Mecca’s Cult and Medina’s Constitution in the Qurʾān: A New Reading of al-Māʾidah
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Mohsen Goudarzi
Abstract
The Qurʾān’s fifth sura denounces the killing of game during pilgrimage and decries the killing of innocent Believers. This juxtaposition reflects the intimate connection between right worship and proper social order, between cult and covenant, a connection that animates the entire sura. In particular, the sura suggests that if Jews and Christians have been generally unreliable allies, if they have been often reluctant to support the Believers’ military efforts against the Quraysh, and if they were even unwilling to requite violence against innocent Believers, it was because the People of the Book mostly had a negative view of the Meccan Sanctuary and its rituals. Specifically, they derided the central rite of ṣalāt, which may have been accompanied with sacrifices on certain occasions (such as Fridays). In the light of their opposition to the Meccan cult, the sura commands the Believers not to take Jews or Christians as covenantal partners. It is possible that the sura thereby ended the Believers’ alliance with some Jewish tribes of Yathrib as enshrined in the Constitution of Medina. What supports this possibility is that al-Māʾidah has significant thematic and terminological overlaps with the Constitution of Medina, as alliance with the Jews and deterring violent crimes through retaliation are central concerns to both documents. Still, and contrary to the interpretations of several scholars, it is doubtful that at the time of al-Māʾidah’s proclamation the Prophet had judicial authority over the People of the Book or that he sought to impose violent punishment against them.
Article Note
I am grateful to Karen Bauer, Abdulla Galadari, and Michael Lecker for reading this paper, offering many helpful suggestions, and drawing my attention to various relevant sources. I also thank Der Islam’s anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (1963–2023)
- Articles
- Ein Diskurs über Glaubwürdigkeit im Koran: Propheten und Poeten in Sūrat aš-Šuʿarāʾ
- Mecca’s Cult and Medina’s Constitution in the Qurʾān: A New Reading of al-Māʾidah
- Images of Writing in the Qurʾān and Sulṭān as a Royal Warrant
- Revisiting the Accounts of the Political Assassinations in the Prophet’s Lifetime
- A Tale of Two Cities: Jābarṣā/Jābalqā and Their Metamorphoses
- Injustice, Corruption, and Partisanship in the Eastern Seljuq Lands of the Early Twelfth Century: al-Ghazālī’s Persian Letters to Viziers as a Historical Source
- The Representation of the Space of the Parties by Mamluk Chancery Secretaries in Documents and Works Concerning Relations between the Sultanate and Christian Powers
- Récit-cadre des Nuits, prologue et épilogue: le point de vue narratologique
- Reviews
- Adam R. Gaiser, Sectarianism in Islam: The Umma Divided, Themes in Islamic History, xii, 237 pp., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, ISBN 9781009325042.
- Marion Holmes Katz, Wives and Work. Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity, New York: Columbia University Press 2022, 309 Seiten, ISBN: 9780231206891.
- Mana Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020, XXIV+312 S. ISBN 978-1-5036-1195-5.
- Michel Lagarde, Le parfait manuel des sciences coraniques. al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān de Ǧalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūṭī (849/1445–911/1505), Leyde-Boston, Brill (Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān, 13/1-2), 2018, 1438 p., Index, ISBN 978-90-04-35709-9.
- Alexander Mallett, Catherine Rider, and Dionysius A. Agius, eds., Magic in Malta. Sellem Bin al-Sheikh Mansur and the Roman Inquisition, 1605, Leiden: Brill, 2022, 574 pp. + Index, ISBN 978-90-04-49893-8
- Suleiman A. Mourad, Ibn ʿAsakir of Damascus: Champion of Sunni Islam in the Time of the Crusades, London: Oneworld Academic, 2021, 147 pp., ISBN 078-0-86154-047-1 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-86164-046-4 (ebk).
- Saba, Elias G., Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019, 258 pp., ISBN: 9783110604054 (hardcover)
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (1963–2023)
- Articles
- Ein Diskurs über Glaubwürdigkeit im Koran: Propheten und Poeten in Sūrat aš-Šuʿarāʾ
- Mecca’s Cult and Medina’s Constitution in the Qurʾān: A New Reading of al-Māʾidah
- Images of Writing in the Qurʾān and Sulṭān as a Royal Warrant
- Revisiting the Accounts of the Political Assassinations in the Prophet’s Lifetime
- A Tale of Two Cities: Jābarṣā/Jābalqā and Their Metamorphoses
- Injustice, Corruption, and Partisanship in the Eastern Seljuq Lands of the Early Twelfth Century: al-Ghazālī’s Persian Letters to Viziers as a Historical Source
- The Representation of the Space of the Parties by Mamluk Chancery Secretaries in Documents and Works Concerning Relations between the Sultanate and Christian Powers
- Récit-cadre des Nuits, prologue et épilogue: le point de vue narratologique
- Reviews
- Adam R. Gaiser, Sectarianism in Islam: The Umma Divided, Themes in Islamic History, xii, 237 pp., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, ISBN 9781009325042.
- Marion Holmes Katz, Wives and Work. Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity, New York: Columbia University Press 2022, 309 Seiten, ISBN: 9780231206891.
- Mana Kia, Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020, XXIV+312 S. ISBN 978-1-5036-1195-5.
- Michel Lagarde, Le parfait manuel des sciences coraniques. al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān de Ǧalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūṭī (849/1445–911/1505), Leyde-Boston, Brill (Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān, 13/1-2), 2018, 1438 p., Index, ISBN 978-90-04-35709-9.
- Alexander Mallett, Catherine Rider, and Dionysius A. Agius, eds., Magic in Malta. Sellem Bin al-Sheikh Mansur and the Roman Inquisition, 1605, Leiden: Brill, 2022, 574 pp. + Index, ISBN 978-90-04-49893-8
- Suleiman A. Mourad, Ibn ʿAsakir of Damascus: Champion of Sunni Islam in the Time of the Crusades, London: Oneworld Academic, 2021, 147 pp., ISBN 078-0-86154-047-1 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-86164-046-4 (ebk).
- Saba, Elias G., Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019, 258 pp., ISBN: 9783110604054 (hardcover)
