dua at beg and end of quran

ORIENTALIA LOVANIENSIAANALECTA

————— 215 —————

UITGEVERIJ PEETERS en DEPARTEMENT OOSTERSE STUDIESLEUVEN – PARIS – WALPOLE, MA

2013

SOURCES AND APPROACHES ACROSSDISCIPLINES IN NEAR EASTERN

STUDIES

Proceedings of the 24th Congress,Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, Leipzig 2008

edited by

VERENA KLEMM and NUHA AL-SHA{AR

with

L. BEHZADI, S. BRINKMANN, S. GÜNTHER and M. JAGONAK

in cooperation with

B. BACKE, H.-G. EBERT, L.M. FRANKE, M. KOERTNER and D. DE SMET

CONTENTS

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

QUR}AN, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICS

ABBOUD Hosn – BeirutSurat Maryam and the Pre-Islamic Panegyrical Ode: A Study of the Tripartite Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

AL-SHAÄR Nuha – LondonBetween Love and Social Aspiration: The Influence of ∑ufi and Greek Concepts of Love on the Socio-Political Thought of the Ikhwan al-∑afaˆ, Miskawayh, and al-TawÌidi . . . . 25

BOTTINI Laura – CataneEntre informations bibliographiques et biographiques: les Rijal de Najashi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

CALDERINI Simonetta – LondonClassical Sources on the Permissibility of Female Imams: An Analysis of Some Îadiths about Umm Waraqa . . . . . 53

ARCAS CAMPOY María – La Laguna (Tenerife)À propos de la terminologie (muÒ†alaÌat) du droit de succession (al-faraî∂): le Coran et le Muwa††aˆ . . . . . . . . 71

FROLOV Dmitry – MoscowThe Role of Prayers in the Composition of the Qurân . . . 83

MELCHERT Christopher – Oxford Quantitative Approaches to Early Islamic Piety . . . . . 91

PLATTI Emilio – LeuvenEntre théologie et philosophie: des Arabes chrétiens dans l’œuvre de Shlomo Pines (1908–1990) . . . . . . . . . . 101

SCATTOLIN Giuseppe – RomeÄbd al-Malik al-Kharkushi (d. 407/1016). His Sufi Treatise Tahdhib al-asrar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

VI CONTENTS

STRAFACE Antonella – NaplesAbalisa and Shaya†in: A Qarma†ian-Isma¨ili Interpretation. The Case of the Kitab shajarat al-yaqin . . . . . . . . . 127

VAN LEEUWEN Richard – AmsterdamReformist Islam and Popular Beliefs: Rashid Ri∂a’s Attack against the Cult of Shrines . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

VAN REETH Jan – AntwerpenLe mi¨rag du Prophète … ou les mirages d’une recherche effrénée? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

WAARDENBURG Jacques – GeneveStudying Islam as a Living Religion: Reflections . . . . 173

STATE AND SOCIETY IN HISTORY AND THE PRESENT

ARAT Mari Kristin – StrasbourgLes interdictions du foulard en France, en Allemagne et en Turquie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

BADRY Roswitha – FreiburgNorms, Gender, and Political Representation: Recent Experi-ences of the Women’s Movement in Jordan (c. 1995–2007) . 207

CARBALLEIRA DEBASA Ana María – GranadaPoverty and Charity in al-Andalus: The Case of Pious and Family Endowments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

HÄMEEN-ANTTILA Jaakko – HelsinkiKhalid ibn ∑afwan – Between History and Literature . . . 233

PELLITTERI Antonino – PalermoLes articles sur la Palestine (1947–1948) du SayÌ MuÌammad al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi: l’autre face du texte entre discours poli-tique et histoire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

REINFANDT Lucian – ViennaThe Political Papyrologist: Adolf Grohmann (1887–1977) . 251

SHATZMILLER Maya – London (Ontario, Canada)The Role of Money in the Economic Growth of the Early Islamic Period (650–1000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

CONTENTS VII

LITERATURE AND RHETORIC

ATTAR Samar – SydneyThe Futility of Friendship with Egoistic Westerners in Modern Arabic Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

BAFFIONI Carmela – Naples NaÒir-i Khosrow, Translator of the Ikhwan al-∑afaˆ? . . . 319

CASSARINO Mirella – Catane La conception du temps dans le Kitab al-imta¨ wa’l-muˆanasa: poétique de l’obscurité et texture du conte . . . . . . 333

CORRAO Francesca M. – NaplesStreet Performers in the Shadow Plays of Ibn Daniyal al-MawÒili . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

DZIEKAN Marek M. – Lodz¨Imad ad-Din Îalil und seine islamische Literaturtheorie und -kritik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

MICHALAK-PIKULSKA Barbara – CracowThe Beginnings of Short Story Writing in Qatar . . . . . 361

OSSIPOVA Christina – MoscowThe System of Colouration in Medieval Arabic Wine Poetry . 371

SCHIPPERS Arie – AmsterdamFlower Poems in Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew Andalusian Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

PHILOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS

BELHAJ Abdessamad – BudapestRhétorique arabe et théologie: quelques lieux communs . . 397

GHERSETTI Antonella – VeniceÉtablir les sources ou de la façon d’écrire correctement: les Kitab al-Îa†† d’Ibn al-Sarrag et d’al-Zaggagi . . . . . 405

SERRANO-NIZA Dolores – La Laguna (Tenerife)Le labyrinthe des mots: «cruauté» et «violence» dans les ouvrages de luga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

VIII CONTENTS

TORLAKOVA Ludmila – Bergen}Af¨alu min kadha: Comparative Idioms in Medieval Arabic Dictionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

AGUIAR AGUILAR Maravillas – La Laguna (Tenerife)A Contribution on the Textual History of Islamic Astronomical Instruments. The Production of Arabic Texts on the Sine Quad-rant Devoted to Teaching from the Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455

MARTOS Juan – MadridLes premiers mathématiciens dans al-Andalus . . . . . 465

NASH Harriet, AGIUS Dionisius A. – ExeterStar Charts from Oman . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

THOMANN Johannes – ZurichA Mathematician’s Manifesto on Scientific Reasoning against Religious Convictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491

ART AND EPIGRAPHY

GRASSI Vincenza – NaplesAbbreviations and Mock Inscriptions in Arabic Epigraphy . 505

SOUTO Juan A. † – MadridGraffiti in the miÌrab of the Great Mosque of Cordova . . 525

THE ROLE OF PRAYERS IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE QURÂN

Dmitry FROLOV

Moscow

1. This paper addresses the topic of prayer as duäˆ, i.e. a prayer in the sense of a supplication or invocation of God in demand of something as opposed to the ritual prayer, Òalat, which is often mentioned in the Qurân. Formula such as tasbiÌ, taÌmid and the like, which frequently constitute the opening lines of a sura, are not given specific attention in this paper.

2. A close reading reveals that the Qurân begins and ends with prayers as frame elements. In the beginning there is the FatiÌa which is the main Muslim prayer comparable as such with the “Pater Noster” and the “Shma¨ Israel”. In reciting these verses, the believer asks for guidance (huda) to the straight path (Òira† mustaqim). The Qurân itself provides the response to this prayer as it states in the beginning of the subsequent surat al-Baqara:

Alif-lam-mim. That is the Book, wherein is no doubt, a guidance (huda) to the godfearing …1

The existence of this link between the FatiÌa and the beginning of the Baqara is mentioned by many Muslim commentators. Some go as far as to state that the existing link actually makes them a unit containing two suras rather than two independently existing ones.

The two final suras constitute prayers which are incantations against the evil — al-Falaq or “The Daybreak” (no. 113) and an-Nas or “Men” (no. 114). Reciting the last sura of the Qurân, the believer seeks protec-tion from the main enemy of man — the Satan or Shay†an — whose main goal is to mislead people and divert them from the straight path and make them to abandon guidance which they asked for. Like the first two suras, Muslim tradition considered these two a twofold semantic and com-positional unit, which is attested through their occasions of revelation

1 See A. J. ARBERRY, The Koran Interpreted, N.Y., 1955, p. 2.

84 D. FROLOV

(or asbab an-nuzul )2 as well as through their unifying name — al-Mu{awwidhatan or “the two protecting ones”.3

2.1. There are several common features among these initial and closing prayers. First, all three suras were absent from the early collection of the Qurân, which is most archaic in its structure and was compiled by Ibn Masüd, a personal servant of MuÌammad who boasted that he had heard 70 suras from the Prophet immediately after their revelation.4 At the same time, there is evidence that the compiler knew these missing suras but considered them prayers of the Prophet, and not part of the Revelation.

And in another early collection made by Ubayy ibn Ka¨b, a katib of MuÌammad, there were two other short prayers added in the final section of the text although their place in the collection differs in different sources. Until today, Muslims have known these texts as Prophetic prayers, not as suras of the Qurân. In other words, they belong to the same group of texts into which Ibn Masüd placed the three abovementioned suras. Hence, the two suras added by Ubayy ibn Ka¨b come as close as possible to the notion of apocrypha.

The first sura (or prayer) is called al-Khal¨, which can be translated as “Repudiation” or “Renouncement”. It runs as follows:

اللهما انا نستعينك ونستغفرك ونثني عليك ولا نكفرك ونخلع ونترك من يفجرك

O God, we pray for succour to Thee, and beg for mercy from Thee,We praise Thee, and we are not ungrateful to Thee.We renounce and leave those, who sin against Thee!

The second is called al-Îafd, which can be translated as something like “Quickness in Service”:

2 I refer to the well-known story about MuÌammad being bewitched with the help of a rope with eleven knots. He was cured, as the story goes, by reading these two suras revealed to him as an antidote. As he read them one knot untied with each verse (the total number of verses in the two suras is exactly eleven) and at the end MuÌammad was completely cured.

3 See e.g. the Tafsir al-Jalalayn or any other commentaries or books on asbab an-nuzul. 4 See A. JEFFERY, Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurân: The Old Codices,

Leiden, 1937, pp. 20–24; see also JALAL AD-DIN AS-SUYU™I, al-Itqan fi ülum al-Qurân, Cairo, 1978, vol. 1, pp. 85–86.

THE ROLE OF PRAYERS IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE QURÂN 85

اللهما اياك نعبد ولك نصلي ونسجد واليك نسعي ونحفد

نرجو رحمتك ونخشي عذابك (او نقمتك) ان عذابك بالكافرين ملحق

O God, Thee only we serve,We pray to Thee and prostrate before Thee,We are quick in working for Thee and in serving Thee,We ask for Thy mercy and fear Thy punishment (or revenge).5

Thy punishment will reach the unbelievers!6

We can only guess about the reasons why these texts did not find place in the Qurânic Vulgata but this is not of our concern here.

Second, the dating of these texts is very vague, to say the least. The FatiÌa is placed by some authorities among the Meccan suras and by others among the Medinan suras. We also find statements which attempt to bridge these views: Some said that it was revealed twice, once in Mecca, and then a second time in Medina. Others said that the first half was delivered in Mecca, and the second half in Medina. Hence, the dis-crepancies with regards to the dating of the FatiÌa cannot be resolved.7

As for the Mu{awwidhatan-suras, there is a discrepancy between the accompanying story and the dating, although both are accepted by the majority of Muslim scholars. The story, which allegedly provides the occasion for the revelation of these suras (the daughters of the Jew Labid are said to possess witchcraft), is definitely Medinan. However, most scholars agree that the suras themselves are Meccan.

Third, all three suras are sometimes categorized as addition to the Scrip-ture proper as framework for it. In respect to the FatiÌa it is sometimes said that the Scripture proper begins in fact with the first words of the Baqara: dhalika-l-kitabu “That is the Book …” or “Here is the Book …” which are understood as the response to the request for the huda. Further-more, there are in the writings of the Muslim scholars statements (or slips of the tongue) that the Qurân begins with the group of Seven Long suras (as-sab¨ a†-†iwal), which opens, as is well known, with the Baqara.8

5 The first reading goes back to a†-™abarani, and the second to Bayhaqi. 6 The translations of the above two texts were made by the author of the article. 7 The detailed account of the discussions about the time when FatiÌa was revealed, see

i.e. in AS-SUYU™I, al-Itqan, vol. 1, pp. 15–16. 8 Sometimes they appear in the commentary on a well-known tradition in which the

Prophet says: “I was given the seven long suras instead of the Torah, the suras of hundred

86 D. FROLOV

As for the two Mu{awwidhatan, Ibn az-Zubayr al-Gharna†i (d. 1308) wrote in his treatise al-Burhan fi tartib as-suwar, concerning the place of these two suras in the Qurânic text:

When the goal (maqÒud) of the Scripture has been completed (kamala), and the greatness of the mercy of Allah has been uncovered for those, who contemplated about this and accepted the Word, the thought of the reader concentrates on seeking protection (istiädha) by Allah from the envy of the envious and evil deeds of the enemies. That is why Allah concluded the Qurân by the Mu{awwidhatan.9

Ibn az-Zubayr’s words need no comment.Forth, we find a structural, semantical and lexical similarity in the first

and the last suras of the Qurân. Both consist of two parts: first, eulogy and praise to God (dhikr); and second, request (†alab), be it of right guid-ance or protection.

In the first part three names of God coincide (in one case — nearly coincide). They are God (Allah – Ilah), King (malik – malik), Lord (rabb). In the second part requests are antinomically related to each other. In the first sura a believer asks for the guidance to the right path, whereas the purpose of the last sura is the protection from the one who leads people astray from the right path. The existence of such a carefully crafted frame for the Scripture consisting exclusively of prayers gave us an impulse to look at other prayers in the Qurân from this angle.

3. A close study of surat al-Baqara provides interesting results. This sura contains two prayers which play a crucial role for its composition.

The closing prayer occupies most of the last verse of the sura:

Our Lord,Take us not to taskIf we forget, or make mistake Our Lord,Charge us not with a load suchAs Thou didst lay upon those before us.Our Lord,Do Thou not burden usBeyond what we have the strength to bear.And pardon us,

verses (al-miûn) instead of the Gospel, the Repeated Ones (al-mathani) instead of the Psalms, and I was given the short suras as a special favour”, see, e.g., ABU ÜBAYD, Fa∂aîl al-Qurân, Beirut, 1991, p. 120.

9 See IBN AZ-ZUBAYR AL-GHARNA™I, Al-Burhan fi tartib suwar al-Qurân, Rabat, 1990, p. 385–386.


And forgive us,And have mercy on us;Thou art our Protector.And help us against the peopleOf the unbelievers.10

This prayer also correlates with the FatiÌa as the latter is an introduction not only to the Qurân as a whole, but also to surat al-Baqara. This sura is of particular importance as it gives the law in its structural and the-matic entirety and ascertains the independence of the new faith in respect to other monotheistic religions.

The introductory prayer, as we said above, is a request for the right path, while the closing prayer contains a request for forgiveness if men in their weakness fail to uphold the commandments of the law, and expresses the wish that the Islamic law would be easier to bear than the previous systems of the law, particularly the Jewish law. Both prayers contain allu-sions to other religions and establish Islam as an independent faith.

These aspects should suffice to conclude that “The Cow”, like the Qurân as a whole, is framed by the prayers which are in conformity with the general content of the sura and their place in its composition.

3.1. But the sura contains a third prayer which is central. This is the prayer of Ibrahim (Abraham), through whom — as is known — Islam establishes the direct link of succession leaving intermediate stages aside. This particular fragment of this very sura constitutes the first incident of this statement.11 It is here that the identity of Islam is defined as a pure Ìanifi monotheism which is neither Judaism, nor Christianity, and that the Muslim community is declared as direct heirs of the faith of Abraham. It is no coincidence that in this fragment the derivatives from the root s-l-m, like muslim, muslimun, verb aslama, are applied to Abraham and his suc-cessors seven times. The translators to other language render these words with equivalents, not connected with the notion of Islam, and are right in doing so, being in conformity with the tafsir tradition, but for the readers of the text in Arabic the connotation is evident. In this context a third prayer occurs, which Abraham recited after he and his son Ismaïl had built up the Ka¨ba:

Our Lord, Receive this (the Ka¨ba) from us; Thou art the All-hearing, the All-knowing;

10 2:286 (All the quotations from the Qurân are based on Arberry’s translation). 11 2:124–141.

88 D. FROLOV

Our Lord,Make us submissive (muslimin) to Thee,And of our seed a nation submissive (muslima) to Thee;And show us our holy rites, and turn towards us;Surely Thou turnest, and art All-compassionate;Our Lord, do Thou send among them a Messenger, one of them,Who shall recite to them Thy signs,And teach them the Book and the Wisdom,And purify them;Thou art the Almighty, the All-wise (2:127–129).

Hence, the three prayers provide a structure for the text and make evident the plan of its contents and message: The opening one (FatiÌa) is a request of the guidance to the right path which is neither Christianity nor Judaism; The central one (a prayer of Abraham) establishes a direct link between this right path and MuÌammad as the Messenger and Abraham, from whom this path originates; The closing one is a request for forgive-ness and mercy towards men in their weakness.

4. It turns out that the third sura also has an opening and a closing prayer, the only difference is that they are placed near — and not exactly in — the beginning and the end of the text. The initial prayer is a request for stead-fastness in following the right path and, thus, a continuation of the central theme of the sequence of prayers outlined in the second sura:

Our Lord,Make not our hearts to swerve after that Thou hast guided us;And give us mercy from Thou;Thou art the Giver.Our Lord,It is Thou that shall gather mankind for a dayWhereon is no doubt;Verily God will not fail the tryst (3:8–9).

The closing prayer contains, as it should, a request for forgiveness and salvation and also fit in the sequence:

Our Lord,Thou hast not created this for vanity.Glory be to Thee! Guard us against the chastisement of the Fire.Our Lord,Whomsoever Thou admittest into the Fire,Thou will have abased;And the evildoers shall have no helpers.Our Lord, We have heard a caller calling us to belief,


Saying, ‘Believe you in your Lord!’ And we believe.Our Lord,Forgive Thou us our sinsAnd acquit us of our evil deeds,And take us to Thee with the pious.Our Lord,Give us what Thou hast promised us by Thy Messengers,And abase us not on the day of Resurrection;Thou wilt not fail the tryst.12

Both prayers are united through an interaction of the formulas placed at the end of each of them:

– “Verily God will not fail the tryst.”13

– “Thou wilt not fail the tryst.”14

The sequence of four prayers, it should be noted, combines two suras — “The Cow” and “The House of ¨Imran” — into a meaningful unity within the structure of the Qurˆan. Muslim tradition saw them in this way, which is attested by the fact that they share, like sura 113 and sura 114, a common name — az-Zahrawan “The Two Shining ones”.15

5. The initial block of suras includes four of them, or rather five if we take the FatiÌa into consideration, and is a parallel — consciously constructed as such or so it seems — to the initial parts of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch) and the New Testament (the Four Gospels). This block con-tains another prayer, placed very significantly at the end of the fifth sura — “The Table”. It is the prayer of Jesus which also designates the end of his story. This prayer contains the hope for salvation and thus semantically rounds up the sequence of prayers which begins with the FatiÌa:

O God, our Lord,Send down upon us a Table out of heaven,That shall be for us a festival,The first and the last of us,And a sign from Thee.And provide for us; Thou art the best of providers (5:114).

12 3:191–194. 13 3:9. 14 3:194. 15 Sura no. 3 contains one other prayer — that of the mother of Maryam (3:35), but it

is confined to the context of the story of Jesus and have no relation with an overall com-positional plan of the sura.

90 D. FROLOV

6. It is interesting to note that although the number of prayers in the rest of the text is considerable, their role changes radically, and none of them contributes to the composition of the Qurân. Most of them are incorpo-rated in the stories of previous prophets. So we will not touch upon them in this paper.

CONCLUSION

– The Qurânic text is not a “container of isolated verses, chaotically arranged”16 but it has an inner order, which manifests a meaningful and rather elaborated composition having to do with the message which this text conveys. And it is not the first time I venture to prove this obser-vation.17

– The Qurânic prayers (adïya) constitute one of the devices used to organize the text and render its inner structure visible to the readers or listeners.

– The distribution of the compositionally relevant prayers in the text definitely shows that the initial block of the suras 1–5 is a compact unity in the Qurânic composition whose role and place in the Scrip-ture of Islam is in certain aspects comparable to the Pentateuch in the Old Testament (or the Jewish Bible, Tanach) and the Four Gospels in the New Testament.

16 See The Qurân as Text, ed. STEFAN WILD, Leiden, 1996, p. 98. 17 See D. FROLOV, Medieval Discussions about the Order of Suras and Their Relevance

to the Study of the Composition of the Qurân, in: Book of Abstracts of the 36th ICANAS, Montreal, 2000, p. 205; D. FROLOV, The Problem of the «Seven Long» Suras, in: Studies in Arabic and Islam. Proceedings of the 19th Congress, UEAI, Halle 1998, Leuven, 2002, pp. 193–203.

dua at beg and end of quran

Documents