7a. Pre-Islamic Arab Ethos, the Qur’an and Going Beyond Tafsir

Chair: Suleyman Dost, University of Toronto Scarborough

In recent years, tafsir (qurʾanic exegesis) has increasingly been studied in its own right as an emerging area of research, rather than simply as an extension of the Qur’an and qurʾanic Studies. However, it has become evident that the relationship of tafsir with other genres is a complicated one. This session is an effort to take up Johanna Pink and Andreas Gorke’s implicit call to interrogate how we approach the study of tafsir by bringing together scholars who take the historical questions seriously and who hope to show the ways in which studying the legacy of pre-Islamic Arab ethos and context can help contextualize the Qurʾan and its commentaries. Several concerns emerge as animating key aspects of this session, including the role of intertextuality and the influence of social and cultural paradigms on early Muslims. This session draws on a wide variety of sources, including tafsir, pre-Islamic poetry and panegyrics, Arabian epigraphy, biblical and post-biblical literature, law and ethics, history and historiography, and stories of the prophets (qisas al-anbiyaʾ), and the Israelite traditions (israʾiliyyat). Our purpose is to underscore the significance and legacy of pre-Islamic Arab ethos and the pre-Islamic context, which shaped early Muslims’ treatment of infanticide and their understanding of hospitality, salvation history, and concepts of rulership, including divinely appointed rule. The papers in this session explore the significance of pre-Islamic Arab ethos and context through their respective analyses of specific subjects as dealt with in different yet related disciplines of Islamic scholarship. The first paper examines the relationship between the qurʾanic injunction against female infanticide and the variety of ancient customs tied to human sacrifice. The second paper examines the way in which Arab notions of hospitality can help contextualize Lot’s offer of his daughters to an angry mob. The third paper explores the conceptual understanding of rulership—particularly as represented in the figure of Sulayman—in pre-Islamic poetry and the Qurʾan and shows how it was already grounded in the pre-Islamic Arab tradition. The fourth paper uses the Ashab al-Rass as a case study to explore salvation history and how qurʾanic commentaries work. Together, these papers help reveal the ways in which Arab ethos and the pre-Islamic context were central in the making of Islamic knowledge.