 “It is essential to ritual that it reproduces a pregiven order with the least possible alteration. Thus, every performance of the ritual coincides with earlier performances of it, so that for societies without writing what emerges is the typical conception of time running in a circle. . . . It is precisely this force [of repetition] that guarantees ritual coherence, from which societies free themselves by way of textual coherence.”96 Assmann draws a cultural-historical consequence from this: “The place of knowledge is now no longer the ritual, which it serves and to some extent brings to performance in the form of holy recitations, but rather the interpretation of the founding texts.”97 Such a culture-historical turn is also documented by the Qur’an text. The early Meccan suras depict a process that can be illuminated through the categories developed by Assmann. The suras initially represent ‘performances’ that are closely related to the Meccan rituals, from which they establish their independence through the reform of the prayer times.98 As a result, they establish entirely innovative performance forms that clearly connect to the collective rituals but that have overcome their initial role as mere verbal supplements. Still, toward the end of the first period, the suras depict a monotheistic worship service, yet one whose individual elements are brought together to form a new structure.99 Not only does the changing text come into the foreground as against the static rituals, but the suras also polemicize against the cyclical perception of time, to which they oppose a linear conception of time running down to the Final Judgment. With little exaggeration, one can say that here late antique Arab culture replicates a development that had occurred previously in Judaism, whereby the liturgical service, which guaranteed coherence after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, “was transferred entirely into the interpretation of texts.”100 In the Arab case, the transition to textual coherence is not accompanied by such a historically dramatic break. But here too, the marginalization of the rituals is accompanied by the discovery of ‘scripture’—if not as the decisive cultural praxis, then as the decisive authority. It is not that the proclamation presented itself from the beginning as a manifestation of ‘scripture,’ but rather, it is remarkable that ‘scripture,’ an idea that in the first suras still plays no role, only gradually—in the first half of the second period—penetrates into the text in two equally transcendent manifestations: the recording of divine wisdom, which figures as the source of the texts recited by the proclaimer, and the register produced by the heavenly scribes about the earthly deeds of humans. Scripture—and indeed exclusively heavenly scripture—now becomes recognizable simultaneously as the original source of the new message of divinely willed order, and as an instrument for the control of humanity, which is required for the implementation of the divine will.

INTRODUCTION

33

The consciousness of this presence of writing that overwhelms everything, both the transcendent and the earthly realms, which becomes the distinctive characteristic of the new community of belief, also introduces an activity that corresponds to interpretive activity that Assmann claims for textual coherence. Not only are scriptural traditions that already belonged to the late antique formation in the form of Psalm verses, biblical narratives, hymns, and litanies, continuously interpreted in the Qur’an’s process of emergence, but the proclaimed texts themselves are continuously made the object of later interpretation—as attested not only by the later additions to many suras, but also by the references back to earlier proclamations that are characteristic for all suras. What the suras of the first period are already preparing is the ubiquitous coding of the message through scripture and scripture emblems. This is manifest not only explicitly in nearly all opening and closing parts of the later suras in the form of scriptural announcements—one thinks here of sura beginnings such as Q 15:1: alif la¯m ra¯ʾ / tilka a¯ya¯tu l-kita¯bi wa-qurʾa¯nin mubı¯n (“Alif lam ra, those are the signs of the scripture and a clear reading”) and concluding scripture confirmations such as Q 56:77–78: innahu la-qurʾa¯nun karı¯m / fı¯ kita¯bin maknu¯n (“it is a glorious reading / it comes from a hidden scripture”)—but it forms the more or less clear and constant subtext of the texts as such. Already in the early Meccan period, the Qur’an is constituted as a text that is not only prophetic but also exegetical—a text that interprets earlier manifestations of the heavenly ur-scripture as well as its own new rendition of this ur-scripture, whose transmission organically flowed into a long age of Islamic exegesis.

Notes 1. Theodor Nöldeke based his periodization of the Qur’an, in refining the earlier attempts, in GdQ2 I, 66–74. For his discussion of the early Meccan suras (GdQ2 I, 74–117), he takes over the sequences already presented in the first edition of his work of 1860 (GdQ1 I, 59–89). 2. GdQ2 I, 74. 3. QLA, 424–429. 4. On the basis of content-related criteria, suras 109, 112, 113, and 114, which are assigned by Theodor Nöldeke to the first Meccan period, should be treated in the context of later suras. 5. Arabic Juzʾ ʿamm, including Q  78–114, named after the beginning of Q  78: ʿamma¯ yatasa¯ʾalu¯n (“What do they ask each other about?”). 6. QLA, 95–99. 7. Margaret Daly-Denton, “Early Christian Writers as Jewish Readers,” 184. 8. Cf. Kirill Dmitriev, “An Early Christian Arabic Account of the Creation”; Isabel ToralNiehoff, “Eine poetische Gestaltung des Sündenfalls.” 9. On al-Ba¯qilla¯nı¯’s judgment, see Angelika Neuwirth, “T.arı¯qat al-Ba¯qilla¯nı¯.” 10. Michael Sells, “Sound and Meaning”; Michael Sells, “Sound, Spirit and Gender”; Michael Sells, “A Literary Approach to the Hymnic Suras.” Also cf. Pierre Crapon de Caprona, Le Coran aux sources de la parole oraculaire. 11. Albert Arazi and Salman Masalha, Six Early Arab Poets. Included here are the collections of Imruʾ l-Qays, Zuhayr b. Abı¯ Sulma¯, T.arafa b. al-ʿAbd, ʿAlqama b. ʿAbada al-Fah∙l, ʿAntara b. Shadda¯d, and al-Na¯bigha al-Dhubya¯nı¯. 12. See QLA, the presentation is based on the category analysis already undertaken in SKMS.

34

INTRODUCTION

13. This detailed commentary, which likewise progresses chronologically from the early Meccan to the later suras, will appear in parallel with the hand commentary. 14. Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx (eds.), The Qurʾa¯n in Context. Historical and Literary Investigations in the Qurʾa¯nic Milieu. 15. Behnam Sadeghi and Uwe Bergman, “The Codex of a Companion of the Prophet.” 16. François Déroche, La transmission écrite du Coran. 17. On this problem, see Gregor Schoeler, “Schreiben und Veröffentlichen.” 18. QLA, 99–103. 19. QLA, 12–17. 20. Rudi Paret, Der Koran, Kommentar und Konkordanz. 21. Rudi Paret, Mohammed und der Koran. 22. On this see Dirk Hartwig, “Die ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung”; Dirk Hartwig, “Abraham Geiger und die erste Generation jüdischer Koranforscher.” 23. On this see QLA, 37–44. 24. Muh∙ammad Fuʾa¯d ʿAbd al-Ba¯qı¯, Al-Muʿjam al-mufahras li-alfa¯z. al-Qurʾa¯n al-karı¯m. 25. Adel Theodor Khoury, Der Koran. Arabisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und wissenschaftlicher Kommentar. 26. Khoury, Der Koran, volume 1, 27. 27. On this see Ignaz Goldziher, Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung. 28. See Angelika Neuwirth, “Koranlesung zwischen islamischem Ost und West.” 29. See QLA, 139–162. 30. See Michael Marx, “Ein Koranforschungsprojekt in der Tradition der Wissenschaft des Judentums.” 31. Gotthelf Bergsträsser, “Koranlesung in Kairo.” 32. Richard Bell, A Commentary on the Qurʾa¯n. 33. Richard Bell, The Qurʾa¯n. On this see Nagel, “Vom ‘Qurʾa¯n’ zur Schrift”; Bell, Introduction to the Qurʾa¯n; and QLA, 40 f. 34. Theodor Nöldeke, GdQ1; Nöldeke, Schwally, GdQ2 I–II. 35. Régis Blachère, Le Coran. Traduction delon un essai de réclassement des sourates. 36. Jane D. McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Qurʾa¯n. 37. Josef Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen. 38. Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary. 39. Hartwig Hirschfeld, New Researches. 40. Heinrich Speyer, Biblische Erzählungen. 41. Theodor Nöldeke, “Zur Sprache des Korans,” in Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, 1–30. 42. August Fischer, Wert der vorhandenen Koran-Übersetzungen. 43. Jakob Barth, “Studien zur Kritik und Exegese des Qora¯ns.” 44. Uri Rubin, “Morning and Evening Prayers.” 45. See QLA, 24–25. 46. Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Die Psalmen. 47. Anton Spitaler, Verszählung des Koran. 48. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process,” 422–424. 49. Theodor Nöldeke, GdQ1 I. A list of the sura sequences for the individual periods is given in GdQ1 I, XI f. On this periodization, see Emmanuelle Stefanidis, “The Qur’an Made Linear.” 50. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process.” 51. Nora K. Schmid, “Quantitative Text Analysis”; Behnam Sadeghi, “The Chronology of the Qurʾa¯n.” 52. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process,” above all the lists at 422–424. 53. The verse structures of the early Meccan suras are a central object of the composition analyses in SKMS, see there 238–291. 54. GdQ2 I, 74: “I believe that I can recognize the suras of this [early, A.N.] time-period with some certainty by their style.”

INTRODUCTION

35

55. William Muir, The Life of Mahomet. 56. Aloys Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed. 57. Hubert Grimme, Mohammed. 58. Frants Buhl, Das Leben Muhammeds. 59. Hartwig Hirschfeld, New Researches. 60. Theodor Nöldeke mostly refers to al-Itqa¯n fı¯ ʿulu¯m al-qurʾa¯n by al-Suyu¯t∙ı¯, but also takes older asba¯b al-nuzu¯l literature into account. 61. On the critique of the Nöldekean chronologisation, see Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process.” 62. Uri Rubin, “Morning and Evening Prayers.” 63. Gottfried Müller, “Barmherzigkeit Gottes”; on this see the discussion in QLA, 244–247. 64. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process,” 425–429. 65. On this see Angelika Neuwirth, “Die Psalmen—im Koran neu gelesen.” 66. According to Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process,” 423, Group II, which belongs in the second position quantitatively and structurally according to its complexity, includes 13 suras. But observations on semantic content and intertextuality compell the keeping together of the sura pair Q 73, in Group II according to Sinai, and 74, in Group IIIa. They are both assigned to III in the hand commentary, since they are closely related to further suras of the group. Likewise, sura 88 with its already detailed diptych, seems to belong to Group III, not II. 67. Arthur Jeffery, The Qur’an as Scripture, 1–17. 68. The groups distinguished by Sinai as IIIa and IIIb are here named as III and IV, in order to prevent confusion between the two subgroups differentiated by letters. 69. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾa¯n as Process,” 423. 70. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾa¯n as Process,” 423. 71. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾa¯n as Process,” 423. 72. Some of the suras assigned to Group IV on the basis of their verse length (see Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process,” 422f.) had to be reassigned to earlier groups in view of intertextual linkages with other suras: Q 70 was placed in Group II, Q 83 in II, while Q 53 belongs to IV instead of III. 73. Nicolai Sinai, “The Qur’an as Process,” 425f.; the subdivision is limited to Group I. 74. Suras 112, 113, 114, and 1 stand out from the suras that he assigned to the first period, as they arose later. 75. They were first systematically studied and provided a basis in formal criteria in SKMS, 201–203, see now QLA, 185–187; cf. also Nicolai Sinai, “The Qurʾa¯n as Process,” 425–429. 76. On this see the citations in QLA, 225–235; on the perception of the growth of the text as a “canonical process,” see QLA, 24. 77. For their classification, we can now refer to QLA, 185–187. 78. The instances treated by Tilman Nagel, Medinesische Zusätze, are not all to be considered as additions on form-critical grounds. Nagel’s discussion is also interested more in the tradition than in the canonical process. 79. On this see James A. Sanders, Canon and Community; cf. also Christoph Dohmen and Manfred Oeming, Biblischer Kanon—warum und wozu? 80. Heinrich Speyer, Biblische Erzählungen [BEQ], laid the groundwork for this with his indispensable collection of texts, but the developmental history of the qur’anic reception of the Bible has not advanced beyond this. 81. Joseph Witztum, “The Foundation of the House,” clearly displays the fruitfulness of this approach. 82. QLA, 347–417. 83. Thomas Bauer, “The Relevance of Early Arabic Poetry”; QLA, 419–452. 84. On the reception of Psalms 136, see e.g., Angelika Neuwirth, “Qurʾa¯nic Readings of the Psalms”; on Psalms 104 see QLA, 466–469;; on the New Testament parables see QLA, 305–312. 85. See Kirill Dmitriev, “Early Christian Arabic Account of the Creation”; see also Isabel Toral-Niehoff, “Eine poetische Gestaltung des Sündenfalls.” 86. Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts.

36

INTRODUCTION

87. Wolfhart Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und griechische Poetik. 88. See the citations in Wolfhart Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und griechische Poetik, 12–15. 89. The concept originates from Tadeusz Kowalski, see Wolfhart Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und griechische Poetik, 20–24. A far-reaching hypothesis for the explanation of this structural ideal that long held sway in ancient Arabic poetry is put forward by von Grunebaum, “The Spirit of Islam.” 90. On al-Jurja¯nı¯’s discussion of the ‘composition’ (naz.m), see Kermani, Gott ist schön, 253284; Weisweiler, “ʿAbdalqa¯hir al-Curca¯nı¯’s Werk über die Unnachahmlichkeit des Korans.“ Cf. also QLA, 477f. On al-Ba¯qilla¯nı¯’s observations on structure, see Gustav von Grunebaum, A Tenth Century Document of Arabic Literary Theory and Criticism; see also Angelika Neuwirth, “T.arı¯qat al-Ba¯qilla¯nı¯. 91. Thomas Bauer, “The Relevance of Early Arabic Poetry.” 92. SEAP. 93. Daniel A. Madigan, The Qur’an’s Self-Image. 94. Nicolai Sinai, “Qurʾa¯nic Self-Referentiality”; see on this QLA, 65–101. 95. Jan Assmann, Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in den frühen Hochkulturen. 96. Jan Assmann, Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in den frühen Hochkulturen, 89. 97. Jan Assmann, Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in den frühen Hochkulturen, 78. 98. On this see Uri Rubin, “Morning and Evening Prayers,” and QLA, 216–217. 99. Cf. QLA, 217–218. 100. Jan Assmann, Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in den frühen Hochkulturen, 87.

S URA GROU P I

SUBGROUP A Q  93 al-d∙u¯h∙a¯ The Bright Morning [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m]  1  wa-l-d∙uh∙a¯  2  wa-l-layli idha¯ saja¯  3   4   5   6   7   8 

ma¯ waddaʿaka rabbuka wa-ma¯ qala¯ wa-la-l-a¯khiratu khayrun laka mina l-u¯la¯ wa-la-sawfa yuʿt∙ı¯ka rabbuka fa-tard∙a¯ a-lam yajidka yatı¯man fa-a¯wa¯ wa-wajadaka ∙da¯llan fa-hada¯ wa-wajadaka ʿa¯ʾilan fa-aghna¯

 9  fa-amma¯ l-yatı¯ma fa-la¯ taqhar 10  wa-amma¯ l-sa¯ʾila fa-la¯ tanhar 11  wa-amma¯ bi-niʿmati rabbika fa-h∙addith Oath series by the times of day   1  By the bright morning!   2  By the night when it is still! Oath pronouncement: Consolation and recollection of benefits   3 Your Lord has not abandoned you, nor scorned you.   4  The last will be better for you than the first.   5 Your Lord will give to you, and you will be content.   6 Did he not find you an orphan and take you in?   7 Did he not find you erring and guide you?   8 Did he not find you in need and enrich you?   9  10  11 

Paraenesis, moral conclusion Therefore do not oppress the orphan, do not drive away the beggar, and the favor of your Lord, proclaim it!

38

SURA GROUP I

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. Rhyme units (stressed on the penultimate syllable throughout) coincide with units of sense. Oath series with oath pronouncements, including an appeal to recollection (verses 1–8): 3C(C)a¯; Paraenesis: exhortation to ethical conduct (verses 9–11): 3Ccar, altered in the closing verse (verse 12) in the exhortation to liturgical activity: 3Ccith.

COMPOSITION







2 3 3 3

1–2 Oaths by day and night 3–5 Consolation and promise Flashback to the demonstrated benefactions 6–8 9–11 Moral conclusions

STRUCTURAL FORMULAE / PROPORTIONS 2+3/3+3

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 wa-l-d∙uh∙a¯] With ∙duh∙a¯ (“bright morning”), a pre-Islamic sacral time (Rubin 1987) is transferred into the new context of personal piety; ∙duh∙a¯ occurs also elsewhere, coupled to the nighttime, which is likewise repurposed for liturgical actions (Q 91:1: wa-l-shamsi wa-d∙uh∙a¯ha¯, “by the sun and the bright morning”; wal-layli idha¯ yaghsha¯ha¯, “and by the night, when it covers it”). The slightly later sura 73:1–4 explicitly mentions such vigils, while various early verses (Q 92:1–2, 91:1+4, 89:1+4, 81:17–18, as well as 74:33–34) seem at least to reflect them (see Neuwirth 1991b: 18–28). On the text sort of the oath series, see QLA, 168–174. V. 2 wa-l-layli idha¯ saja¯] The night provides an opposition to the day in the social sphere; as a liturgical time (for vigils), it is filled with prayer associations in analogy to ∙du¯h∙a¯ (cf. Q 73:1–4). The Psalter also refers to such liturgically relevant times, cf. Psalms 119:55: zakharti ba-laylah shimkha YHWH wa-eshmerah toratekha (“I recall your name at night, O Lord, and preserve your Torah.”); Psalms 119:62: h∙as∙ot laylah aqum le-hodot lakh (“At midnight I stand in order to praise you”). On the role of psalmic recitation in Christian vigil, which can be presumed to have been familiar to some of the proclaimer’s audience, see Baumstark (1957). V. 3 ma¯ waddaʿaka rabbuka wa-ma¯ qala¯] The very personal relationship that is articulated here between the addressee and his Lord, rabbuka, is expressed exclusively in the consolation suras. This verse also picks up on a predecessor tradition of sacral language; indeed, the experience of God’s unforeseen turn toward a man of piety is a biblical topos, cf. Psalm 22:25: ki lo-vaza we-lo shiqqes∙

SURA GROUP I

39

ʿenut ʿani we-lo histir panav mimennu (“For He has not despised nor abhorred to show mercy on the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from him”). V. 4 wa-la-l-a¯khiratu khayrun laka min l-u¯la¯] Life in the hereafter is designated metonymically, being described “the last,” in opposition to the this-worldly life, which is named as “the first.” The conceptual pairing al-a¯khira/al-u¯la¯ (“the last/ the first,” see already the early Meccan Q 92:13, 87:17, 79:25, 53:25), which is unknown in Arabic before the Qur’an, may have been a new qur’anic coinage. Both concepts have chronological connotations—al-a¯khira may translate the Greek term for the hereafter, to eschaton (“the last”). On the other hand, the related conceptual pairing al-a¯khira/al-dunya¯ (“the last/that which is below, nearest”), deployed to indicate “life in the lower spheres,” is introduced somewhat later, and adds a cosmological association (see Q 87:16, 79:38, 53:29). On this, see QLA, 241–244. Ghassan El-Masri’s (2011) interpretation of al-a¯khira as meaning an entirely inner-worldly time span is difficult to support on the basis of passages from early Meccan texts, even if in this particular usage a relationship to real-world circumstances can be maintained—namely, the adoption of abandoned orphans, easing of the destitution of the poor, and guidance given to those on errant paths. Nonetheless, the meaning of the enjoined behaviors—the adoption of orphans, care for the poor, and the sermon about divine benefits—is more convincingly interpreted, together with belief in the hereafter, as eschatologically motivated admonitions intended for the collective, forming part of the same monastic canon of virtues. V. 5 wa-la-sawfa yuʿt∙ı¯ka rabbuka fa-tard∙a¯] The eschatological promise culminates in the guarantee of spiritual fulfillment (on rid∙a¯ in the early Meccan period, cf. the entirely eschatologically situated evocations of rid∙a¯ in Q  92:21, 101:7, 88:9, and 69:21). Here too, use is made of the language of worship that is already at hand in the Psalms; on the entire verse, see the parallel Psalms 20:5, which, however, cannot be situated eschatologically: yitten lekha khi-levavekha we-khol ʿas∙atkha yemalle (“May He give you what your heart desires, And let all your plans succeed”). V. 6–8 a-lam yajidka yatı¯man fa-a¯wa¯ / wa-wajadaka ∙da¯llan fa-hada¯ / wa-­ wajadaka ʿa¯ʾilan fa-aghna¯] Here also, the recalled life situations of deficiency and the consoling assertion of God’s enduring nearness have precedents already in the Psalms, cf. Psalm 9, of which verses 14–15a likewise formulate the thought figure of duty developed out of experienced benefit: h∙aneneni YHWH reʾeh ʿonyi mi-sonʾay meromemi mi-shaʿare mavet / le-maʿan asapperah kol tehillatekha [. . .] (“Have mercy upon me, O Lord; Behold my affliction [which I suffer] of them that hate me, Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death; That I may show forth all thy praise”); see QLA, 244. Birkeland’s attempt to locate the sura chronologically in the work of the proclaimer is indeed fundamentally promising: “Doubtless, the sura evinces a very early stage of Muhammad’s religious devel-

40

SURA GROUP I

opment, before the day of judgment and particular ethical ideas became central elements of his preaching” (1956: 37). But Birkeland’s detailed identification, which relies on the Islamic tradition (see Raven 2005), of pronouncements that remain general in the text with individual life situations of the proclaimer (in particular, his reading of aghna¯ as attestation of his marriage to Khadı¯ja) have been rightly criticized (see Paret’s review [1975b]); ʿa¯ʾilan and aghna¯ by no means must be interpreted mechanically as denoting different material conditions. It is more probable to interpret aghna¯ as a spiritual reversal of poverty, i.e., a reversal of the lack of inner-worldly ‘prestige’” (h∙asab). Birkeland’s approach, which does not take the older traditions into account, carries the danger of obscuring the psalmically marked, liturgical character of the text, which also produces its claims for general validity. The text is closely bound up intertextually to the psalmic corpus, and is thus text-referential as well as referring to a concrete reality; the personal experiences that are addressed are interpretable on their own as metaphors for the suffering of want in a generally paraenetic sense (see QLA, 241–244). Nonetheless, the sura may also contain biographical references; indeed, the proclaimer’s status as an orphan seems to be alluded to in suras 108 and 102, which follow shortly upon this one, wherein a lack of inner-worldly privilege or nasab, genealogical decent, is balanced out with a spiritual counterpart (see the respective commentary, below). The phrase inna maʿa l-ʿusri yusra¯ (“for with hardship is also ease”), repeated also in the following sura 94:5–6, could also refer to the situation of lack connected to the social isolation experienced by the orphan, offset by the active remembrance of God. V. 9­–11 fa-amma¯ l-yatı¯ma fa-la¯ taqhar / wa-amma¯ l-sa¯ʾila fa-la¯ tanhar / waamma¯ bi-niʿmati rabbika fa-h∙addith] The liberation from the three situations of lack obligates one toward support and solidarity for others who suffer from such a lack. Although the experienced lifting of the lack occurs for the proclaimer most likely as the result of spiritual attention, it is a spur toward the rectification of a material lack for others. The concluding injunction to spread the experienced divine turn of attention through communication may be directed above all to the proclaimer.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History of Development The short sura may be among the first texts of the Qur’an, perhaps the very first overall. It does not, however, stand alone typologically, but rather reflects the scheme that is typical of the cluster of consolation and praise suras, Q 94 al-sharh∙ (“Widening”), Q 97 al-qadr (“Determination”), and Q 108 al-kawthar (“Abundance”): experience of worship (lacking in Q 94 and Q 108), followed by recollection of a lack, culminating in a promise of fulfillment and exhorta-

SURA GROUP I

41

tion to worshipful actions (see QLA, 166–187). The decision to place these suras at the beginning of the corpus is founded on the consideration that the oldest texts were not yet public reading performances but rather reflect personal ‘conversations’ between the prophet, overwhelmed by his calling, and the divine interlocutor. It is consistent with this that the proclaimer, facing the necessity to develop a language for his novel experience of calling to proclamation, orients himself in the earliest texts toward liturgical forms of speech that were then already available, i.e., to psalmic language. The fact that the earliest suras are already poetically formed texts, wherein the transformation of the end-assonance of the verses, breaking with the compulsion of monorhyme poetry, articulates the course of argument, speaks in favor of their actual recitation before a circle of hearers, most likely, considering the exclusively personal form of address, a circle comprising the people closest to the proclaimer.

Content and Structure The sura shows ring composition: it begins with a recollection of an experienced communication between God and man, and ends with an injunction to further communication of the received message of divine nearness. The time al-d∙uh∙a¯ (“the bright morning”), which is mentioned at the opening, is not to be understood as a purely chronometric designation, but rather in the sense of a time that is employed liturgically. Indeed, the opening evocation of the onset of the light of day (d∙uh∙a¯), evokes a time of day that, according to Uri Rubin (1987), was the locus of prayers of thanks both in pagan cultic praxis and during the early phases of the community’s development—a service type to which the sura stands in close relation in terms of content, in that the recollection of received consolation, actualized through recitation, serves as an expression of thanks. The night is mentioned as a second phase of time, coming at the end of the period of light, and most likely spent in vigils. Such vigils, following the model of the monastic midnight service that is spent predominantly in Psalm recitation, may have already preceded the proclamation (see Baumstark 1957). Times relevant to divine services occur also in the Psalter itself (cf. Psalms 119:55, 62, 147). That the experience of prayer exercises resonates among the particular oath objects in the introductory verses of the sura is suggested not least by the oath pronouncement (v. 3–5), wherein a new consciousness is reached: what was clearly an agonizing fear is dispelled: ma¯ waddaʿaka rabbuka wa-ma¯ qala¯ (“Your Lord has not abandoned you, nor scorned you’)—this too is a psalmic topos (see Psalms 22:25). Consoling expectations are raised: wa-la-l-a¯khiratu khayrun laka mina l-u¯la¯ (“The last will be better for you than the first”), culminating in the hoped-for situation of fulfillment (v. 5: rid∙a¯): wa-la-sawfa yuʿt∙ı¯ka rabbuka fa-tard∙a¯ (“Your Lord will give to you, and you will be content”), an idea that also has its

42

SURA GROUP I

parallels in the Psalms, although without the eschatological components. The idea of the hereafter, introduced here for consolation, which in slightly later texts will take on threatening connotations, is thus already involved in the proclamation from the beginning. Further transformations from a state of lack into one of fulfillment are the subject of the paraenetic recollection of verses 6–8: a-lam yajidka yatı¯man fa-a¯wa¯ / wa-wajadaka ∙da¯llan fa-hada¯ / wa-wajadaka ʿa¯ʾilan fa-aghna¯ (“Did he not find you as an orphan and take you in? / Did he not find you erring and guide? / Did he not find you in need and enrich you?”). Even if the liberation from a lack of family support and good reputation is best interpreted in the sense of a spiritual experience, it still also entails the obligation toward charitable actions on behalf of others who suffer from such a lack. Harris Birkeland (1956), who was the first to deal with the early suras, attempted to situate the sura fully within the biography and work of the proclaimer. Birkeland’s position, which agrees with the Islamic tradition, cannot be dismissed immediately on principle; but one cannot ignore its dependence on the early tradition. An overly detailed identification of the individual pronouncements of the sura with concrete biographical stages of the proclaimer’s life would restrict the significance of the text, dismiss its interwovenness with the older monotheistic traditions, and cause the Qur’an to appear from the beginning as a particularist text reserved for the community of Muhammad. The life situations of lack that are recalled, as well as the consoling assertions of God’s enduring nearness, not only reflect lived reality, but are rather, as Rippin (2000a) has already claimed, biblical topoi. According to Rippin’s hypothesis, however, these recollections represent not much more than ‘biblical material’ brought together by later compilers to form the text corpus that was canonized as the Qur’an retrospectively—in this formulation, their function for the communication situation remains unrecognized. However, if we presuppose the emergence of the Qur’an gradually from the proclamation as it progressed in time, the functionality of the biblical topoi becomes more clear. Going beyond Rippin, we can attribute to them real hermeneutic functions (on the ‘revisionist’ view of John Wansbrough, adopted by Rippin, see QLA, 47–50). Indeed, as elements of a transconfessional sacral language, the topoi are of a decisive significance for the shaping of the new, specifically qur’anic, formulation of biblical tradition. Namely, the psalmic topoi that are incorporated into the proclamation as such in the early phases, which later are subject to intensive debate, make it possible for important stages of the qur’anic development to be differentiated and reconstructed. The initially unquestioned model character of the Psalms is reflected not least by Sura 93 as a whole, which closes with a thought figure familiar from the Psalms. The closing verse, an echo of the Psalm of thanksgiving (Psalms 9:14–15a): “Have mercy upon me, O Lord; Behold my affliction [which I suffer] of them

SURA GROUP I

43

that hate me, Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death; That I may show forth all thy praise,” contains the corresponding injunction to derive consequence from one’s personally experienced right guidance—just as verse 9 about the orphan is a consequence of verse 6, and verse 10 about the poor is a consequence of verse 8. It shows how divine right guidance (huda¯, verse 7) will be passed on, by way of recitation: wa-amma¯ bi-niʿmati rabbika fa-h∙addith (“and as for favor of your Lord, proclaim it!”). The circle is therefore closed: with the exhortation to liturgical recitation at the close, reference is made again to the experience evoked at the start, that of divine service at night and early morning, the vigils and ∙duh∙a¯-prayers. Individual thoughts are united into a strict argument in a new way not evidenced in the Psalms: the obligation for ethical conduct, above all proclamation, emerged from experienced benefits. This argument is not formulated simply as a series of exhortations that answer congruently to a series of experiences, but rather obtains its particular tension by way of a folding-over of the sequence, thus requiring the attention of the hearer: verse 9 answers to verse 6, verse 10 to verse 8, and verse 11, with its central call to proclamation, to verse 7.

Speaker-Hearer Interaction; Authorization The text does not mention present hearers. However, it does refer to phenomena relevant to the society of the proclaimer, such as the time designation al∙duh∙a¯, which was already being deployed in a pagan liturgical context, and which appeals to the cultic practices of those present. Also, the dressing of the first pair of verses in the diction of the oath series, which was characteristic of the practice of the ancient Arabian seer, leads us to conclude in favor of a connection to hearers accustomed to this particular sacral language. If one presumes the nightly vigil as a time frame—given its description in Q 73:1 as the privileged time of recitation—then we are perhaps dealing with a performance before a closely limited hearership, in the style of monastic Psalm recitation. Within this practice, then, the group of hearers do not need to be addressed explicitly, as they locate themselves within the type of the pious man that is thematized in the text. Without the introductory oath series, the text might appear to be a personal inner monologue by the proclaimer; but including the oaths, it obtains rather a cultic coding, establishing a virtual connection to other participants in the cult. Both oath objects, al-d∙uh∙a¯ and al-layl, thereby receive new religious connotations, in that they now refer to liturgical times drawn from the sacral experience of those addressed. The text does not seek an authorization for its pronouncements about the nearness of the personal God, reference to whom is consistently in the third person, and who never explicitly speaks of himself. Authority is drawn implicitly,

44

SURA GROUP I

rather, from the poetic diction and from the application of pre-Islamic textual strategies.

REFERENCES Baumstark, Anton (1957): Nocturna Laus; Bell, Richard (1937–1939): The Qur’an: Translated, with a Critical Re-arrangement of the Surahs; Birkeland, Harris (1956): The Lord Guideth (see also the review by Rudi Paret: “Leitgedanken in Mohammeds frühesten Verkündigungen; Böwering, Gerhard (2004): “Prayer”; Böwering, Gerhard (2004): “Time and the Qur’an”; Cuypers, Michel (2000): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 92 à 98”; Guenther, Sebastian (2002): “Day, Times of”; Khoury, Adel Theodor (2001): Der Koran. Arabisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und wissenschaftlicher Kommentar; Masri, Ghassan, El- (2011): “Ad-dunya¯ and ala¯khirah”; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (1991): “Der Horizont der Offenbarung“; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor, and Friedrich Schwally (1909): GdQ2 I; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Raven, Wim (2005): “Sira and the Qur’an”; Rippin, Andrew (2000a): “‘Desiring the Face of God’”; Rubin, Uri (1987): “Morning and Evening Prayers.”

Q  94 al-sharh∙ The Widening [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 

a-lam nashrah∙ laka ∙sadrak wa-wad∙aʿna¯ ʿanka wizrak alladhı¯ anqad∙a z∙ahrak wa-rafaʿna¯ laka dhikrak fa-inna maʿa l-ʿusri yusra¯ inna maʿa l-ʿusri yusra¯ fa-idha¯ faraghta fa-ns∙ab wa-ila¯ rabbika fa-rghab

1 Have we not widened your breast 2  and removed your burden 3  which weighed down your neck, 4  and raised your remembrance? 5  For with hardship is also ease 6  with hardship is also ease. 7 If you are free now, labor on 8  and strive after your Lord!

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. The rhyme schemes change along with units of sense: consoling question (v. 1–4): 2CC3k; consequence to be drawn from this (v. 5–6):

SURA GROUP I

45

2CCa¯; required thanks (v. 7–8): 2CC3b. The first and last rhyme schemes are related.

COMPOSITION



4 [ ⎧ 2 [ 4 ⎪ ⎩ 2 [

1–4 Questions to the proclaimer (with consoling function) 5–6 Repeated pronouncement of consolation 7–8 Exhortation to askesis

STRUCTURAL FORMULA / PROPORTIONS 4+2+2

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 a-lam nashrah∙ laka ∙sadrak] The verse is generally understood in relation to the prophet’s biography. The prophet biography, the Sira, reports in detail the “opening of the breast” (shaqq/sharh∙ al-s∙adr) in a physical sense, in the context of the story of Muhammad’s childhood. There, it constitutes the unique testimony for the conception of his predetermined selection (see Ibn Ish∙a¯q 1936: 166 and Guillaume 1955: 72). The episode is also transmitted correspondingly in the Hadith works (see the detailed tradition-critical study by Rubin 1995: 59–65). It is unclear, however, whether the narratively unfolded legend of a prophet initiation carried out by way of a physical procedure, which appears in the earliest traditions as an incision of the breast in order release impurity, is derived from the Qur’an’s text and thus represents a ‘vertative reading’ of the metaphor in Q 94:1, or whether—as Rubin maintains based on a comparison of the ­traditions—it emerged independently and was only secondarily united with the sura. The connection of the legend to Q 94:1 can be attested in exegesis from the second Islamic century on (see Rubin 1995: 70f.) and forms the nucleus of an initiation myth that is widespread in the asba¯b al-nuzu¯l and prophet vita literature (see Forster 2010). With Josef Horovitz (1918), one can best account for its emergence as an incorporation of older legend traditions into the developing vita of the prophet. The “widening of the breast” in the Qur’an itself—like the following image of the “unburdening of the back”—is no more than a metaphor for a psychical experience, which can best be understood as a newly achieved ‘opening toward God’s presence.’ The same image recurs in the narrative of Moses’s calling (Q 20:25), where Moses prays for the “widening of his breast,” here clearly to be understood in the sense of a freeing from fear. Indeed, ∙sadr does not exclusively denote the area of the body, but is already understood in ancient Arabic poetry as the seat of psychic processes and characteristics, largely interchangeable with

46

SURA GROUP I

qalb (“heart”; see Seidensticker 1992: 116–127). In later suras, the phrase comes to stand idiomatically for the divine predisposition of humanity toward belief or unbelief (see the late Meccan Q 16:106, 39:22, 6:125)—probably in relation to the state of belief reached by the two prophets through the experience of freeing. The widening of the breast, together with the consequent unburdening of the back, which has a psalmic correspondence, is an immediately understandable religious metaphor. The attempt undertaken by Birkeland (1955) to provide the entire sura with an exclusively ‘historical reading,’ and to assign to it details from the prophet biographies, falls short. V. 2–3 wa-wad∙aʿna¯ ʿanka wizrak / alladhı¯ anqad∙ z∙ahrak] The two verses about hardship are closely bound together audibly by the repetition of the emphatic apical d∙ from wad∙aʿna¯ in anqad∙a, followed by the likewise emphatic dental z∙ in z∙ahrak. They thus contrast audibly to the beginning verse concerning the disburdening, which does not have these sounds. The “unburdening of the back” is an image already introduced in the Psalms, cf. Psalms 81:7a: hasiroti mi-sevel shikhmo (“I have released your neck from the burdens”). The sura describes a successive release and reburdening: the addressed is released from a burden (v. 2–3: wizr), which is not further defined, then made aware of his ease (v. 5–6: yusr, v. 7: faraghta), which, however, obligates him to take upon himself new, ascetic endeavors. Qur’anic metaphors have been studied only sporadically up to now, see Lohmann (1966), Sabbagh (1943), Torrey (1892), cf. Heath (2003). V. 4 wa-rafaʿna¯ laka dhikrak] While the verse could be considered, analogously with the preceding verses, to be concerned primarily with the situation of the proclaimer, the image of the ‘straightening up’ could also be understood, as in the Psalm, to refer to the ‘you’ of an exemplary pious figure, cf. Psalms 145:14: somekh YHWH le-khol ha-nofelim we-zoqef le-khol ha-kefufim (“The Lord lifts all who fall, and guides all who are bent.”) Dhikr is translated by Paret as “renown” (KU, 432), and by Bobzin as “calling” (2010: 573). In ancient Arabic poetry, however, it does not yet occur in the sense of “renown” but only in that of “recollection, remembrance” (cf., for example, the instances of dhikr in Zuhayr cited in SEAP, 476). The preservation and enhancement of renown (h∙asab) is a central issue in pagan-heroic thought (cf. Izutsu 1966: 68f.). In the sura, however, the thought seems to be less of inner-worldly renown than of the special status of the addressed before God, cf. Psalms 8:5: ma enosh ki tizkerennu u-ven adam ki tifqedennu (“What is the man, that you think is yours, the Son of man, that you adopt as your own?” and positively in the Jewish apocryphon of the first century AD, 4 Ezra 10:57: “for you are more blessed than many, you were named before the most high as few others.” In this sense it is translated as “remembrance,” cf. on this the reinterpretation of ʿa¯ʾila and aghna¯ from “materially in need” or “rich” to “spiritually in need” and “spiritually rich,” which is achieved most probably for Q 103.

SURA GROUP I

47

V. 5–6 fa-inna maʿa l-ʿusri yusra¯ / inna maʿa l-ʿusri yusra¯] The two words ʿusr and yusr, which not only rhyme but also begin with the same consonant, indicate opposites. Yet their nearly identical articulation indicates something shared; this serves here to render credible the redemption and replacement of what is difficult by what is easy. The combination of contraries YSR/ʿSR occurs already in ancient Arabic poetry: according to a verse of T∙arafa (19:63, see SEAP, 727), it is obligatory for the aysa¯r, the “untroubled,” to alleviate the “hardship” (ʿusr) of the poor (cf. also the early Islamic Abu¯ S∙akhr al-Hudhalı¯, Dmitriev 2008: 208f., VIII.28). The action expected of heroes in poetry recurs in the sura as a divine promise. A material lightening is also turned into a spiritual one. V. 7 fa-idha¯ faraghta fa-ns∙ab] Concluding exhortations, with the injunction to worship, become a topos of qurʾanic speech in the early Meccan period (see Q 96:19, 93:11, somewhat later also Q 69:52, cf. QLA, 182–184). V. 8 wa-ila¯ rabbika fa-rghab] Where elsewhere certain ascetic exercises are enjoined at the end of suras, the two final verses of the sura here restrict themselves to the injunction of an ascetic attitude (see Neuwirth 1996). The audible affinity of faraghta from v. 7 with fa-rghab, which contributes subliminally to the binding of the assertion of freedom to the instruction of a new attitude, is difficult to miss.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History of Development Q 94 is a further monothematic consolation sura, which like Q 93 makes clear use of psalmic language and terminology: ‘the lightening of spiritual burden,’ ‘remembrance of God,’ i.e., ‘repute before God.’ The benefits pronounced in first-person plural speech and interrogative form by the divine voice pertain in the first instance to the inner disposition of the addressee, who, with his newly gained opening toward the divine address, is liberated recognizably from a troubling worry—a feeling of freeing that is also expressed by sura Q 93, which perhaps directly preceded it. The received benefits oblige him—similarly to the divine attentions thematized in Q 93—to acts of gratitude, which do not consist in social actions as in Q  93, but rather in acts of worship. Between these two ideas, which are maintained also with closely related rhymes in ∙sadrak/wizrak, z∙ahrak/dhikrak, and fa-ns∙ab/fa-rghab, stands a gnomic pronouncement that is particularly effective due to its repeated articulation (v. 5–6), with its own rhyme in yusra¯ that, by delaying the injunction of liturgical activity (v. 7–8), gives the final pronouncement particular weight (see SKMS, 239). Although a definite judgment about the relative position of the two suras cannot be offered with certainty, Q 94 does seem to resume in more abstract form the concrete calls toward remembrance of Q 94. The recognition implicit in dhikr (“remembrance”) follows further on the idea of the deficient fate the orphan elevated by

48

SURA GROUP I

the ­attention of God in Q 93:6, now in the spiritual sense of an elevation of the divine recognition familiar from the Psalms.

Content and Structure Birkeland (1956: 38–55), following the Islamic tradition, interprets the sura exclusively as evidence of the prophet’s biography. But, as Rippin (2000b) emphasizes, the text also expresses in general terms a spiritual experience of the pious man that is not unfamiliar. Both references, to the proclaimer and to the pious man, should be maintained. Q 93 offered a very similar argumentation, wherein the pronouncement—a consolation and injunction to derive certain obligations from received benefits—is authorized by way of introductory oaths by the times of day. In Q 94 such a ‘poetic authorization’ is omitted, and in its place comes the ‘apodictic authorization’ through God’s first-person plural speech. Prerogatives of the ancient Arab hero, such as the alleviation of the hardships of the underprivileged (taysı¯r al-ʿusr) are perceived as belonging to the divine speaker himself, while the emphasis on the striving for reputation (h∙asab) is relocated from the inner-worldly sphere to the God-human relation (dhikr). If one interprets the consolation suras primarily as relating to the personal situation of the proclaimer, and then secondarily as directed to the pious man, then one can read a particular personal turn of attention in the figure of the divine question a-lam nashrah∙ etc. (“have we not widened your breast . . .?”), and Q 93:6ff. (a-lam yajidka yatı¯man etc., “did we not find you an orphan . . .?”), a turn that goes beyond the corresponding gnomic assertion in the Psalms of God’s setting right of the good man in need. It culminates in the guarantee of lightening, the pledge that the inner-worldly lack will be lifted spiritually, and beyond that, in the concrete injunction to the addressee to perform certain actions. Thus, an ancient Arab ambition that was socially maintained, the increase of reputation, is transferred into the sphere of the human-God relation.

Speaker-Hearer Interaction; Authorization The sura, like Q 108 (al-kawthar) does not contain the authorization through oaths that introduces Q 93 (al-d∙uh∙a¯); the authorization of the text stems instead from its direct divine speech in the first-person plural, directed to the individual pious man, without indicating the presence of further hearers. The sura is exclusively a dialogue between a speaker an addressee addressed as ‘you.’ Nonetheless, it concludes in the injunction to those addressed to give testimony before the hearers.

REFERENCES Birkeland, Harris (1955): The Opening of Muhammed’s Breast; Birkeland, Harris (1956): The Lord Guideth; Bobzin, Hartmut (2010): Der Koran; Cuypers,

SURA GROUP I

49

Michel (2000): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 92 à 98“; Dmitriev, Kirill (2008): Das poetische Werk des Abu¯ S∙aḫr al-Huḏalı¯; Heath, Peter (2003): “Metaphor”; Horovitz, Josef (1918): “Muhammeds Himmelfahrt”; Izutsu, Toshihiko (1966): Ethico-Religious Concepts; Lohmann, Theodor (1966): “Die Gleichnisreden Muhammeds”; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor, and Friedrich Schwally (1909): GdQ2 I; Paret, Rudi (1966/1971): KÜ; Rippin, Andrew (2000b): “Muhammad in the Qur’an”; Rubin, Uri (1995): The Eye of the Beholder; Seidensticker, Tilman (1992): Altarabisch “Herz.”

Q  97 al-qadr The Determination [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  inna¯ anzalna¯hu fı¯ laylati l-qadr 2  wa-ma¯ adra¯ka ma¯ laylatu l-qadr 3  laylatu l-qadri khayrun min alfi shahr 4  tanazzalu l-mala¯ʾikatu wa-l-ru¯h∙u fı¯ha¯     bi-idhni rabbihim min kulli amr 5  sala¯mun hiya h∙atta¯ mat∙laʿi l-fajr 1 We sent it down on the night of determination. 2 Do you know what the night of determination is? 3  The night of determination is better than a thousand months. 4   The angels and the spirit descend in it,    by permission of their Lord in every matter. 5  Blessing it is until the break of dawn!

LITERARY ANALYSIS The mention of laylat al-qadr (“night of determination”) has raised questions as to the chronological assignment of the sura. Wagtendonk (1968; 2002), who evaluates the sura in terms of the prophetic biography, assumes a Medinan origin: “Muhammad would have designated the night of the 27th Rajab as the night of his (first) revelation, after he abrogated the ʿA¯shu¯ra¯ʾ day, and before the battle of Badr” (Wagtendonk 1968: 113; see KKK, 517). This ordering is not confirmed by the structure, as all elements of the sura correspond to early Meccan conventions; for the usage of inna¯ at the sura beginning, see Q 104; for the rhetorical question: 104:4ff., 101:1ff., 90:11ff., 8 3:7ff., 69:1ff., 56:27–28.41–42; for the concluding exclamation: 55:78. The content, too, does not need to refer to later cult politics—this is equally so for the late Meccan sura 44:1–4 (cf. SKMS, 157), which also refers to laylat al-qadr as a time of revelation, see in the verse c­ ommentary. Schwally claims that the sura, as well as Q  108, Q  48 (middle Meccan), and Q 71 (Medinan), “may have lost [its] original beginning” (see GdQ2 I, 92).

50

SURA GROUP I

The short sura consists of single-membered verses. Only the overlong verse 4 falls outside of the sura’s structural scheme of single-membered verses. Not only does the proviso phrase bi-idhni rabbihim (“with the permission of their Lord”) refer to a perception of the angels that already bears theological reflection, but also the mentioning of the ru¯h∙ (‘spirit’) may—as in the addition 78:38 and in 70:4—refer (see Webb 2001) to the function of the bringing down of the message, which is later explicitly assigned to them (see the middle Meccan verse 19:17), so that one could view the entire verse as a later interpretation with the purpose of explaining the connection between revelation (v. 1) and the sacral night (v. 1–3) (see SKMS, 231). The proviso phrase is lacking in the otherwise corresponding verse in Q 70:4, which is likewise a later expansion of its sura. The rhyme throughout is 3CCr.

VARIATIONS IN VERSE DIVISIONS Damascus and Mecca insert a verse ending within v. 3, after qadr, which, however, would divide the subject and predicate and atomize the verse (see SKMS, 34).

COMPOSITION





3 [

1 Pronouncement of the sending down of God’s word 2 Rhetorical Question 3–5 Answer; v. 4 is a later addition

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 inna¯ anzalna¯hu fı¯ laylati l-qadr] Against Nöldeke/Schwally (GdQ2 I, 92), the suffix -hu in anzalna¯hu, which lacks a referent, does not necessarily indicate a now-lost beginning of the sura; rather, the ‘free-floating personal pronoun’ is prevalent in the early Meccan period as a strongly emphasized Qur’an reference; it almost always refers to the transcendent message actualized through the recitation (cf. later Q 74:54: kalla¯ innahu tadhkirah, “and it is indeed a warning,” and 69:40: innahu la-qawlu rasu¯lin karı¯m, “it is the word of a noble messenger,” and frequently elsewhere). Here, however, the concept qurʾa¯n itself in the sense of “reading” (from a heavenly scripture) cannot yet be assumed; it is established first in suras that come somewhat later, where the injunction to “read” occurs alongside mention of the heavenly source, i.e., in Q 87 and 96. It thus cannot relate to the sending down of texts, but rather to the reception of inspiration in the sense of an empowerment to proclaim the word of God, which “descends” from the transcendent world. The ceremonial embedding of the reception of inspiration into a holy time within the cultically elevated month of Rajab, during which the “Night of Determination” fell in the period before the Medinan

SURA GROUP I

51

calendar reform (see Wellhausen 1897: 98–100 and Kister 1971), is only reasonable given the great significance attributed to the proclamation. The text thus appears most likely to indicate an early Meccan context. The identification of the laylat al-qadr (“Night of Determination”) as a time of inspiration already attests to the reinterpretation of a seasonal ritual into a festival of exclusively scriptural commemoration (cf. Lohmann 1969), a reinterpretation that will be fully achieved in the adoption of this time as the month Ramadan. The degree to which the laylat al-qadr can already be assumed to have a monotheistic meaning in the pre-qur’anic period cannot be entirely determined—it corresponds to the ‘cosmically elevated night,’ and also designates the Jewish New Year festival and Pesach holiday, as well as Easter (see Neuwirth 2002a), while also showing shared characteristics with Christmas night. The communication of the message is indicated with the verb anzala (“to send down”) as a “sending down” for the first time in this text (see Wild 1996 and Madigan 2001). Such usages of inna¯ anzalna¯(hu) at sura beginnings are attested elsewhere first in the middle and late Meccan periods (see Q 12:2, 44:3); Wild (1996: 139) lists further late Meccan occurrences: Q 39:1, 40:2, 41:2.4, 5:2, 46:2. As an image for the handing over of the message, tanzı¯lun min rabbi l-ʿa¯lamı¯n (“It is a sending down from the Lord of the Worlds!”) occurs already in the early Meccan period in Q 69:43 and 56:69. The development of the image of the divine “sending down” of God’s word or, more concretely, of the power to communicate this word of God, may be a new casting of the ancient mythic scenario of the ‘descending’ of the jinns onto the poets with supernatural speech, and is not necessarily an absolutely spontaneous theological coinage of the Qur’an (see QLA, 65–73). Already in Q 26:121ff., in contrast to the tanazzul (“descent”) of the angels in Q 97, there is speech of a tanazzul of the shayt∙a¯ns, a polemical text that fends off the insinuation of a demonic inspiration on the part of the proclaimer (Q 69:43). This pre-Islamic context could have influenced the early understanding of the concept of tanzı¯l. Nas∙r H ∙ a¯mid Abu¯ Zayd (1990: 38–40) also refers to the pre-Islamic inspiration by jinns, demons, in the context of his revision of the traditional concept of revelation (cf. Kermani 1996). On the other hand, the image of the coming down of the word of God also assumes a central place in the Christian tradition; the Nicene creed gives the formulation: “katelthonta ek to¯n ourano¯n,” nazala mina l-sama¯ʾ. In this formulation, which would later become stereotyped, there may be a reflex to an earlier logos theology (see QLA, 89–92). It is not the ‘text’ that comes down, but the ‘power’ to communicate the divine word. That the Qur’an contains a logos theology comes out more clearly from the somewhat later sura 55 (see the commentary to Q 55:1–4). V. 2 wa-ma¯ adra¯ka ma¯ laylatu l-qadr] It is possible that the distinguished night that fell in the month of Rajab was not known unambiguously in the pagan context as laylat al-qadr, and thus an explanation was required (see Wellhausen

52

SURA GROUP I

1897: 98–100). The name laylat al-qadr makes clear reference to divine decisions, as they are bound up particularly to the Jewish New Year and the ten days of repentance that follow it (yamim noraʾim), leading up to the Day of Repentance, Yom Kippur, on which the final divine judgment on man’s passage into the new year then occurs (see Zobel 1936: 55–58). V. 3 laylatu l-qadri khayrun min alfi shahr] The conception of a divine time, relativizing the time of man, is biblical, cf. Psalms 84:11: ki ∙tov yom ba-h∙as∙erekha me-alef (“then a day in your court is better than a thousand”; see BEQ, 449); Psalms 90:4: ki elef shanim be-ʿenekha ke-yom etmol ki yaʿavor we-ashmurah valaylah, “then a thousand years are before you like a day, which passes, and a single vigil,” cf. also Q 32:5 (late Meccan): yudabbiru l-amra mina l-sama¯ʾi ila¯ l-ard∙i thumma yaʿruju ilayhi fı¯ yawmin ka¯na miqda¯ruhu alfa sanatin mimma¯ taʿuddu¯n, “he directs the matter from heaven to earth, then it goes back up to him—in a day whose measure is a thousand years by your counting,” see BEQ  25. In Q 70:4, allusion is made to an elevated night specified to have a duration of 50,000 years. In Q 97, the specification of the 1,000 months may relate to the idea of the movement of the angels from the earth to the heavens, which is measured as 500 years in the Jewish Haggada (see Speyer, BEQ 25, which cites bPesah∙im 94a and other sources). In the frame of the original text, without the following biblically marked interpretation, the night remains only a cosmically elevated event. V. 4 tanazzalu l-mala¯ʾikatu wa-l-ru¯h∙u fı¯ha¯ bi-idhni rabbihim min kulli amr] The epiphany of angels—a topos in postbiblical literature since Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:10–17)—is a particularly frequent image in Christian theology and iconography; one thinks of Christmas, already suggested by Bell as a precedent (Luke 2:10), an association from which Luxenberg (2005) hastily concludes the existence of a “Christian origin” for sura 97 from a Christmas hymn. Rather, the descent of angels accompanies the new ‘birth event,’ which in the Qur’an corresponds typologically to the birth of Christ, the descent of the qurʾa¯n logos (see QLA, 66–68). The image presupposes the late antique, hierarchically structured world image that also prevailed in the ancient Christian tradition, “with a wide basis in the material and sensible-vegetative world, with an endowment of spirit increasing through stages up to the sublime pinnacle of the pure spirit, the highest being, God. . . . The divine expression of intention occurs through the bearers of revelation and authority, in part directly and in part by means of created powers, toward those that are accounted angels, being subordinated pure spirits” (Vorgrimler 1991: 13). The concrete image goes back ultimately to the epiphany seen by Jacob, in which angels climb and descend upon a ladder up to heaven (Genesis 28:10–17), a text that is present widely in the eastern church as an allegorical image for Mary. Mary is praised in ancient hymns as the ladder to heaven; see the Akathistos Hymn, 3, Stasis, V. 10f.: Chaire klimax epouranie¯ di he¯s katebe¯ Theos / chaire gephyra metagousa tous ek ge¯s pros ouranon (“Hail, ladder of

SURA GROUP I

53

heaven, by which God has descended, hail, bridge, which bears the earthly up to heaven.”), cf. Peltoma (2001: 4f.); the Jacob’s ladder text Genesis 28 is one of the three liturgical readings in the liturgy of the Feast of the Assumption. This allegorical interpretation of the scene is not reflected in the sura, but the image of the heavenly ladder may have been especially common among monotheistic men of piety, given its Christological significance. On the understanding of al-ru¯h∙ as a messenger angel, which should be presupposed here and which is made explicit in the middle Meccan sura 19:17, see also the middle Meccan additions to the early Meccan suras (Q 78:38, 70:4), and later citations such as 26:193 and 17:25 (cf. Webb 2001; Sells 2005); on its naming as al-ru¯h∙ cf. the role of the holy spirit in the Nicene creed, grasped as “that which has spoken through the prophets,” to lale¯san dia to¯n prophe¯to¯n, al-na¯∙tiq bi-l-anbiya¯ʾ. The phrase min kulli amr (“in every matter”) certainly does not mean, as Paret (KÜ, 514) claims, “sheer being of the Logos”; al-qurʾa¯n itself, rather, is what corresponds to the Logos (see QLA, 65–103). The phrase should refer to the ordering of the angels—in analogue to the clearly expressed late Meccan parallel text in Q 44:3ff. There it states, without a mention of the angels: inna¯ anzalna¯hu fı¯ laylatin muba¯rakatin inna¯ kunna¯ mundhirı¯n / fı¯ha¯ yufraqu kullu amrin h∙akı¯m / amran min ʿindina¯ inna¯ kunna¯ mursilı¯n (“We have sent it down on a blessed night, it is we who give warning. In it every wise command is decided, in our decree, it is we who send envoys.”) One should then understand min in the sense of the more frequent fı¯, “in any command of God.” V. 5 sala¯mun hiya h∙atta¯ mat∙laʿi l-fajr] The verse seems to reflect the doxology linked to Christmas eve, Luke 2:14: kai epi ge¯s eire¯ne¯ (“and peace on Earth”). In contrast to the Christian scenario, however, the cosmological relevance of laylat al-qadr remains of highest significance, as it is recalled again at the conclusion of the sura. Michael Sells (1991) correctly emphasizes that the rising movement emphasized here (mat∙laʿ), creates an oppositional movement against the sending down or descent recorded earlier in v. 1.4, so that the exchange between heaven and earth occurs through channels of communication operating simultaneously downwards and upwards.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History of Development Similarly to the consolation suras Q 108 (al-kawthar) and Q 94 (al-sharh∙), the sura begins immediately with an inna¯ pronouncement that is of personal relevance to the proclaimer. Although it does not offer consolation, but rather praises a cosmically distinguished night as the time of revelation, it may nonetheless belong to the beginning of the proclamation; for the text lacks any testimony of an interaction occurring outside of the God-human communication. As the

54

SURA GROUP I

sura makes no reference to an already-proclaimed text as an authority, and also thematizes the affectivity of the proclaimer, it is not possible to make an unambiguous placement of the text. Nonetheless, with Michael Sells (1991: 243), one can point to the artful formation characteristic for early Mecca, and specifically the teaching questions that were in use very early and fell out of use later (cf. Q 101:1–3.4–11, 90:12–16, 86:2–3; see QLA, 184–185), as evidence for the earliness of the sura. The fact that the core text of the sura required an early clarifying expansion, at the latest in the middle Meccan period, also shows that the sura is early. If one accepts this placement of the sura immediately following the consolation suras, then the -hu will be seen less to refer to the concrete recitation or its text, and rather to refer to the affective presence of the divine inspiration that empowers the proclaimer to perform his new function—a manifestation of the logos, the word of God hypostasized in the recited text (see QLA, 89–92).

Content and Structure As a ‘praise sura,’ the sura is otherwise close to the cluster of consolation suras. For although the proclaimer is not addressed directly in his personal affective state, Q 97 concerns the central point of his work: the power being granted to him to communicate the qurʾa¯n. The time-frame of this communication, the laylat al-qadr (“night of determination“), which is bound up for him with a wondrous ‘opening of the heavens,’ supplies the key word for a teaching question (see QLA, 184–185). The further enigmatizing of what was perhaps not known to the hearers by the name laylat al-qadr by means of a teaching question— a form employed elsewhere almost exclusively for threatening and unknown phenomena (as in e.g., Q 101:1–3)—builds the tension, which is not released by the hyperbolic praising of the night (v. 3) and the closing call (v. 5) alone. Only the later verse (v. 4), with the statement of the rank, fixed content, and the special status of the laylat al-qadr, provides the expected solution to the riddle. The clarifying addition, which probably occurred in the middle Meccan period, is no mere expansion, but rather a waymarker toward a theologically deepened understanding of the text. For while the laylat al-qadr is praised hymnically in the core text of v. 1–3 and 5, the occasion of its elevation is the event of communication that is newly bound up with it, which takes place, or is perhaps begun, on this night. In the addition v. 4, this event is connected to its biblically stylized accompanying phenomena: angels that apparently descend on a track comparable to Jacob’s ladder (cf. Q 70:4), with a messenger angel (al-ru¯h∙) among them. The laylat al-qadr, initially located in the month of Rajab that was central to ancient Arabian cult, is thereby ‘filled up’ with revelation theology. In the context of this sura, the communication of the word awakens associations with the logos conception that circulated widely in late antiquity in Judaism and Christianity (see QLA, 89–92). These associations are later taken up in

SURA GROUP I

55

Q 55:1–4 and, in the middle Meccan period, in Q 44:1–5, without the connection to older traditions being explicitly unfolded. The word of God is introduced at the outset only through a grammatical function word, but it nonetheless stands at the center of the verse and remains present through the sura, in so far as the fixed content of the laylat al-qadr—clarified in the additional verse as a cosmic opening that allows the angels, and thus also the bringers of the message, to move freely between heaven and earth—is connected closely to the process of communication that occurs also elsewhere preferably at night (see the somewhat later sura 74:1–6). The closing verse evokes the break of day as a further prayer time (see QLA, 214f.), and thus marks a resumption of the idea of the communication between God and humanity in the reception of the word of God in the beginning verse. The last words of the sura, h∙atta¯ mat∙laʿi l-fajr (“until the he break of dawn”) describe a forward-directed movement that reverses the movement described in the sura, that of the sending down of the logos and the descent of the angels. A kind of osmotic exchange between heaven and earth is thus depicted (cf. Sells 1991: 253).

Speaker-Hearer Interaction; Authorization The sura authorizes itself not only through first-person plural divine speech but also through its reference to the festival, and thus its call to the cultural memory of the hearers. A reevaluation of the laylat al-qadr thereby occurs, in analogue to the theological reinterpretation of the local Meccan tradition or local institutions in the following, likewise very early, suras 105 (al-fı¯l) and 106 (Quraysh). The opening with inna¯ anzalna¯hu (“we sent it down”) may presuppose the expectations of hearers in relation to the message’s process of the communication, which is now bound up to a seasonally demarcated night. Verse 4, a later addition, fulfills the hearers’ expectations that were left open in the original text, for the concrete scenario of the communication of the message addressed in v. 1. It also provides an explicit new interpretation of the holy night as a time of the receipt of revelation. This receipt of revelation is ensured as an exclusively divine work by the proviso formula bi-idhni rabbihim (“with the permission of their Lord”). The naming of the ru¯h∙ (“spirit”) adds the mention of the messenger angel, a central figure for the communication of the revelation, which became identified with the ru¯h∙ in the middle Meccan period (see Q 19:17).

REFERENCES Abu Zayd, Nasr Hamid (1990): Mafhu¯m al-nas∙∙s; Bell, Richard (1991): A Commentary on the Qur’an; Birkeland (1956): The Lord Guideth; Böwering, Gerhard (2001): “Chronology and the Qur’an”; Böwering, Gerhard (2005): “Time”; Cuypers, Michel (2000): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 92 à 98“; Goitein, Shlomo Dov (1966): “Ramadan, the Muslim Month of Fasting”; Horovitz,

56

SURA GROUP I

­Josef (1926): KU; Jeffery, Arthur (1938): The Foreign Vocabulary; Kermani, Navid (1996): Offenbarung als Kommunikation; Kister, Jacob M. (1971): “Rajab Is the Month of God”; Lohmann, Theodor (1969): “Die Nacht al-Qadr”; Luxenberg, Christoph (2005): “Weihnachten im Koran”; Madigan, Daniel (2001): “Book”; Marcotte, Roxanne D. (2003): “Night of Power”; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2001): “Cosmology”; Neuwirth, Angelika (2004): “Gewalttexte”; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor, and Friedrich Schwally (1909): QdQ2 II; Paret, Rudi (1966): KÜ; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Peltoma, Leena-Mari (2001): The Image of the Virgin; Plessner, Martin M. (1995): “Ramadan”; Sells, Michael (2001): “Ascension”; Sells, Michael (2005): “Spirit”; Vorgrimler, Herbert (1991): Wiederkehr der Engel?; Wagtendonk, Kees (1968): Fasting in the Koran; Wagtendonk, Kees (2002): “Fasting”; Wagtendonk, Kees (2005): “Vigil”; Webb, Gisela (2001): “Angel”; Wellhausen, Julius (1897): Reste altarabischen Heidentums; Wiederholt, Lutz (2003): “Morning”; Wild, Stefan (1996): “We Have Sent Down to Thee the Book with the Truth”; Zobel, Moritz (1936): Jahr des Juden.

Q  108 al-kawthar Abundance [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  inna¯ aʿt∙ayna¯ka l-kawthar 2 fa-s∙alli li-rabbika wa-nh∙ar 3  inna sha¯niʾaka huwa l-abtar 1 Indeed, we give you abundance! 2  So pray to your Lord and sacrifice! 3  The one who hates you is the one cut off.

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. According to GDQ2 I, 92, the sura may have “lost its original beginning . . . like the other suras . . . beginning with inna¯ (Q 48, 71, 97).” The rhyme throughout is in 3CC3r.

COMPOSITION





1 1 1

1 Affirmation of a benefit provided 2 Exhortation to worship 3 Conferral of reproach against an enemy

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 inna¯ aʿt∙ayna¯ka l-kawthar] The hapaxlegomenon kawthar, which is unusual morphologically, is striking. Kawthar is a rare fawʿal form (see GVGS

SURA GROUP I

57

II, 344), which also occurs, however, in ancient Arabic poetry (cf. Ibn Hisha¯m 1858: 261; on this see Horovitz 1978 and WKAS I, 66). Luxenberg (2000: 271), however, sees in kawthar an Arabization of the Syriac lexeme ku¯tha¯ra¯ (“constancy”). This interpretation is already excluded formally in view of the definite form al-kawthar, cf. as examples of the indeterminate designation of virtues Q 19:12b–14: wa-h∙ana¯nan min ladunna¯ wa-zaka¯tan wa-ka¯na taqı¯ya¯ (“we gave to him kindness from us and purity . . . and reverence toward his parents”). Rather, al-kawthar belongs to the numerous cases in the early Meccan suras of concepts left in enigmatic form, mostly pertaining to the eschatological domain, such as ha¯wiya (Q 101:9), zaba¯niya (Q 96:18), h∙ut∙ama (Q 104:5), for which the meanings of the roots (“to fall,” “to push away,” “to crush”) indicate the direction of the interpretation, while allowing for ambiguity, so that the pronouncement gains gravity through the persistent need of interpretation. The sura beginning with the immediate affirmation of a benefit follows the scheme of inna¯ anzalna¯hu fı¯ laylati l-qadr (“we sent it down in the night of determination,” Q 97:1) and the like. The perfect form aʿt∙ayna¯ may be used to indicate a continuing action. In view of the communication between God and humanity reflected here, the bestowal itself here pertains not to “richness in earthly goods,” as Birkeland (1955: 56–99) and after him Paret (1957: 525f.) assume, but rather, in the sense of a-lam nashrah∙ laka ∙sadrak (“have we not expanded for you your breast,” Q 94:1), to the communication of an inner deliverance, a spiritual abundance. The noun kawthar is apparently a derivation from KThR in the rare intensive form fawʿal; it stands succinctly for a divine turning of attention that is apparently experienced as significant. V. 2 fa-s∙alli li-rabbika wa-nh∙ar] Ancient Arab ‘pagan’ rites are considered by the proclaimer to be obligatory also elsewhere (see Q 107: 4–6 [s∙ala¯h]). The performance of sacrificial rites located at the Kaʿba has been demonstrated by Rubin (1999). At the same time, however, the verse can also be interpreted textreferentially; indeed, sacrifices as exercises of piety are also a Psalmic topos, cf. Psalms 4:6: zivh∙u zivh∙e ∙sedeq u-vit∙h∙u el-YHWH (“offer the proper sacrifices, and trust in the Lord”). Luxenberg’s emendation (2000: 274) of wa-nh∙ar to a verb from the root NGR with the meaning “to remain, persevere”—which is not attested elsewhere in Arabic and can only be pointed to in Syriac—lacks any foundation. V. 3 inna sha¯niʾaka huwa l-abtar] Sha¯niʾ is most convincingly explained in the sense of an Arabic reproduction of soneh (“hater”), which is frequent in the Psalms, wherein the Hebrew word is homonymous with the Aramaic soneh, definite sanya. The denigration of the hater (sha¯niʾuka) recalls the psalmist’s frequent complaint regarding one or several haters, always expressed with soneh (cf. Psalms 106:10; 119:85; 139:21; 41:8; 55:13; 86:17; 81:16; 9:14). Luxenberg (2000: 274) insists on a Christian understanding of sha¯niʾuka as “your (absolute)

58

SURA GROUP I

adversary,” namely, Satan, Syriac-Aramaic sanakh, for which he refers not to the Psalms but to a passage in the Epistle of Peter (1 Peter 5:8–9). Such an interpretation would be completely isolated in the Qur’an, where the conception of the devil as a personal adversary that must be fended off through liturgical piety is entirely lacking until the late Meccan period. The concrete reference to the prophet’s biography that is asserted in earlier Qur’an research (Bell 1926; Birkeland 1955: 56–99; KKK, 26f.), depending on the Islamic tradition, also does not bear good results. This view is detached from the understanding of the relevant intertexts, and runs the danger of obscuring the liturgical function of the text; the text can be read, as in the case of the Psalms, as a complaint of the righteous man against slanderers (on the psalmically marked piety of the qur’anic community, see QLA, 241–244). The interpretation of al-abtar in the sense of a familial condition (“without male descendants”) or social situation (“without attachment”) is controversial (see KKK, 526); the problem can only be solved through attendance to inner-qur’anic intertextuality (see the commentary to Q 102 al-taka¯thur). The slightly later sura 102 suggests the interpretation of abtar in the sense of “having no family clan behind him.” Directed against his opponents, however, abtar (“without attachment”) can hardly have the same meaning, but rather, in view of kawthar being guaranteed to the proclaimer as a replacement for the lacking family attachment, must mean “detachment of the opponent from divine favor, from spiritual connections.” The connection to a Syriac lexeme with the meaning “to defeat,” which can only be produced by way of a metathesis, is inadmissible for the genuine Arabic formation abtar, and is proposed by Luxenberg (2000: 274) only to preserve the interpretation of sha¯niʾ as “devil” at any price, contrary to all qur’anic evidence, by way of an artificial and manufactured route.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History Development The text, which belongs to the group of the consolation and praise suras (Q 93 al∙duh∙a¯, 94 al-sharh∙, and 97 al-qadr), indicates for the first time a situation of conflict that is unknown to the previous suras. Such conflicts become characteristic in the following suras; sura 108 should for this reason stand at the end of the series of consolation suras, with which it shares the consoling introduction and the very personal divine turning of attention. The sura also shares with the preceding suras the tendency toward the revaluation of experiences of worldly fulfilment into spiritual ones: as in Q 93:5 spiritual enrichment with aghna takes the place of material enrichment; in Q 94:4, with dhikr, divine commemoration takes the place of h∙asab, inner-worldly reputation; and in Q  94:5.6, with yusr, spiritual lightening takes the place of material lightening. So here, with kawthar, spiritual abundance is introduced as a redress for the lack of genealogical authority.

SURA GROUP I

59

Content and Structure The text consists of the assertion of a divine turning of attention, accompanied by an injunction toward worship, and a polemical conveyance of an allegation against the opponent. With the triumphal introductory assertion of a special privileging of the addressee, the sura also asserts the achievement of having coped with a crisis; an opponent’s attack, in view of the closing verse apparently an attempt at slander, is fended off. The providing of benefits (v. 1: kawthar) by God, asserted in first-person plural in the beginning pronouncement, is indeed left undefined, but is clearly marked as generous and well-taken through the morphological intensive form fawʿal and the root KThR that connotes “abundance.” The expressive, if enigmatic, kawthar is most probably to be understood in the sense of a spiritual fulfilment, embodied in the power for proclamation of the new message of a world fulfilled with sense. That which already echoed in Q 97 with the “sending down” of power that was not named explicitly (v. 1: anzalna¯hu, “we sent it down”), is here concretized in the description as “abundance.” In a somewhat later sura (Q 55), the analogies to previously circulated ideas of a logos theology will emerge more clearly (see QLA, 90–92). This empowering of the proclaimer offsets the lack apparently called to mind in v. 3, the lack of embedding in a powerful and protecting family clan (nasab). It is rather the very opponent who raises this accusation, who finds himself in a situation of lack, since he is deprived of spiritual abundance. This consciousness gives rise to an obligation to give thanks on the part of the one being gifted, which consists, as in Q 93 and 94, in actions of worship, here prayer and sacrifice. An exclamation of consolation, transferring the alleged flaw from the addressee to the opponent, concludes the short text.

Speaker-Hearer Interaction; Authorization Elsewhere in inna¯ pronouncements at the beginning of suras, authorization through the ancient Arabic medium of the oath series as a rule leads the way, but in Q 108 as in Q 94 the authorization is limited to divine first-person plural speech. If one assumes on this basis that the consolation is directed primarily to the proclaimer personally, then the emphatic mention of the “hater” in V. 3 can be seen as the redirection against the opponent of an accusation originally leveled against the proclaimer; the fending off of the abtar-accusation would thus be a response to a polemic. Any further historization of the text remains, however, speculative; attempts at a biographical decoding of the text’s situation of emergence, of the ‘setting in life,’ as Birkeland (1956) and Paret (KKK) pursue depending on the Islamic tradition, cannot lead to any secure results. The sura may be the testimony of a personal situation of the prophet, but it may equally

60

SURA GROUP I

be a text in the tradition of the Psalms that can be adapted to the situations of later pious men.

REFERENCES Bell, Richard (1926): The Origin of Islam; Birkeland, Harris (1956): The Lord Guideth; Brockelmann, Carl (1908–1913): Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen; Cuypers, Michel (1997): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 105 à 114”; Horovitz, Josef (1927): “Kawthar”; Horovitz, Josef (1978): “Kawthar”; Ibn Hisham (1858–1860): Kita¯b sı¯rat Rasu¯l Alla¯h; Luxenberg, Christoph (2000): Die syro-aramäische Lesart des Koran; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor, and Friedrich Schwally (1909): GdQ2 I; Paret, Rudi (1957): “Leitgedanken in Mohammeds” (review by Harris Birkeland, The Lord Guideth); Paret, Rudi (1971): KÜ; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Rubin, Uri (1999): “The Kaaba.”

Q  105 al-fı¯l The Elephant [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  a-lam tara kayfa faʿala rabbuka bi-as∙h∙a¯bi l-fı¯l 2  a-lam yajʿal kaydahum fı¯ tad∙lı¯l 3 wa-arsala ʿalayhim ∙tayran aba¯bı¯l 4  tarmı¯him bi-h∙ija¯ratin min sijjı¯l 5 fa-jaʿalahum ka-ʿas∙fin maʾku¯l 1 Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the people of the elephant? 2 Did he not cause their mischief to go astray 3  and send down on them birds in swarms 4  that pelted them with hard-baked clay 5  and made them like devoured grass?

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. Rhyme 2l. Verses 1–4: -ı¯l, closing verse with culmination of the discourse, rhymes uniquely in -u¯l.

COMPOSITION

1 3 1

1 Recollection of the ‘People of the Elephant’ 2–4 God’s punishment of their mischief 5 The effect of the punishment

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 a-lam tara kayfa faʿala rabbuka bi-as∙h∙a¯bi l-fı¯l] The sura centers on the military campaign into the north of Arabia by Abraha, the Abyssinian vice-king of

SURA GROUP I

61

Yemen, which was undertaken “not long after 543” (KU, 96). Reports about this campaign are transmitted also outside of the local Meccan tradition. According to some reports it was interrupted by the outbreak of an epidemic before the campaign reached Mecca, an event that was interpreted early on in the sense of a miraculous salvation of Mecca, as reflected already in the pre-Islamic poets; according to Horovitz (KU, 97), the participation of the elephants may also belong to the legendary embellishment. On the historical background, see Nöldeke (1879: 204–219), Kister (1965a), Shahid (2004). Although the wording of the sura provides only an exemplary instance of divine punishment that is not connected explicitly to Mecca, according to Horovitz (KU, 97), who is also able to adduce older poetic references to the retreat of the Abyssinian attacker Abraha, it can be assumed that “in the pre-qur’anic period, the narrative of a campaign by the Abyssinian accompanied by an elephant was already widespread in Mecca, and the Islamic transmission rightly referred S[ura] 105 back to it.” On the basis of more recent studies, a concrete foreknowledge among the hearers can be assumed as certain: Uri Rubin (1984), on the basis of a critical assessment of the traditions, has pointed to the resonance in Q 105 of the defeat of Abraha, who was said to have been forced to withdraw from the area around Mecca achieving nothing, and leaving the sanctuary miraculously spared, a turning point in the position of the Meccans on the peninsula (on this, see also Sinai 2009: 59–74). The pagan Meccans could thus establish themselves after this event as the holders of a significant cult center. Such an increase in their power even allowed them to relinquish the contracts for the securing of subsistence that were established with other tribes, which had earlier been crucial for their survival. This background renders the historical dimension back to this modest evocation of the event. The introduction of short narratives by a-lam tara becomes frequent later (see Q  89:6, on which KU, 10f.; cf. QLA, 178–180). It attests to the teachingargumentative function of the stories, which are above all ‘signs’ of God’s omnipotence. In place of the name of the wicked group, their most striking characteristic is named, their possession of an elephant of war. V. 2 a-lam yajʿal kaydahum fı¯ tad∙lı¯l] anticipates the interpretation of the event according to a salvation-historical aspect, in that God himself defeats their adversarial intentions. V. 3 wa-arsala ʿalayhim ∙tayran aba¯bı¯l] Aba¯bı¯l, a word that is not attested elsewhere, cannot be explained etymologically (for the hypotheses up to now, see FVQ, 44f.). An instance in Umayya ibn abı¯ l-S∙alt (Schulthess 1911: fragment 4.3) appears to draw from the Qur’an, and therefore should be considered inauthentic. The translation “herds, swarms” would correspond most probably to the intended sense of the verse (cf. Bell 1991: 585). V. 4 tarmı¯him bi-h∙ija¯ratin min sijjı¯l] The defense of the opponents from Mecca, which is presented in the Qur’an as a miracle, has no parallels in the

62

SURA GROUP I

historical tradition. Sijjı¯l, another hapaxlegomenon in the Qur’an, is a loan formation according to Jeffery (FVQ, 164), derived from Liat sigillum (cf. Robinson  2001; Frolov 2005). The recourse to a loan word serves to enigmatize, and thus heighten the significance of, the act of annihilation, which is presented in sura’s text as a miraculous intervention by the God worshipped in the local sanctuary. V. 5 fa-jaʿalahum ka-ʿas∙fin maʾku¯l] The image evokes Psalm verses, which speak of “withering like the green of the herb” (Psalms 37:1) or “withering like the grass on the road” (Psalms 58:7); those passages, however, address the frailty of humanity as such, while the sura uses the image to give expression to the turning to ‘dust’ of a concrete armed force (cf. QLA, 373–375). The reference to impermanence stands in sharp contrast to the initial image of solidness embodied by the elephant. The episode, which belongs in the local tradition to the history of Mecca (GdQ2 I, 93), is thus given a biblical coloring.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History of Development Q 105 and 106 are both texts that are closely related to the consolation and praise suras, in that they extend the emphasis of the praise, which up to now has concerned the administration of divine care to the individual, the proclaimer—and thus also, vicariously, for the pious man in general—toward the show of providence for the collective. They show themselves to be very early suras in that they focus on an interaction between God and man without concrete reference to the actuality of the circle of hearers; Q 105, like the consolation suras, also deploys psalmic images. The pair of suras can thus best be viewed as a continuation of the opening cluster of consolation suras.

Content and Structure According to Birkeland (1956: 100f.), Q 105 is a sura of thanks based on the personal local recollection of the proclaimer; according to Horovitz (cf. KU, 96–98), however, it is the earliest example of a punishment legend. The action of the “people of the elephant,” which is thwarted by a punishing divine intervention, ends with their annihilation, but the story lacks the figure of the messenger of God that is typical of the punishment legends. Rather, at the center of the sura stands the annihilation of a known but unnamed aggressor, including his powers of war, this annihilation being adduced as evidence for the omnipotence of the personal God worshiped by the proclaimer. The event is not simply reported in the sura, but rather undergoes a reinterpretation: with the entrance of God (rabbuka, “your Lord”) into the role of the main agent of the reported story (faʿala, a-lam yajʿal, arsala, jaʿala, “he did,” “did

SURA GROUP I

63

he not?” “he sent,” “he made”), the local tradition about the event is elevated to become part of salvation history, to furnish an argument to prove the omnipotence of the unique God as Lord of history; the rhetorical introductory question already attests to this argumentative function. The closing verse has a particularly strong expressive effect through its contrast of the aggressor advancing with a majestic elephant to that which remains of him in the end—devoured grass. The incorporation of the local tradition into salvation history is underscored essentially by the recourse to a topos of the Psalms: in Psalm 37:1, the image of annihilation is likewise clothed in the agrarian metaphor “to wither like the green of the herbs”; and cf. Psalms 58:7, where there is mention of “withering like the grass on the road.” Going beyond these image references to the Psalms, the sura also appears to be formed after a Psalmic narrative model: it transfers the type of the annihilation stories of enemies (see for example, Psalms 136) into the Meccan environment of the proclaimer, and it assures for the hearers the divine providence for their greater society, an assurance that, as in the history Psalms, is demonstrated through an example from history. Here, however, it does not make recourse to the later-dominant model of the punishment legend in the strict sense, wherein the annihilation of the wicked is preceded by their refusal of a messenger of God.

Speaker-Hearer Interaction Although the sura depicts no speaker-hearer scenario, the significant reference to place, and the presentation of the event as an act of divine salvation, creates a relationship that includes pagan Meccan hearers. By appealing to the significance attributed by both the believers and the other listeners to this event, which is suggested as a divine act of salvation, local Meccan history is made recognizable as a part of salvation history. The lack of an authorization by sacral discourse models such as oaths is counterbalanced by place-historical reference, which is tacitly underlaid with a new, religious valence.

REFERENCES Bell, Richard (1991): Commentary; Birkeland, Harris (1956): The Lord Guideth; Cuypers, Michel (1997): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 105 à 114”; Faizer, Riwzi (2002): “Expeditions and Battles”; Frolov, Dmitry V. (2005): “Story”; Jeffery, Arthur (1938): The Foreign Vocabulary; Kister, Meir Jacob (1965a): “The Campaign of H ∙ uluba¯n; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor (1879): Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sassaniden; Nöldeke, Theodor, and Friedrich Schwally (1909): GdQ II; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Robinson, Neal (2001): “Clay”; Rubin, Uri (1984): “The I¯la¯f of Quraysh”; Schulthess, Friedrich (1911):

64

SURA GROUP I

Umayya Ibn Abi ∙s-S∙alt; Shahid, Irfan (2004): “People of the Elephant”; Sinai, Nicolai (2009): Fortschreibung und Auslegung.

Q  106 Quraysh Quraysh [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  2  3  4 

li-ı¯la¯fi Quraysh ı¯la¯fihim rih∙lata l-shita¯ʾi wa-l-s∙ayf fa-l-yaʿbudu¯ rabba ha¯dha¯ l-bayt alladhı¯ at∙ʿamahum min ju¯ʿin wa-a¯manahum min khawf

1 Why the keeping of Quraysh, 2  their keeping of the journeys in winter and summer! 3 Let them serve the Lord of this house 4 Who protects them from hunger and secures them against fear!

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity; because of its syntax—the main clause arrives only in v. 3—it has been joined by some transmitters to the preceding sura 105. The defective writing of the connection li-ı¯la¯f has found a number of various solutions; the canonical reading ı¯la¯f/ı¯la¯fihim is controversial. Some readers offer a reading with a finite verb form: li-yaʾlafa / ı¯la¯fahum (“so that the Quraysh can gather their winter and summer caravans”), which Birkeland (1956: 102–108) considers the original reading. As Paret already emphasizes (KKK, 522f.), however, an emendation is not necessary. The transmitted readings all represent attempts to expand the defective writing (see GdQ2 I, 91 and KKK, 522f.). Rhyme throughout: 3CC.

COMPOSITION





2 2

1–2 Reproachful astonishment at the behavior of Quraysh 3–4 Exhortation to worship with hymnic praise of God as founder and sustainer of a sacred district

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1–2 li-ı¯la¯fi Quraysh / ı¯la¯fihim rih∙lata l-shita¯ʾi wa-l-s∙ayf] The beginning with li¯ıla¯fi Quraysh presents a riddle, since it is the only occasion in the Qur’an where a sura begins with an adverbial phrase. In a 1984 study, Uri Rubin rejected the suggestions of some critics that Q 106 and the preceding sura make up a single unbroken text, whereby the beginning verses would yield the translation “so that the Quraysh can bring together their summer and winter caravans.” The text was long interpreted in terms of a trade agreement on the part of the

SURA GROUP I

65

Meccans with the surrounding tribes, permitting a winter journey to Yemen, Abyssinia, and Iraq and a summer journey to Syria (in this sense, see Birkeland 1956: 123; Kister 1965b: 121; Simon 1989: 206; otherwise, see Crone 1987). Recently, however, F.  E. Peters (1999: XL–XLI) argued for an interpretation in the sense of travel by groups of pilgrims, who flocked toward the sanctuary at the two main festival times Hajj and ʿUmra. Li-ı¯la¯fi Quraysh would then be understood as a dedication (“for the bringing together of the Quraysh”). Rubin (1984) had already offered a contrary explanation: I¯la¯f (Alla¯h) should be interpreted in view of poetical attestations (cf. Kister 1965b: 128, note 4), as a verbal noun with the meaning “provision of safety, protection of God,” thus indicating divine relief (from troubles and fears). In Q 107, one can see in ı¯la¯f a concrete reference to “unburdening” either from the need for caravan travels that have been made superfluous due to the general recognition of the sanctuary, or due to their accomplishment, which is now no longer obligatory for the Meccans. Patricia Crone has cast doubt on both of the trade activities evoked in the sura (see Crone 1987), while Rubin (1984), on the other hand, assumed a political turning point after Abraha’s thwarted campaign (Q 105) rendered superfluous the earlier engagement of the Meccans. Since then, Rubin (2011) has offered an even more convincing interpretation of verses 1–2: he would no longer understand ı¯la¯f in the sense of “unburdening,” but rather that of “habitual dedication, keeping to a habit,” and accordingly—in dependence on a number of earlier philological commentaries—he interprets the preposition li- as li al-taʿajjub in the sense “wonder at x . . . how curious.” Since here the meaning carries censure, it is translated as “Why only the keeping of Quraysh!.” According to this understanding, in Q 106 we have already a sura that goes beyond the assurance of providence to express a social criticism of the collective of the pagan contemporaries, corresponding entirely to the immediately following sura 102, which complains of this same people’s too-close connection to inner-worldly things, here, namely, the obsession with the ideal of strong family associations, and thus with noble origins (nasab). V. 3–4 fa-l-yaʿbudu¯ rabba ha¯dha¯ l-bayt / alladhı¯ at∙ʿamahum min ju¯ʿin waa¯manahum min khawf] The divinity is introduced as rabb ha¯dha¯ l-bayt (“Lord of this temple”), for whom worship services should be carried out. The two predicates at∙ʿamahum min ju¯ʿin (“who protects them from hunger”) and a¯manahum min khawf (“who secures them against fear”)—both marks of favor that are closely connected to the caravan trade—further elevate the status of the local divinity, which was already high in the pagan context, so that the “Lord of this temple” is now identified as the original grantor of the Meccan privileges. In earlier interpretations, the caravan trade stood in the foreground as a positive reason for the independence of the Quraysh, but according to Rubin’s more recent explanation, the caravan trade is no longer a crucial undertaking because of the economic independence and safety already accorded by God. Rather than

66

SURA GROUP I

obsessively concern themselves with business, the Quraysh should rather turn to the worship of God. For the God worshipped at the Kaʿba is also at once the Lord of history, to whose providence the privileged situation of the Meccans is due. It is not special cultic performances that are required for the new understanding of God, but rather the recognition of the power of God reaching into the social life of the collective. Protecting men from hunger becomes a qur’anic topos of divine attention slightly later on—see for example, Q 80:33 = Q 79:33: mata¯ʿan lakum wa-li-anʿa¯mikum (“as sustenance for you and your livestock”), cf. Q 80:24—but here it is a matter not of universal protection, but rather special protection provided to the Meccans. The privilege of the provision of safety is reserved for the Meccans also elsewhere (cf. for a¯manahum min khawf, “who secures them against fear,” Q 95:3: wa-ha¯dha¯ l-balad al-amı¯n, “by this secure city.”)

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History of Development Q 106 is a text closely connected to Q 105; it is concerned with the divine demonstrations of favor that pertain specifically to the collective of the proclaimer, the tribe of Quraysh, similarly to the saving of Mecca from the Abyssinians described in Q 105. Just as the obligation toward liturgical actions is derived from personal showings of favor, so too is it derived from demonstrations of favor that manifest collectively, such as the material preservation and safeguarding of the Quraysh against enemies (v. 4, cf. the somewhat later Q 95:3), which is ensured by the sacred aura of the sanctuary. With its introductory expression of astonishment, intended as reproach, the sura anticipates the following sura (Q 102), which rebukes the pagan hearers for their unbalanced interest in family prestige and wealth.

Content and Structure The striking sura introduction has provoked differing interpretations, between which judgment can now be decisively given due to the lexicological-historical study of Uri Rubin (2011): the countrymen’s obsessive keeping of their trade journeys in winter and summer is rendered unnecessary, and thus becomes a ground for censuring astonishment. The Meccans enjoy divine favor—the thwarting of an aggressor is alluded to—which has granted them a privileged role on the peninsula, a suitable livelihood, and social security, ensured by the sacral aura of the sanctuary (v. 4). An admiring and respectful perception of Mecca from outside is also attested in the poetic quotations cited by Gottfried Müller (1988: 346). The sura, which culminates in an exhortation to cultic faithfulness on the part of the Meccans (v. 3: fa-l-yaʿbudu¯, “let them serve”), refers to the privilege accorded to them by all tribes as keepers of a sanctuary, which is already known to the hearers. This emphasis on their special position, which

SURA GROUP I

67

appeals to the cultural memory of the Meccan hearers, grants to the text a particular authority—as was already the case in Q 105. Here too, it is not simply that something known is repeated, but rather a decisive new subject is introduced: the God that is worshiped at the Kaʿba (rabb ha¯dha¯ l-bayt, “the Lord of this house”) is united with the personal God of the proclaimer, who is also the Lord of history. It is not new cultic performances that are required, but rather the recognition of the power of the unique God reaching into the social life of the collective. The thought figure documented in Q 105, that of the God who intervenes in history either to save or annihilate, probably followed psalmic models, although comparable patterns of thought are attested in pre-Islamic poetry (cf. Müller 1988: 361).

Speaker-Hearer Interaction; Authorization The sura, which does not address the Quraysh as present hearers but rather speaks about them in the third person and places demands on them, may have been delivered first in the small circle of close hearers, and only “published” later. The short sura, culminating in a call to the cultic faithfulness of the Meccans (v. 3: fa-l-yaʿbudu¯, “let them serve”), and which lacks an introduction in its transmitted form, draws its authorization—similarly to Q 105—from its reference to locality, which appeals to the cultural memory of the Meccan hearers.

REFERENCES Ammann, Ludwig (2001): Die Geburt des Islam; Crone, Patricia (1987): Meccan Trade; Cuypers, Michel (1997): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 105 à 114”; Hawting, Gerald (2003): “Ka’ba”; Hawting, Gerald (2004): “Pre-Islamic Arabia”; Jeffery, Arthur (1937): Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an; Kister, Meir Jacob (1965b): “Mecca and Tamı¯m”; Müller, Gottfried (1988): “Die Barmherzigkeit Gottes”; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor, and Friedrich Schwally (1909): GdQ2 I; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Peters, Francis E. (ed. 1999): Arabs and Arabia on the Eve of Islam; Rubin, Uri (1984): “The I¯la¯f of Quraysh”; Rubin, Uri (2004): “Quraysh”; Rubin, Uri (2004): “Sacred Precincts”; Uri Rubin (2011): “Quraysh and Their Winter and Summer Journey”; Simon, Róbert (1989): Meccan Trade and Islam.

SUBGROUP B Q  102 al-taka¯thur The Striving for More [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  alha¯kumu l-taka¯thur 2  h∙atta¯ zurtumu l-maqa¯bir

68 3  4  5  6  7  8 

SURA GROUP I kalla¯ sawfa taʿlamu¯n thumma kalla¯ sawfa taʿlamu¯n kalla¯ law taʿlamu¯na ʿilma l-yaqı¯n la-tarawunna l-jah∙ı¯m thumma la-tarawunnaha¯ ʿayna l-yaqı¯n thumma la-tusʾalunna yawmaʾidhin ʿani l-naʿı¯m

1  The striving for worldly gain controls you 2  until you visit the grave! 3  No, you will come to know! 4 Again, you will come to know! 5  No, if you know with certain knowledge, 6  you will see the firebrand before you! 7  Then you will see it with the clearest certainty, 8  then on that day you will be asked about bliss!

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. The rhyme structure of the invective (v. 1–2: 3r) changes in the rest of the sura to 2n/m.

COMPOSITION







2 2 2 2

1–2 Invective against a present object of rebuke 3–4 Threat announcing the onset of knowledge, with repetition 5–6 Specification of the knowledge: the reality of the fire (conditional clause) 7–8 Increasing clarity of the perception of the fire and injunction of ­accountability for the conduct of worldly life (apodosis)

STRUCTURAL FORMULAE / PROPORTIONS 2+2+2+2

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1–2 alha¯kumu l-taka¯thur / h∙atta¯ zurtumu l-maqa¯bir] The meaning of the two verses is contested in the research. Nicolai Sinai (unpublished commentary) translates: “Avarice distracts you, until you come into the grave” (cf. Paret: “The desire to have more has diverted you, until you go to the grave”; this reading is adopted in WKAS I, 64), thus deciding for interpretation of taka¯thur as the striving for more possessions. With reference to Künstlinger (1931: 619), he reads the Arabic word as corresponding to the Greek pleonexia (“avarice”), a vice that is condemned in many places in the biblical context. (Sinai adduces: “Psalm 119:36 and the catalogue of vices in Mark 7:21–22, Romans 1:29–31, I Corin-

SURA GROUP I

69

thians 6:9–10; see especially Luke 12:15: “then he said to the people: pay heed, protect yourself from every kind of avarice [Gr. pleonexia]. For the sense of life does not consist in that a man should live in excess due to his wealth.”) Indeed, none of the biblical passes seems to stand in an organic relationship to the first verse pair, which clearly makes a point that goes beyond the pleonexia/taka¯thur accusation. The Qur’an’s depiction of the obsessive striving for material profit is depicted is shown by sura 106 (al-humaza), which is most likely only slightly later, where the explicit naming of ma¯l (“possessions”) leaves no doubt as to what is meant. In Q 102, on the other hand, the interpretation in the sense of avarice cannot be meaningfully connected to v. 2. Here we should consider quite a different interpretation of the sense of taka¯thur (“the striving for more”): as the striving for, and high valuation of, family connections. Such a meaning is suggested by verses such as Q 57:20: iʿlamu¯ annama¯ l-h∙aya¯ta l-dunya¯ laʿibun wa-lahwun wa-zı¯natun wa-tafa¯khurun baynakum wa-taka¯thurun fı¯ l-amwa¯li wa-l-awla¯d (“know that the life of this world is only play and idleness, and ornament and mutual boasting among you, and vying after possessions and children”), where the ‘vying after richness in material goods and sons’ also implies a ‘striving for renown.’ The interpretation “striving for a family bond that is as powerful as possible,” which will in turn ensure a life of prosperity and security—perhaps a generalizing interpretation of al-taka¯thur fı¯ l-awla¯d (“striving for more sons”)— seems, for two reasons, more likely than a mere “striving for riches.” It makes the otherwise erratic v. 2 plausible, since h∙atta¯ zurtumu l-maqa¯bir (“until you visit the tombs”) must be understood as a very loose, even ironic formulation, if one seeks to maintain an interpretation of the expression meaning “until the grave.” Za¯ra, a hapaxlegomenon in the Qur’an, denotes outside of the Qur’an a pietistic visit, not least to sacred sites. v. 2, taken literally, speaks of visitation to tombs, which is nothing out of the ordinary in Late Antiquity. A nearness to their ancestors is attested also elsewhere for the pagan contemporaries, as where they doubt the possibility of resurrection for their dead fathers: a-inna¯ la-mabʿu¯thu¯n / a-wa-a¯ba¯ʾuna¯ l-awwalu¯n? (“Should we perhaps be resurrected / or even our forefathers?” Q 56:47–48, and often later); in the Medinan legislation of the h∙ajj, there is the exhortation that the participants in God’s cult should recall God, “as you recall your fathers, or yet more”: Q 2:200: fa-dhkuru¯ lla¯ha ka-dhikrikum a¯ba¯ʾakum aw ashadda dhikran (“recall God, just as you recall your fathers, or more so”), see also on the status of father traditions among the proclaimer’s contemporaries, Izutsu (1966: 49). A further argument for this interpretation lies in the word usage: maqa¯bir (hapaxlegomenon) should not refer simply to “graves,” but rather to visible tombs, since qabr (cf. early Meccan: Q 100:9, 82:4) is also available to indicate the grave as a burial of the dead, see also aqbarahu in Q 80:21. Later references to burials always employ qubu¯r. According to the suggested interpretation, one can understand the verses in the literal sense, without the tendentious assumption of irony in the otherwise

70

SURA GROUP I

serious sura. There is thus no intention here to quantify the dead, as Bell assumed (1937–1939: 675) relying on the traditional exegetes,: “‘until you die,’ or following the acknowledged explanation: they vie so much for numbers that they go to the graves themselves and count the dead.” The pagan contemporaries include their dead among their great and powerful family bands. On the contrary, the proclaimer adopts a denigrating attitude toward the veneration of ancestors; the erring of the fathers is continuously mentioned, above all in the middle and late Meccan periods. That they no longer possess authority becomes especially clear in later texts, for example in the context of the original covenant (Q  7:172–173): there, men are prevented from denying the unity of God, and from saying innama¯ ashraka a¯ba¯ʾuna¯ min qablu wa-kunna¯ dhurriyyatan min baʿdihim, a-fa-tuhlikuna¯ bi-ma¯ faʿala l-mubt∙ilu¯n? (“Our forefathers associated others with God previously, and we were their seeds after them, will you destroy us because of what those who act absurdly have done?”). More importantly, the sura stands in a discursive relationship to an earlier proclamation. In Sura 108 (al-kawthar), which thematizes a nonconcretized conception of abundance or multiplicity as a privilege of the proclaimer provided by God, there is another derivative of KThR, kawthar, which, according to the most probable interpretation, is likewise used in the context of a problem bound up with the “family bond.” God-given abundance (kawthar) represents the counterbalance to the lack of a circle of dependents that is pointed out by the opponents: despite his lack of a great family band, the proclaimer is not “cut off.” It is not to be excluded that taka¯thur alludes to the kawthar that was thematized only a short time earlier. V. 3–4 kalla¯ sawfa taʿlamu¯n / thumma kalla¯ sawfa taʿlamu¯n] The sharp answer with kalla¯ also announces the ‘corrective’ of a false earlier attitude, namely, the backward-oriented worship of the ancestors, which the proclaimer opposes with an outlook towards the future. The exclamation appears again identically somewhat later in Q 78:4–5. The idea of the eschatological unveiling of consequential wisdom occurs here for the first time, embedded in a context wherein tension is maintained regarding the solution riddle about the object of the announced knowledge, down to the close of the sura. The idea of the eschatological disclosure of knowledge becomes a central theme in the following sura group II. There, it is concretized into the insight that the individual gains within himself in respect to his earthly deeds, i.e., about himself. In Q 82:5 it forms the pronouncement after an idha¯ series: ʿalimat nafsun ma¯ qaddamat wa-akhkharat (“[then] a soul will know what it has done and what it has left behind”), and just after this it appears yet more emphatically with the same function in Q 81:14, as the conclusion of an eschatological scene containing twelve verses: ʿalimat nafsun ma¯ ah∙∙darat (“[then] a soul will know what it has accomplished”). V. 5–6 kalla¯ law taʿlamu¯na ʿilma l-yaqı¯n / la-tarawunna l-jah∙ı¯m] This sentence, too, is translated in various ways; Paret translates v. 5 as an abbreviated condi-

SURA GROUP I

71

tional sentence or wish statement. Sinai translates it as a pronouncement about the future. He appears, however, to confirm the solution suggested already in SKMS, 232, that law taʿlamu¯na represents a concentrated counterfactual conditional sentence, in which the unwieldy verbal form law kuntum taʿlamu¯na is abbreviated to law taʿlamu¯na, even if the later classical grammatical theory does not permit this construction. V. 7–8 thumma la-tarawunnaha¯ ʿayna l-yaqı¯n / thumma la-tusʾalunna yawmaʾidhin ʿani l-naʿı¯m] The sentence could be read as the continuation of the apodosis, but the translation as a new sentence appears more plausible: those addressed will attain the knowledge of their lacking behavior, so that they will be made accountable for their wrongly enjoyed advantage. Naʿı¯m is later used consistently as a designation for paradise; but flashbacks also often sketch the scene of a more light-hearted life spent safely among a family-band, for which the worldly oriented pagan contemporaries will be held accountable on the Final Day (see Q 84:13: innahu ka¯na fı¯ ahlihi masru¯ra¯, “he lived happily among his people”). On the possible conceptual history of ʿayn al-yaqı¯n, see Rosenthal (1970: 22–28) and QLA, 271–273; on the orientation of the mentality of the pagan Arab society toward the principle of carpe diem, see Toshihiko Izutsu (1966: 55–59).

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement within the History of Development Sura 102 may be one of the earliest suras composed for public recital. If we assume a connection between this sura—which is discussed controversially in the research—and the earlier sura 108, then the current texts concerns an answer to a challenge previously set to the proclaimer by his pagan opponents. Two relatively unfamiliar derivatives from the root KThR, kawthar and taka¯thur, each with a central position, already invite us to view the two very early suras 104 and 102 in a shared context. In comparison to the slightly older consolation sura 108 (al-kawthar), wherein the allegation of being cut off, of social isolation, is rebutted by the proclaimer, who adduces divinely provided abundance (kawthar) as a counterbalance to the lack of family associations, sura 102, in contrast, already works with a self-conscious confidence. It begins with an accusation against the pagan contemporaries, that they find themselves for their part in a situation of lack, namely, they are accused of being obsessively motivated by the same tribally guaranteed social privileges that were denounced by the proclaimer in Q  104. Their striving (al-taka¯thur), which focused on the magnification of family associations, apparently culminates in ancestor worship, the ziya¯rat almaqa¯bir. The Sura thus offers a rejoinder against the grievous accusation of social lack pronounced by the proclaimer’s opponents, strengthened further by reference to the knowledge revealed on the Final Day. If one contextualizes the two suras in the way suggested here, then one can already make out the

72

SURA GROUP I

nucleus of the fathers-tradition discourse that develops later, to which various wrongful notions are attributed (see Noth 1987). This fathers-tradition apparently remains current, including cultically, up until the latest period; a Medinan sura (Q 2:200) still has to pronounce the injunction to commemorate God “like the fathers, or even more so.” A novelty in this sura is the thematizing of the hellfire, not yet introduced as the place destined for those addressed, but rather as the contents of the knowledge disclosed to them earlier. This knowledge, which is hidden to humanity during life, is thematized in this sura for the first time, but without being presented explicitly in its moral dimension as man’s insight into his own deeds, and thus his possibility of self-knowledge.

Content and Structure After the accusation of diversion by way of false values, there follows a threat of knowledge to be disclosed in the future, which will open a view into the abyss. The opening of this knowledge appears in neighboring texts as the central event of the Final Day, prepared for by the dissolution of the cosmos. In the context of the dissolution of the cosmos, where Christian texts offer the opening of a messianic vision preparing the way for the coming of the Son of man (cf. Matthew 24:29–31; Mark 13:24–26; Luke 21:25–27), the Qur’an sets the opening up of knowledge to humanity that was heretofore sealed off. This at the same time enables an insight into the false orientation toward the advantages of worldly life guaranteed by the “striving for more,” although no connection is drawn here to the concrete deeds of the individual that will be the basis of his eschatological status. With the idea of the injunction to accountability for a false life-direction, the text links back again to the reproachful pronouncement at the sura’s beginning. The emphatic final rhyme-word of the sura concisely brings to a point the central accusation of striving for “comfortable living” (naʿı¯m), secured only through great and prominent family associations.

Speaker-Hearer Interaction; Authorization The very early sura is directed to present hearers who are addressed directly, first with a rebuke and then with a threat. The claim of an elevated knowledge on the part of the proclaimer is connected to the threat of the hellfire.

REFERENCES Bell, Richard (1937–1939): The Qur’a¯n: Translated, with a Critical Re-­ arrangement of the Suras; Cuypers, Michel (1997): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 105 à 114”; Izutsu, Toshihiko (1966): Ethico-Religious Concepts;

SURA GROUP I

73

Künstlinger, David (1931): “Einiges über die Namen und die Freuden des k∙ura¯nischen Paradieses”; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Noth, Albrecht (1987): “Früher Islam”; Paret, Rudi (1966): KÜ; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Rosenthal, Franz (1970): Knowledge Triumphant; Ullmann, Manfred (1970): WKAS I.

Q  107 al-ma¯ʿu¯n Assistance [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  2  3  4  5  6  7 

a-raʾayta lladhı¯ yukadhdhibu bi-l-dı¯n fa-dha¯lika lladhı¯ yaduʿʿu l-yatı¯m wa-la¯ yah∙ud∙∙du ʿala¯ ∙taʿa¯mi l-miskı¯n fa-waylun li-l-mus∙allı¯n alladhı¯na hum ʿan ∙sala¯tihim sa¯hu¯n alladhı¯na hum yura¯ʾu¯n wa-yamnaʿu¯na l-ma¯ʿu¯n

1 What do you think of the one who denies the day of judgment? 2  That is the one who pushes away the orphan, 3  and does not urge the feeding of the poor. 4 Woe to the worshippers 5  who are heedless in their prayers, 6  who only wish to be seen 7  and refuse to provide assistance!

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. In spite of various commonalities with late suras, the arguments for a later composition of verses 4–8 presented in the earlier research are not convincing (see Bell 1991: 590; KKK, 534f.). The catalogue of vices (see on this QLA, 176–178) in verses 5–7, a series of plural statements, does not connect smoothly to the preceding rebuke of an individual denier (or of the type of ‘the denier’) in verses 1–4, but the cultic misconducts continue the earlier stated social misconducts, as the progress fa indicates. The reference to cultic activities such as prayer among the pagan contemporaries in the early Meccan period should raise no doubts as to the classification of the text as early; following Uri Rubin (1987; cf. also QLA, 214–217) the reality of a pre-qur’anic prayer rite is firmly established. Rhyme throughout in 2n.

DIFFERENCES IN VERSE DIVISION V. 6 yura¯ʾu¯n is not recognized as a verse closure by Damascus, Mecca, and Medina. If one accepts the contraction of verses 6 and 7 in spite the compatibility

74

SURA GROUP I

of yura¯ʾu¯n with the rhyme, then this yields for sura 107 a symmetrical structure of two groups of three (see SKMS, 36); otherwise there are two verse groups of differing lengths.

COMPOSITION



⎧ ⎪ 3 ⎪ ⎪ ⎩ ⎧1 4 ⎪ ⎩ 3

1 Appearance of an opponent (or opponent type) who denies the judgment Vice catalogue: social misconduct 2–3 4 Exclamation of woe about a group of worshippers Vice catalogue: lack of sincerity, craving, refusal to provide assistance 5–7 (verses 6 and 7 are perhaps one verse)

STRUCTURAL FORMULA / PROPORTIONS 3 + 3 or 3 + 4

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 a-raʾayta lladhı¯ yukadhdhibu bi-l-dı¯n] This question form, which is frequent in early Mecca but apparently does not occur in poetry, is most often not translated literally, as “have you seen that, the,” but rather phraseologically, as “what do you think of that, which.” Elsewhere, too, it introduces vice catalogues or enumerations of offensive behaviors (cf. the somewhat later Q 96:9.11.13). Here for the first time, a denier of the judgment as such is brought into view—the accusation becomes a topos slightly later on (Q 95:7, 83:11, 74:46). The singular does not necessarily indicate an individual in the strict sense, more likely intends a type of opponent. There is often talk of such types in early Mecca, even if as a rule they are marked as plural with kull, cf. waylun li-kulli humazatin lumazah (“woe to every slanderer and backbiter,” Q 104:1). That dı¯n stands, as in Q 95:7 and 82:9, for judgment and not for religion (in the sense of the Iranian loan word) as Birkeland (1958: 16f, 21f.) claims, is unquestionable in the early Meccan suras in view of the predominance of the idea of judgment, expressed as a rule by yawm al-dı¯n (cf. the somewhat later Q 83:11, 74:46). The accusation of denial of the judgment (kadhdhaba bi-l-dı¯n), which becomes standard in the course of the early Meccan period, occurs only rarely at the beginning. It is found again only in the very early sura 95:7: fa-ma¯ yukadhdhibuka baʿdu bi-l-dı¯n (“what lets you lie about the judgment?”). Nonetheless the sura does not need to be dated later; its early date is attested, as in the case of Q 95:7, by the focusing on a blameworthy type, as opposed to “the deniers” (al-mukadhdhibu¯n) that will later be taken into view. At Q 91:11, kadhdhaba becomes a marker of the apostate peoples, embodied first in Thamu¯d.

SURA GROUP I

75

V. 2–3 fa-dha¯lika lladhı¯ yaduʿʿu l-yatı¯m / wa-la¯ yah∙ud∙∙du ʿala¯ ∙taʿa¯mi l-miskı¯n] The denial of the judgment is linked to instances of social misconduct, cf. the somewhat later parallel vice catalogue in Q  89: 17–20: kalla¯ bal la¯ tukrimu¯na l-yatı¯m / wa-la¯ tah∙a¯∙d∙du¯na ʿala¯ ∙taʿı¯m al-miskı¯n / wa-taʾkulu¯na l-tura¯tha aklan lamma¯ / wa-tuh∙ibbu¯na l-ma¯la h∙ubban jamma¯ (“But no! You do not honor the orphan / nor do you urge the feeding of the poor / you devour the entire inheritance / and you love wealth heartily!”). Care for orphans and the poor—thematized for the first time in this sura after a short allusion in Q 93—are early subjects of the proclamation (cf. Q 93:9, 90:15–16, 89:17ff.); they have their model in the prophetic sayings of the Hebrew Bible, but also above all in the monastic piety of Late Antiquity, whose ideals are articulated elsewhere in qur’anic virtue catalogues, as they are here—inverted—in this vice catalogue (cf. Andrae 1932). V. 4–6 fa-waylun li-l-mus∙allı¯n / alladhı¯na hum ʿan ∙sala¯tihim sa¯hu¯n / alladhı¯na hum yura¯ʾu¯n] Following the initial focus on a single opponent or opponent type, it is now opponents in the plural that come into view. The connecting fa- suggests an identification of the previously named opponent type with the cult participants that are now focused on. There is no basis for the assumption of a secondary joining of the two sura parts. Likewise, Bell’s (1991: 590) displacement of the sura into Medina misjudges its clear early Meccan marking: the form of the exclamation of woe, which is already known from the Hebrew Bible, slightly later becomes a member of the fixed formal inventory of the suras, cf. Q 104:1: waylun li-kulli humazatin lumazah (“woe to every slanderer and backbiter”), Q 83:10: waylun yawmaʾidhin li-l-mukadhdhibı¯n (“woe on that day to the liars”); it appears ten times as a refrain in Q 77. Wayl with a pronominal suffix for the expression of the object of woe occurs already in ancient Arabic poetry (see the verses in SEAP, 1252), but the formulaic exclamation of woe waylun li- belongs to the biblical tradition. The lack of sincerity in prayer and the outward intention to be seen are also major transgressions in the monastic canon of conduct. The rebuke of the hypocritical pretension toward piety on the part of a group recalls above all the address, likewise formed as an exclamation of woe, of Jesus to the Pharisees, who seek to be seen in their fulfillment of cult: “woe to you Pharisees, you love the first seats in the synagogues” (Luke 11:43, cf. also the rebuke of the hypocrite in Matthew 6:5); it should be considered a topos of monotheistic polemic. V. 7 wa-yamnaʿu¯na l-ma¯ʿu¯n] Ma¯ʿu¯n raises problems. Geiger’s suggestion of a derivation from Hebrew maʿon (“habitation, refuge”) is accepted by Nöldeke (1910: 28), who, however, argues for an understanding in agreement with the meaning of the Arabic root ʿWN (“to help”). He is able to adduce a usage of the lexeme by al-Aʿsha¯, where ma¯ʿu¯n clearly has the meaning “benefit, donation” or the like. As in the case of other loan words such as furqa¯n (see QLA, 419f.), ma¯ʿu¯n apparently underwent an independent semantic development in

76

SURA GROUP I

Arabic. That a social benefit is intended in Q  107:7 is evident also from the verbal usage, which recalls qur’anic formulations such as manna¯ʿin li-l-khayri (“he who denies the good,” Q 68:12). As Nicolai Sinai (2011) has noted, in the closing verse, “the scarcely accidental similarity of the roots in ma¯ʿu¯n and the verb manaʿa [is] striking, consisting of two differing permutations of the same group of consonants (m-n-ʿ / m-ʿ-n). The contrast between the ‘assistance’ that is actually enjoined and its ‘hindrance’ in point of fact is thus highlighted by the similarity of the words; the occurrence of the hapaxlegomenon ma¯ʿu¯n instead of a more common term is surely also motivated in this way.” The loanword remains morphologically striking. It suggests a surplus value of meaning that may not be conveyed by the everyday translation “assistance.”

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement in the History of Development Like the preceding sura 102, the sura puts forward an open rebuke of either a singular opponent or a group of opponents, whose failure to fulfill their social obligations is linked in Q 107 to an insufficiently sincere performance of worship. Phonetic subtleties such as the assonance in yamnaʿu¯na l-ma¯ʿu¯n, alongside structural traits, show the sura to be very early: the closing verse wa-yamnaʿu¯na l-ma¯ʿu¯n, with its end-placement of the key concept of the sura, corresponds to the closing verse of Q 102 (thumma la-tusʾalunna yawmaʾidhin ʿani l-naʿı¯m, “then on that day you will be asked about comfort”), which likewise places the key concept of the sura in the last rhyme word. Even if a secure sequencing is hardly possible, the exclamation of woe that occurs here for the first time, against a group of cult participants accused of hypocrisy, may have preceded the exclamation of woe against persons accused of other offenses, in view of the close parallels to Jesus’s exclamation of woe against the Pharisees, who were also accused of hypocrisy in cult (Luke 11:43). Q 107 would thus be established as prior to Q 104.

Content and Structure The sura begins with a rebuke, initially concerning the deniers of the judgment, who are at the same time identical to the socially negligent. In the second verse group, a lack of sincerity is alleged against the apparently pagan hearers; the exclamation of woe against them, the first in the Qur’an, recalls Jesus’s exclamation against the Pharisees who show off their piety in prayer (Luke 11:43). The two vice catalogues taken together reflect moral and cultic expectations that were most likely familiar in a monastic context. The sura closes with a morphologically striking lexeme as the final rhyme (ma¯ʿu¯n), which is linked audibly to its governing verb manaʿa (“to hinder”) in a poetically forceful combination, but

SURA GROUP I

77

which, as a strange sounding word, also grants to the closing verse of the short sura an enigmatic dimension that goes beyond the everyday meaning of its root ʿWN (“to help”). The conclusion by way of the naming of the apparently central subject, social solidarity, echoes back to the conclusion (v. 8) of the preceding sura 102, which ends with the naming of the pagan life ideal of naʿı¯m, the life of comfort that is pilloried by the proclaimer. Although the form of the woe exclamation stokes eschatological associations, there is no mention of punishment in the sura. Here it again shows a close relatedness to the preceding sura 102, which indeed briefly inserts the image of the hellfire, but does not speak explicitly of the assignment of the blamed to a punishment in hell.

Speaker-Hearer Interaction The sura, in contrast to the previous one, addresses no present hearers. It is possible, however—if we presuppose its application in the context of cult (see QLA, 212–217)—that it was recited in the presence of those being blamed.

REFERENCES Birkeland, Harris (1958), Muslim Interpretation of Surah 107; Birkeland, Harris (1975): “The Interpretation of Surah 107”; Cuypers, Michel (1997): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 105 à 114”; Horovitz, Joseph (1925): “Proper Names and Derivatives in the Koran”; Neuwirth, Angelika (1981a): SKMS; Neuwirth, Angelika (2019): QLA; Nöldeke, Theodor (1910): Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft; Paret, Rudi (1975), “Sure 107”; Paret, Rudi (1971): KKK; Rubin, Uri (1987): “Morning and Evening Prayers”; Sinai, Nicolai (2011): Akademie-Kommentar.

Q  111 al-masad The Palm Fiber [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  2  3  4  5 

tabbat yada¯ Abı¯ Lahabin wa-tabb ma¯ aghna¯ ʿanhu ma¯luhu wa-ma¯ kasab sa-yas∙la¯ na¯ran dha¯ta Lahab wa-mraʾatuhu h∙amma¯lata l-h∙at∙ab fı¯ jı¯diha¯ h∙ablun min masad

1  Perish the hands of Abu¯ Lahab! And may he himself perish! 2 His possessions and what he has gained will not avail him. 3 He will burn in a fire, flaming! 4 And his wife—bearer of firewood!— 5  with a palm-fiber around her neck.

78

SURA GROUP I

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. Ibn Masʿu¯d, Ubayy b. Kaʿb, and Ibn ʿAbba¯s, and others after them, read the nominative in verse 4 in place of the vocative accusative h∙amma¯lat al-h∙at∙ab (see Jeffery 1937:112, 180, 208). In this way, the sentence about the wife of Abu¯ Lahab that extends across two verses is broken down into two short sentences. The reading is not only less convincing, being the lectio facilior, but also prematurely releases the tension that is maintained in the textus receptus down to the last word of the sura. The verses rhyme throughout in -ab, until the final verse, whose semantically surprising statement is highlighted by the slightly variant -ad.

COMPOSITION



⎧ 1 2 ⎪ ⎩1 ⎧ 1 3 ⎪ ⎩ 2

1 Curse of Abu¯ Lahab 2 Further disparagement: uselessness of his possessions 3 His eschatological fate, to burn in the fire 4–5 The fate of his wife as the bringer of firewood for his burning

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 tabbat yada¯ Abı¯ Lahabin wa-tabb] For the first time, the sura targets an unambiguous, individual opponent. On Abu¯ Lahab as a “figurative kunya,” see Horovitz (KU, 78, cf. 88): “If we recall that Abu¯ Lahab is not a proper name, but rather a designation invented by the prophet and attached to his opponent to name him as condemned to hell, then nowhere in the Meccan period do any names of individual contemporary persons occur.” On the basis of the Qur’an text, one should agree with Horovitz—against the biographical interpretation in the Islamic tradition, which would identify Abu¯ Lahab with an uncle of the prophet who had this name—that the name should be interpreted as a term of abuse against an unidentified opponent who cannot be clearly identified. One could perhaps translate this as “Man of Flames” or the like, without his identification with the family member of the proclaimer being thereby excluded. On the earliest evidence of the Islamic tradition, which also discredits Abu¯ Lahab as dishonorable aside from his opposition to the proclaimer, see Rubin (1979). The expression tabbat yada¯ Abı¯ Lahabin (“perish the hands of Abu¯ Lahab!”), wherein the hands stand for the entire person, refers to the fact that the right hand—raised for an oath—vouches for the rightful ability to act, cf. the psalmic im eshkah∙ekh Yerushalayim tishkah∙ yemini (“if I forget yours, Jerusalem, let my hand be forgotten,” Psalms 137:5). Its integrity is to be understood as a central precondition for autonomous public action. In the Psalm an additional condi-

SURA GROUP I

79

tion for the capacity to speak is added: tidbaq leshoni le-h∙ikki (“and let my tongue adhere to my palate,” Psalms 137:6). In the qur’anic curse, a deprivation of social rights is also intended against the opponent. V. 2 ma¯ aghna¯ ʿanhu ma¯luhu wa-ma¯ kasab] The sentence can be interpreted either as a pronouncement, seen retrospectively from the eschatological future, or as a question (“what does it benefit him. . .?”). In view of the eschatological determination already addressed in the imprecatory name, and the eschatological projections that are also common elsewhere (see Q  69:28: ma¯ aghna¯ ʿannı¯ ma¯liyah, “my possessions avail me nothing”), we should assume a primary interpretation in the sense of “nothing will avail him.” V. 3 sa-yas∙la¯ na¯ran dha¯ta Lahab] With this verse, the enigmatic imprecatory name is ‘completed,’ cf. on this the somewhat later sura 85, where the precisely equivalent as∙h∙a¯bu l-ukhdu¯d (“the people of the pit”) of verse 4 are likewise first “completed” and made comprehensible in verses 5–6. In the same sura, the mysterious wa-sha¯hidin wa-mashhu¯d (“by a witness and what is witnessed”) of verse 3 is likewise made clear in verses 7 and 9. V. 4–5 wa-mraʾatuhu h∙amma¯lata l-h∙at∙ab / fı¯ jı¯diha¯ h∙ablun min masad] Continuation of the invective by way of denigration of the wife, who is presented, through a parenthetical address, in her eschatological role as the bringer of the wood for the fire in which her husband will burn. Her humiliation consists not only in the attributed socially degrading role of a wood-bearer, but culminates in a further image that is even more compromising: she is presented as stripped of her jewelry, in place of which appears the rope of palm fiber worn by a female slave. This image can only achieve such force as a conclusion by way of a particularly heightened poetic intertextuality. As Fischer (1937) already stresses, the woman’s slender neck hung with jewels is a standard element in the inventory of ancient Arabic poetic praise. This should be added to the prominence of the representation of jewel-wearing women in the iconography of the Hellenistic images of goddesses, especially Aphrodite; see for example, the illustrations in Fowden and Key (2004: 19), which reproduce a female ideal of the Umayyad period, and Fowden and Key (2004: 23, mosaic from Hama).

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Placement within the History of Development In this short sura, which is preceded by only two texts with a rebuking tone, Q 102 and 107, we have before us the earliest qur’anic invective. This will be followed already in the early Meccan period by several generically related individual statements, which are already embedded in larger sura contexts. These invectives likewise begin with curses and merge into eschatological projections, see for example Q 85:4–12 (without the later expansion verses 9–11) and 51:10–

80

SURA GROUP I

14. The short monothematic sura 111 on the other hand still plays with the image of flames: certainly it is the object of denigration that is meant to burn in these flames, but here hell does not yet figure as a collective place for the damned, since the entire scene is reserved only for Abu¯ Lahab and his wife, who brings the kindling specifically for his fiery death. The social shaming of the association of the wife with servile activities and the neck jewelry of female slaves here stands in the foreground rather than the punishment by flames. The sura cannot be assigned an unambiguous position in sequence, since it contains no literal references to earlier suras. It belongs closely together with sura 104, which we assign to a place following this text, as both texts pillory acquisitiveness and thematize ‘burning in the fire.’ In view of the differing objects of rebuke, the sequence of the two suras cannot be determined.

Content and Structure The sura was described by August Fischer (1937) as an early qur’anic example of ancient Arabic invective (hija¯ʾ); further comparative materials from early Arabic secular literature are offered by Manfred Ullmann (1966), Geert J. Van Gelder (1988: 13–40), and Ewald Wagner (1987: 43f.). While invectives elsewhere aim at groups of opponents, the attacks in this sura strike directly at an apparently unique individual opponent, who is prominent enough to be vulnerable to the offense of a denial of his legal capacity. Although his identity remains anonymous in the Qur’an, it must be that of a man who, like his wife, is of noble origin. As it occurs in the text, her social humiliation, which is not only placed in the eschatological future but also suggested by the address to be current in the mind of the speaker, is only convincing if one assumes a proudly held position of privilege for the couple. The inversion of the image of a woman’s bejeweled neck, which is celebrated in poetry and Hellenistic iconography alike, into the bare neck laden with the materially worthless and socially degrading signs of a slave, would be felt as a particularly heavy attack on the public reputation and private life of the couple.

REFERENCES Cuypers, Michel (1997): “Structures rhétoriques des sourates 105 à 114”; Fischer, August (1937): Der Wert der vorhandenen Koran-Übersetzungen und Sure 111; Fowden, Garth, and Elizabeth Key (2004): Studies on Hellenism; Rubin, Uri (2007): “The Hands of Abu¯ Lahab”; Ullmann, Manfred (1966): ­Untersuchungen zur Rag˘azpoesie; Van Gelder, Geert Jan (1988): The Bad and the Ugly; Wagner, Ewald (1987): Grundzüge der klassischen arabischen Dichtung, Bd. 1.

SURA GROUP I

81

Q  104 al-humaza The Backbiter [bi-smi lla¯hi l-rah∙ma¯ni l-rah∙ı¯m] 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 

waylun li-kulli humazatin lumazah alladhı¯ jamaʿa ma¯lan wa-ʿaddadah yah∙sabu anna ma¯lahu akhladah kalla¯ la-yunbadhanna fı¯ l-h∙ut∙amah wa-ma¯ adra¯ka ma¯ l-h∙ut∙amah na¯ru lla¯hi l-mu¯qadah allatı¯ tat∙∙taliʿu ʿala¯ l-afʾidah innaha¯ ʿalayhim muʾs∙adah fı¯ ʿamadin mumaddadah

1 Woe to every slanderer and backbiter 2  who gathers riches and counts them 3  believing that his riches make him immortal. 4  No indeed! He will be flung to the crusher. 5 Do you know what the crusher is? 6  The fire of God, kindled, 7  which rises over the hearts, 8  whose flames beat together above them 9  in high-reaching columns.

LITERARY ANALYSIS The sura is a unity. Rhyme scheme 3CC3Cah in which 3CC3dah predominates, only lumazah (v. 1) and h∙ut∙amah (v. 4 and 5) break with this pattern. v. 3. is perhaps best understood as a rhetorical question (see SKMS, 234f.).

COMPOSITION



⎧ 2 ⎪   4 ⎪ ⎪ ⎩2 1 ⎧2 4 ⎪ ⎩ 2

1–2 Exclamation of woe against a particular type of opponent; short vice catalogue 3–4 Rejection of his self-security, announcement of the punishment in the h∙ut∙ama 5 Teaching question about the h∙ut∙ama 6–7 Answer: place of physical and psychical punishment 8–9 The h∙ut∙ama’s annihilating’s effect on the punished

STRUCTURAL FORMULA / PROPORTIONS 4+1+4

RUNNING VERSE COMMENTARY V. 1 waylun li-kulli humazatin lumazah] On the structure of the entire sura, see Robinson (22003: 164–166) and SKMS, 233f. On the text type of invective,

82

SURA GROUP I

which resonates in the two first verses, see Wagner (1987: 43f.), cf. in general Van Gelder (1988: 13–40). The polemic against a type of opponent is introduced by an exclamation of woe. An exclamation of woe without threat has occurred already in the earlier sura Q 107:4, also followed by a vice catalogue in which cultic misconducts (failures in prayer) are linked to social failures: Q 107: 2–3: fa-dha¯lika lladhı¯ yaduʿʿu l-yatı¯m / wa-la¯ yah∙ud∙∙du ʿala¯ ∙taʿa¯mi l-miskı¯n (“that is the one who pushes away the orphan / and does not urge the feeding of the poor”). In Q 104, too, the obsession with possessions entails a failure in relation to the needy. Cf. somewhat later Q 83:1-4: waylun li-l-mut∙affifı¯n / . . . / / a-la¯ yaz∙unnu ula¯ʾika annahum mabʿu¯thu¯n (“Woe to the skimpers / . . . / / Do they not believe that they will be resurrected?”), where the exclamation of woe about those being blamed is continued by a rhetorical question in relation to the false evaluation of their eschatological situation. Further exclamations of woe occur in Q 83:10, 77:15.19.24.28.34.37.40.45.47.49 (as refrain) and 52:11–12. The person being reprimanded here—if this is not rather the rebuke of a certain type—appears in the rare morphological form fuʿala (intensive for human behavior, see Grande 21998; personal communication from Kirill Dmitriev; the form fuʿala is not attested in GVGS), elsewhere it occurs in the common intensive form fuʿʿa¯l: Q 68:10–14: wa-la¯ tut∙iʿ kulla h∙alla¯fin mahı¯n / hamma¯zin mashsha¯ʾin bi-namı¯m / manna¯ʿin li-l-khayri muʿtadin athı¯m / ʿutullin baʿda dha¯lika zanı¯m / an ka¯na dha¯ ma¯lin wa-banı¯n (“And do not obey every contemptible swearer / backbiter [humma¯z], spreader of slander / hinderer of good, / sinning transgressor / greedy, moreover, and ignoble!”). This detailed vice catalogue is expanded with the rebuke of the cultic negligence of the blamed (Q 68:15): idha¯ tutla¯ ʿalayhi a¯ya¯tuna¯ qa¯la asa¯∙tiru l-awwalı¯n (“