Qur'an and History – a Disputed Relationship. Some Reflections on Qur'anic History and History in the Qur'an

Abstract

The relationship between Qur'an and history is disputed in more than one respect. The Qur'an as a canonical scripture locates itself beyond history. In most current critical scholarship the pre-canonical Qur'an – regarded as no longer reconstructable – is equally discarded. There have been some attempts, however, to restore to the Qur'an a textual history. 28 years after Günter Lüling, Cristoph Luxenberg has renewed the hypothesis of a linguistically and spiritually Syriac–Christian imprinted pre-canonical text. Luxenberg's reading with its far-reaching conclusions has – though in itself little convincing since largely relying on circular argument – revived the debate about the role of Syriac, as the most vigorous linguistic medium in the transmission of knowledge in Near Eastern late Antiquity, in the emergence of the Qur'an. The present paper advocates a search for historical evidence in the text itself trying to show that the complex relationship between Qur'an and history cannot be tackled appropriately without a micro-structural reading of the Qur'an itself. The history of the Qur'an does not start with canonisation but is inherent in the text itself, where not only contents but also form and structure can be read as traces of a historical process.

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