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Copyright by Sharon Lyn Silzell 2015 Copyright by Sharon Lyn Silzell 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Sharon Lyn Silzell Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: In Hearts and Hands: Sanctity, Sacrilege, and the Written Qur’ān in Pre-Modern Sunnī Muslim Society Committee: Denise A. Spellberg, Supervisor Alison Frazier Julie Hardwick Stephennie Mulder Hina Azam In Hearts and Hands: Sanctity, Sacrilege, and the Written Qur’ān in Pre-Modern Sunnī Muslim Society by Sharon Lyn Silzell, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2015 Dedication For Marjorie Acknowledgements It is with great pleasure that I take this opportunity to thank the many people who have supported me in myriad ways, not only in the production of this dissertation, but during my entire tenure here at UT. I must first express my profound gratitude to my advisor, Denise Spellberg. Denise not only guided my education and research, she did so while allowing me to choose my own path and, in the case of this thesis, change direction. Her enthusiasm for all of my projects was continually reinforced by her thoughtful comments on a series of drafts that resulted in work of which I am proud. It is not surprising that my other committee members have been with me since my first year in Austin. Alison Frazier’s extremely high expectations of my work set a bar for which I hope to continue to strive throughout my career. The fruits of her support and careful critique of every word I wrote can be seen on each page of this project. Julie Hardwick’s straightforward approach to academia, tempered by an unencumbered laugh, forced me to assess my work with honesty and optimism, both of which yielded some of my best writing. I thank Stephennie Mulder for her remarkable patience during my first year as well as her willingness to share her thoughts on sacred space and lived religion. I am grateful to Hina Azam for her generosity in guiding me through translating difficult Arabic passages and for her interest in my personal happiness and well-being. I am blessed with a small cohort of friends in Austin. I must thank Kirsten Beck for continuously bringing out the best in me as a scholar and as a human being. Christine Baker repeatedly acted as my mentor, my friend, and as a sounding board when things got frustrating. My lunches, coffees, and friendship with Lior Sternfeld were incredibly valuable. I thank Jason Morgan for reinforcing the importance of balance in a life where v teetering is the norm. I am most grateful to my mother Marj, who never doubted that I could do this. vi In Hearts and Hands: Sanctity, Sacrilege, and the Written Qur’ān in Pre-Modern Sunnī Muslim Society Sharon Lyn Silzell, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Denise A. Spellberg This dissertation explores the written Qur’ān and its role in the lives of Sunnī Muslims in the Middle East from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. Until now, medieval Qur’ān manuscripts have been largely the domain of art historians who emphasize the commissioning of luxury Qur’āns as demonstrations of piety and authority. This study relocates the Muslim scripture, taking it off the bookshelf and placing it in the hands of every-day Muslims, literate and illiterate, men and women. By combining the close examination of hundreds of Qur’ān manuscripts with an analysis of the book’s portrayal in a variety of medieval Arabic literary genres, a portrait of the Qur’ān emerges that is very much at odds with the prescriptions and proscriptions set forth in Islamic law regarding the treatment of the book and its designation as a sacred object. I argue that beginning with the rise of the book as a means of transmitting knowledge in the ninth century, attitudes toward the written Qur’ān changed at all levels of society. Recognizing the increased presence of books, elite religious scholars attempted vii to disassociate women from the transmission of the written Qur’ān. My gendered reading reveals the failure of these men to rewrite the life Ḥafṣa, a wife of the Prophet closely associated with the preservation of the first Qur’ān codex. With the rise of Sufism and its emphasis on a personal relationship with God, every-day Muslims forged a parallel personal relationship with their written scripture, and, ignoring Islamic law, designated some Qur’āns as hyper-sacred and used them as a means of intercession with God. At the same time, the Sunnī Muslim masses in Baghdad raised the Qur’ān during street riots, exposing it to pollution and potential destruction. This dissertation reveals for the first time that rather than the elite Islamic scholars defining orthopraxy concerning the written scripture, it was every-day Muslims who determined what the Qur’ān as a book meant to them and how it was to be treated. viii Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter One: The Rise of the Book and the Elevation of the Muṣḥaf ..................24 Chapter Two: Ḥafṣa and al-Muṣḥaf: Women and the Written Qur’ān in the Early Centuries of Islam .........................................................................................68 Chapter Three: Blood on the Text: The Muṣḥaf and the Construction of the Sacred .....................................................................................................................101 Chapter Four: Sacredness and Sacrilege: Changing Attitudes toward the Sanctity of the Qur’ān Codex ........................................................................................149 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................195 Appendix ..............................................................................................................201 Bibliography ........................................................................................................216 ix Introduction Muslims believe that the Qur’ān was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, beginning in the year 610 CE and continuing until just before the Prophet’s death in 10/632.1 The scripture was revealed in Arabic and is considered by Muslims to be the actual speech of God. As Muhammad received the Qur’ān, he transmitted the text orally to his followers who, in turn, memorized it and transmitted it to others. The Qur’ān was not collected and written down in a codex until a year or two after the Prophet died. To date, the primary focus of Qur’ānic studies has been that of textual criticism. This content-based approach includes the book’s relationship to other scripture as well as its relationship to other Islamic sciences including exegesis (tafsīr), Arabic grammar, and Islamic law. Some Western scholars have also attempted to historicize the Qur’ānic text using various approaches to determine the origins and chronology of the Muslim scripture.2 The book itself, as a material object, has been almost exclusively the domain of art historians and paleographers. Art historians have focused primarily on luxury editions of 1 All dates are given in the standard Hijra/Common Era format. In general, when relating historical reports, I omit the isnāds (the list of the chain of transmitters found at the beginning of a ḥadīth or historical report (khabar)). I follow common usage and use “ḥadīth” for both the singular and plural, and because Abū ʿUbayd and Ibn Ḥanbal use this term for reports from the Prophet and his Companions, I do as well. To make this study more accessible to non-Arabic speakers, when using Arabic plurals I generally add the letter “s” to the Arabic singular; I also omit the blessings found after references to the Prophet and his Companions. I have also standardized all spellings of the word “Qur’ān.” 2 John Wansbrough is perhaps the best-known scholar to challenge the authenticity of the origins and chronology of the Qur’ān. See his Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). For a critical overview of Western approaches to the origins of the Qur’ānic text see Angelika Neuwirth, “Qur’an and History - A Disputed Relationship: Some Early Reflections on Qur’anic History and History in the Qur’an,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 5 no. I (2003): 1- 18. 1 the Qur’ān as expressions of piety and authority.3 Paleographers have approached the various scripts used to write the Qur’ān as a means of dating manuscripts,4 while a few scholars have examined Qur’ān codices to trace variant readings of the scripture.5 The role of the written Qur’ān (muṣḥaf pl. maṣāḥif) in pre-modern Muslim society has been largely ignored by scholars. This dissertation is the first study to use the Qur’ān as a material object to better understand what it meant to be a Muslim in the pre-modern Middle East. It challenges the notion that it was elite religious scholars who determined Islamic orthopraxy. Rather than following the letter of Islamic law, which states that as the Word of God, the Qur’ān must be set apart and treated as a sacred object, my study demonstrates that the muṣḥaf was meaningful to every-day Muslims in ways that went far beyond the scripture it contains. This is also the first study to examine the impact of the rise of the book on a society that was largely illiterate.6 I argue that the written Qur’ān had a function in pre-modern Muslim society that was much more complex than its role as merely a sacred object. Moreover, the role of the muṣḥaf was far from fixed. Every-day Muslims used the Qur’ān in increasingly dynamic ways, and this study demonstrates that the multivalent uses of this book were a result of a 3 Cf. Sheila Blair, “Uses and Functions of the Qur’anic Text,” Melanges de l’Universite Saint-Joseph 59 (2006): 183-208.
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