Devin J. Stewart is a scholar of Islamic studies and Arabic language and literature. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Middle eastern and South Asian studies at Emory University. [1] His research interests include Islamic law, the Qur'an, Islamic schools and branches and varieties of Arabic. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Stewart graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University in 1984 after completing a 143-page long senior thesis titled "Three Wise Men: The Safawi Religious Institution 1576 - 1629." [6] He completed the Center for Arabic Study Abroad's program at the American University in Cairo, and then earned his PhD with distinction in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Pennsylvania six years later. [2] [7]
Stewart has taught Arabic studies, Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies at the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University since 1990. He also serves on the editorial board for the Library of Arabic Literature. [2] [8] He is one of the senior editors of the Encyclopedia of Islam.
Much of Stewart's work has focused on the reconstruction of early Muslim legal theory based on ancient texts. He has also called attention to infrequently studied genres of Arabic literature such as Maqama. [9]
The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God (Allāh). It is organized in 114 chapters which consist of individual verses. Besides its religious significance, it is widely regarded as the finest work in Arabic literature, and has significantly influenced the Arabic language. It is the object of a modern field of academic research known as Quranic studies.
Theodor Nöldeke was a German orientalist and scholar, originally a student of Heinrich Ewald. He is one of the founders of the field of Quranic studies, especially through his foundational work titled the Geschichte des Qorāns. His research interests also ranged over Old Testament studies, and his command of Semitic languages ranging across Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Ethiopic allowed him to write hundreds of studies across a wide range of Oriental topics, including a number of translations, grammars, and works on literatures found in various languages.
Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr ibn Yazīd al-Ṭabarī, commonly known as al-Ṭabarī, was a Sunni Muslim scholar, polymath, traditionalist, historian, exegete, jurist, and theologian from Amol, Tabaristan, present-day Iran. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari is widely known for his historical works and expertise in Quranic exegesis, and has been described as "an impressively prolific polymath". He authored works on a diverse range of subjects, including world history, poetry, lexicography, grammar, ethics, mathematics, and medicine. Among his most famous and influential works are his Quranic commentary, Tafsir al-Tabari, and historical chronicle, Tarikh al-Tabari.
Islamic calligraphy is the artistic practice of handwriting and calligraphy, in the languages which use Arabic alphabet or the alphabets derived from it. It includes Arabic, Persian, Ottoman, and Urdu calligraphy. It is known in Arabic as khatt Arabi, which translates into Arabic line, design, or construction.
Al-Mu'awwidhatayn, an Arabic expression meaning "The Two Protectors" or "The Two Protective Incantations", refers to the final two surahs (chapters) of the Quran: 113 (Al-Falaq) and 114 (Al-Nas). They are called by this name because of their use of the term ʿādhā in a phrase that occurs in both surahs: ʿqul aʿūdhu bi-rabbi al- ... min .... Likewise, the two surahs appear consecutively in the Qur'an, are both very short, and bear additional stylistic resemblances with one another, broadly functioning as incantations that appeal to God's protection from evils or ailments. Some in the Islamic tradition have claimed that the two surahs were also revealed at the same time to Muhammad.
The mysterious letters are combinations of between one and five Arabic letters that appear at the beginning of 29 out of the 114 chapters (surahs) of the Quran just after the Bismillāh Islamic phrase. The letters are also known as fawātiḥ (فَوَاتِح) or "openers" as they form the opening verse of their respective surahs.
Saj‘ is a form of rhymed prose understood by the way it uses end rhyme, (accent-based) meter, and parallelism. There are two types of parallelism in saj': iʿtidāl and muwāzana.
In Islam, ’i‘jāz or inimitability of the Qur’ān is the doctrine which holds that the Qur’ān has a miraculous quality, both in content and in form, that no human speech can match. According to this doctrine the Qur'an is a miracle and its inimitability is the proof granted to Muhammad in authentication of his prophetic status. It serves the dual purpose of proving the authenticity of its divineness as being a source from the creator as well as proving the genuineness of Muhammad's prophethood, an unlettered man who could not read nor write, to whom it was revealed.
The history of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is the timeline ranging from the inception of the Quran during the lifetime of Muhammad, to the emergence, transmission, and canonization of its written copies. The history of the Quran is a major focus in the field of Quranic studies.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe is an American educator, scholar of Islam and the inaugural director of national and international outreach at the Library of Congress.
Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem, , is an Egyptian Islamic studies scholar and the King Fahd Professor of Islamic Studies at the SOAS University of London in London, England. He is the editor of the Journal of Qur'anic Studies.
The Quran states that several prior writings constitute holy books given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, in the same way the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. These include the Tawrat, believed by Muslims to have been given by God to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, the Zabur revealed to David (Dawud); and the Injil revealed to Jesus (Isa).
Bilal Orfali is a Lebanese scholar of Arabic language and literature. He currently serves as Sheikh Zayed Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut. He is considered an expert on Arabic prose and poetry, especially during the 10th century.
Shawkat M. Toorawa is the Brand Blanshard Profesor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and a professor of comparative literature at Yale University. He has published extensively on classical, medieval and modern Arabic literature, and has also published translations from Arabic. He identifies himself as a multicultural Muslim having lived in England, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mauritius and the US. He is a faculty member in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at Yale University.
Angelika Neuwirth is a German Islamic studies scholar and Professor of Qur’anic studies at the Free University of Berlin.
James A. Bellamy was an American professor. He was Professor Emeritus of Arabic Literature at the University of Michigan.
The Birmingham Quran manuscript comprises two leaves of parchment from an early Quranic manuscript or muṣḥaf. In 2015, the manuscript, which is held by the University of Birmingham, was radiocarbon dated to between 568 and 645 AD. It is part of the Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, held by the university's Cadbury Research Library.
In Muslim tradition the Quran is the final revelation from God, Islam's divine text, delivered to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the angel Jibril (Gabriel). Muhammad's revelations were said to have been recorded orally and in writing, through Muhammad and his followers up until his death in 632 CE. These revelations were then compiled by first caliph Abu Bakr and codified during the reign of the third caliph Uthman so that the standard codex edition of the Quran or Muṣḥaf was completed around 650 CE, according to Muslim scholars. This has been critiqued by some western scholarship, suggesting the Quran was canonized at a later date, based on the dating of classical Islamic narratives, i.e. hadiths, which were written 150–200 years after the death of Muhammad, and partly because of the textual variations present in the Sana'a manuscript. Muslim scholars who oppose the views of the Western revisionist theories regarding the historical origins of the Quran have described their theses as "untenable".
Quranic studies is the academic application of a diverse set of disciplines to study the Quran, drawing on methods including but not limited to ancient history, philology, textual criticism, lexicography, codicology, literary criticism, comparative religion, and historical criticism.
The Geschichte des Qorāns is a foundational German work of modern Quranic studies by Theodor Noldeke (1836–1930). Published originally in 1860, the work continued to be revised and expanded by Noldeke's students and successors between 1909 and 1938. It represented a major leap forward in the field, aided by access to collections of manuscripts in Germany and the recent publication of the al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾan, a major 15th-century traditional commentary on the Quran by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, in 1857. In this work, Noldeke reassessed the traditional chronology of the Quran. He placed each surah of the Quran into either a Meccan or a Medinan period, with the Meccan period coming first. The Meccan period was also split into Early, Middle, and Late Meccan phases.