Sinai (Nicolai) -ed.-, Unlocking the Medinan Qur’an, Leiden, Brill, ("Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān ; 19"), 2022. ISBN 978-90-04-50970-2

Presentation

The Qur’anic surahs and passages that are customarily taken to postdate Muhammad’s emigration to Medina occupy a key position in the formative period of Islam: they fundamentally shaped later convictions about Muhammad’s paradigmatic authority and universal missionary remit; they constitute an important basis for Islam’s development into a religion with a strong legal focus; and they demarcate the Qur’anic community from Judaism and Christianity. The volume exemplifies a rich array of approaches to the challenges posed by this part of the Qur’an, including its distinctive literary and doctrinal features, its relationship to other late antique traditions, and the question of oral composition.

Contributors

Karen Bauer, Saqib Hussain, Marianna Klar, Joseph E. Lowry, Angelika Neuwirth, Andrew J. O’Connor, Cecilia Palombo, Nora K. Schmid, Nicolai Sinai, Devin J. Stewart, Gabriel S. Reynolds, Neal Robinson and Holger Zellentin.

Table of content

Introduction
  Nicolai Sinai

Part 1 Literary Features of the Medinan Qurʾan

1 Towards a Compositional Grammar of the Medinan Suras
  Nicolai Sinai

2 Lexical Layers vs Structural Paradigms in the Opening of Sūrat al-Baqara: Typically Medinan Structures in Q 2, Q 3, and Some Shorter Medinan Compositions
  Marianna Klar

3 Formulae and Repetition in the Medinan Qurʾan: The Story of the Golden Calf between Meccan and Medinan Suras
  Cecilia Palombo

4 Interrogative Rhetoric and Deliberative Discourse in the Medinan Suras
  Nora K. Schmid

5 Vocatives in the Qurʾan and the Framing of Prophetic Proclamations
  Devin J. Stewart

Part 2 Ritual, Prophetology, and Law: Some Medinan Themes

6 The Qibla of Muhammad’s Community Reconsidered
  Angelika Neuwirth

7 Obeying God and His Messenger: Medinan Prophetology in the Meccan Qurʾan?
  Andrew J. O’Connor

8 Law in the Medinan Qurʾan: The Case of Biblical Incest Law and Its Qurʾanic Reiteration
  Holger Zellentin

Part 3 Studies of Individual Suras

9 The Dynamics of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (Q 3)
  Neal Robinson

10 A Guide to the Legal Material in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (Q 4)
  Joseph E. Lowry

11 Emotive Rhetoric, Plot, and Persuasion in a Jihād Surah (Q 8 al-Anfāl)
  Karen Bauer

12 Intratextuality, Doublets, and Orality in the Qurʾan, with Attention to Suras 61 and 66
  Gabriel S. Reynolds

13 Q 63 (Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn): A Text-Critical and Structural Analysis
  Saqib Hussain

Index