Keynote: Professor Ahmad al-Jallad
ʾAṣdāʾu kalāmi l-ḥiǧār fī luġati l-ʾaqlāmi wa-l-ʾasfār: The Quran in light of 1500 years of pre-Islamic Arabian epigraphy
In the popular imagination, the Arabic language bursts on the scene in the 7th century CE with the appearance of the Quran, having no appreciable documentation prior to this period. The supposed absence of pre-Islamic Arabic texts, religious or otherwise, meant there was no substantial literary comparanda to aid in understanding the Quran’s language and literary background. In recent years, the impact of late antique religious traditions and their languages on the Quran has generated much scholarly interest, but relatively little work has been done on the Quran in its Arabian context. While the better-known inscriptions of Ancient Yemen have garnered some attention, the more difficult material from Central and North Arabia has yet to contribute in a systematic way to our reconstruction of the Quran’s linguistic and literary context. This lecture is a prolegomenon to such a research program. The inscriptions from North and Central Arabia, conventionally termed Ancient North Arabia, and the later Nabataeo-Arabic and Paleo-Arabic texts, contain rich liturgical and ritualistic vocabularies and formulae, sharing much in common with Quranic diction. We will demonstrate that, in some cases, there are incredible continuities in the Quran’s religious lexicon and phraseology, stretching back to the Iron Age, while at other times, the Quran attests a disruption in this regard, reflecting the religious transformations that were happening across Arabia in Late Antiquity. We will conclude with a brief discussion of pre-Islamic Arabian poetic material and its relationship to Quranic literary form, especially early Meccan surahs such as 108, 112, 113, etc.
