Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur’an pdf download

Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur’an

الاتقان في علوم القران

by Jalaluddin Suyuti – English Translation by Muneer Fareed

AL-ITQAN FI ULUM AL-QUR’AN

Introduction

The work before you, some twenty chapters of excerpts from Jalal ‘l-Din ‘l-Suyuti’s ‘l-Itqan fi `Ulum al-Qur’an, is a translation of what this celebrated polymath considered indispensable linguistic and stylistic tools for comprehending the meanings of the Koran.

  Whilst the translation itself is to my knowledge unprecedented, the use of Itqan material as such in modern studies of the Koran is not,  the most significant being that of Theodore Noldeke’s still invaluable, Geschichte des Qoran.1

And whilst the Itqan is rightly described both as an invaluable “introduction to the critical study of the Koran”2, as well as “a monumental synthesis of the quranic sciences”3 its greater value would seem to lie in the as yet fledgling area of higher critical studies of the Koran.

Arkoun might well have had just this in mind when he complained of an “epistemological myopia” common to both western as well as Islamic scholars who hesitate in applying modern linguistic tools such as narrative analysis or semiology  to the Koran.4 

To this category, I would suggest, belong those traditionalists, for whom Koranic studies ventures not beyond the search for even greater literary clarity and thematic coherence in the Koran; 

this includes those Arabists, who—when not involved in some translation—perpetuate their convention of trying to isolate and define Islamic society, or the Arab mind, or the oriental temperament; and of late, it has come to include revisionists, who, having cast grave doubts on the authenticity of the traditional texts and even on the canonization of the Koran itself then turn around and selectively use those very texts to make their point! 

Inasmuch as western studies of the Koran differ in their approach to traditional source materials, and in the methodologies, they each bring to bear on the study of such materials, they nonetheless share one feature which sets them apart from traditional approaches:

they all ask questions that go beyond the Koran itself to the very Sitz im Leben of the faith itself.

So, in seeking answers to questions about the origins of the sacred text, for instance, they implicitly ask not just when canonization occurred, or how outside religious strains are entwined in the Koranic narrative,  but also which milieu most influenced its overall message. 

Muslim scholars accept as their working principle the Koran’s ontological claims whereas non-Muslims reject the claim itself as being outside the purview of academic inquiry.

For secular academics, this poses a dilemma because their only bridge to Islam’s past is through material collected by early Muslim scholars who made no distinction between material that was purely historical and that which was salvific.

The historiographical material of traditional Muslim scholarship has served as source material for both the standard Muslim narrative as well as the bulk of secular western studies on Islam and Muslims but with differences in approach. For traditional Islamic research, in their details the six authentic works on apostolic traditions (the sihah sitta) are authentic and more than adequate;

for what they lack in historiographical rigor is more than provided by the comparatively less authentic historical works of Ibn Ishaq (d. 767 c.e.) and Tabari.

As for western historians, for whom such material was largely evidentiary, what the texts said about the milieu in which early Islam developed was more important than the scrutiny to which their transmission was put.

More important to them, therefore, were questions that asked, to what extent did Muhammad borrow Judeo-Christian leitmotifs, biblical personalities and mosaic rites and rituals? 

The only time alternate sources to Tabari et.al. were given serious consideration was when they differed substantively from the Biblical sources.5 

In the 19th century Abraham Geiger6 and Julius Wellhausen7  tried to show that much of the Koran was actually borrowed, in the case of Geiger from rabbinic literature and in the case of Wellhausen, from Christian. 

This search for Islam’s origins in biblical literature was continued in the 20th century by Charles Torrey and Richard Bell.

Montgomery Watt was one of the first to break from this tradition with his focus on the sociological and ideological backdrop of 7th century Arabia as the impetus for  Muhammad’s teachings.8  

It was Watt who first suggested that the very demand for luxury goods in areas north and south of Mecca that so enriched its economy also plunged its citizens into a spiritual and moral crisis that helped launch Mohammed’s monotheistic assault on idol worship.9

 But  Watt came in for much criticism by Patricia Crone, following John Wansbrough, for hewing too closely to the traditional sources if not to their narrative, and for trying “to say nothing that would be the rejection of any of the fundamental doctrines of Islam”.10

Ever since the publication of Wansbrough’s four articles that together comprise his Quranic Studies  a small but not insignificant cadre of scholars have tried to develop alternate theories to the origins of Islam.

For such scholars the origins of Islam, the canonization of its holy book, and the authentication of its apostolic traditions lie somewhere between the 7th and the 9th centuries of the common era.  

To summarize, the most significant bone of contention in all of the foregoing approaches, therefore, is the historiographical.

 For traditional Muslim scholarship, only the factual minutiae of the traditional accounts are open to question; for most western scholars, the problem lies in traditional historical literature not being distinguishable from salvation literature;

 and for the radical revisionists such as Wansbrough, Crone, et.al., there is, in addition to the questionable authenticity of the historical logia, the greater problem pertaining to the very methods, theories, and principles used by modern historians.

 But in all such efforts the material found in the Itqan, if its almost ubiquitous appearance in so many texts is anything to go by, has proven both reliable and indispensable to the study of the Koran.

 All serious efforts at either plumbing the traditional depths of Muslim scholarship even deeper, or those given to probing alternate explanations further,  have shown need for the material that Suyuti painstakingly put together. 

When complete, therefore, the translated Itqan will undoubtedly allow a far broader cross section of modern scholarship to engage the source material in this very important debate directly and accurately. 

As for the sections chosen here, they reiterate the somewhat neglected fact that whilst theological reservations may have prevented comment on God’s “word” (kalam Allah) the text’s many