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The Quranic Mushrikūn and the resurrection (Part II)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2012

Patricia Crone*
Affiliation:
Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton University

Abstract

This article examines the attitudes of the Quranic mushrikūn to the resurrection and the afterlife, focusing on those who doubted or denied the reality of both. The first part of the article, published in a previous issue of BSOAS, argued that the doubters and deniers had grown up in a monotheist environment familiar with both concepts and that it was from within the monotheist tradition that they rejected them. This second part relates their thought to intellectual currents in Arabia and the Near East in general, arguing that the role of their pagan heritage in their denial is less direct than normally assumed. It is also noted that mutakallims such as Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and al-Māturīdī anticipated the main conclusions reached in this paper.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2012

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References

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45 Avi-Yonah, Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule, 250.

46 Origen, in Matthiam 23:22 (MPG xiii, col. 1564); Homily 25 ad Numeri (MPG xii, 763).

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67 Theodoret, Providence, 9:34 f.

68 Theodoret, Providence, 9: 36–42.

69 Theodoret, Providence, e.g. 1:37; 3:21, 23; 4:34; 5: 6.

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73 Ps. Athanasios, “Quaestiones ad ducem Antiochum”, MPG xxviii, cols. 608, 681 (questions 17, 134); cf. Dagron, G., “L'Ombre d'un doute: l'hagiographie en question, VIe–XIe siècle”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 46, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 62 f. (My thanks to Yannis Papadoyannakis for these references.)

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76 EI 2, s.v. “Dahriyya”; EIr., s.v. “Dahrī”; EI 3, s.v. “Dahrites”; P. Crone, “The Dahrīs according to al-Jāḥiẓ”, forthcoming in Mélanges de l'Université de St Joseph; P. Crone, “Ungodly cosmologies”, forthcoming in S. Schmidtke (ed.), Oxford Companion to Islamic Theology.

77 For atheism as a pagan characteristic, see Bar Penkaye see above, note 75. Theodore Bar Koni, Scolies, mimrā I, 29.

78 Thus EI 2, s.v. “Dahriyya” (Goldziher and Goichon); EIr, s.v. “Dahrī” (Shaki); McDermott, M. J., “Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq on the Dahriyya”, Mélanges de l'Université de Saint-Joseph 2, 1984, 387 (but not everyone agrees)Google Scholar.

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80 He tells us that there were akhbār about ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Zayd b. ʿAmr and Quss b. Sā’ida indicating that they believed in the creator and the resurrection; whether he envisages them as mushrikūn is not clear, however (ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Mughnī, v, 156).

81 Māturīdī, Taʿwīlāt, xv, 44, ad 58:9.

82 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiv, 339, ad 57:8.

83 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xi, 405, ad 34:7.

84 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, x, 28.

85 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xvi, 309, ad 75:36.

86 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiii, 336 (ad 45:24).

87 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xv, 81 (ad 59:13).

88 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, iv, 94 (ad 4:150).

89 al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-milal wa'l-niḥal, ed. Cureton, W. (London, 1842–46), 432Google Scholar; ed. M. S. Kaylānī (Cairo, 1961), ii, 235; tr. Gimaret, D. and Monnot, G., Livre des religions et des sectes, UNESCO 1986Google Scholar, tr. ii, 497. Unfortunately, Ibn al-Malāḥimī, the best source for Abū ʿĪsā, does not have a section on the pre-Islamic Arabs.

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91 al-ʿĀmirī, Kitāb al-amad ʿalā ’l-abad, ed. and tr. Rowson, E., A Muslim Philosopher on the Soul and Its Fate (New Haven, 1988)Google Scholar, ix.1 (160 = 161).

92 Rāzī, Tafsīr, xxvii, 269 f., ad loc.

93 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr (Cairo, n.d.), iv, 150, with a swipe at the “theist philosophers”.

94 al-Maʿarrī, Risālat fī ’l-ghufrān (Beirut, n.d.), 294 (radd ʿalā Ibn al-Qāriḥ, al-Mutanabbī, shakwā ’l-dahr).

95 Similarly Tamer, Zeit und Gott, 194, on al-Shahrastānī. The same applies to al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, Amālī, ed. Ibrāhīm, M. A.-F. (Cairo, 1954)Google Scholar, i, 127.10.

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97 Cf. Reynolds, J. and Tannenbaum, R., Jews and God-fearers at Aphrodisias: Greek Inscriptions with Commentary (Cambridge, 1987), 4877Google Scholar, which supersedes all earlier treatments. Cyril of Alexandria reports on Godfearers in Phoenicia and Palestine in the fifth century; the last evidence is an inscription from sixth-century Italy (pp. 53, 63, 65f.).