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Review of Qur’anic Research, vol. 4, no. 6 (2018)

Seyyed Hossein NASR, Caner K. DAGLI, Maria Massi DAKAKE, Joseph E. B. LUMBARD, and (eds.)

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary

New York: HarperOne, 2015. Pp. lix + 1988.

Hardcover US $59.99. ISBN: 978-0061125867

doi: 10.11086/696034

Following in the footsteps of the Harper Collins Study Bible and the Jewish Study Bible, The

Study Quran is a welcome addition to the field of qurʾānic studies. In response to a proposal from the publisher, the distinguished Islamicist agreed to serve as the

Editor-in-Chief and general supervisor of the project on the condition that the team of scholars who carried out this monumental task would include only Muslim scholars who accept the Qurʾān “as the word of God and an authentic revelation” (xl). To this end, Nasr chose three talented young scholars to serve as General Editors: Caner Dagli, Maria Dakake, and Joseph Lumbard. Another scholar, Mohammed Rustom, served as Assistant Editor. The RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org volume has three parts: the translation, a verse-by-verse commentary printed below the translation, followed by fifteen essays on topics relating to the Qurʾān. Special attention was paid to the dust jacket and page design: In the translation, verse numbers are marked in red, inserted within a red medallion, and placed at the beginning of the corresponding verse—a significant break from the Islamic tradition, which places verse numbers at the end of a verse.

A substantial General Introduction to the volume was written by the Editor-in-Chief. The three

General Editors were each responsible for a section of the translation, a section of the commentary (to which the Assistant Editor also contributed), and at least one of the essays in the third section (Joseph Lumbard wrote two). The other eleven essays in the third section were written by Ingrid Mattson, Muhammad Mustafa al-Azami, Muhammad Abdel Haleem,

Walid Saleh, Toby Mayer, Muzaffar Iqbal, Aḥmad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib, Muṣṭafā Muḥaqqiq

Dāmād, William C. Chittick, Jean-Louis Michon, and Hamza Yusuf. The volume also has three appendices: Appendix A presents information (source references, variants) on ḥadīths cited, paraphrased, or referred to in the commentary, with a link, in red, to the sūrah number and verse number in which a particular ḥadīth is mentioned; and a bibliography of published ḥadīth sources. Appendix B is a timeline of major events relating to the career of the Prophet and the revelation of the Qurʾān. Appendix C includes short biographies of the Qurʾān commentators whose works are cited in the text. The volume also includes a comprehensive index as well as RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org eleven color maps that depict Arabia, the Hijaz, pilgrimage stations in Mecca, the topography of Medina, and important battles: Uḥud, the Trench, Badr, Mecca, Ḥunayn, and Ṭā’if.

The three General Editors have produced a new translation of the Qurʾān that seeks to convey what the Arabic text actually says rather than what later commentators and/or translators said that it means (xlii). Difficult words, phrases, and idioms are explained in the commentary, which draws on no less than forty-one tafsīr texts written over a period of nearly

1300 years—from Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767) to Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī (d.

1401/1981). The stated goal of the commentary is to clarify difficult passages, to explain the inner meaning of the text, “when necessary,” and, generally, to provide a “reasonable account” of what Muslim authorities have said about the text as it relates, inter alia, to ritual, law, theology, ethics, metaphysics, spirituality, and sacred history (xliii). In fact, the project editors claim to have produced a “new commentary that is…based completely on traditional

Islamic thought and the earlier commentary traditions” (xliv). This new commentary synthesizes the views of previous Muslim authorities (xliv), much like the commentary produced by the two Jalāls—Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī—in the ninth/fifteenth century. Although this new commentary is based largely on traditional sources, Nasr explains that the editors did consult academic scholarship in qurʾānic studies, albeit only such scholarship as they determined to be “reliable” (xliv). They avoided RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org scholarship written by unspecified scholars who “do not accept the Quran as revelation…, have a truncated view of the Islamic intellectual tradition, or… reject the Islamic worldview as a whole” (xliv). In the General Introduction, Nasr chastises these unnamed scholars for producing “questionable theories… published for the sake of worldly ends, such as gaining fame or furthering academic careers” (xliv). The tone of his remarks is regrettable in a volume that aspires to be ecumenical and that identifies as its audience not only Muslim lay(wo)men and scholars but also their non-Muslim counterparts (xlvi).

A project of this scope inevitably will raise questions among specialists. One might quibble, for example, with the translation of sunnah as “wont” (xxvii). The project is decidedly

Muslim, and the editors and the authors of the supplementary essays put forward a decidedly

Muslim view of how the Qurʾān took its present form and shape. “We can assume,” al-Azami asserts, “that the entire Quran was available in written form during the Prophet’s lifetime, a fact corroborated in numerous traditional sources” (1611). Indeed, “the Prophet himself,” Nasr asserts, “specified the location of verses in sūrahs and the order of sūrahs in relation to one another as they were revealed to him” (xxxiii–xxxiv). Similarly, Mattson states that “[a]s long as the Prophet was alive, new verses were revealed and inserted before, after, or in between existing verses within any sūrah according to the instructions the Prophet received from the

Source of the revelation” (1590). Statements such as these may provide a reasonable account of RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org what Muslim authorities have said, but that does not transform an assumption into a fact. It is difficult to imagine, for example, how one might prove that a prophet communicated with what Dakake calls the “Source of the revelation.”

Based on an examination of several verses with which I am familiar, I have identified a few issues that merit attention. Let me provide a couple of examples, beginning with the translation and its accuracy. Q Nisā’ 4:11 awards specific fractional shares of the estate to children, parents, and siblings. The Arabic text specifies that if a man dies leaving only one daughter, she receives one-half of the estate. The text also specifies that if a man leaves more than two daughters, these daughters receive two-thirds of the estate: “fi-in kunna nisā’an fawqa ithnatayni fa-lahunna thuluthā mā taraka.” The literal meaning of fawqa ithnatayni is “above two” or “more than two”—that is to say, three or more. For some reason—Allāhu aʿlam—Q 4:11 does not specify the entitlement of two daughters. Dakake translates the relevant clause in this verse as follows: “but if there are only daughters, two or more, then unto them is two-thirds of what he leaves” (emphasis mine). Two points are noteworthy: first, although the Qurʾān does appear to take it for granted that the case in question involves a man who leaves only one or more daughters (but no sons), the Arabic text does not specify that the deceased leaves only daughters, as in Dakake’s translation—which is thus, in fact, really a gloss. Second, as noted,

“fawqa ithnatayni” signifies “more than two,” that is to say, three or more—not “two or more,” RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org as in the translation. Thus, there is a substantive gap in the text: the Qurʾān specifies the entitlement of one daughter (1/2) and it specifies the entitlement of three or more daughters

(2/3) but it does not specify the entitlement of two daughters. This gap in the qurʾānic legislation was identified by early authorities, who solved the problem by using one verse of the Qurʾān to clarify or explain another, a technique that came to be known as tafsīr al-qur’ān bi’l-qur’ān. In the present instance, these authorities drew an analogy to the inheritance rights of sisters in Q Nisā’ 4:176, which specifically awards two-thirds of the estate to two sisters, using the unequivocal dual form (fa-in kānatā ithnatayni). Just as two sisters inherit two-thirds of the estate in Q 4:176, these authorities reasoned, so too two daughters should inherit two- thirds of the estate in Q 4:11—even if verse 11 does not explicitly say so. Curiously, Dakake has imported this analogy into her translation of Q 4:11, thereby violating one of the stated principles of The Study Quran, namely, to convey what the Arabic text actually says rather than what one or another authority said that it means (xliii). In accordance with this principle, one would have expected a literal translation of the Arabic text, followed by a discussion of the substantive problem in the commentary.

My second example relates to the commentary on two other inheritance verses. The second half of Q Nisā’ 4:12—hereinafter, Q 4:12b—awards fractional shares of the estate to siblings. The opening clause of Q 4:12b is translated by Dakake as follows: “If a man or woman RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org leaves no direct heir, but has a brother or sister, then unto each of the two a sixth; but if they are more than two, they share equally a third…” Note that the award here is capped at one- third of the estate and that one or more brothers and sisters inherit equal shares of the estate.

The very last verse in Sūrat al-Nisā’—Q 4:176—returns to the subject of inheritance by siblings.

Q 4:176 treats the same set of facts as Q 4:12b: a person dies without a direct heir, leaving one or more siblings, male and/or female. Curiously, the fractional shares awarded in Q 4:176 are substantially different from those awarded in Q 4:12b: one brother inherits the entire estate; one sister inherits one-half; two or more sisters inherit two-thirds; and if brothers and sisters inherit in competition with one another, they share the entire estate—pace Dakake, who claims that they share only two-thirds—with a male receiving twice the share of a female, e.g., one brother (2/3) and one sister (1/3). Note that whereas in Q 4:12b siblings inherit a maximum of one-third of the estate and males and females inherit on a basis of equality, in Q 4:176 siblings inherit between 50% and 100% of the estate and a brother inherits twice as much as his sister.

In her commentary on Q 4:176, Dakake observes that, according to the Companion al-Barā’ b.

ʿĀzib, Q 4:176 “was the last verse of the Qurʾān revealed to the Prophet”—a point of potential relevance to the present discussion even if Dakake does not follow up on it. Citing only the

Shiʿi commentator Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (d. 468/1076), she states, “The present verse

[viz. 176] increases the portion of the estate to be divided among the siblings and delineates RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org the division among the siblings more specifically.” Here Dakake asserts that the legislation in Q

4:176—reportedly the last verse revealed to Muḥammad—changed or modified the legislation in Q 4:12b. That is to say, she suggests, without explicitly saying so, that Q 4:176 abrogated

(nasakha) Q 4:12b. If so, this would be an instance of naskh al-ḥukm dūna’l-tilāwa or the abrogation of the legal force of Q 4:12b but not of its recitation. To the best of my knowledge, no Muslim authority has ever made this claim. Rather, confronted with a seeming contradiction between these two verses, the commentators universally solve the problem by means of a textual interpolation. When God used the word “brother” or “sister” in Q 4:12b, they explain, He meant “uterine brother” or “uterine sister” (akh li-umm or ukht li-umm). And when God used the word “brother” or “sister” in Q 4:176, He meant either “consanguine” or

“germane” brother or sister (akh li-ab/ukht li-ab or akh li-ab wa-umm/ukht li-ab wa-umm).

Indeed, a variant reading (qirā’ah) of Q 4:12b, attributed to Ubayy b. Kaʿb (d. 30/650–651) and

Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ (d. 55/675), adds li-umm to the consonantal skeleton of Q 4:12b. Remarkably, however, no commentator has ever suggested that Q 4:176 “increases the portion of the estate to be divided among the siblings”—as claimed by Dakake. Rather, the standard view is that each verse treats a different type of sibling (uterine siblings in Q 4:12b, consanguine and/or germane siblings in Q 4:176) and that this difference accounts for the differences in the size of the fractional shares awarded to siblings in the two verses. In fact, this is how al-Ṭūsī—the only RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org source cited by Dakake in the paragraph in which she makes this assertion—understood the meaning of “brother” and “sister” in these two verses.1 Pace Dakake, no Islamic source that I am familiar with states that Q 4:176 “increases the portion of the estate to be divided among siblings.”

Anyone who sets out to produce a new commentary that draws upon forty-one tafsīr texts and who attempts to provide a reasonable account of what earlier commentators have said will have to make many decisions—often difficult ones—about what material to include and what material to exclude, and about what is important and what is not. To assess the reasonability of the decisions made by the editors of The Study Quran, it will be necessary to undertake a close analysis of the entire commentary. In the meantime, let me conclude this short review with some remarks about three verses in Sūrat al-Aḥzāb that were translated and commented upon by Lumbard. These three verses all treat a single figure: a man named Zayd.

Q Aḥzāb 33:4 suggests that a man who says that a person is “his son” does not thereby transform that person into a true son. (“Nor has He made those whom you claim [as sons] your sons. These are merely words from your mouths. But God speaks the truth and guides upon the way.”) In the commentary, Lumbard explains that this verse was revealed

to clarify the nature of the Prophet’s relationship with Zayd ibn Ḥāritha, a freed slave of the Prophet who remained a part of the Prophet’s extended household. Sometime

1 Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān fī tafsīr al-qur’ān, eds. Aḥmad Shawqī al-Amīn and Aḥmad Ḥabīb Qaṣīr, 10 vols. (Najaf: Maktabat al-Amīn, 1957–1963), 3.407-12. RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org

before the beginning of revelation, Zayd’s father had repudiated him when Zayd declared that he preferred to remain with Muḥammad as his slave rather than return to his family (1020). Lumbard’s statement that Zayd’s father “repudiated” Zayd arguably reverses cause and effect as the story is told, for example, in Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845) and Balādhurī (d. 279/892). In these early sources, we learn that Zayd b. Ḥāritha al-Kalbī was born ca. 580 CE and that when he was approximately twenty years old, he was captured by Arab horsemen and transported to a distant location. When Zayd’s father Ḥāritha became aware of his son’s disappearance, he was inconsolable and he worked tirelessly to identify his whereabouts. Fortuitously, Ḥāritha learned that Zayd was living as a slave in the Hijaz and he hurried to Mecca, where he offered

Zayd’s master—a man named Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qurashī—a large sum of money as ransom so that Zayd might be reunited with his birth family. Faced with the choice between freedom and slavery, Zayd freely chose to remain a slave with Muḥammad. “I would not choose anyone over you,” Zayd said. “In my mind, you have the status of both father and mother.” Following this demonstration of loyalty, Muḥammad manumitted Zayd and adopted him as his son in a ceremony attended by Ḥāritha, who reportedly was satisfied with his son’s choice (ṭābat nafsuhu). Henceforth, Zayd was known as Zayd b. Muḥammad—as noted by

Lumbard in his commentary on Q Aḥzāb 33:5. One suspects that later generations of commentators were discomforted by Muḥammad’s adoption of a twenty-year-old man who RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org had a living mother and father. Lumbard’s statement that Zayd’s father repudiated his son no doubt reflects this discomfort. His statement may be reasonable, but is it accurate?

In Q Aḥzāb 33:37, the omniscient narrator—presumably God—cites a statement made by the addressee—presumably the Prophet—to a third party identified later in the verse only as

Zayd: “Retain your wife for yourself and reverence God.” Post-qurʾānic sources identify the

“Zayd” mentioned in verse 37 as Zayd b. Ḥāritha al-Kalbī and they identify the “wife” to whom he was married at the time as Zaynab bt. Jaḥsh. In his commentary on verse 37, Lumbard says, drawing on Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201), Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1273), and al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273),

“When Zayd told the Prophet that his wife, Zaynab bint Jaḥsh, wished to divorce him, the

Prophet replied, Retain your wife for yourself and reverence God” (1030). Again, Lumbard has reversed cause and effect as presented in early sources. For example, in the tafsīr of Muqātil b.

Sulaymān—a text not cited here by Lumbard—the commentator explains that Zayd begged his father for permission to divorce his beautiful wife on the grounds that she was haughty, condescending, and sharp-tongued. In this commentary—as in many others—it is Zayd who wants to divorce Zaynab and not the other way around. It is not immediately clear why

Lumbard has reversed cause and effect here, although, presumably, his explanation is based on something said or reported by one of the three above-mentioned medieval commentators. RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org

Q Aḥzāb 33:40 famously proclaims that “Muḥammad is not the father of any man among you; rather he is the Messenger of God and the Seal of prophets. And God is the knower of all things.” Lumbard begins his commentary on verse 40 by explaining that the opening clause (“Muḥammad is not the father of any man among you”) “refers to the Prophet’s relationship with Zayd ibn Ḥāritha, whom the Prophet had claimed as his son after Zayd’s father disowned him [sic; see above] and whom others had referred to thereafter as the “Son of

Muḥammad” (1031) before the revelation of this sūrah.” Lumbard adds that the phrase “Seal of the prophets” signifies that Muḥammad is the last prophet sent to humanity, citing three

ḥadīths that support this claim, including a statement attributed to Muḥammad himself in which he reportedly said, “The succession of prophets has been completed in me” (1031–1032).

It is curious that Lumbard does not address the significance of the fact that Zayd was known as the son of Muḥammad or how the father/son relationship related to Muḥammad’s status as the last prophet. Again, these are issues that were addressed by Muqātil who, in his commentary on verse 40, poses two hypotheticals: (1) Had it been the case—contrary to fact— that Muḥammad did have a son [viz., who attained maturity and outlived his father,] that son would have been a Messenger [and] Prophet (rasūlan nabiyyan). (2) Had it been the case—again contrary to fact—that Zayd was the “son of Muḥammad” he, that is to say Zayd, would have been a prophet! Muqātil’s thought experiment suggests that the existence of a man known as RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org

Zayd b. Muḥammad posed a threat to the theological doctrine that Muḥammad brought the office of prophecy to an end. This is surely an important issue and one wonders why Lumbard here chose not to incorporate Muqātil’s observations on verse 40 in his commentary on the same verse in The Study Quran.

These criticisms, based on the examination of a handful of verses, do not detract from the importance of The Study Quran, which will serve as a key reference work and resource for scholars and students, specialists and non-specialists, Muslims and non-Muslims, for years to come. The editors are to be thanked for their indefatigable efforts and congratulated on a major achievement.

David S. Powers