Today, most scholars agree that the texts of the QurʾÄn basically (1) were authored as part of Muḥammadâs mission of about twenty years (up to 632) in Mekka and Medina and, being written in Arabic and with Arabic characters, stressed his missionâs distinct Arabness against the background of pre-Islamic Western Arabia, where writing in Arabic with Arabic characters had been marginal; (2) were compiled into one authoritative text earlier or later in the pre-Umayyad, Umayyad, and Early Ê¿AbbÄsid imperial period (632â800) to display the power of the one Arab-Islamic Empire to Arab Muslims and all others alike; and (3) strongly influenced the quite diverse cultures of the Islamic Ecumene up to the FÄtimid period and beyond (800â1000), in which Arabic had become the one lingua franca and Arabic writing, so to speak, the one scriptura franca. Yet to be honest, we only vaguely know what the QurʾÄnâs Sitz im Leben in these three phases actually was, what exactly the QurʾÄn was used for in Muḥammadâs own time, how it was placed to display Muslim imperial rule, and how it was later employed by IsmÄÊ¿Ä«lÄ«s, Melkites, Sunnites, Zoroasthrians, Karaites, etc. of the Arabic, Coptic, Sabaean, New Persian, Turkish, etc. tongues.
Each of the three phases mentioned has its distinct source profile. (1) For Muḥammadâs own time, our best source is probably the text of the QurʾÄn itself, which stresses that it is not a seerâs stammering but a written message and also emphasizes how people should have reactedâand how they actually did reactâto Muḥammad and his message, and to earlier messengers and their messages.1 North-Arabian inscriptions, statues, and votive offerings found in the West Arabian towns of Qaryat al-FÄw, DedÄn/al-Ê¿UlÄ, al-Ḥiǧr/MadÄʾin á¹¢Äliḥ, TaymÄʾ, etc. similarly refer to themselves and define what writing was meant to be used for.2 There may also be information in the steadily growing but mostly undated corpus of graffiti found in West Arabia.3 The most rewarding, yet almost unexamined treasure is the vast corpus of Christian and Jewish apocrypha in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Greek, etc.: these apocryphaârather than the Bible one step farther backâare both what the QurʾÄn directly reacts to and what very much shaped and mirrored the conceptions of religious men and women and their (written) messages in Muḥammadâs time.4 Finally, pre-Islamic Arabic poetry occasionally describes how people used writs, and often refers to the role that poets and poetry played; since it was mostly compiled in the eighth century and later but claims to go back to pre-Islamic times, identifying the safely pre-Islamic bits is a challenge of its own.5
(2â3) For understanding how the QurʾÄn actually was used in the imperial and lingua franca periods (632â1000), the sources are much more precise and rich. We might use the QurʾÄn manuscripts preserved from these same periods examining all traces of compilation left on its text (the order of the Surahs, the use of the Basmala, the Mysterious Letters, etc.) and on the manuscripts (the presentation of Surah titles and verse dividers, verse numbers, the dimensions of the QurʾÄn manuscripts, etc.).6 We need to check how the QurʾÄn was quoted and displayed in inscriptions, coins, papyrus and parchment documents, manuscripts and objects such as potsherds, tiles, etc. The later we are in this period, the more important become QurʾÄnic bits and pieces in the Ḥadīṯ collections, in historiography, and in Adab literature.7 And there are full descriptions of how the QurʾÄn was used.
Exactly this is one of the two aims of the present volume: the examination of QurʾÄnic quotations in the three most important corpora of papyrus and parchment documents preserved from the imperial and the lingua franca periods (632â1000), i.e., in original letters, agreements, and amulets. The results are quite astonishing. Daniel Potthast in his contribution makes clear that while original Arabic letters preserved from the imperial period (632â800) had a clear Muslim-only flavour, original Arabic letters preserved from the lingua franca period (800â1000) are generally monotheist and not explicit on their religious affiliation, with only a very few using QurʾÄn quotations to stress their Muslim identity. Similarly, Leonora Sonego finds that in Arabic legal agreements from the lingua franca period (800â1000)âno earlier ones have been preservedâonly divorce and marriage documents quote the QurʾÄn; this is probably due to the fact that the QurʾÄn has precise legal instructions only on divorce that are quoted in both divorce and marriages documents. Ursula Bsees shows that in Arabic amulets from the lingua franca period (800â1000), QurʾÄn quotations are displayed in two quite different ways: for those who were illiterate, the dangerous power of amulets was visually represented by the use of archaizing ornamental script and by magical symbols, whereas amulets aimed at the literate population were in a casual script, yet on small strips of low-quality papyrus.
The other aim of this volume is to evaluate how much we might use radiocarbon (14C) for dating early QurʾÄn manuscripts. Eva Mira Youssef-Grob, on the one hand, and Michael Josef Marx and Tobias J. Jocham, on the other, convincingly show how radiocarbon dating, if used in a skeptical and well considered way, strongly confirms the paleographical attribution of the early QurʾÄn manuscripts to the imperial period (632â800).
This volume is longly overdue, and we wish to thank both all contributors and Brill publishers for their patience. The collections most kindly allowed us to reproduce images, not to mention the fact that some even lent a helping hand for radiocarbon dating.
Andreas Kaplony
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For the QurʾÄn reflecting on itself, see, e.g., Jeffery 1952; Madigan 2001; Jones 2003: 8â15; Boisliveau 2011; 2013; 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; Neuwirth 2015: 13â24.
For a survey of archaeological findings on the Arabian Pensinsula, see Roads of Arabia 2012. There is a full-text database of South Arabian, Ancient North Arabian, Aramaic, and Nabatean inscriptions on the Arabian Peninsula, the Digital Archive for the Study of Pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI) (
For the graffiti from the Arabian Peninsula, see, e.g., Jones 2003: 4; Macdonald 2010; Imbert 2011; 2012; 2013; 2015.
For the apocrypha as background to the QurʾÄn, see, e.g., Griffith 2008; Kropp 2008; Mourad 2008; Witztum 2011.
For pre-Islamic Arabic poetry referring to documents, see Jones 2003: 1â4; Neuwirth 2015: 7â12.
For early QurʾÄn manuscripts up to 800, see Déroche 2007; 2013; 2014; Puin 2011; Cellard 2015; Chahdi 2015; George 2015; Marx 2015; Small 2015.
For Ḥadīṯ collections, historiography, and Adab literature on the QurʾÄn, see Motzki 2001; Jones 2003: 5â7; Amir-Moezzi 2013.