Kontrafaktische Intertextualität im Koran und die exegetische Tradition des syrischen Christentums

In der modernen Koranforschung wurde wiederholt auf die Bedeutung des Erbes der syrischen Sprache und des syrischen Christentums für ein tieferes Verständnis des Korans verwiesen. Die vorliegende Studie versucht zu zeigen, wie sich das Verhältnis der koranischen Verkündigung zu diesem Erbe auf intertextueller Ebene systematisieren lässt. Dazu wird die hier besprochene Form der koranischen Intertextualität als kontrafaktisch beschrieben. Anhand der Ankündigungs- und Geburtsgeschichten von Jesus und Johannes dem Täufer im Koran wird diese Form der kontrafaktischen Intertextualität im Koran exemplifiziert. Dabei wird aufgezeigt, dass die koranische Theologie ganz bestimmte christologische und soteriologische Konzepte aus der Tradition des syrischen Christentums adressiert.

The Textual Evolution of the Ottoman Şeyhülislams’ Fetvas: A Cross-Corpora Computational Analysis

In this article, we use a mix of computational techniques to identify textual shifts in the Ottoman şeyhülislams’ fetvas between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Our analysis, supplemented by a close reading of these texts, indicates that the fetvas underwent multiple forms of transformation, a consequence of the institutional evolution of the şeyhülislam’s fetva office (fetvahane) that aimed to speed up and streamline the production of the fetvas: over time, the texts appropriated a more uniform character and came to contain shorter responses. In the compositions of the questions, we identified many “trigger terms” that facilitated reflexive responses independent of the fetvas’ jurisprudential contexts, a tendency that became stronger after the second half of the seventeenth century. In addition, we propose in the article a methodology that measures the relative strengths of textual and conceptual links among the fetva corpora of various Ottoman şeyhülislams. This analysis informs us about possible paths of long-term evolution of this genre of jurisprudential documents.

Whence Come Qurʾān Manuscripts? Determining the Regional Provenance of Early Qurʾānic Codices

In studies of early Qurʾānic manuscripts, determining the provenance of these manuscripts is a thorny issue because in most cases they lack endowment notes or colophons. The reports in early Islamic sources regarding textual variants of regional codices (maṣāḥif al-amṣār) may contribute to find a solution to this problem. A list of regional variants, mostly based on al-Dānī’s al-Muqniʿ, can be found in Nöldeke et al.’s The History of the Quran. However, as the authors have stated, a comparison of some of the early Qurʾānic manuscripts in the Topkapı Sarayı Museum with this table of maṣāḥif al-amṣār variants indicates that the traditional reports are unreliable for identifying the provenance of Qurʾānic manuscripts because none of these codices can be attributed to any particular region. The present article is an attempt to demonstrate that this problem results from relying solely on the data provided by al-Dānī and ignoring earlier and more significant sources, such as al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif. It attempts to provide a new and more precise classification of regional variants by reading afresh the reports on the features of maṣāḥif al-amṣār, taking into account the sources which were not used by Nöldeke et al., especially al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif, thus making the list of maṣāḥif al-amṣār variants more accurate, thereby the variants of each of these early Qurʾānic Codices tally more with the reports preserved for the characteristics of one of the maṣāḥif al-amṣār in literary sources. As the texts of the surviving manuscripts are not of a diverse nature we are able, with some certainty, to draw conclusions that substantiate the reports as to the peculiarities of the muṣḥafs of different cities.