Volume 68, Issue 2

The talk summarizes the traditional view of Islam's origins and its limitations, particularly the problem of deficient sources, and then sketches out differing revisionist approaches on Islam's origins and on the nature and early history of the Qur'an text. While skepticism about some information in the traditional Islamic narratives is warranted, it is also clear that these sources must be used, albeit critically, to reconstruct Islam's origins. The paper closes with a summary of a reconstruction, based mainly on parts of the Qur'an, that posits an early community of Believers dedicated to strict monotheism and adherence to stringent standards of piety in which Jews, Christians, and Qur'anic monotheists all played some part. The fluidity or porousness of confessional identities in the early community seems to have given way to stricter boundaries around 700 CE, when the core of the community redefined itself around the Qur'an and the figure of the prophet Muhammad to become Muslims in the classic sense.

In this paper I explain the most important principle of research I followed in achieving my study on the life of Muhammad. The literary genre of hadith which did not come into being before the end of the seventh century AC must not be considered as a reliable source for the study of Muhammad's biography, since it reflects the theological and social developments of that subsequent epoch. Therefore research on the historical Muhammad has to be based on the koran. The text of the koran embodies the evidence of a prophetic experience which lasted for more than two decades. The different meanings of rasūl and nabī are the starting-point of the exposition of the method underlying my biography of Muhammad. Some of the major consequences of this difference are analyzed, and I try to show its momentousness for understanding the historical prophet.

This contribution is a response to Tilman Nagel's essay “ ‘Authentizität’ in der Leben-Mohammed-Forschung” [‘Authenticity’ in the research on the Life of Mohammed] in which the author again presents the main theses argued in his monograph Mohammed. Leben und Legende and responds to criticism. Whereas his critics agree with Nagel that complete ‘authenticity’ is unattainable in principle, yet an asymptotic approximation of Mohammed as a figure is indeed possible, the way to attain such an approximation remains a matter of dispute. Contrary to Nagel, the proponents of the so-called isnad-cum-matn analysis hold this method, which offers the possibility to date ḥadīṯs (traditions) and reconstruct texts in circulation in the 1st cent. H., for one of the most successful towards achieving this goal. Another successful procedure of proven value is the evaluation and appraisal of the corpus of traditions traced back to ʿUrwa b. az-Zubayr (d. c. 712), one of the earliest and most important collectors of historical material in Islam. Proponents of both of these procedures do not apply the term ‘authentic’, as asserted by Nagel, in the sense of ‘what exactly happened’, but rather use this term if the transmitters of a tradition are historical figures and when the process of transmission is proven to have ensued as indicated in the chain of transmission.

In a recent issue of Arabica , Tilman Nagel published a fundamental critique of the isnād-cum-matn analysis. He claims that the method is a formalistic procedure that is incapable of producing any relevant results with regard to the life of Muḥammad and that is to be regarded as a step backwards in the study of the historical Muḥammad. He also criticises the proponents of this method – most notably Gregor Schoeler and Harald Motzki – and accuses them of methodological flaws and scholarly naïveté. In particular, he argues that the proponents of this method wrongly claim that it allows the identification of ‘authentic’ traditions about the life of Muḥammad. The following article offers a critical review of Nagel's arguments. It shows that Nagel's criticism is fraught with misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the works he discusses and that his accusations are thus unwarranted and untenable. The article also explains what the isnād-cum-matn analysis actually is and how it can be used for dating traditions, which is – in contrast to Nagel's claims – the method's primary objective.

This article deals with a theological treatise that has been wrongly ascribed to the Imāmī scholar al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044). The treatise discusses the question of human agency in relation to divine decree and determining, arguing for positions that, to a large extent, resemble Murtaḍā's known views. Nevertheless, the treatise also betrays features incompatible with Murtaḍā's theology as a whole, in addition to stylistic and bibliographical questions that make a good case against the work's authenticity. This wrong ascription, however, has not been noted despite the repeated editions of the text in the Islamic world. As such, it misrepresented many of Murtaḍā's views, sometimes undermining the main pillars of his theological system. The author of the treatise establishes his ethical concepts on the basis of scriptural dictates before proceeding to rational arguments, relies on non-multi-attested reports, defers to the authority of the Prophet's companions and culls God's names and attributes from the word of revelation. While going against Murtaḍā's positions, these views – put together – are considerably closer to non-Imāmī doctrines, and could have easily been the work of a Muʿtazilī author.

This article responds to Gottfried Hagen's extensive review (see Der Islam 2/2013) of my book Islamische Verantwortungsethik im 17. Jahrhundert. Ein weberianisches Verständnis der Handlungsvorstellungen Kātib Čelebis (1609–1657). Whilst I benefitted greatly from some of Hagen's critical remarks and historical elucidations, his review not only misstates crucial passages of my book but also largely disregards its main objective, which is to develop a systematic model for understanding Kātib Čelebi's ethical stance. Besides reiterating crucial arguments ignored and rectifying central aspects misrepresented in Hagen's review, I here ask how the more fundamental misunderstandings – exceeding differences in theoretical positions or empirical observations – between the au-thor's intentions and the reviewer's reception may be explained. Gottfried Hagen's historiographical perspective on Kātib Čelebi diverges from my sociological take on the same subject matter to the extent that both perspectives are struggling to enter into dialogue. Such dialogue, however, remains highly desirable so as to complement a historical reconstruction of Kātib Čelebi's life and times with a systematic, theoretically grounded understanding of his views.

The first part of this paper presents two contrary views on the Arab-Islamic culture : The first one claims the essential otherness of the Orient against the Occident, which causes the historian of cultures to focus more on differences than similarities between Arab-Islamic world, on one hand, and Europe which developed out of the Greek-Roman-Byzantine cultural traditions, on the other. In opposition, the other view stresses a poetic and mystical unity between the two cultural realms. According to this position, the spiritual aspects of Islam and the Orient are emphasized. In the second part, the author presents a new approach to deal with the Orient, based on conceptualizing predominant cultural phenomena which have direct impact on the life of societies. Through the investigation of the concept of time in the Qurʾān and influential Arab literary works, the paper attempts to demonstrate that questions about the relationship between cultures and peoples can be answered more accurately by analyzing the concepts which shape the mentality of the people.

Several Arabic poets composed verses on poetry in general, and on their own poetry in particular. Some of these metapoetic reflections already have been of interest to the Arabists, and became the subject of literary studies (e.g. Lyons, Schoeler, Fakhreddine, McKinney). If I again took up the topic with the focus on Ibn al-Ḥaǧǧāǧ (d. 1001), so it is because he referred to his own poetry much more often than other poets did. He had reason for this: Ibn al-Ḥaǧǧāǧ became famous – or one could also say infamous – because the new theme of suḫf (scatological obscenety) played an important role in his poetry. So he had to give arguments in support of his way of composing. The article presents a selection from his self-references which show that he not only defends his suḫf , but also boasts of this addition to Arabic poetry, which made his poems spread all over the countries.