Suheil Laher

Tawātur is the concept that if we obtain the same information through a sufficient number of independent channels, we reach certainty about that data. When applied to the transmission of Qur’ān and hadith texts, tawātur can serve as a means by which to assert the truth of a source-text, which in turn has implications for correctness of the religious belief or practice that is conveyed by the text, and hence the orthodoxy of one accepting or rejecting it. This dissertation is an attempt to unravel the twisted historical threads of the conception and usage of tawātur across diverse disciplines, with a view to discovering the extent to which tawātur was used by Muslim scholars to draw and define boundaries of Islam and of orthodoxy. I undertake a diachronic study of primary sources in theology, Qur’ānic studies, legal theory, and ḥadīth studies, with an emphasis on the first five centuries, which represent the formative period for much of Islamic thought. I explore the origins of the term and concept in kalām-circles, its eventual adoption by anti-kalām hadith-folk, its transition into legal theory and thence hadith-studies, and its application to evaluating transmission of the Qur’ānic text and its recitation and to hadiths. I find that tawātur of the Qur’ān (in the broad outlines of the ˁUthmānic text), along with some core beliefs and central rituals found overwhelming acknowledgement among Muslims as a sine qua non of Islam. However, tawātur was not successful in delineating a unanimous canon of ḥadīths, because the mutāwatir status of particular hadiths is sometimes disputed, and because of ambiguities of interpretation of some texts. Nevertheless, the dominant and majority voices in Muslim scholarship (both Sunnī and Shīˁite) reached a steady state of a two-tiered orthodoxy (corresponding to the two-tiered tawātur) that is linked to a conception that knowledge is not unsusceptible to progression over time.

Tawātur is the concept that if we obtain the same information through a sufficient number of independent channels, we reach certainty about that data. When applied to the transmission of Qur’ān and hadith texts, tawātur can serve as a means by which to assert the truth of a source-text, which in turn has implications for correctness of the religious belief or practice that is conveyed by the text, and hence the orthodoxy of one accepting or rejecting it.

This dissertation is an attempt to unravel the twisted historical threads of the conception and usage of tawātur across diverse disciplines, with a view to discovering the extent to which tawātur was used by Muslim scholars to draw and define boundaries of Islam and of orthodoxy. I undertake a diachronic study of primary sources in theology, Qur’ānic studies, legal theory, and ḥadīth studies, with an emphasis on the first five centuries, which represent the formative period for much of Islamic thought. I explore the origins of the term and concept in kalām-circles, its eventual adoption by anti-kalām hadith-folk, its transition into legal theory and thence hadith-studies, and its application to evaluating transmission of the Qur’ānic text and its recitation and to hadiths.

I find that tawātur of the Qur’ān (in the broad outlines of the ˁUthmānic text), along with some core beliefs and central rituals found overwhelming acknowledgement among Muslims as a sine qua non of Islam. However, tawātur was not successful in delineating a unanimous canon of ḥadīths, because the mutāwatir status of particular hadiths is sometimes disputed, and because of ambiguities of interpretation of some texts.

Nevertheless, the dominant and majority voices in Muslim scholarship (both Sunnī and Shīˁite) reached a steady state of a two-tiered orthodoxy (corresponding to the two-tiered tawātur) that is linked to a conception that knowledge is not unsusceptible to progression over time.

This paper analyzes the current state of Western research on the variant readings of the Qur'ān and how it differs from traditional Muslim scholarship through the lens of objectivity and bias. After a brief survey of the major views in the field, I identify three major sources of contention between the two camps: the problem of sources, disagreements concerning the history of the Arabic language, and disputes over the value of the isnād (chain of transmission) as an indicator of historical reliability.
Each camp’s premises and goals impact their research, and each camp may perceive the other as biased. I then discuss how to use the concept of “objectivity as responsibility” to defuse the bias paradox and outline suggestions for measures that the two camps could adopt to facilitate a more productive way forward.

This  article  studies  the  life  and  thought  of  ʿAbdullāh  al-Ghumārī  (d.  1413/1993),  an accomplished, yet uncelebrated, Muslim scholar from Morocco. After a brief biographical sketch, I present an overview of his thought (including numerous nonconformist views he held) in the fields of theology, law and Sufism. I proceed to analyze his methodology and what it tells us about his interaction with modernity and the Islamic scholarly tradition. Finally, I draw some more general conclusions about Islam in modernity, in light of the views of contemporary French sociologist Hervieu-Léger. I infer that Ghumārī was a nonconformist thinker who leveraged a broad understanding of tradition to remold or revive the tradition from within. The early-modern milieu may have contributed to and facilitated his attempts to restore dynamism to a religious scholarly tradition that had (in some ways at least) become static or stagnant.

Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150H / 767CE), eponym of the Ḥanafī Islamic legal school, differed from most legal scholars (fuqahāʾ) by allowing recitation of the Qurʾān in Persian translation in the ritual prayer (ṣalah). Subsequently, there occurred theoretical disputes among theologians about whether the term “Qurʾān” refers to the meaning of the text, or both the meaning and the wording, the latter being the majority view. Some later Hanafi sources report that Abu Hanifa later recanted this view. Abū-Zahra and Zadeh have inferred that the permissive view is consistent with Abū Ḥanīfa’s milieu, in that the increasing numbers of non-Arab Muslims might have needed temporary accommodations for their performance of the prayers. Zadeh has further opined that the later reports about Abu Hanifa having recanted his view reflect Hanafi discomfort with the said view, amidst the triumph of the notion that the concept of scripture encompasses both form and meaning. I argue that both these explanations are unsatisfactory. Instead, I argue that the various relevant genres (law, legal theory, legal polemics and history) need to be differentiated, and engaged separately in the context of the functional role of each genre. By so doing, I conclude that Abu Hanifa’s view is an example of an important phenomenon in Islamic law: that of a gap between hypotheticals (thought experiments) and actual practice. There is no conclusive evidence that recitation of the Quran in Persian was a normative practice that was endorsed by Hanafi jurists.  Hence, most Muslims, even in non-Arab lands, were multilingual, albeit in a very limited sense. I also examine a related issue, that of supplicating in Persian within the ṣalah, and show how the permissibility of this was also sidelined in the Ḥanafī school, apparently due to intellectual vestiges of the Pro-Persian shuʿūbiyya movement which had met its demise centuries earlier

Narratives, especially stories of former prophets, are a prominent Qurʼānic theme, yet the Qurʼān is not a conventional histoire text, for it intersperses plot with theology, exhortation, and dialectic. Existing Western scholarship on Qurʼānic narratives has foregrounded etic and intertextual concerns, especially comparison with Biblical narratives. There is a need to enrich this discourse by examining emic perspectives, which (in contrast to the Eurocentric approaches) allow exploration of theological themes such as the Qurʼān's own internal coherence and its inimitability (iʻjāz). This paper seeks to contribute to this by analyzing how two contemporary Muslim exegetes approached two parallel Qurʼānic narratives of Moses, who is the most frequently mentioned prophet in the Quran. I focus on two mimetic accounts of the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh (in Surahs 7 and 26) that show much overlap in wording, but also some noticeable differences. I compare and contrast the Qurʼānic passages themselves, and also examine their analysis in the exegeses of two twentieth-century Muslim scholars: Tunisian Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr (1879-1973) and Iraqi Dr. Fāḍil al-Sāmarrāʼī (b. 1933), both known for their focus on rhetorical dimensions of Qurʼānic language. This provides a window into these exegetes' views on the role(s) of Qurʼānic narrative and the function of lexicological nuance as an element of iʻjāz.

Narratives, especially stories of former prophets, are a prominent Qurʼānic theme, yet the Qurʼān is not a conventional histoire text, for it intersperses plot with theology, exhortation, and dialectic. Existing Western scholarship on Qurʼānic narratives has foregrounded etic and intertextual concerns, especially comparison with Biblical narratives. There is a need to enrich this discourse by examining emic perspectives, which (in contrast to the Eurocentric approaches) allow exploration of theological themes such as the Qurʼān's own internal coherence and its inimitability (iʻjāz). This paper seeks to contribute to this by analyzing how two contemporary Muslim exegetes approached two parallel Qurʼānic narratives of Moses, who is the most frequently mentioned prophet in the Quran. I focus on two mimetic accounts of the encounter between Moses and Pharaoh (in Surahs 7 and 26) that show much overlap in wording, but also some noticeable differences. I compare and contrast the Qurʼānic passages themselves, and also examine their analysis in the exegeses of two twentieth-century Muslim scholars: Tunisian Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr (1879-1973) and Iraqi Dr. Fāḍil al-Sāmarrāʼī (b. 1933), both known for their focus on rhetorical dimensions of Qurʼānic language. This provides a window into these exegetes' views on the role(s) of Qurʼānic narrative and the function of lexicological nuance as an element of iʻjāz.

إن كون تدوين علوم أوّل الأصلين (القرآن الكريم) تأخر عن تدوين ثانيهما (السنة) يلمح إلى فروق بين مفهومي المسمَّيَينِ ، وتحاول مشاركتي استكشاف تلك الفروق من خلال عدسة القرن الرابع الهجري.
إن الباحث في علوم القرآن ، عندما يتأمل القرن الرابع الهجري ، يجد ظاهرا متناقضا ما. فإن هذا القرن يعتبر طور النضوج والاستقرار للعلوم الإسلامية عموما، إذ فيه بدأ تأسيس المذاهب الفقهية والعقدية .المشهورة.كما ظهر لدى العلماء اهتمام بنظريات أصولية، حيث شاهد هذا العصر ابتداء تبلور علم أصول الفقه (على أيدي أمثال القاضي الباقلاني، م403هـ) ، وأصول النحو (على يد ابن السراج ، م316هـ). وحيث ظهرت تأليفات تحاول استقصاء قواعد علوم الحديث (كمعرفة علوم الحديث للحاكم ، م405 هـ). وبناء على هذه التطورات، وتحت تأثير علوم اليونان العقلية ، أخذ بعض علماء البلاد الإسلامية (أمثال الفارابي ، م339هـ، والتوحيدي ، م414ه، وغيرهم) يؤلفون أيضاً كتبا في تصنيف (أصناف) العلوم. فهذا كله مما يطلع عليه الباحث من ناحية.
أما من الناحية الأخرى، فإن أغلب تلك الكتب التي عُنيت بأصناف العلوم ضربت عن ذكر علوم القرآن صفحاً، إذ لم تعدّها نوعا مستقلا لها مكانة راسية بين صفوف العلوم الدينية الأخرى. وإن التأليف المركّز في علوم القرآن لم يأت إلا بعد عدة قرون،حيث يجيء العلامة الزركشي الشافعي (م794هـ) ويتعجب من عدم اهتمام سابقيه بتدوين علوم القرآن اهتمامَهم بمثله في علوم الحديث، كما يتعجب من ذلك أيضاً الإمام السيوطي (م911هـ) بعده. وهنا على الباحث أن يستفسر: ما هي أوجه التشابه بين هذين العِلمين؟ وماهي الفروق التي قد تكون أدّت دورا في هذا التفاوت بين مسارَيْ تدوين هذين العِلمين؟ سأبرهن خلال مقالتي هذه ، إن شاء الله، أن القرن الرابع ينبغي أن يعتبر أنشَط فترة في تأسيس علوم القرآن، رغم أن تدوينها لم يتم في نفس الفترة، وأنه لولا نشاطات هذا القرن لظلت علوم القرآن (بالنسبة للجزء الأكبر) مجرد فرع لعلوم الحديث وربما لا يستحق تدوينا مستقلا. وسأبين أهم تلك النشاطات (التعريف الأصولي للقرآن، وجمع القراءات، والرد على فكرة التحريف، والبحث في إعجاز القرآن) ومدى ارتباطها أو عدم ارتباطها بعلوم الحديث، وسألقي بذلك الضوء على سبب تأخر تدوين علوم القرآن.
وأخيراً، سأتعمق في مدى تأثير القرن الرابع على كتاب الإتقان للسيوطي، وذلك عن طريق تحليل إحصائي (prosopographique) للأعلام المنقول عنهم في الإتقان وكذلك المباحث المدونة في الكتاب، ابتغاء اكتشاف شيء عن تصور مفهوم علوم القرآن لدى السيوطي، وكيفية تأثره بزمانه في ذلك.

This paper discusses how the rationalist Muslim theologians' epistemological concept of tawātur, although initially spurned by their tradionalist rivals, was first mastered by the latter, then embraced and turned against its initiators.

In his thematic survey Islamic Theology : Traditionalism and Rationalism, Abrahamov has proffered that while these two prominent trends in early (3rd-10th centuries) Islamic thought are not mutually exclusive polar identities, nevertheless the methodology of each camp does have unique characteristics  that favor, or contribute to, distinct trends. Thus, rationalism leads to change (and hence instability), while traditionalism favors stability as a result of its adherence to past authority and precedents, but that nevertheless there often were compromizes. In his recent article Scripturalist and Tradiitionalist Theology, he goes on to describe that what eventually came to dominate was a traditionalist theology, but one drew also upon rational methods and was consequently able to refute rationalists on their own terms. My study provides a specific case study that supports this general thesis, while at the same time elucidating what seems to be a radical shift in the traditionalists' tools and approach.

Taking a prominent traditionist scholarly lineage as a representative cross-section of this period, I explore how tawātur made inroads among the traditionists across the 4th/10th-5th/11th centuries. I show how a dialogic between the writings of the competing camps led to a paradigm-shift among traditionists during this period, which corresponded to the ascendancy of Ash`ari rationalism.

French mathematician Laplace proffered that the probability of truth of historical information diminishes as time elapses, similar to the decrease in visibility that results from successive panes of glass intervening between an object and its viewer. This article studies the difference time made to perception of two issues in Islamic law. 3rd/9th century Muslim traditionists (hadith-folk) stressed an epistemology centered on authentication of the transmission-route of reports (hadiths) attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.  This sometimes caused conflict with followers of earlier legal schools who tended to consider inherited religious tradition (sunnah) as normative even in the absence of a hadith text; a concept that appeared nebulous to the hadith-folk and threatening to the entire edifice of their enterprise. Al-Shafi`i (d. 204/820), eponym of one of the Sunni legal schools, is widely acknowledged as having been prominent in highlighting and grappling with these tensions, and in championing textualism over (text-less) inherited tradition. Through examining al-Shafi`i’s discussion of two specific hadiths (one declaring sea-water to be suitable for pre-prayer ablutions, and the other placing a restriction on bequests), I show that he did acknowledge a limited role for the authority of text-less tradition (or tradition that is in accord with a hadith of dubious transmission), where he perceived such practice to be so ubiquitous in the Muslim community as to constitute a consensus, or to be supported by reasoning based on other general texts.  I then show how the picture blurred with the passage of time, and these two hadiths, which al-Shafi`i had regarded as having weak transmission, were re-classified, in the 5th/11th century, as sound transmissions backed by consensus. I argue that this is illustrative of the increasing elusiveness – as  generations passed, some earlier views became extinct, and others took on sectarian overtones – of identifying ubiquity and consensus in the knowledge of the earliest Muslims, and that the sunnah-to-hadith shift spearheaded by al-Shafi`I was therefore a natural response to the decay of knowledge over time.

A paper presented as part of a panel entitled "Science, Culture and Society Part II: The Secrets of Eloquence: Linguistic Expression in Medieval Arabic Thought and Practice," at Middle Eastern Studies Association, Annual Conference, Boston, MA, 11/2009.

This article sketches the development of balagha over fifteen centuries,  starting in Arabia, but eventually spreading as far as central Asia and Andalusia. In the course of this journey across space and time, we will see the field described by multiple names (bayan, fasaha, balagha and others), and developing in several separate currents, before these are eventually brought to a confluence, and the field takes a steady-state shape comprising three sub-disciplines: ma`ani (linguistic pragmatics / semantics), bayan (imagery and figurative language) and badi` (rhetorical embellishments). As for the leading characters of this story, we will meet folk as diverse as Caliphs and imams, philologists and theologians (including Sunnis, Shi`is and Mu`tazilis), as well as poets and secretaries. So, won’t you join us on this fascinating odyssey?

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Prelude..................................................................................................................................................1 The Red Tent and the First Century.......................................................................................................2 Secretaries and Stallions : The Second and Third Centuries.................................................................4 Conceits and Quran : The Third and Fourth Centuries..........................................................................6 Synthesis and Consolidation : The Fifth and Sixth Centuries................................................................9 Stasis and Stagnation : The Seventh to Fourteenth Centuries............................................................11 Encounter and Engagement with Modernity......................................................................................13 Modern Rhetorical Exegesis.....................................................

In this paper, I examine the varieties of Madinian recitation through the lens of the tradition of Medinian Qur’ān-master Nāfiʻ. First, I compare Nāfiʻ’s recitation, with both canonical transmissions from the Kūfan reciter `Asim1, to see the extent to which they reflect elements of the Ḥijāzī-Tamīmī linguistic dichotomy. I then look more closely at one of these phonological features, the imalah,  and attempt to correlate its variations with biographical details. My analysis suggests that the Madinians reciters did not originally pronounce imalah (in line with what is widely-accepted as being a Hijazi trait), but that they began to do so around the mid-second century under the influence of the koine that was gaining increasing ascendancy in the new cosmopolitan conditions. The early second century is thus seen as a time of phonological transitions reflecting a synthesis of Western and Eastern features.

In this paper, I examine the varieties of Madinian recitation through the lens of the tradition of Medinian Qur’ān-master Nāfiʻ. First, I compare Nāfiʻ’s recitation, with both canonical transmissions from the Kūfan reciter `Asim, to see the extent to which they reflect elements of the Ḥijāzī-Tamīmī linguistic dichotomy. I then look more closely at one of these phonological features, the imalah,  and attempt to correlate its variations with biographical details. My analysis suggests that the Madinians reciters did not originally pronounce imalah (in line with what is widely-accepted as being a Hijazi trait), but that they began to do so around the mid-second century under the influence of the koine that was gaining increasing ascendancy in the new cosmopolitan conditions. The early second century is thus seen as a time of phonological transitions reflecting a synthesis of Western and Eastern features.

Translation (from Arabic to English) of article “Tawarruq : The Practical Scenario in which it is implemented,” by Mufti Taqi Usmani, in The Tawarruq Debate in Islamic Finance, ed. Frank E. Vogel, S. Nazim Ali, Umar Oseni (Edward Elgar, 2014)

Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi presented one of his most famous poems at an event at the Higher Teacher's College club in Cairo, in the euphoric time just before the opening of independent Egypt's new parliament. The Arabic poem, 68 lines long, extols knowledge and teachers, laments the current state to which learning has devolved in his land, and describes the herculean responsibility of teachers to inculcate knowledge as well as values in the next generation. I present a literary (non-literal) translation of the entire poem in pentametric blank verse, along with a short biography of the poet and brief notes.

The book reviewed here is a welcome addition to the library of works seek- ing to construct a richer picture of the early Islamic landscape after the wane of radical revisionist theories of Islamic origins of Islam. Salem has presented a thoughtful study of the scholar-ascetic-warrior ‘Abdallāh ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), and what the outlines of his life reveal about the proto-Sunnī milieu of the second Islamic century. Whereas early academic explorations of the development of Sunnī orthodoxy focused on theology and law, with Scott Lucas later highlighting the crucial role of ḥadīth, Salem has focused on the hitherto neglected dimension of ethics. The book is well laid out with an introduction, then a chapter outlining Ibn al-Mubārak’s life, followed by chapters analyzing his activities in the fields of ḥadīth, ji- hād, and zuhd respectively, wrapped up with a brief concluding chapter. Chapter 1 begins with a succinct overview of the ‘descriptive’ and ‘skeptical’ approaches among...

The main ideas and critical theses of Shady Nasser’s substantial recent book are here critically discussed and evaluated. The book offers many contributions to the field, but I note a few debatable instances where the author’s data are open to interpretations other than those he has concluded. An excursus contains a detailed discussion on the reliability of the eponymous quranic reciters, a topic that, I argue, the book does not treat adequately.

Emad Hamdeh’s Salafīsm and Traditionalism: Scholarly Authority in Modern Islam is a meticulous study of a contemporary debate  about scholarly legitimacy, between the Salafī hadith-scholar Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī and his traditional Sunnī interlocutors, focused on  disputes over both hadiths and Islamic Law (fiqh). The book is a welcome addition to contemporary studies about Salafīsm, which (as  the author observes) often tend to focus on political dimensions of the movement, at the expense of religious elements—this although the latter may be more significant in the sense that most Salafīs themselves view their initiative as primarily religious, and not necessarily political.