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A Comment on the Hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough

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A Comment on the Hypotheses of Burton and Wansbrough the codification of the qurʾan 779 ThE COdificaTION OF THE QurʾAN: A COmmENT ON THE HypOTHESES OF BURTON AND WANSbrOugH Gregor Schoeler Introduction Christoph Luxenberg’s proposed Syro-Aramaic reading of the Qurʾan, which has figured prominently during the conference from which the present volume has emerged, can be classed together with two other very well-known theories, those of Patricia Crone/Michael Cook and John Wansbrough 1 All three approaches either mistrust or com- pletely reject the Arabic accounts concerning the early Islamic period Crone/Cook do so with regard to historical traditions about early Islam in general, while Wansbrough argues against the traditional account of how the Qurʾanic text has come into being, and Luxenberg casts doubt on the traditional reading of the Qurʾan John Burton’s theory that it was the Prophet himself who was responsible for the “final edition” of the Qurʾan should also be mentioned in this context, since it also dismisses the respective Islamic account as fictitious 2 All of these scholars show a tendency to continue the pattern set by Ignaz Goldziher with his well-known criticism of prophetic traditions (in particular legal ḥadīth),3 an approach that was developed further by Joseph Schacht, who also extended it to the transmission of historical traditions 4 The rejection of the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry by David Margoliouth and (following him) Tāḥā Ḥusayn may be seen as pointing in the same direction 5 A certain degree of skepticism towards traditions concerning early Islam is justified by the circumstance that all the relevant accounts, tales, and poems are extant only in works written or published in their present form 150 to 200 years after the events occurred (i e , not before 800 ce) Thus, we possess neither contemporary Islamic records 1 Crone and Cook, Hagarism; Wansbrough, Quranic Studies 2 Burton, Collection 3 Goldziher, Entwickelung 4 S chacht, Origins 5 Ḥusayn, Fī l-adab al-jāhilī 780 gregor schoeler of the acts and sayings of the Prophet, nor contemporary reports of the redaction and compilation of the Qurʾan (which tradition places before 650 ce), nor yet contemporary collections of pre-Islamic or early Islamic poems that would have reached us through written transmission We are similarly unaware of how the Qurʾan was read in the Prophet’s lifetime What we do have are later generations’ accounts of events from the early period, accounts which are fre- quently widely divergent Given these circumstances, it is only under- standable that Western scholarship did not content itself with the analysis and comparison of the various traditions, but very early on began to scrutinize the process of transmission itself, which in turn led the scholars referred to above to conclude that the respective traditions ought to be rejected The question facing us today, however, is whether this criticism, and in particular its most recent formula- tions, has not gone too far In examining, as I plan to do, a number of questions surrounding the written compilation and transmission of the Qurʾan (the Ḥadīth will be addressed towards the end), I will also have to rely on tradi- tions written down by later generations I cannot prove that all of them are accurate—indeed, I am certain that many of them have been poorly transmitted and distorted, and that some are false or even downright inventions Nevertheless, I do believe that these traditions have a genuine core and that they provide a consistent general picture of the history of the Qurʾan’s compilation I take this to be justified on the grounds that this core is confirmed by what we know from other contexts about the use of writing in early Islam, as well as by our knowledge about later periods (for example, contemporary records) To avoid repeating what I have said about this issue elsewhere,6 I shall concentrate on attempting to discover how credible the “genuine core” of the relevant reports about the collection of the Qurʾan in fact is— that is, credible in the light of our wider knowledge about the use of writing in early Islam 6 Cf Schoeler, “Frage”; id , “Weiteres”; id , “Mündliche Thora”; id , “Schreiben und Veröffentlichen”; id , Charakter und Authentie; id , Ecrire et transmettre, 15–41 .
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