Volume 7, Issue 1

The accepted variant readings ( qirāʾāt ) of the Qurʾān have often been characterized as those that may be recited in the course of the ritual prayer. However, it appears on examination that premodern juridical handbooks laying out the rules governing the ritual prayer rarely discuss textual variants. When they do, it is almost always to rule out variants reportedly recited by Companions before the caliph ʿUthmān promulgated a single orthodox text. Also, contrary to what some scholars continue to allege, it is doubtful whether the acceptance of seven, ten, or any other number of accepted variant readings has been affected by judicial rulings or fatwas from jurisprudents backed by state power. What constrained specialists to restrict themselves to widely accepted variants was evidently fear not of the state but of disapproval from fellow specialists.

This article explores the inner-qurʾānic development of the images of women in the qurʾānic Paradise and explains the possible reasons for this development via a consideration of qurʾānic images of women more broadly. Women appear in the qurʾānic Paradise as “houris” ( ḥūr ʿīn ), “spouses” ( azwāj ), “spouses who acted righteously” ( wa-man ṣalaḥa min … azwājihim ), “pure spouses” ( azwāj muṭahharah ), and “believing women” ( muʾmināt ). Such references to women in Paradise correspond to the inner-qurʾānic development of the female image. The “houris” are mentioned only in the Meccan period, while references to “pure spouses” and “believing women” occur exclusively in the Medinan period. Furthermore, after the believing men are rewarded with the houris in earlier Meccan verses, later Meccan verses discuss earthly spouses. In these later Meccan verses, as earthly women gradually rise in station as the spouses of believing men in Paradise, the houris seemingly disappear. In parallel with this development in the qurʾānic account of women in Paradise, the early Meccan sūrahs do not explicitly describe women as “believing women,” thus putting forward no explicit rules of good conduct for earthly spouses. Finally, it is not until the Medinan verses that women are treated as moral agents.

The meetings between Joseph and his brothers in Egypt are often portrayed in Qurʾān commentaries as dramatic occurrences. A few early Imāmī-Shīʿī commentaries mention a peculiar account that describes the heated clash between the brothers and Joseph following Joseph’s accusation that one of them stole from him. A comparative examination shows that a second version of this tradition appears in contemporary Sunnī exegesis, and that earlier Jewish Midrashim influenced both Muslim versions. This paper will suggest that the Muslim versions consciously altered the Jewish exegetical narrative to agree with the qurʾānic one and that the Islamicized version of the tradition was adopted “back” into later Jewish exegesis. The differences between the Imāmī and Sunnī versions suggest that each community had independent access to rabbinic lore. The paper also studies elements in the Imāmī version that are absent from both the Sunnī and Jewish versions, including unusual bleeding from various organs and a golden pomegranate. Finally, it offers some preliminary observations concerning the considerations that might have led to the unique developments exhibited in the Imāmī version.

This article analyzes the Qurʾān’s use of an Arabic rhetorical device called iltifāt , the shift of person within a text. It addresses the way iltifāt has been interpreted by medieval Muslim exegetes and the implications of its use for the structure and cosmology of the Qurʾān. By analyzing the use of iltifāt in the Qurʾān, the article demonstrates that the qurʾānic narrator exclusively refers to itself in the first-person plural, and that shifts to other persons (e.g., first-person singular) signify shifts into nested dialogues, asides, and/or narratives within narratives. Furthermore, the way this narrator refers to earthly and heavenly beings suggests that this first-person plural narrator holds a distinct place in the Qurʾān’s cosmology, one that is linked to but distinct from God and other inhabitants of the heavens.