News and Publications
9 January 2021: Marianna Klar has just published an edited volume showcasing a wide range of contemporary approaches to the identification of literary structures within Qur’anic surahs: Structural Dividers in the Qur’an. Klar’s own contribution to the volume, “A Preliminary Catalogue of Qur’anic Sajʿ Techniques: Beat Patterning and Parallelism, and Rhyme”, presents some of the research she has undertaken in the framework of the QuCIP project and is available as an open-access publication. The book also contains chapters by project members Schmid, Sinai, and Zellentin.
17 December 2020: QuCIP’s PI Nicolai Sinai delivered an invited online lecture at the University of Erlangen entitled “Versuch zum Leben Muhammads” (“An Essay on the Life of Muhammad”).
14 May 2020: QuCIP researchers Klar and Sinai have just published two chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies, entitled “Qur’anic Exempla and Late Antique Narratives” (by Marianna Klar) and “Inner-Qur’anic Chronology” (by Nicolai Sinai).
11 February 2020: Nicolai Sinai has just published an article analyzing the Qur’anic food taboos, entitled “The Qurʾān’s Dietary Tetralogue: A Diachronic Reconstruction” and available in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 46 (2019).
7 December 2019: Behnam Sadeghi gave a paper entitled “An Apocryphal Hadith from the Mid-First Century AH (AD 650–693) Illuminates the Kūfan Qurrā’, Vindicating the Historical Sources” at the workshop The Transmission and Reception of the Qurʾān in Light of Recent Scholarship at Harvard University. A video recording of the presentation can be found here.
22–25 November 2019: QuCIP researchers Saqib Hussain, Nora K. Schmid, Nicolai Sinai, and Holger Zellentin presented aspects of their ongoing research on the Qur’an in papers read at the Annual Meeting of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) in San Diego. Saqib Hussain spoke about “Q 56 as a Group-closing Surah.” In the Panel The Qur’an and the Biblical Tradition, Nora K. Schmid read a paper on “The Embodied Appropriation of God’s Word in the Qur’an and in Ascetic Circles” and Nicolai Sinai on “The Qur’an on Divine Embodiment.” Holger Zellentin’s paper focussed on “The Qur’anic Community, Their Prophet, and Their Personal Encounters with Jews and Christians.”
17 November 2019: QuCIP researcher Behnam Sadeghi served as a chair and discussant for the panel Women as Patrons and Producers of the Islamic Sciences at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).
4–6 November 2019: QuCIP member Nora K. Schmid has co-convened the conference “Prophetic Knowledge – Figurations of Prophecy and Transfer of Divine Knowledge in Premodern Traditions” together with Anne Eusterschulte, Nora Schmidt, and other members of the Collaborative Research Center 980 “Episteme in Motion: Transfer of Knowledge from the Ancient World to the Early Modern Period” at Freie Universität Berlin. The programme can be found here.
18 July 2019: Nicolai Sinai gave a lecture entitled “Regenspender, Knochenbrecher, Tatvergelter: Allāh in vorislamischer Zeit” at the University of Bamberg.
3 July 2019: Saqib Hussain presented a paper entitled “Q 38 as Re-written Bible” at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Rome.
26 June 2019: Nora K. Schmid gave a paper on “Louis Cheikho and the Christianisation of Pre-Islamic and Islamic Ascetic Poetry” at the workshop The Early Modern Christian Cultural and Literary Heritage in the Eyes of Nahḍa Scholars, convened by Feras Krimsti at Balliol College, Oxford.
12–15 May 2019: Holger Zellentin spoke about “Gentile Purity in Judaism and Christianity” at the conference Negotiating Identities: Conflict, Conversion and Consolidation in Early Judaism and Christianity (200 BCE–400 CE), convened at Lund University.
10 May 2019: Holger Zellentin gave a guest lecture on the topic “Circumcision in Late Antiquity: the Ethnic and Ritual Context in Judaism, Christianity and Islam” at the University of Oslo.
18 March 2019: Marianna Klar spoke about “Major Qur’an Translators and Their Strategies” at the workshop Making Sense of the Qur’an in Translation, hosted by Bruce Lawrence at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.