742_ajiss21-1 - book reviews - historical dictionary of prophet in islam and judaism.pdf

7/28/2019 742_Ajiss21-1 - Book Reviews - Historical Dictionary of Prophet in Islam and Judaism.pdf

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Over the past 2 years, I have conducted extensive surveys of com-munal violence in India. I arrived in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on February

15, 2002, to work on a micro-finance project in a Hindu slum. Twelve

days after my arrival, communal violence erupted and I shifted my work to rehabilitating the 85,000 Muslims displaced during the violence.

Contrary to Varshney’s thesis, violence in Ahmedabad occurred only in

the mixed locales – where Muslims and Hindus either worked or lived

together. In areas where Muslims ghettoized themselves, violence did not occur. The primary reason for this is because Muslims living in

Hindu locales found themselves vulnerable to attacks from neighboring

Hindus.

If civic interaction is the panacea for communal discord, then why did such networks not prevent the violence in Gujarat? How has the Hindu boy-

cott of Muslim goods ghettoized the Muslims both economically and emo-

tionally? Why do some Hindus and Muslims feel that their only safety lies

in creating physical and emotional barriers? Why do some feel that riots area form of economic empowerment?

Two years after the violence, the injustices and the questions linger.

Muslims I interview wonder why and how their neighbors, bosses, teach-ers, and colleagues could turn on them and afflict so much harm. This is

a question Ashutosh Varshney fails to answer.

Zahir Janmohamed

Former Outreach Director for the Indian Muslim Council-USAArlington, Virginia

Historical Dictionary of Prophets

in Islam and Judaism

Scott B. Noegel and Brannon M. Wheeler London: The Scarecrow Press, 2002. 520 pages.

As the compilers of this dictionary point out, Qur’anic and Islamic viewsof prophecy have been studied largely in isolation, despite the obvious con-

nections between Islam and the Biblical tradition. Comparative studies

have focused on what Islam has taken, or borrowed, from Biblical sources,often implying that this material has been manipulated for tendentious

motives.

The present dictionary works toward a less polemical comparative

study of prophecy, investigating the complex relationships between

124 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:1



Islamic, Biblical, and other Near Eastern views. The dictionary has beendesigned to examine shared traditions, promote interdisciplinary dia-

logue, and include a wide range of material not only from the Qur’an and

the Bible, but also from extra-Biblical and extra-Qur’anic texts, withoutclaiming to be comprehensive. Such texts include Rabbinic literature of

many types; Christian pseudepigrapha, apocrypha, and commentaries;

Qur’anic commentary (tafsir ), histories, geographies, biographical diction-

aries, stories of the prophets (qisas al-anbiya’), and theological discus-sions of prophetology (dala’il al-nubuwah).

It also includes several extremely useful additions: a general introduc-

tion (pp. xxiii-xxxvii), a chronology (pp. xix-xxii), a brief history of

prophecy in the Near East (pp. xxiii-xxxvii), a list of entries (Appendix I: pp. 357-64), a list of prophets (Appendix II: pp. 364-68), a bibliography,

and an index. The bibliography, arranged by topic, is extensive and

extremely useful for those interested in exploring the topic further (pp.

368-480).The entries on the main characters and prophetic figures shared by the

Biblical and Islamic traditions – Aaron, Abraham, Adam and Eve, David,

Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and so on – are extremely informative, concise, and accurate synopses. In addition to giving an overview of the Biblical mate-

rial, they refer precisely to the elements of Biblical accounts that appear in

the Qur’an, providing an excellent basis for comparative study. There is an

occasional slip in these discussions, such as the statement that the Arabicterm kalim Allah applied to Moses means “the spokesperson of God,”

when it actually means “the one to whom God spoke,” a reference to the

scene at the burning bush on Mount Sinai. All of the Prophets, one would

gather from the Qur’an, are “spokespersons of God”; Moses is special because God addressed him directly and not through inspiration or an

intermediary.

The entries also include important scholars, places, texts, and even

topics in methodology, such as “Form Criticism,” “Speech Act Theory,”

and “Textual Criticism.” A variety of general entries on religious practicesappear – “Divination,” “Dreams and Dream Interpretation,” “Sacrifice” –

as well as entries on ancient Near Eastern religious traditions pertinent to prophecy, such as “Ebla,” “Epic of Gilgamesh,” “Marduk Prophecy,”

“Mari,” “Ugarit,” and entries on Manichaean and Zoroastrian texts. Other

entries relate to scholars and commentators in later Jewish, Christian, or

Islamic traditions: “Maimonides,” “Jerome,” “Origen,” Sa’adia ha-Gaon,”“Ibn Rushd,” “Tabari,” and others.

Book Reviews 125



Perhaps most interesting for a comparative understanding of the Qur’anare the entries describing lesser known texts related to Biblical narratives in

the Qur’an. “Infancy Gospels” discusses several non-canonical Christian

gospels, including the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” which, in one passage,tells of Jesus’ giving life to a clay bird, and the “Gospel of Pseudo-

Matthew,” which depicts a palm tree bending down above Mary at childbirth

to offer her its fruit. Both stories resemble quite closely scenes depicted in

the Qur’an. The “Testament of Solomon” portrays King Solomon’s bindingof demons to build the Temple in Jerusalem, paralleling his control over the

jinn in the Qur’an. The “Life of Adam and Eve” includes a narrative of the

fall of Satan that resembles the Qur’anic story quite closely.

The pagan Arab religion has been regularly denigrated in Islamic tra-dition, just as medieval Christians denounced Greek and Roman religious

practices as barbaric. Whereas Greek mythology has been recuperated in

the West, nothing similar has occurred with ancient Arabian beliefs in the

Muslim world. Modern scholarship has, for the most part, inherited thisanti-pagan bias, which often interferes with a sound historical under-

standing of the Qur’an and Islamic origins. This makes for poor treatment

of the pre-Islamic Arabian religious tradition in most scholarship in thefield, including this dictionary.

For example, the entry “Wadd, Suwa`, Yaghuth, Ya`uq, Nasr” simply

informs the reader that these were gods worshipped by the people of Noah,

as is stated in Surat Nuh (Q 71:23). However, it is well-known that thesewere pre-Islamic Arabian gods. Their appearance in the Qur’an as the gods

of Noah’s opponents represents a significant reinterpretation of the Arabian

past to make it part of Biblical history. Similarly, the entry “Ka’bah” dis-

cusses the well-known Ka’bah at Mecca without informing the reader thatthere were many other ka’bahs, rectangular temples or shrines, located in

Arabia.

The entry “Kahin,” meaning soothsayer, discusses the important cul-

tic functions of this individual, but does not name any specific soothsay-

ers. The soothsayers Shiqq and Satih achieved legendary status and appear prominently in the Sirah of Ibn Hisham, predicting the Ethiopian invasion

of Yemen and the advent a great Arab Prophet. The “false prophets,” alsodesignated as kahin, the most famous of whom was Musaylimah “the

Liar,” led religious movements similar to Islam contemporary with the

Prophet and just after his demise. Moreover, the entry does not inform the

reader that many passages in the Qur’an draw extensively on the style of pre-Islamic soothsayers’ oracular pronouncements, including cryptic

126 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:1



oaths, omens, charms, and curses presented in rhyming and rhythmiccadences (Ar. saj`). Several entries that present Biblical and ancient Near

Eastern material exclusively could have benefited from the additional dis-

cussion of pre-Islamic Arabian material, particularly “False Prophets,”“Oracles,” and “Parallelism.”

This historical dictionary is an extremely informative and useful

work, and hopefully it will promote the more informed comparative study

of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A Biblical bias is understandable,even expected, in a work framed in a manner such as this one. The short

shrift given to pre-Islamic Arabian religious traditions, however, is a

major problem in the field and a decided obstacle to an informed under-

standing of the Qur’an in context. One hopes that the comparative, inter-disciplinary framework will expand to include this material.

Devin Stewart

Chair, Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian StudiesEmory University

Atlanta, Georgia

Mulla Sadra, The Elixir of the Gnostics:

A Parallel English-Arabic TextWilliam Chittick, trans.

Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2003. 192 pages.

Professor Chittick undertook the translation from Arabic of the Iksir al-

`Arifin (Elixir of the Gnostics) at the bequest of the Sadra Islamic

Philosophy Research Institute. No doubt, one of the institute’s reasons for making this request is because Chittick is currently one of North

America’s most formidable scholars of the Islamic “sapiental” tradition,

the stream of thought that combined both falsafah (philosophy) and

tasawwuf (Sufism). He has to his credit some of the best English transla-

tions of medieval Arabic and Persian texts. Chittick’s wealth of knowl-edge comes out in the extensive endnotes, running 28 pages, which not

only help explain obscure passages and terms, but also trace many of the

ideas to their sources.The Elixir is a unique work of Sadra’s in that it is, as Chittick notes in

the introduction, something of a translation of Kashani’s (d. 1213-14)

Persian Jawidan-nama (Book of the Everlasting). One could argue that the

Everlasting serves simply as a template for Sadra’s work, since he

Book Reviews 127

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