This anthology, translated from German, continues the revisionist program of The Inārah Institute for Research on Early Islamic History and the Koran. Alongside some interesting ideas, it contains a great deal of dross and pays insufficient attention to relevant evidence and prior scholarship.
The foreword to the English edition by Markus Gross and the introduction by Karl-Heinz Ohlig position the volume's contributors as outsiders to an overly credulous Orientalist establishment. They regard the traditional Islamic salvation history about the Qurʾan and the rise of Islam as a fictitious back-projection, and propose instead to rely solely on non-Muslim sources. This is like tracing the history of Catholicism through Protestant polemics and finding it rife with devil worship. Enemies tend to introduce distortions even larger than a group's own exaggerations and cover-ups.
Volker Popp's “From Ugarit to Sāmarrāʾ: An Archaeological Journey on the Trail of Ernst Herzfeld” argues that the Islamic Empire was actually a joint project of Persians and Aramaic-speaking Christians until legal scholars Islamicized it in the ninth century. Popp's rambling account combines interesting facts and documents with so many oddities—like the outlandish association of the Umayyad Caliph Marwān with the Persian city of Marv—that it would be impossible to address them here. Its main failing is that it ignores entire swaths of Islamic historiography, even concerning the Abbasid period, which is hardly shrouded in obscurity.
Karl-Heinz Ohlig's “Evidence of a New Religion in Christian Literature ‘Under Islamic Rule’?” casts doubt on the dating, provenance, and relevance of various non-Muslim sources to show that there is no solid independent evidence for seventh-century invasions by Arab adherents of a new religion following an Arabian Prophet named Muḥammad (who, if he existed, may have been the leader of a Christian sect). Sowing doubt is easy, and in this case, disingenuous. Refusing to see the terms Saracens, Arabs, Ishmaelites, or Hagarenes as references to Muslims is like doubting that the Crusaders were Catholics simply because Arabic texts call them Ifranj.
Ohlig's “From muḥammad Jesus to Prophet of the Arabs: The Personalization of a Christological Epithet” argues that muḥammad, meaning “blessed” or “chosen,” was applied originally to Christ—though this was subsequently forgotten among both Christians and Muslims—and only later to the Prophet Muḥammad. This suggests that the “Islamic” invasion of the Near East was originally a Christian movement.
Christoph Luxenberg's “Relics of Syro-Aramaic Letters in Early Qurʾān Codices in Ḥiǧāzī and Kūfī Ductus” argues that the Qurʾan employed a mixed language heavily influenced by Aramaic, that its current script was affected by Syriac script, and that its early transmission was not oral but written and involved Syriac copyists. Luxenberg offers several emendations and readings based on the idea that lām and ʿayn are easily confused in Syriac script, and that final yāʾ in Qurʾanic orthography can resemble Syriac final nūn. Few of these suggestions help with textual difficulties, and most can be refuted easily. The emendation libadā (72: 19) > ʿābidīn would ruin both rhyme and rhythmical parallelism. Lumazah (104:1) > ghammāzah would ruin rhythmical parallelism, and other examples of yalmizu > yaghmizu (9:58, 9:79, 49:11) would only be worth considering if the original word were problematic. Li-dulūki sh-shamsi (17:78) likewise makes sense without being changed conjecturally to li-duʿūki sh-shamsi. Shayʾ is extremely common and need not be emended to the much less frequent shaʾn or shān. The verb hayyin, yuhayyin does not provide an improved reading over hayyaʾa, yuhayyiʾu (18:10, 16). ʾĪ wa-rabbī (10:53) appears correct, and there is no evidence for ʾēn wa-rabbī; the similar expression ʾī wa'llāhi produces the dialectal form aywa, so perhaps ʾī should be ʾay. Luxenberg's claim that the emphatic particle la- derives from Aramaic is unconvincing; la- was probably different from lā and was lost early on in the other West Semitic languages but retained in Arabic (David Testen, Parallels in Semitic Linguistics: The Development of Arabic La- and Related Semitic Particles [Brill, 1998]). Only three of Luxenberg's points seem worth considering. First, libadā does indeed beg an explanation. Second, as previously proposed by Horovitz, Jeffrey, and others, the form Yaḥyā (3:39; 19:7) probably does derive from Yuḥannan, perhaps by confusion of -n with –ā; this would not require a Syriac script. Finally, given the oddity of the phrase lā yajidūna illā juhdahum (9:79), it does seem worth considering whether it might be a calque on an Aramaic expression.
Goldziher's essay “L'Islamise et le Parsisme” proposes several borrowings from Zoroastrianism: Persian influence on Abbasid administration and court culture, historical writing inspired by the royal annals of the Sassanians, the theocratic and confessional character of the Abbasid Empire, the idea that religious merit can be measured in specific weights, the emphasis on purity, and the impurity of dead bodies and unbelievers. He also notes reactionary influence: Muslims adopted a negative view of dogs, which was at odds with Arab tradition, in order to distinguish themselves from Zoroastrians’ esteem for dogs.
Volker Popp's “The Influence of Persian Religious Patterns on Notions in the Qurʾan” suggests Persian influence on the Qurʾan's depictions of paradise. He accepts Luxenberg's view that these reflect Syriac descriptions, and adds that the clothing mentioned, for instance, is characteristic of Persian gentry. The parallels he points out, however, are not specific enough to indicate influence. He links Qurʾanic and Zoroastrian angels, and connects the term dīn to the Persian dēn “wisdom” (?). The latter suggestion may have some merit, since the translation “religion” seems anachronistic and only some Qurʾanic instances of dīn fit the meaning “religious law” or the Hebrew meaning “judgment.”
In “New Ways of Qurʾānic Research: From the Perspective of Comparative Linguistics and Cultural Studies,” Markus Gross makes several points about language in support of Luxenberg. He gives examples of mixed languages, but does not give evidence of the mixed Arabo-Aramaic language posited by Luxenberg. He argues against the view—which few scholars would affirm—that the Qurʾan, like the Rig-Veda, was preserved with great accuracy through oral transmission. He claims that all Qurʾanic variants can be explained by written transmission; but while some variants can only be explained that way (he could have mentioned yaqḍī bi'l-ḥaqq for yaquṣṣu l-ḥaqq in Q 6:57), many others clearly arose orally (e.g., sirāṭ vs. ṣirāṭ in Q 1:7). The importance of rhyme and repetition suggest that the Qurʾan originated in oral performance, which is not precluded by evidence of written transmission. Gross also denies the Qurʾan's poetic qualities: Against the entire Arabic poetic tradition, he finds it “phonetically unthinkable” (416) that long –ū- could rhyme with long –ī-, and he finds poetic devices rare (425–7) even though roughly 86% of Qurʾanic verses exhibit end-rhyme and many others employ rhetorical figures or poetic license. While the Qurʾan does not have the same kind of meter as Arabic poetry, other forms of quantitative meter are found in the sections that resemble sajʿ (rhymed and rhythmical prose). Gross ignores all this evidence, as well as the scholarship in which it has been discussed—a failing that, unfortunately, characterizes this volume as a whole.
