scholarly journals Explorative Journey Through Hadith Collections

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Orhan Elmaz

The article offers insight into a fresh way to utilise hadith collections beyond criticising their material in terms of their authenticity or discussing their implications for Islamic law. It builds on a digital corpus of collections to represent the wealth of canonical Sunni, Shia and Ibadite traditions. In this first exploration of this corpus, the interconnectedness of early Islamic Arabia with other parts of world is highlighted through an analysis of travelling words, proper names, and concrete objects in a few case studies organised into five sections by geographical area. These include translation, a Wanderwort, and contact through commerce and trade. The methods applied to analyse the material are those of historical and comparative linguistics. The results indicate that exploring linguistic aspects of hadith collections—notwithstanding editorial revision and their canonisation—can inform studies of language change in Arabic and set the course to research the standardisation of Arabic. Key words:      Hadith Studies, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, Middle Persian, Southern Arabia, Late Antiquity

Author(s):  
Mohammad Dabir-Moghaddam

Modern Persian reveals interesting typological properties. In terms of word order parameters, it has grammaticalized a number of OV-type and a number of VO-type parameters. As this mixed typological behaviour can be attested in Old Persian and Middle Persian, the implications of this observation for typology, formal linguistics, and theories of language change are worth pursuing. The agreement system of Modern Persian is Nominative-Accusative. However, the majority of Modern Iranian languages are split in this respect. Morphologically, Modern Persian is analytic. This morphological type can be observed in Middle Persian as well. This two-millennium-old typological property gives Persian a distinct place within the Indo-European languages. As Persian is spoken in a widespread geographical area, there are many Persian dialects currently in use. A number of grammatical features of Tajik Persian, Afghan (Dari) Persian, Isfahani Persian, and Gha’eni Persian are briefly mentioned.


Der Islam ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-366
Author(s):  
Sebastian Bitsch

AbstractThis article discusses eventual Qurʾānic allusions to Zoroastrian texts by using the example of zamharīr (Q 76:13). In the early tafsīr and ḥadīth-literature the term is most commonly understood as a piercing cold, which has frequently been interpreted as a punishment in hell. This idea, it is argued, has significant parallels to the concept of cold as a punishment in hell or to the absence of cold as a characteristic of paradise in the Avestan and Middle-Persian literature. In addition, Christian and Jewish texts that emphasize a similar idea and have not been discussed in research so far are brought into consideration. The article thus aims to contribute to the inclusion of Zoroastrian texts in locating the genesis of the Qurʾān – or early Islamic exegesis – in the “epistemic space ” of late antiquity.


2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yossef Rapoport

AbstractThe mahr or sadāq is the only marriage gift required under Islamic law. But Islamic law did not necessarily determine actual marriage settlements, even in early Muslim societies. In this essay, I compare the early Islamic legal literature with the pattern of matrimonial gifts recorded in marriage contracts and divorce deeds preserved from early Islamic Egypt. In marriage settlements recorded in the papyri, the groom gave a sadāq that was divided into advance and deferred portions, and brides brought to the marriage a counterpart dowry (jihāz or shiwār). These marriage settlements, which were common to Muslims, Copts and Jews, resembled the Egyptian marriage settlements of late antiquity. The Islamic legal literature preserves the objections of contemporary jurists, including Mālik, to these Egyptian practices, which they initially regarded as an objectionable innovation. Eventually, the local traditions were incorporated, albeit with modifications, into the legal discourse.


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-158
Author(s):  
Jonathan E. Brockopp

In Islamic Studies, charisma has usually been reserved for the study of marginalized individuals. I argue here that charisma may also be applied to leadership among legal scholars. To do so, I join a long line of scholars who have modified Max Weber’s initial insights, and put forth a new, dynamic model of charismatic authority. The purpose of my model is to account for the fact that religious histories emphasize the uniqueness of the originating charismatic event, be that Prophet Muhammad’s revelations, Jesus’ theophany or the Buddha’s enlightenment, while at the same time recognizing that the charismatic cycle never quite ends. In contrast with Weber, I argue that charismatic authority in religious traditions is best understood as a network of influence and interaction through which the routinization of charisma reinterprets and redefines the meaning of the originating charismatic event.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 181-212
Author(s):  
Joseph S Spoerl

Islamic thinking on war divides roughly into two main schools, classical and modern. The classical (or medieval) view commands offensive war to spread Islamic rule ultimately across the entire world. The modernist view, predominant since the nineteenth century, limits war to defensive aims only. This paper compares the views of two important Muslim scholars, the classical scholar Ibn Ishaq (d. 767) and the modernist scholar Mahmud Shaltut (d. 1963). This comparison reveals that the modernist project of rethinking the Islamic law of war is a promising though as-yet-unfinished project that can benefit from the insights of Western scholars applying the historical-critical method to the study of early Islamic sources.


Author(s):  
Derek Nurse

The focus of this chapter is on how languages move and change over time and space. The perceptions of historical linguists have been shaped by what they were observing. During the flowering of comparative linguistics, from the late 19th into the 20th century, the dominant view was that in earlier times when people moved, their languages moved with them, often over long distances, sometimes fast, and that language change was largely internal. That changed in the second half of the 20th century. We now recognize that in recent centuries and millennia, most movements of communities and individuals have been local and shorter. Constant contact between communities resulted in features flowing across language boundaries, especially in crowded and long-settled locations such as most of Central and West Africa. Although communities did mix and people did cross borders, it became clear that language and linguistic features could also move without communities moving.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terttu Nevalainen ◽  
Tanja Säily ◽  
Turo Vartiainen

AbstractThis issue of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics aims to contribute to our understanding of language change in real time by presenting a group of articles particularly focused on social and sociocultural factors underlying language diversification and change. By analysing data from a varied set of languages, including Greek, English, and the Finnic and Mongolic language families, and mainly focussing their investigation on the Middle Ages, the authors connect various social and cultural factors with the specific topic of the issue, the rate of linguistic change. The sociolinguistic themes addressed include community and population size, conflict and conquest, migration and mobility, bi- and multilingualism, diglossia and standardization. In this introduction, the field of comparative historical sociolinguistics is considered a cross-disciplinary enterprise with a sociolinguistic agenda at the crossroads of contact linguistics, historical comparative linguistics and linguistic typology.


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