Qur'anic studies is the
academic study
Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completio ...
of the
Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...
, the religious scripture of
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
.
Schools
Behnam Sadeghi
Behnam Sadeghi (born September 16, 1969) is a scholar of religion and assistant professor of religious studies at Stanford University.
Biography
Sadeghi received his PhD in 2006 from Princeton University. His doctoral dissertation investigated tex ...
and Mohsen Goudarzi classify scholars of Quranic studies into four groups: traditionalists, revisionists, skeptics, and neo-traditionalists. Most premodern scholars belong to the traditionalist group. According to Sadeghi and Goudarzi, the traditional account:
The traditional account "continues to be fairly popular among the specialists in the
Muslim world
The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. I ...
". European and American scholars, however, do not often agree with this account. This is because there is a "prevailing distrust in the literary sources on which it is founded". Sadeghi and Goudarzi categorize the majority of modern Euro American scholars into two main groups. The revisionist group rejects the traditional account as wrong. They dispute the idea that Uthman sought to correct the text, or they believe that important modifications in the standard text continued after Uthman, or, in the instance of scholars such as
Wansbrough, they believe it is perhaps "anachronistic" to talk of the Quran during the time of Uthman, because the text came into being much later. Among the notable revisionists are John Wansbrough,
Patricia Crone
Patricia Crone (March 28, 1945July 11, 2015) was a Danish historian specializing in early Islamic history. Crone was a member of the Revisionist school of Islamic studies and questioned the historicity of the Islamic traditions about the beginnin ...
, Alfred-Louis de Prémare, and David Powers. The skeptics, the larger group of the two, neither accept the traditional account nor the revisionist ones, being "equally unconvinced by traditional and revisionist narratives". However, Sadeghi and Goudarzi calls them ''de facto'' revisionist because of their "attitude toward the literary sources".
Neo-traditionalists constitute the minority among scholars in the Western academia. They agree with important elements of the traditional account. Although they don't accept every report conveyed in the later sources, they do think that a critical and in-depth examination of the literary evidence supports the traditional account. Some well known members of this group include
Michael Cook, Muḥammad Muḥaysin, and
Harald Motzki, with the first being a revisionist defector. Neo traditionalists "have their counterparts in the Muslim world".
Journals
* ''
Journal of Qur'anic Studies
The ''Journal of Qur'anic Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that focuses on Qur’anic Studies from a wide range of scholarly perspectives, reflecting a diversity of approaches. It publishes articles both in English and Arabic, to en ...
'' (
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
)
* QURANICA – International Journal of Quranic Research
* JIQSA-Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association
Major books
*
Brill
Brill may refer to:
Places
* Brielle (sometimes "Den Briel"), a town in the western Netherlands
* Brill, Buckinghamshire, a village in England
* Brill, Cornwall, a small village to the west of Constantine, Cornwall, UK
* Brill, Wisconsin, an un ...
's
Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān
The ''Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān'' (abbreviated EQ) is an encyclopedia dedicated to Quranic Studies edited by Islamic scholar Jane Dammen McAuliffe, and published by Brill Publishers.Promotion text by Brill:
"Drawing upon a rich scholarly her ...
* Center for Islamic Science's ''Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān (IEQ)''
* The Qur'anic Studies Series, published by the
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
See also
*
Islamic studies
Islamic studies refers to the academic study of Islam, and generally to academic multidisciplinary "studies" programs—programs similar to others that focus on the history, texts and theologies of other religious traditions, such as Easter ...
References
Sources
* {{cite journal , last=Sadeghi , first=Behnam , last2=Goudarzi , first2=Mohsen , title=Ṣan‘ā’ 1 and the Origins of the Qur’ān , journal=Der Islam , publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH , volume=87 , issue=1-2 , year=2012 , issn=1613-0928 , doi=10.1515/islam-2011-0025 , pages=1–129