Tahera Qutbuddin (born 1964,
Bombay
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...
) is a professor of Arabic literature at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
. A
Guggenheim Fellow
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...
(2020) and a winner of the
Sheikh Zayed Book Award
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is a literary award begun in the UAE. It is presented yearly to "Arab writers, intellectuals, publishers as well as young talent whose writings and translations of humanities have scholarly and objectively enriched Arab ...
in 2021, she is best known for her works on Arabic oratory and the usage of Arabic in India, especially in the
Dawoodi Bohra
The Dawoodi Bohras are a religious denomination within the Ismā'īlī branch of Shia Islam. Their largest numbers reside in India, Pakistan, Yemen, East Africa, and the Middle East, with a growing presence across Europe, North America, South ...
tradition.
Life
Tahera Qutbuddin was born in Bombay in 1964 in a Dawoodi Bohra family.
Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin
Mohammed Burhanuddin (6 March 1915 – 17 January 2014) was the 52nd Dā'ī al-Mutlaq of Dawoodi Bohras. He led the community for 49 years in a period of social, economic, and educational prosperity; strengthened and re-institutionalized the f ...
, a leader of the Bohra community, was a relative. She attended Villa Theresa High School and
Sophia College for Women
Sophia College (Autonomous) is an undergraduate women's college established in 1941 by Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is affiliated to the University of Mumbai. The governing body of The Society for the Higher Education of Women in In ...
, where she completed her secondary education in 1984.
Qutbuddin learned Arabic from her father Khuzaima Qutbuddin. She received a bachelor's degree (1988) and a ''tamhidi magister'' (1990) from the
Ain Shams University,
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...
, followed by master's (1994) and doctoral degrees from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
(1999), where her advisor was
Wolfhart Heinrichs
Wolfhart P. Heinrichs (3 October 1941 – 23 January 2014) was a German-born scholar of Arabic. He was James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard University, and a co-editor of the second edition of the '' Encyclopaedia of Islam''. He taug ...
.
Career
In 2002, Qutbuddin joined the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago. She was made a
Carnegie Scholar
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Carnegie Corporation has endowed or otherwise helped to establis ...
in 2008 and a Guggenheim fellow (2020).
Among her early publications was a study of the Arabic language in India, especially among the Dawoodi Bohras, and its influence on the Gujarati language sermons of
Taher Fakhruddin
Taher Fakhruddin is the 54th Da'i al-Mutlaq of the Qutbi Bohras, a sect within Shia Islam. He is the son of Khuzaima Qutbuddin, the 53rd Syedna succession controversy (Dawoodi Bohra). After the death of the 52nd Da'i al-Mutlaq, Mohammed Burh ...
.
Qutbuddin's 2005 monograph ''Al-Mu˒ayyad al-Shirāzī and Fāṭimid Da˓wa Poetry. A Case of Commitment in Classical Arabic Literature'' expanded on her doctoral thesis of 1999. It was deemed especially important for its access to private manuscripts of the
Tayyibi
Tayyibi Isma'ilism is the only surviving sect of the Musta'li branch of Isma'ilism, the other being the extinct Hafizi branch. Followers of Tayyibi Isma'ilism are found in various Bohra communities: Dawoodi, Sulaymani, and Alavi.
The Tayyibi ...
Ismaili Da˓wa in India. She showed that
Al-Mu˒ayyad al-Shirāzī was a major innovator in the development of ''committed literature'', i.e., literature produced by someone convinced of a particular ideology who then seeks to persuade society of its truth. She showed that
Fatimid
The Fatimid Caliphate was an Ismaili Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids, a dyna ...
poetry prior to al-Shirāzī was stylistically and thematically similar to that of the
Abbasids, whose main exponents were panegyrists, whereas al-Shirāzī's works were entirely in the promotion of the Da˓wa. She also showed how the traditions of the Tayyibi Ismailis moved to Yemen and thereafter in India after the death of al-Shirāzī, where his poetry's influence on the Dawoodi Bohra community endures to present times.
In 2013, Qutbuddin published an edition of her translations of Al-Qāḍī Al-Quḍāʿī's collection of the sayings and sermons of
Imam Ali
ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam. ...
and Al-Jāḥiẓ's selection of proverbs attributed to Ali. It was considered a definitive work as it considered all available editions and manuscripts, unlike previous translations of these important examples of Islamic religious literature. In particular, she was lauded for the quality of the translations, which conveyed well the punchiness of the pithy Arabic expressions and the variations in their meanings.
Qutbuddin's book ''Arabic Oration – Art and Function'' (2019) traced Arabic literature from its oral origins to its influence on modern sermons. She created a comparative framework between Arabic and Greek oratory, and explored how oratory was the foundation for the shaping of politics and public speaking, and thence to literature. She had worked on it for over a decade, although she had had the idea for it during her undergraduate days in Cairo. She explored the cultural milieu around Imam Ali and the aesthetics of his sermons. She established that public preaching in the form of ''
khutbah
''Khutbah'' ( ar, خطبة ''khuṭbah'', tr, hutbe) serves as the primary formal occasion for public preaching in the Islamic tradition.
Such sermons occur regularly, as prescribed by the teachings of all legal schools. The Islamic traditio ...
'' popular till today stemmed from pre-Islamic oratory, with texts available from decades before the founding of the faith. Much of the orally transmitted literature was lost but several texts in Arabic survive. The oratory depended much on visual imagery, but especially on rhythm and similar grammatical structure in every line, serving to reinforce the message in the listeners' minds. Qutbuddin also found that women held important positions in early Islamic society but would be permitted to speak publicly only in times of acute troubles. An example was the declamation by Imam Ali's daughter
Zaynab who, following the defeat of Ali's descendants at the
Battle of Karbala
The Battle of Karbala ( ar, مَعْرَكَة كَرْبَلَاء) was fought on 10 October 680 (10 Muharram in the year 61 AH of the Islamic calendar) between the army of the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid I and a small army led by Husayn ...
, castigated the victor,
Yazid I
Yazid ibn Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan ( ar, يزيد بن معاوية بن أبي سفيان, Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya ibn ʾAbī Sufyān; 64611 November 683), commonly known as Yazid I, was the second caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate. He ruled from ...
, for his actions.
In 2021, Qutbuddin was working on a monograph on
Imam Ali
ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam. ...
, the fourth caliph of Islam, titled ''ʿAli ibn Abi Talib: Life, Teachings, and Eloquence of the Sage of Islam''. Ali is considered a master guide for life on earth and in heaven by both Sunnis and Shiites; his orations exemplary and beautiful, with ornate, difficult vocabulary. Qutbuddin focussed on the interrelationships between political, religious and literary aspects of his life, aiming to reconstruct his life.
Selected works
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References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Qutbuddin, Tahera
1964 births
Living people
People from Mumbai
American academics of Indian descent
Harvard University alumni
University of Chicago faculty
Sophia College for Women alumni
Dawoodi Bohras
Ain Shams University alumni
American Islamic studies scholars
Women scholars of Islam
Shia scholars of Islam