Establishing Authenticity: Language, Style, and Theorizing the Qurʾānic Miracle

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@ 1:30 pm

An online lecture with Professor Rachel Friedman (Arabic Language and Muslim Cultures, University of Calgary)

https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/94725317126

Part of the The Medieval Studies Program’s visiting speaker series

Islamic thought has normatively construed the Qur’an to be the Islamic miracle par excellence. What precisely was the Qurʾānic miracle has been the subject of much discussion and debate. A central idea that developed during the medieval period held that the Qurʾān’s eloquence—its very literary form—was miraculous. The discourse about the Qurʾān’s rhetorical properties has been studied as a central component of medieval Arabo-Islamic thought on literary style, but it also served an important theological function. Establishing that the Qurʾān was more eloquent than what humans could produce served as evidence of its authenticity—that is, of its divine origin. The Qurʾān being the direct word of God was crucial to its status as an authoritative source of knowledge. Indeed, the status of the Qurʾān as the first source of Islamic law and theology meant that a lot rested on its authenticity. This talk examines this under-studied link between the idea of Qurʾānic authority and the linguistic ‘proof’ of its divine source.

Rachel Friedman is Associate Professor (Teaching) of Arabic & Muslim Cultures at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on the status of the Qur’an in medieval Islamic thought, with particular attention to cross-disciplinary connections between Islamic legal theory, rhetoric, and theology. She is currently completing a monograph on debates about the Qur’an in Islamic theology during the 10th-11th centuries, a particularly significant time in the history of Islamic denominations and schools of thought. Friedman was previously the 2022-23 McCready Fellow at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, where she researched medieval texts on the Qur’an’s rhetorical and literary qualities, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Classical Arabic Literature at Williams College. She currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Arabic Literature.

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Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund, the Jay and Ruth Halls Visiting Scholar Fund, the Middle East Studies Program, the Religious Studies Program, and the Departments of African Cultural Studies and History.