Book

Clare Elena, Wilde, Approaches to the Qur’an in early christian Arabic Texts,750CE-1258 CE, Palo Alto, Academica Press,LLC, 2014, 424 p. ISBN 978-1936320813

Author

Clare Wilde a soutenu une thèse en islamologie sous la direction du révérend Sidney H. Griffith ST. Licenciée d’études arabe et islamique (Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies / School of Theology and Religious Studies), son sujet de doctorat était intitulé : “ The Qur’an in Early Melkite Texts.” Clare Wilde enseigne à l’Université de Georgetown.

Presentation

Most Euro-American study of the Qur an, however, relies on classical Islamic sources - or radical deviations from Islamic tradition (and, at times, the standards of scholarly academic inquiry). Dr.Wilde’s research attempts to expand the scope of (western and Islamic) qur anic studies through an examination of early Christian Arabic employment of qur anic passages (a novel endeavor insofar as Christian Arabic texts, when examined, are generally done through an ecclesiastical, rather than Islamicist, lens). These works, however, focus on narratives and reports about the formation of the text, rather than on textual evidence for the transmission of the text itself. Some work on the textual evidence for the contents of the Qur an has been done, but generally with exclusive reliance on Islamic sources (i.e. numismatics, epigraphy, or Gerd Puin s work on palimpsests of Qur an manuscripts).

While Christian Arabic texts are being studied in ecclesiastical circles, and Islamic sources are invaluable for the information they shed on the preservation, transmission and normative interpretation of the Qur an, Islamicists have yet to mine Christian Arabic texts for the light they might shed on these processes (qur anic preservation, transmission and interpretation). The early Islamic state had numerous non-Muslim communities in its midst, most if not all of whom eventually became Arabophone. Unlike non-Christian sources from the first centuries of Christianity, which went through a heavy process of purging or purification by Church authorities, non-Muslim sources from early Islamic times remained in the provenance of their respective non-Muslim communities. Thus, given their relative communal autonomy, non-Islamic sources contemporaneous to early Islamic society furnish us with information about the handling of, and approaches to, the Qur an.