Presentation
This volume offers an interdisciplinary study of the modalities, actors, technicalities and consequences of the evolving of religious texts within the perspective of the fragment versus the whole. The focus is on fragmentary texts from Islamic religious sources, and includes contributions on Qur’anic manuscripts, early graffiti, the formation of the Qur’anic canon, the Hadith literature, and Old Babylonian extispicy texts. Three main topics are addressed: the text and its materiality; the structure of the text and the dynamic relationship between the fragment and the whole; and methods of shaping and reshaping traditions. The hermeneutical experience of the fragment versus the whole is explored in depth throughout, and the consequences addressed for the history of the religious text, its composition, its reception and its interpretation.
Editors
Asma Hilali, Université de Lille
Maîtresse de conférence en islamologie. Elle a étudié la civilisation islamique à l’université de Tunis et a soutenu une thèse de doctorat à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études à Paris. Par la suite, elle a travaillé dans plusieurs centres de recherches en France, en Allemagne et en Angleterre. Ses travaux se basent sur l’étude de manuscrits et ses publications abordent le problème de la transmission et de l’autorité des textes religieux aux débuts de l’islam. Elle est notamment l’auteur d’une étude originale du fameux palimpseste coranique de Sanaa : The Sanaa Palimpsest. The Transmission of the Qur’an in the First Centuries AH, Oxford, 2017.
Stephen Burge Institute of Ismaili Studies
Stephen Burge joined the Institute of Ismaili Studies as a Research Associate in 2009, having completed his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. He has published a monograph on angels in Islam, as well as a number of articles on angels, exegesis and interpretation. He is also co-editing and translating a volume of the Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries Series on the Pillars of Islam, and editing a volume entitled The Meaning of the Word: Lexicology and Qur’anic Exegesis. His main research interests are the works of Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, hadith studies, tafsir (Qur’anic Exegesis) and angelology.
Contributors
- Aziz al-Azmeh, Central European University, Budapest
- Asma Hilali, Université de Lille
- Stephen Burge, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London
- Alba Fedeli, Universität Hamburg
- Jean-Jacques Glassner, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Paris
- Frédéric Imbert, Aix-Marseille Université
- Holger Zellentin, University of Cambridge