Early Islamic Studies Seminar (2013-), learned society

The Early Islamic Studies Seminar: International Scholarship on the Qur’ān and Islamic Origins (EISS) is an academic group of international specialists associated to the Enoch Seminar: International Scholarship on Second Temple Judaism, Christian, Rabbinic, and Islamic Origins who work together, share the results of their research in the field and biennially meet to discuss topics of common interest within the Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meetings.

Board of Directors

• Guillaume Dye (Free University of Brussels [ULB], Belgium, EU)
• Emilio Gonzalez Ferrin (University of Seville, Spain, EU)
• Manfred Kropp (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, EU)
• Carlos A. Segovia (Camilo Jose Cela University, Spain, EU)
• Tommaso Tesei (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Israel)

Background and Purpose

From the 1970s onwards a seemingly major shift has taken place in the study of Islam's origins. Whereas the grand narratives of Islamic origins contained in the earliest Muslim writings have been usually taken to describe with some accuracy the hypothetical emergence of Islam in mid-7th-century Arabia, they are nowadays increasingly regarded as too late and ideologically biased – in short, as too eulogical – to provide a reliable picture of Islamic origins. Accordingly, new timeframes going from the late 7th to the mid-8th century and alternative Syro-Palestinian and Mesopotamian spatial locations are currently being explored. On the other hand, a renewed attention is also being paid to the once very plausible pre-canonical redactional and editorial stages of the Qur'an, a book whose core many contemporary scholars agree to be a kind of “palimpsest” originally formed by different, independent writings in which encrypted passages from the OT Pseudepigrapha, the NT Apocrypha and other ancient writings of Jewish, Christian and Manichaean provenance may be found, and whose liturgical and/or homiletical function contrasts with the juridical purposes set forth and projected onto the Quranic text by the later established Muslim tradition. Likewise the earliest Islamic community is presently regarded by many scholars as a somewhat undetermined monotheistic group that evolved from an original Jewish-Christian milieu into a distinct Muslim group perhaps much later than commonly assumed and in a rather unclear way, either within or tolerated by the new Arab polity in the Fertile Crescent or outside and initially opposed to it. Finally the biography of Muhammad, the founding figure of Islam, has also been challenged in recent times due to the paucity and, once more, the late date and literary nature of the earliest biographical accounts at our disposal. In sum three overall trends define today the field of early Islamic studies: (a) the traditional Islamic view, which many non-Muslim scholars still uphold as well; (b) a number of radically revisionist views which have contributed to reshape the contents, boundaries and themes of the field itself by reframing the methodological and hermeneutical categories required in the academic study of Islamic origins; and (c) several moderately revisionist views that stand half way between the traditional point of view and the radically revisionist views. The Early Islamic Studies Seminar aims at exploring afresh different issues on the early history of Islam with the tools of Biblical criticism and the new methods put forth in the study of Second Temple Judaism, Christian and Rabbinic origins, and thereby contribute to the renewed study of formative Islam as part and parcel in the complex process of religious identity formation in late antiquity in close dialogue with scholars working in this latter field of research.

To achieve its goals the EISS develops several simultaneous activities such as different research projects and group discussions. In addition the EISS is also responsible for the contents of the Early islamic Studies section on 4 Enoch: The Online Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Origins).

To learn more about our current activities and projects please contact Guillaume Dye (gdye@noos.fr) or Carlos A. Segovia (segoviamail@gmail.com).

Upcoming Projects

Group Discussions

EARLY ISLAMIC ESCHATOLOGY

Chair: Tommaso Tesei (Van Leer Institute Jerusalem, Israel)

DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES AND IDENTITY MAKING IN THE QUR'AN AND THE EARLY ISLAMIC SOURCES

Chair: Carlos A. Segovia (Camilo José Cela University, Spain, EU)

Religious identity making builds upon a number of peculiar power/knowledge strategies including rhetorical and discursive conventions that tend to emphasise distinctiveness as the outcome of an exceptional founding event. Selective remembering of the past, mythical and hyperbolic reworking of elusive historical data, ethnic and genealogical self-legitimation, artificial distinction between sameness and otherness, adaptation of previous textual materials in a polemical fashion, unequal treatment of similar topoi, editorial elaboration of rudimentary formulae, theological coordination of independent stories and more or less systematic historisation of dogma conspire to inscribe religious renewal as divinely sanctioned rather than politically achieved due to mundane reasons – and contribute to represent self-identity, therefore, as a non-problematic notion. Postmodern scholars of formative Judaism and Christianity are well familiar with these insights. Conversely, contemporary scholars of early Islam only very seldom seem to be aware of their crucial implications, as though the texts examined by them could be read and understood as little more than embellished reports about what need not be questioned and reviewed accordingly, i.e. both de- and re-constructed otherwise. My proposal is to re-read both the Qur’ān and Ibn Hišām’s Sīra in light of these and other related considerations.

(All group discussions will be hosted at the Enoch Seminar Online website.)

Encyclopaedia Entries

• 4 Enoch: Early Islamic Studies section

Meetings

• Early Islam and Its Connections to Judaism and Christianity / Fourth Nangeroni Meeting (2015 Milan), conference

Members

Core Members

• Guillaume Dye (Free University of Brussels [ULB], Belgium, EU)
• Emilio Gonzalez Ferrin (University of Seville, Spain, EU)
• Manfred Kropp (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, EU)
• Carlos A. Segovia (Camilo Jose Cela University, Spain, EU / The Enoch Seminar)
• Tommaso Tesei (Van Leer Institute Jerusalem, Israel)
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Participants

By Name

• • Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (École Pratique des Hautes Études, France, EU)
  • Mehdi Azaiez [University of Notre Dame, USA]
  • Albert I. Baumgarten (Bar-Ilan University, Israel / The Enoch Seminar)
  • Herbert Berg (University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA)
  • Emmanouela Grypeou (University of Oxford, England, UK, EU / The Enoch Seminar)
  • Christian Lange (Utrecht University, Netherlands, EU)
  • Basil Lourié (Scrinium, Russia / The Enoch Seminar)
  • Gabriel Said Reynolds (University of Notre Dame, USA)
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By Project

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Attendees of the EISS Nangeroni Meetings

I. EARLY ISLAM AND ITS CONNECTIONS TO JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY (2015)

• Chair: Emilio González Ferrín (University of Seville, Spain, EU)
• Co-chairs: Guillaume Dye (Free University of Brussels [ULB], Belgium, EU) and Gabriele Boccaccini (University of Michigan, USA)
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Collaborative Institutions

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