The Koran as a text from Late Antiquity

THE KORAN AS A TEXT FROM LATE ANTIQUITY:

Bridging the Gap between Orthodox Interpretation and New Research

In her comprehensive Koran study, Angelika Neuwirth, Director of the research project Corpus Coranicum, interprets the Koran as a text that was developed in the milieu of Late Antiquity theological debates. Stefan Weidner introduces the book and project

[Quantara.de]

German scholarship of Islam experienced its heyday around 100 years ago. Back then, Ignaz Goldziher and Theodor Nöldeke presented studies on early Islam, the Koran and the emergence of Islamic law, publications still viewed as vitally important to this day.

For some years now, scholars have reconnected with these glory years of research into early Islam from a quite different perspective, at among others the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Under the programmatic title "The Koran as Text from the Late Antiquity. A European Approach", the scholar of Arabic Angelika Neuwirth, who heads a group of young Koran researchers at the Academy, presents the project's initial findings.

Embedded in a cultural and religious context

Angelika Neuwirth's work liberates the Koran from later Islamic tradition and makes the process of its creation visible. It then reads just as contemporaries must have understood it: as evidence of intensive theological wrangling on the Arab Peninsular but in a cultural and religious context that also characterised the rest of the Mediterranean region in the 7th century – and thereby ultimately European spiritual beliefs to this day:

"In as far as the Koran emerged from the debates raging during the Late Antiquity, and carved its own niche among existing Christian and Jewish traditions (…) this means it is itself part of the historical legacy of the Late Antiquity in Europe."


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HT Abu 'l-Rayhan Al-Biruni.