Book Launch Leiden University Centre for Islamic Thought and History
- Date
- Friday 22 April 2022
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 148
Marijn van Putten, "Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions"
What was the language of the Quran like, and how do we know? Today, the Quran is recited in ten different reading traditions, whose linguistic details are mutually incompatible. This work uncovers the earliest linguistic layer of the Quran. It demonstrates that the text was composed in the Hijazi vernacular dialect, and that in the centuries that followed different reciters started to classicize the text to a new linguistic ideal, the ideal of the Ê¿arabiyyah. This study combines data from ancient Quranic manuscripts, the medieval Arabic grammarians and ample data from the Quranic reading traditions to arrive at new insights into the linguistic history of Quranic Arabic.
Dr. Marijn van Putten is a historian of language working on Quranic Arabic and the linguistic history of Arabic and Berber. His work focuses on early manuscripts of the Quran and the early Islamic history of the Arabic language.
Ahmad Al-Jallad, "The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia"
This book approaches the religion and rituals of the pre-Islamic Arabian nomads using the Safaitic inscriptions. Unlike Islamic-period literary sources, this material was produced by practitioners of traditional Arabian religion; the inscriptions are eyewitnesses to the religious life of Arabian nomads prior to the spread of Judaism and Christianity across Arabia. The author attempts to reconstruct this world using the original words of its inhabitants, interpreted through comparative philology, pre-Islamic and Islamic-period literary sources, and the archaeological context.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad is a philologist, epigraphist, and historian of language. His work focuses on the languages and writing systems of pre-Islamic Arabia and the ancient Near East.