The preMuḥammadan Qurân

Mehdy Shaddel came to this blog's attention awhile ago; cited in 2019 for an incomplete thesis. I did not necessarily think Shaddel was all wrong however. I find today he's announced the publication of a dissertation. We are provided the contents, introduction, conclusion, two appendices and a bibliography.

Overall it looks... we'll say, worthy of continued attention. We must pay heed at least to its reviewers, at least three of four being class A scholars: Wood, Sijpesteijn, and al-Jallad (the remnant is Himmelfarb; if I don't know her I'm assuming that's my fault). I can find some fault with the project's assumptions - but that might not be fatal. On the one hand this manuscript holds that the Qurân was had in full as of the Dome of the Rock, and certainly of 'Umar II's rescript (which he translates; this is not the shurut). Also Shaddel thinks that this 2022 paper has "refuted" Shoemaker 2012 that Muhammad might have lived to see the first exArabian conquests. I don't read a refutation; I just read that Shoemaker went too far.

On the other hand, Shaddel accepts that the Qurân owns a preMuḥammadan core: The short, rhyming suras of the Quran which are placed towards the end of the Uthmanic muṣḥaf are very likely remnants of the liturgical hymns used by the congregation from which the Quran’s messenger and his earliest followers broke away and thus constitute an even earlier stratum. That is... quite revisionist. Sadly this thesis does not wish to deal with that issue here.

The book in general is arguing that the Qurân is supercessionist against the Jews but not against the Christians. Shaddel is aware that Reliance of the Traveller and basic Maliki literature (thanks to Aisha Bewley, widely spread in the Anglo West) - and that shurut - be supercessionist. I assume that Shaddel knows Awzâ'î too, and he's accepted the 'Umarid rescript as supercessionist and authentic. But his book argues that jihad-state Muslims could torture dogmata off their own texts as well as any modern counterjihad blogger can. That's actually part of why Shaddel thinks the Qurân was already fixed in the second 'Umar's time at least: caliphs like him had to play eisegesis games, because nobody would accept a new fake sura from them.

I'd probably have to, like, read the actual MS and not just the intro and conclusion. As to Q. 9:33 I actually do think it develops supercessionist rhetoric, namely the Marwânid plaque at the Dome. I would argue (have argued) the reason the Qurân doesn't talk much about superceding the Christian Bible is that too many of its suwar are trying to supercede the Qurân, over a long period of internal strife. Like that second civil war, and I'd add the Ashâ'itha.

But Shaddel cannot simply be dismissed. It seems like I'd be most-interested in those "liturgical hymns". I should buy his second book.

BACKDATE 9/24