RQR | Review of Qur'anic Research

RQR | Review of Qur’anic Research Shari Lowin, Editor [email protected] www.iqsaweb.org Review of Qur’anic Research, vol. 4, no. 6 (2018) Seyyed Hossein NASR, Caner K. DAGLI, Maria Massi DAKAKE, Joseph E. B. LUMBARD, and Mohammed RUSTOM (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 Seyyed Hossein Nasr 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.

Load more