Majid Soleimani's essay “The Historians' Quran”

What we rarely find so readily elsewhere, in particular, are the extensive studies that address the historical figure of the Prophet—and for someone who has read Ibn Hisham's Sira, the Maghazi, and al-Tabari's History, this is a source of wonder, though also of disappointment. Namely, that we know far, far less about the historical figure of Muhammad than we think we do, and perhaps his historical image has been lost to us entirely. For example, even the year of the Prophet's death, let alone the day and month... because older, non-Islamic sources have given a different account. On the other hand, this critique of the sources at least explains the reason for the contradictions in this historical figure: the exemplar of mercy and compassion on one side, and mass killings on the other... It is clear today that these issues cannot be resolved by examining the "attributed" narrations—so-and-so reported from so-and-so, who reported from so-and-so—and by casting doubt on the reliability of this or that person. These researchers have critiqued these sources using their own specific methods. They point out that one must also read between the lines to understand what the motivation behind these narratives, formed in various eras of course, was, and which religious or governmental demand each was answering at any given time, until, around the third and fourth centuries, all these highly contradictory narratives more or less took on an orthodox form and became the dominant narrative of Muslims.

Another point we mentioned concerns the very image of the religion of Islam in contemporary non-Islamic texts, which aids our understanding of Islam's formation. What was apparently, at first, an Arabian sect within the spectrum of Christian-Jewish religions—as we find from all the repeated dialogues and disputes with the Christians and Jews of the Peninsula in the Quran—later, under the shadow of political power, the great empire that suddenly arose and changed the world map, separated from its tradition and found an independent identity as "Islam, the new religion." Furthermore, this research provides a new picture of the beliefs of the "Jahili" Arabs, whose social weight in the Quran is not comparable to what we read in the Islamic Sira narratives two or three centuries later, in the sense that the religious atmosphere of the Peninsula, leaving aside the desert Arabs, was situated among the "Abrahamic" religions and, of course, the Iranian ones, and Islam arose within this environment. In light of these very studies, many Quranic terms are redefined through historical and philological research, or we witness their semantic evolution, which finds new references. Another point is the examination of the impact of constant conflicts and civil wars—from the era of the Prophet to the Ridda wars, to the conquests of Umar's era, to the civil wars of Ali's caliphate and the subsequent bloody political struggles... which are characteristic of early Islamic history—on the formation of the Quranic text.

Another very important section concerns Quranic rulings: where each ruling, compared to the customs of the era, originated from, what change it underwent, and, in any case, what its root was. A very interesting example is the controversial "hijab" verse, which is, in reality, a more or less word-for-word translation of a Christian ruling in the Syriac language, the original of which they also show; and you can imagine what this ruling, with its severe and intensified interpretations, later wrought. The same applies to other hudud punishments... Let us state here that the authors have a historical justification for why Muslims, when faced with contradictory rulings or statements in the Quran—for instance, regarding wine, which, as we said, was later assumed from a religious perspective to be abrogated, as if God, for certain expediencies, retracted His own view, though its historical justifications are otherwise—have generally adopted the stricter ruling and, in a way, made it their distinguishing rite and slogan.

Overall, this work gathers and juxtaposes the results of Western academic Quranic research, from the era of Nöldeke and Goldziher to the Quranic research revolution of the seventies, to the very recent, groundbreaking studies of graffiti, better examination of Syriac and Ethiopian sources, and so forth, and has, in a way, made this conversation possible there as well. The point is that all these diverse statements appear revolutionary, astonishing, and sometimes strange and hasty to our eyes—we who walk calmly on the sidelines, as if with a compass—especially when set against the supposedly firm "thousand-year-old science" that has an answer for every question, based on sources that, two or three centuries after the Prophet's life, neglected no detail in transmitting his words and deeds and the occasions of the Quran's revelation... But no, these theories of Quranic studies, too, with a life hidden from our view, have a long history and have been subject to scholarly critiques, and now the digest of Western Quranic researchers' work has emerged from a specific circle and been presented to the general public.

It goes without saying that this introduction does not imply endorsement or acceptance of all the hypotheses and propositions of this research; rather, it is an example of a methodical, scientific examination of an ancient seventh-century text called the Quran, with a gaze free from religious and denominational beliefs, which at least has no qualms about posing clear questions, and whose answers, convincing or not, are not of the usual, derivative essayistic kind... Critiques have already emerged regarding this very collection, and this is a necessity of scholarly research.

However, regarding the other two thousand four hundred pages! which, in the same manner, in a systematic format, surah by surah and verse by verse, address the Quranic text, we must write separately and also provide examples. I have seen a few samples, concerning certain highly contested verses, such as Mary being addressed as "sister of Aaron," or where Jesus is asked whether he told people, "Take me and my mother as two gods besides God?" as if Mary has taken the place of the Holy Spirit, and which, from the perspective of specialists in ancient Jewish-Christian religions, indicates the beliefs of which religious current these signs reflect. This second part of historical-scientific commentary on the Quranic text, apart from what Michael Cook brought forth in the nineties, which is certainly not on this scale, is unprecedented.

This summary was told upside down... but now when are we going to read this collection as it ought to be read? The book's authors have placed a sentence from Nietzsche at the beginning of the second volume: philology is the art of reading slowly... So I will seek strength from the Truth, and success, and boast, until with a needle I unpick this Mount Qaf!

* Le Coran des historiens (Coffret), 3408 pages - nov. 2019

Les edition du Cerf, Avec la collaboration de : Guillaume Dye, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi