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Early Islamic Studies Early Islamic Studies is a field of research that specializes in the study of formative Islam in its Jewish-Christian setting and early Islamic history and culture. 4 Enoch focuses on Second Temple Judaism, i.e. the period from the Babylonian exile to the Bar-Kokhba Revolt. Here the Encyclopedia offers a selection of the most influential scholarly and fictional works in the field of Early Islamic Studies by international specialists and authors. Some of these works touch upon "Second Temple Judaism" too, as they study the interrelationship between Jewish, Christian and Islamic Origins and the reinterpretation of Jewish and Christian traditions in the early Islamic tradition. Even when works do not include references to Second Temple Judaism, they have however deeply affected the understanding of Second Temple Judaism and the development of scholarly research in the field.

Index Categories : Muhammad -- Islamic Origins -- Early Islamic History -- Early Islamic Fiction -/- Abraham -- Bible & Qur'an -- Early Christian Literature & Qur'an -- -- Early Islamic Traditions -- Early Muslim Community -- Early Muslim Dogma -- Early Muslim Sects -- Ishmael -- -- Muslim-Christian Polemics -- Muslim-Christian Relations -- Muslim Jesus -- Muslim-Jewish Polemics -- Muslim-Jewish Relations -- NT Apocrypha & Qur'an -- OT Pseudepigrapha & Qur'an -- Quranic Exegesis -- Talmud & Qur'an Chronology : Top 1500s -- Top 1600s -- Top 1700s -- Top 1800s -- Top 1850s -- Top 1900s -- Top 1910s -- Top 1920s -- Top 1930s -- Top 1940s -- Top 1950s -- Top 1960s -- Top 1970s -- Top 1980s -- Top 1990s -- Top 2000s -- Top 2010s Languages : English -- French -- German -- Italian -- Latin -- Spanish Countries : Algeria -- Australia -- Austria -- Belgium -- Canada -- Czech Republic -- Denmark -- Egypt -- Estonia -- Finland -- France -- Germany -- Greece -- Hungary -- India -- Iran -- Iraq -- Ireland -- Israel -- Italy -- Japan -- Lebanon -- Netherlands -- Norway -- Pakistan -- Palestine -- Poland -- Russia -- Saudi Arabia -- Spain -- Sweden -- Switzerland -- Tunisia -- Turkey -- United Kingdom -- United States

Early Islamic Studies

Early Islamic Studies is a field of research that specializes in the study of formative Islam in its Jewish-Christian setting and early Islamic history and culture. 4 Enoch focuses on Second Temple Judaism, i.e. the period from the Babylonian exile to the Bar-Kokhba Revolt. Here the Encyclopedia offers a selection of the most influential scholarly and fictional works in the field of Early Islamic Studies by international specialists and authors. Some of these works touch upon "Second Temple Judaism" too, as they study the interrelationship between Jewish, Christian and Islamic Origins and the reinterpretation of Jewish and Christian traditions in the early Islamic tradition. Even when works do not include references to Second Temple Judaism, they have however deeply affected the understanding of Second Temple Judaism and the development of scholarly research in the field. Index Categories : Muhammad -- Islamic Origins -- Early Islamic History -- Early Islamic Fiction -/- Abraham -- Bible & Qur'an -- Early Christian Literature & Qur'an -- -- Early Islamic Traditions -- Early Muslim Community -- Early Muslim Dogma -- Early Muslim Sects -- Ishmael -- -- Muslim-Christian Polemics -- Muslim-Christian Relations -- Muslim Jesus -- Muslim-Jewish Polemics -- Muslim-Jewish Relations -- NT Apocrypha & Qur'an -- OT Pseudepigrapha & Qur'an -- Quranic Exegesis -- Talmud & Qur'an Chronology : Top 1500s -- Top 1600s -- Top 1700s -- Top 1800s -- Top 1850s -- Top 1900s -- Top 1910s -- Top 1920s -- Top 1930s -- Top 1940s -- Top 1950s -- Top 1960s -- Top 1970s -- Top 1980s -- Top 1990s -- Top 2000s -- Top 2010s Languages : English -- French -- German -- Italian -- Latin -- Spanish Countries : Algeria -- Australia -- Austria -- Belgium -- Canada -- Czech Republic -- Denmark -- Egypt -- Estonia -- Finland -- France -- Germany -- Greece -- Hungary -- India -- Iran -- Iraq -- Ireland -- Israel -- Italy -- Japan -- Lebanon -- Netherlands -- Norway -- Pakistan -- Palestine -- Poland -- Russia -- Saudi Arabia -- Spain -- Sweden -- Switzerland -- Tunisia -- Turkey -- United Kingdom -- United States

• This page is edited by Carlos A. Segovia, Camilo José Cela University, Spain, and Emilio González Ferrín, University of Seville, Spain

Overview

The connections between formative Islam and late antique Judaism and Christianity have long deserved the attencion of scholars of Islamic origins. Since the 19th century Muhammad’s early Christian background, on the one hand, his complex attitude – and that of his immediate followers – towards both Jews and Christians, on the other hand, and finally the presence of Jewish and Christian religious motifs in the Quranic text and in the Hadith corpus have been widely studied in the West. Yet from the 1970s onwards, a seemingly major shift has taken place in the study of Islam origins. Whereas the grand narratives of Islamic origins traditionally 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 (i.e. from the Marwanids to the Abbasids) 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 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 the apparently 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 afresh 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 traditional approach to the origins of Islam

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Moderately revisionist approaches

Defenders of moderately revisionist approaches contend that even though some of the early written sources of Islam may date to a later period, they are reliable enough and offer us a fair picture of the events they comment upon or describe. Some of the details they provide us with might be contradictory and even doubtful, yet the master narrative that they support should remain unchallenged, as there is no real reason to question it.

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Radically revisionist approaches

Conversely, defenders of radically revisionist approaches sustain that the whole narrative of Islamic origins must be revised, reframed, and retold differently.

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From "Islamic Religious Studies" to "New Islamic Studies"?

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References

External links

Learned Societies

• Early Islamic Studies Seminar
• International Qur'anic Studies Association

Journals

• Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies
• Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
• Der Islam
• Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
• Journal Asiatique
• Journal of Islamic Studies
• Oriens
• Oriens Christianus
• Scrinium: Revue de patrologie, d’hagiographie critique et d’histoire ecclésiastique
• Vigiliae Christianae: A Review of Early Christian Life and Language

Websites