English-speaking readers should feel greatly enriched by the publication of this book containing articles from 1990 to 2012 by renowned Qurʾan scholar Angelika Neuwirth. Several of these were originally in German only and are now, with others, accessible. One of the most important voices in Qurʾan scholarship in the West today, Neuwirth has offered corrections to recent findings by others and has developed bold original views on the Qurʾan that have given the field of Qurʾanic studies in Western academic circles a new trend and new horizons of research.
Neuwirth confronts essential questions about the literariness of the Qurʾan, while accepting it as a mantic manifestation giving rise to a new community. She sees the Qurʾanic text as a drama to be viewed sequentially and thus she reads it diachronically, the parts revealed later being in dialogue with ones revealed earlier and interpreting them. This intratextuality helps understand the growth of the Qurʾanic text as it is forming the new community of believers through language. Meanwhile, she is also aware of intertextuality, whereby the Qurʾan considers the religious texts of other religions, and is in dialogue with them and is therefore interpreting them too. But she is not as concerned with intertextuality in this book as she is with intratextuality because, she says, she wants to counterbalance the known Western scholarly preference for “source studies” (dealing with texts outside the Qurʾan and influencing it) over literary studies dealing with the Qurʾan itself.
The Qurʾan in her view is a transcript of an ongoing debate, at times between Prophet Muḥammad and his Arabian contemporaries, and at other times between the new religion of Islam and the previous religions. All this happens in what Neuwirth calls Late Antiquity, which is not to be understood as a political chronological period, though she sees it historically extending from early Roman imperial times to classical Islamic times; Late Antiquity is rather to be understood as an “epistemic space” out of which the Qurʾan emerged. The Qurʾan in her view is thus the cultural translation of this space of interaction, it is a transcript of an ongoing debate as mentioned above and a dynamic participant in it, in addition to being a mantic manifestation, i.e., a prophetic discourse.
Neuwirth's book has three sections: section I, “Pagan and Monotheistic Frameworks”; section II, “The Liturgical Qurʾan and the Emergence of the Community”; and section III, “Narrative Figures between the Bible and the Qurʾan.”
In section I (four articles), Neuwirth deals with the Arab environment in which the Qurʾan emerged, an environment to which, she says, scholarship in the West paid little attention but which now deserves more attention because more about it is known through archaeology, especially epigraphy. The Qurʾan's appearance is studied in its historical setting and Neuwirth shows that it was an unexpected leap creating a genuine cultural shift with a new theological discourse. As a result, Arabian society's ideals underwent a revolution, and relationships based earlier on blood kinship and oral traditions had now to be inspired by the authority of a text, by the medium of language. In the early short suras of the Qurʾan, the motif of paradise, the announcement of the imminence of the Day of Judgement, the oaths affirming the proclaimer's prophethood, and the powerful images and metaphors are all seen as literary strategies that emotionally affected the listeners.
In section II (five articles), the ritual use of the Qurʾan in public worship is studied and its effect on the gradual emergence of the new Muslim community is recognized. Sūrat al-Fātiḥa (Q. 1), as an introit of the Ṣalāt, and Sūrat al-Ḥijr (Q. 15), as a body of rulings for believers, both reinforce the process of the canonization of the Qurʾan and the emergence of the community. Sūrat al-Israʾ (Q. 17), acknowledging Jerusalem as al-Masjid al-Aqṣā to which Prophet Muḥammad was miraculously transported from Mecca one night, brings the new community finally within the realm of the established monotheistic community of Jews and Christians. Neuwirth's argument, supported by her detailed literary study of the suras, accentuates her theory about the simultaneous growth of the Qurʾanic text and the parallel development of the Muslim community historically as she reads the Qurʾan diachronically.
In section III (five articles), narratives in the Bible and the Qurʾan are studied and their function is shown to correspond to the changing needs of the early community as it evolves from its connection with a local shrine to an association with a remote sanctuary in Jerusalem. The Biblical narratives are recounted not once but several times in the Qurʾan, with varying emphasis and content depending on the evolving community's needs, and the idea of a transcendent scripture named al-Kitāb is considered to be their source beyond all other sources and higher than them all. Neuwirth studies the changing representation of Moses, of Mary and Jesus, and of others—but always takes each sura holistically as a literary unit and makes an attempt to classify the Qurʾan's stories within a more general narratology that accords with a developing theology.
The diachronic reading of the Qurʾan is Neuwirth's principle throughout her book, and it helps in understanding the oral development of the Qurʾan during the Muslim community's growth engendered by it. But it has to be admitted that such a diachronic reading cannot be fully valid until a rearrangement of the Qurʾan's suras in a chronological sequence is completed—which has not yet been done. In Western studies of chronology since Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930), literary form and linguistic structure have been the principles helping to distinguish between earlier and later suras, and Neuwirth herself has contributed to these studies, only for Meccan suras, in her book Der Koran (Insel, 2010). At any rate, scholarship has to go on with present data and methods with the hope of having more in the future—though the true chronology may never be known.
Meanwhile, Neuwirth's book reviewed here is a good contribution to a reading of the Qurʾan in its Sitz im Leben with an appreciation of its literary character as scripture, and it is a good study of how the Qurʾan helped make a community, even while it was itself orally growing and being canonized as a scripture of a new religion. Her book is recommended to all scholars of the Qurʾan and is even useful to scholars in Biblical studies and in comparative religious studies.
