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Problems in sura 53*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2015
Abstract
This paper argues that sura 53 contains a number of problems, of which the most intractable is the question: who is speaking in the oracular, part I? The answer is not God, nor is it easy to see how it could be the Prophet. Since the Prophet is undoubtedly responsible for the sura as a whole, the solution tentatively proposed here is that he found part I in an earlier text current among his people, such as a collection of oracular verdicts.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 15 - 23
- Copyright
- Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2015
Footnotes
For Gez, whose book of 1999 changed my academic direction
*
An early version of this paper was presented at a conference in Notre Dame convened by G.S. Reynolds in April 2013. My thanks to Professor Reynolds for permission to publish the final version in the Festschrift for Professor Hawting; it will also appear online in G.S. Reynolds and others (eds), The Qurʾān Seminar Commentary: A Collaborative Analysis of 50 Select Passages. I must also thank Michael Cook for helpful comments on an earlier version.
References
1 For kāhins (of whom there were several different kinds) acting in dispute settlements, see Ḥabīb, Ibn, al-Munammaq, ed. Fāriq, Kh.A. (Hyderabad, 1964)Google Scholar. The procedures are particularly well described in the cases at 114–6 (disputed presence at a majlis) and 118–20 (accusation of adultery; also in other works). Ibn Ḥabīb strangely calls both cases a munāfara, a boasting competition, perhaps because honour was the issue in both of them, but real boasting competitions were about the relative merit and nobility of two men and were normally settled by ḥakams, usually translated as “umpires” or “arbitrators” (correctly, if meaning judges whose could not cannot be enforced). There were several kinds of those too. The key difference between ḥakams and kāhins was that ḥakams were knowledgeable about tribal law, whereas kāhins had knowledge of the supernatural. Ḥakams were chosen on the basis of their “nobility, truthfulness, reliability, leadership, age, dignity and experience”, as al-Yaʿqūbī, says (see Taʾrīkh, ed. Houtsma, M.Th. (Leiden, 1883)Google Scholar, II, 299), and many were chiefs. By contrast, diviners had opted out of their tribes and lived in isolation, or they were women, sometimes slave women, who stood outside the tribal system of authority. It was for their supernatural knowledge that they were chosen, and they were always tested for their access to the unseen before being asked to deliver a verdict. Ibn Khaldūn saw this very well. Fahd, T., La divination arabe (Leiden, 1966)Google Scholar, 118, citing his Muqaddima, ed. M. Quatremère (Paris, 1858), I, 196; tr. F. Rosenthal (second ed. Princeton, 1967), I, 218ff, on ʿarrāfs and kuhhān. Diviners always delivered their verdict in rhymed prose (sajʿ). Al-Jāḥiẓ, , al-Bayān wa'l-tabyīn, ed. Hārūn, ʿA.-S.M., second printing (Cairo, 1960–61)Google Scholar, I, 284, 289f, claims that ḥukkām (enumerated by name) did so as well, thereby creating a confusion that has endured to this day.
2 See further, Crone, P., “Angels versus humans as messengers of God”, in Townsend, P. and Vidas, M. (eds), Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity (Tübingen, 2011), 315–36Google Scholar, 316–8.
3 Cf. Crone, “Angels versus humans”, esp. 320–3.
4 Fossum, J.E., “The apostle concept in the Qurʾān and pre-Islamic Near Eastern literature”, in Mir, M. and J.E. Fossum (eds), Literary Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy (Princeton, 1993), 149–67Google Scholar, 157. Similarly Nöldeke, Th., Geschichte des Qorāns, ed. Schwally, F. (Leipzig, 1909–38)Google Scholar, I, 100.
5 On these, see van Bladel, K., “Heavenly cords and prophetic authority in the Quran and its late antique context”, BSOAS 70/2, 2007, 223–46Google Scholar.
6 Cf. Crone, “Angels versus humans”, 334f.
7 The exceptions are verses 24 and 25, cf. Nöldeke, Geschichte, I, 103 (one of the many examples where current academic orthodoxy turns out to rest on one line in this book). But verse 24 only makes sense against the background of verse 23 (i.e. the supposedly later addition): for verse 23 assures us that the devotees of the female angels are following nothing but conjecture and “what [their] souls fancy” (mā tahwā ’l-anfus). Verse 24 continues this line of thought by rhetorically asking, “Shall man have whatever he desires?” (am li’l-insāni mā tamannā). Verse 25, on the other hand, is just a nondescript claim that this world and the next belong to God.
8 Sura 105:1 has, “Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant?” (a-lam tarā kayfa faʿala rabbuka bi-aṣḥābi ’l-fīl). Compare Zuhayr in Nöldeke, Th. (ed.), Delectus Veterum Carminum Arabicorum (Wiesbaden, 1933; repr. 1961), 106, lGoogle Scholar: “Have you not seen Ibn Sinān how he favoured him (a-lam tarā ’bna Sinānin kayfa faḍḍalahu), he does not buy people’s praise of him for a price.” Obviously Zuhayr is speaking of what one should learn from Ibn Sinān’s example, but he presupposes that his audience has seen Ibn Sinān's behaviour. As regards 105:1, an African elephant was brought by a man from Aila to Anastasius I in 496, almost certainly as a gift from the ruler of Aksum. An extremely rare sight, it was depicted in a papyrus (S.M. Burstein, “An elephant for Anastasius: a note on P. Mich. Inv. 4290”, in Burstein, Graeco-Africana (New Rochelle, NY, 1994), 215–17. Compare the enormous impression made by an elephant sent by an embassy from western Sudan to Marrakesh in 1593, or that made by the Indian elephant Hanno sent to Pope Leo X around 1510 (García-Arenal, M., Ahmad al-Mansur: the Beginnings of Modern Morocco (Oxford, 2009), 2Google Scholar. It is presumably the elephant seen at Aila that sura 105 is referring to, though it fuses it with some other story, identified in the tradition as Abraham's campaign against Mecca (cf. Prémare, A.L. de, “‘Il voulut détruire le temple’: L'attaque de la Kaʿba par les rois yémenites avant l'Islam. Akhbār et Histoire”, Journal Asiatique 28/2, 2000, 261–367Google Scholar).
9 Similarly Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorans, I, 100, cited in Hämeen-Anttila, J., “Qur. 53:19, the prophetic experience and the ‘satanic verses’ – a reconsideration”, Acta Orientalia 58, 1997, 24–34Google Scholar, 26; cf. also p. 30 (drawn to my attention by J. Witztum). Hämeen-Anttila plays safe by interpreting the seeing as both literal and metaphorical.
10 Peters, F.E., Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (Albany, NY, 1994)Google Scholar, 161.
11 Cf. Ahmed, S., “Satanic verses” in McAuliffe, J.D. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, IV (Leiden, 2004), 531–5Google Scholar; S. Ahmed, The Problem of the Satanic Verses and the Formation of Islamic Orthodoxy, forthcoming.
12 See also Sinai, N., “An interpretation of Sūrat al-Najm (Q53)”, Journal of Qur'anic Studies 13, 2011, 10fGoogle Scholar.
13 Cf. above, note 7.
14 Sinai, N., “Qurʾānic self-referentiality as a strategy of self-authorization”, in Wild, S. (ed.), Self-Referentiality in the Qurʾān (Wiesbaden, 2006), 103–34Google Scholar, 127. (I owe my knowledge of this study to J. Witztum.)
15 The formulation here is Sinai's (“Self-referentiality”, 121).
16 Cf. Crone, P., “The Quranic Mushrikūn and the Resurrection, part I”, BSOAS 75/3, 2012, 445–72Google Scholar, 461ff.
17 The precise meaning of this is open to debate since no benefits have been mentioned, only punishments, but we can leave that aside here.