The Oral and the Written in Early Islam (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures)

Made up of a number of seminal articles that are translated for the first time in English, this prestigious book from Gregor Schoeler gives a reasoned, informed and comprehensive overflow of how the written and the spoken interacted, diverged and received cultural articulation among the Muslim societies of the first two centuries of the Hijra.

Schoeler, Gregor

Vagelpohl, Uwe

Montgomery, James E.

Reference

Routledge

The Biography of Muhammad (Routledge Studies in Classical Islam)

This book considers the Arabic biographies of Prophet Muhammad, the earliest of which dates from two centuries after his life. These biographies, prized by Muslims, have been approached in the Western study of Islam from a range of positions. Some scholars reject them entirely, seeing in them products of the Muslim community’s idealisation of its history, while others accept them at face value, reasoning that, if not exact versions of events, the events could not have differed too much from their descriptions. The author revisits the debate and reconsiders several key incidents in the life of the Prophet. By compiling an extensive corpus of materials and comparing them closely, this book analyses the transmission and the contents of the accounts. It shows that by understanding clearly the interaction in early Islam between written and oral modes of transmission, and by the judicious sieving of the accounts, as well as the lines of transmission, we can sometimes reach back to that generation of Muslims who though not themselves witness to the events were younger contemporaries of those who were. Establishing a solid basis for the informed study of Muhammad’s biography and adding to the ongoing debate, this book will appeal to scholars of early Islam, history and theology.

The Biography of Muhammad: Nature and Authenticity (Routledge Studies in Classical Islam)

The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read (The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys)

In the beginning was the Qur'an, the first book of Islam and also the first book of Arabic literature. Occasioned by the need to understand and interpret the word of God, and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims made an inventory and study of their tradition. This involved the collection, transmission and instruction of the sacred text, of the words and deeds of Muhammad, and also of poetry, both from before and after the rise of Islam, or pre-Islamic events, indeed of all matters regarded as pertinent to the proper and scholarly study of the tradition.This activity, which began in the last third of the seventh century, relied predominantly on aural study with a master, that is, on oral communication between teacher and student, although writing was already an integral part of this process. And it was the genesis of one of the richest literatures of late antiquity and the middle ages, as is clear from the widespread dissemination of scholarship through writing and the attendant proliferation of books. In the present work, Professor Schoeler explains how this change - from predominantly oral/aural to written - came about. In particular, he looks at the relationship between the aural and the written and explains how the tension between the oral and the written resulted in a creative coexistence.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Edinburgh University Press

The Oral and the Written in Early Islam

Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East are published as supplement to Der Islam founded in 1910 by Carl Heinrich Becker, an early practitioner of the modern study of Islam. Following Becker's lead, the mission of the series is the study of past societies of the Middle East, their belief systems, and their underlying social and economic relations, from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia, and from the Ukrainian steppes to the highlands of Yemen. Publications in the series draw on the philological groundwork generated by the literary tradition, but in their aim to cover the entire spectrum of the historically oriented humanities and social sciences, also utilize textual sources as well as archival, material, and archaeological evidence. Its editors are Stefan Heidemann (Universität Hamburg, editor-in-chief), Gottfried Hagen (University of Michigan), Andreas Kaplony (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), and Rudi Matthee (University of Delaware).

Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Überlieferung über das Leben Mohammeds (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients, N.F. 14) (German Edition)

History

Europe

Walter de Gruyter

The main part of this book consists of a compilation and evaluation of the corpus of traditions about the life of Muhammad attributed to the early scholar 'Urwa ibn al-Zubayr (c. 643-c. 712). 'Urwa was the nephew of the Prophet's wife 'A'isa, who was also his most important informant. The authenticity of a large part of these traditions is certain, since they were handed down independently from each other by two or more tradents of 'Urwa. They are thus the oldest authentic Muslim reports about the Prophet. The authors argue that 'Urwa's reports by and large correctly reflect the basic features of the historical events described. Somewhat older than 'Urwa's traditions about Muhammad is only a report in a non-Islamic Armenian source attributed to the chronicler Sebeos (wrote around 660). This and other external evidence partly agree with the Islamic sources, sometimes providing new perspectives on the life of the Prophet. But there are also contradictions. The authors can show that in such cases the 'Urwa transmission is preferable. The crux of the much-discussed so-called Hagarism hypothesis, which proposes an alternative narrative of the origins of Islam (Muhammad, after having established a community which comprised both Arabs and Jews, set off with these allies to conquer Palestine) is demonstrably based on a misreading of a Sebeos passage..

Earliest Writings on the Life of Muhammad: The 'Urwa Corpus and the Non-Muslim Sources

Politics & Social Sciences

Görke, Andreas

Social Sciences

Gerlach Press

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