Quranic studies

Qur'anic studies is the academic study of the Quran, the religious scripture of Islam.^[1]

Schools

Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi classify scholars of Quranic studies into four groups: traditionalists, revisionists, skeptics, and neo-traditionalists.^[2] Most premodern scholars belong to the traditionalist group. According to Sadeghi and Goudarzi, the traditional account:

held that the Prophet Muḥammad disseminated the Qur’ān gradually. Some of his Companions compiled copies of the scripture. These codices had differences. Motivated by the differences and seeking uniformity among Muslims, the Caliph ‘Uthmān, himself a Companion, established a standard version. He – or, more precisely, a committee of Companions appointed by him – did so by sending master copies of the Qur’ān to different cities – codices that themselves differed slightly in a small number of spots – and people in turn made copies of them. In subsequent decades and centuries, this standard text was read differently by different readers.^[3]

—Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi , Ṣan‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān, 2012

The traditional account "continues to be fairly popular among the specialists in the Muslim world".^[4] European and American scholars, however, do not often agree with this account. This is because there is a "prevailing distrust in the literary sources on which it is founded".^[4] Sadeghi and Goudarzi categorize the majority of modern Euro American scholars into two main groups. The revisionist group rejects the traditional account as wrong. They dispute the idea that Uthman sought to correct the text, or they believe that important modifications in the standard text continued after Uthman, or, in the instance of scholars such as Wansbrough, they believe it is perhaps "anachronistic" to talk of the Quran during the time of Uthman, because the text came into being much later.^[4] Among the notable revisionists are John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, Alfred-Louis de Prémare, and David Powers. The skeptics, the larger group of the two, neither accept the traditional account nor the revisionist ones, being "equally unconvinced by traditional and revisionist narratives". However, Sadeghi and Goudarzi calls them de facto revisionist because of their "attitude toward the literary sources".^[5]

Neo-traditionalists constitute the minority among scholars in the Western academia. They agree with important elements of the traditional account. Although they don't accept every report conveyed in the later sources, they do think that a critical and in-depth examination of the literary evidence supports the traditional account. Some well known members of this group include Michael Cook, Muḥammad Muḥaysin, and Harald Motzki, with the first being a revisionist defector.^[6] Neo traditionalists "have their counterparts in the Muslim world".^[6]

Journals

• Journal of Qur'anic Studies (Edinburgh)
• QURANICA – International Journal of Quranic Research^[7]
• JIQSA-Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association^[8]

Major books

• Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān
• Center for Islamic Science's Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ)^[9]
• The Qur'anic Studies Series, published by the Oxford University Press^[10]

See also

• Islamic studies

References

Sources

• Sadeghi, Behnam; Goudarzi, Mohsen (2012). "Ṣan‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān". Der Islam (Walter de Gruyter GmbH) 87 (1-2): 1–129. doi:10.1515/islam-2011-0025. ISSN 1613-0928. 

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