Jihad in Sulami's commentary on the Qur'an

Thursday, September 8, 2011

How exactly is the concept of struggle "jihad" used in the Qur'an. An important early witness is the Sufi scholar Sulami (Husayn al-Sulami al- Nlsaburi) whose main Quran tafsir has a lot to say:
http://www.blogtopsites.com/outpost/8b477bd11c588a5d0c00710a66b37cbd was working but now not?
Also, Gerhard Bowering wrote on this work: The Minor Qur'an Commentay of al-Sulami (Ziyadat haq'iq al-tafsir), Beirut 1995.
Found a good Qur'an interpretation reading list: http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=110572

Islamic Manuscripts site

There's an enormous resource of Islamic manuscripts available at:
http://www.islamicmanuscripts.info/index.html
The site is run by Jan Just Witkam, Emeritus-Professor of Paleography and Codicology of the Islamic world in Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. There's plenty of material to search for any researcher. Where to begin!

Latest Syriac research at Oxford

The Oxford Patristics Conference is oh so far to go, but at least their blog has some basic info on latest research. The Syriac papers are available at: http://oxfordpatristics.blogspot.com/search/label/Syriac There's also lots of other relevant material elsewhere on the blog, eg some great bits on St John Chrysostom.

Syriac ascetic struggle and the Greek agon

Recently had a wonderful relaxing week with great friends the Rudolphs. In between beach walks I was researching how the Syrian Christian ascetic struggle was shaped by earlier Greek notions of the agon, the "contest" of wrestling, music, ideas, etc. In Syriac agon is agona and is used in pretty much the same way as the earlier Greek playwrights and historians write of the "struggle". Also found an excellent site for all the Greek plays (in Greek) that allows searching on individual words like agon eg in Sophocles: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0189%3Acard%3D1556

Diatessaron

Friday, July 15, 2011

The Diatessaron is an important early reference for the formative years of Syriac Christianity, and there's some very interesting material available on it. The original Syriac only exists in portions as quotes in other authors like St Ephrem, and the Arabic version is apparently an 11th century translation. But what does it have to say about struggle/agona/jihad? Watch this space...

Some resources:
1. Diatessaron Wiki
2. The complete Latin and Arabic translations are available here, plus links to English translation etc.
3. English Translation
4. This is a key book by William Petersen, with very comprehensive and extensive research, although ridiculously expensive!

Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry

Monday, July 11, 2011

There's lots of very significant material in pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry related to Allah (and His identity), struggle (jihad), inter-tribal contests etc. Some great sites are: Al-Moallaqat in Arabic and an excellent book and the Muallaqat in English.
Also, an excellent thesis "The concept of Allah as the highest God in Pre-Islamic Arabia (A study in Pre-Islamic Arabic Religious Poetry)".

Stuck in the middle with you, oh Syriac

Saturday, June 11, 2011

With apologies to "Stealers Wheel", I find myself not quite fitting into many of the Uni department categories and typical conference themes. My research doesn't quite fit properly into Arabic and Islamic studies, although it covers a lot about early Islam. It doesn't quite fit Byzantine or medieval studies, although there's lots of overlap. And Syriac is usually specifically Christian-focussed, whereas my work is half about Islam. Hmmm. This is both a negative and a positive- at least I get to build bridges to people in several fields :-)