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[1/x] A very interesting, wide-ranging, paper from Devin J. Stewart in the recent volume edited by Marianna Klar. Some random thoughts & excerpts
![[1/x] A very interesting, wide-ranging, paper from Devin J. Stewart in the recent volume edited by Marianna Klar. Some random thoughts & excerpts](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er3u05lXYAIFA6M.png "[1/x] A very interesting, wide-ranging, paper from Devin J. Stewart in the recent volume edited by Marianna Klar. Some random thoughts & excerpts")
![[1/x] A very interesting, wide-ranging, paper from Devin J. Stewart in the recent volume edited by Marianna Klar. Some random thoughts & excerpts](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er3u-LSWMAgB8Ty.jpg "[1/x] A very interesting, wide-ranging, paper from Devin J. Stewart in the recent volume edited by Marianna Klar. Some random thoughts & excerpts")
He gives his take on the structure/purpose/genre of Quranic oaths, and based on this analysis determines whether specific oath-containing surahs are composite (the conclusion: some are, some aren’t).
More interesting to me is his contextualization of the oaths. Scholars have long suspected them of being modeled on the speech of pre-Islamic Arabian soothsayers. Eg Richard Bell, as quoted by Stewart:
Stewart specifically compares Quranic oaths to others preserved in the tradition; this includes a couple attributed to Musaylimah (see below). The picture is compelling (imho), though it is ultimately up to specialists to decide if it’s not just a mirage.
The authenticity question is massive here. Stewart’s take: the broad picture on oaths from later sources is likely correct. He even suggests that 8th/9th c writers may also have had access to a living tradition of oracular speech. Would love to know if this is at all verifiable.
Btw, Nora Schmid’s article in the same volume is a good companion piece to Stewart’s: her’s is more of a diachronic survey of how the use of oaths evolves in the corpus, but she also has some nice late antique contextualization. Epigraphy is also brought into the picture.
Back to Stewart: as usual he's very knowledgeable on the history of western Quranic studies. He’s also always attuned to instances where the modern historical-critical approach has similarities with work done by pre-modern scholars in the tradition.
Stewart also on the genre of the Quran itself — it is not a world history or Islamic Gospel (for that look to Ibn Ishaq), but rather an “anthology of sermons, prayers, and other religious texts ... the collected sermons of a particular preacher over the span of several years.”
Hopefully folks engage with the paper, imo the big question is (as usual, I guess) the authenticity issue. Regardless, it is nice to see more work dealing with the Quranic oaths, there seems to have been a resurrection of interesting in the topic.
The entire volume the paper is in is fascinating too, though I’ve only read Schmid and Sinai’s papers. Sinai continues his redactional approach to the Medinan surahs; some money methodological views:
