“You Were Not There,” The Creation of Humility and Knowledge in Qur'anic Stories:
A Rhetorical and Narratological Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.28486Keywords:
Qur'an, Literary, second-person addressAbstract
In this study, I explore verses in the Qur'an that come towards the end of stories and use a second-person address to say, “you were not there” when this happened. I seek to understand what literary function in the story it serves to address the second person and her/ his lack of knowledge, whomever s/he is. I locate all of these verses (3:44, 11:49, 12:102 and 28:44–46) and analyze them in order to obtain a better understanding and analysis of Qur'anic literary style. I focus on what these stories have in common and how the verses function. In addition, I analyze the verses and their roles in their respective stories. Through this analysis, we see that these verses are generally seen by commentators and modern scholars as asserting the Prophet’s authority and the Qur'an’s authenticity. However, I argue that these verses function as a sophisticated Qur'anic literary and rhetorical device that works to put people in their place: Prophet Muhammad, his contemporaries, and all of the Qur'an’s audience, by showing them their lack of knowledge and their temporality.
References
Abboud, Hosn. 2006. “Mary, Mother of Jesus and the Qur'anic Text: A Feminist Literary Study,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto.
Abdel Haleem, Muhammad. 2010. The Qur'an: English Translation and Parallel Arabic Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.islamawakened.com/Quran/default.htm.
———. 2010. “Qur'anic ‘jihad’: A linguistic and contextual analysis.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 12: 147–166.
———. 1999. Understanding the Qur'an: Themes and Style. New York: I.B. Tauris.
Abu' l-Su'ud, Muhammad b. Muhyi' l-Din Muhammad b. al-'Imad Mustafa al-'Imadi. 1994. Irshad al-'aql al-salim ila mazaya al-Qur'an al-karim. 9 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Haya' al-Turath al-'Arabi.
Afsar, Ayaz. 2006. “A discourse and linguistic approach to Biblical and Qur'anic narrative.” Islamic Studies 45(4): 493–517.
Alter, Robert. 1981. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books.
Asad, Muhammad. 2003. The Message of the Qur'an. 6 vols. Bristol: The Book Foundation.
Austin, J. L. 1975. How To Do Things With Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
El-Awa, Salwa. 2006. Textual Relations in the Qur'an: Relevance, Coherence and Structure. New York: Routledge.
Ben Nabi, Malik. 1983. The Qur'anic Phenomenon: An Attempt at a Theory of Understanding the Holy Qur'an. Translated by Abu Bilal Kirkary. Indianapolis, IN: American Trust Publications.
Bodman, Whitney S. 2011. The Poetics of Iblis: Narrative Theology in the Qur'an. MA: Harvard Theological Studies.
Boisliveau, Anne-Sylvie. 2013. “Polemics in the Koran: The Koran’s negative argumentation over its own origin.” Arabica 60: 131–145.
Booth, Wayne C. 1983. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Cuypers, Michel. 2009. The Banquet: A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Qur'an. Edited by Rafael Luciani, translated by Patricia Kelly. Miami, FL: Convivium Press.
———. 2011. “Semitic rhetoric as a key to the question of the nazm of the Qur'anic text.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 13(1): 1–24.
Ernst, Carl W. 2011. How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
al-Ghazali, Muhammad. 2000. A Thematic Commentary on the Qur'an. Translated by Ashur A. Shamis. Revised by Zaynab Alawiye. Herndon, VA: The International Institute of Islamic Thought.
Johns, Anthony H. 1981. “Joseph in the Qur'an: Dramatic dialogue, human emotion and prophetic wisdom.” Islamochristiana 7: 29–55.
———. 1999. “Narrative, intertext and allusion in the Qur'anic presentation of Job.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 1(1): 1–25.
———. 2000. “Reflections on the dynamics and spirituality of Surat al-Furqan.” Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur'an, edited by Issa J. Boullata, 188–227. London: Curzon.
Kamuf, Peggy. 2002. “Derrida and Gender: The other sexual difference.” In Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader, edited by Tom Cohen, 82–107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kermani, Navid. 2004. “From revelation to interpretation: Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and the literary study of the Qur'an.” In Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, edited by Suha Taji-Farouki, 168–182. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2015. God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran. Malden, MA: Polity.
Lybarger, Loren D. 2000. “Prophetic authority in the Qur'anic story of Maryam: A literary approach.” The Journal of Religion 80(2): 240–270. https://doi.org/10.1086/490608
al-Mahalli, Jalal al-Din Muhammad bin Ahmad and Jalal al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman bin Abi Bakr al-Suyuti. 2002. Tafsir al-Imamayn al-Jalalayn. Beirut: Dar El-Marefah.
Mårtensson, Ulrika. 2008. ‘“The persuasive proof”: A study of Aristotle’s politics and rhetoric in the Qur'an and in al-Tabari’s commentary.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34: 363–420.
———. forthcoming. “Ibn Ishaq’s and al-Tabari’s Historical Contexts for the Quran: Implications for Contemporary Research.” In Knowledge and Education in Classical Islam, edited by Sebastian Günther. Leiden: Brill.
Martin, Richard C. 1982. “Understanding the Qur'an in text and context.” History of Religions 21(4): 361–384. https://doi.org/10.1086/462906
Maybudi, Rashid al-Din. Kashf al-Asrar Unveiling of the Mysteries, Abridged Version, Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Fons Vitae, translated by William C. Chittick. http://main.altafsir.com/Books/kashf.pdf
McComiskey, Bruce. 2002. Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric. Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Mir, Mustansir. 1986. “The Qur'anic story of Joseph: Plot, themes, and characters.” The Muslim World 76(1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1986.tb02766.x
———. 2009. “Some aspects of narration in the Qur'an.” In Sacred Tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an as Literature and Culture, edited by Roberta Sterman Sabbath, 93–106. Leiden: Brill.
Morris, James W. 1994. “Dramatizing the Sura of Joseph: An introduction to the Islamic humanities.” Annemarie Schimmel Festschrift, special issue of Journal of Turkish Studies 18: 201–224.
Mourad, Suleiman A. 1999. “On the Qur'anic stories about Mary and Jesus.” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-faith Studies 1(2): 13–24.
Muqatil, Abu al-Hasan. 2003. Tafsir Muqatil b. Sulayman. Beirut: Dar al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyah.
Neuwirth, Angelika. 2007. “Orientalism in Oriental Studies? Qur'anic studies as a case in point.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 9(2): 115–127.
———. 2003. “Qur'an and history: A disputed relationship some reflections on Qur'anic history and history in the Qur'an.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 5(1): 1–18.
———. 2000. “Referentiality and textuality in Surat al-Hijr: Some observations on the Qur'anic “canonical process” and the emergence of a community.” Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur'an, edited by Issa J. Boullata, 143–172. London: Curzon.
———. 2014. Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community: Reading the Qur'an as a Literary Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2008. “Two views of history and human future: Qur'anic and Biblical renderings of divine promises.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 10(1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3366/e1465359109000217
Qutb, Sayyid. 2007. Fi Zilal al-Qur'an. Cairo: Dar al-Shorouk.
Reynolds, Gabriel Said. 2010. The Qur'an and Its Biblical Subtext. New York: Routledge.
Robinson, Neal. 2003. Discovering the Qur'an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text. 2nd edition. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Robson, James. 1950. “Stories of Jesus and Mary.” The Muslim World 40: 236–243.
Ruf, Frederick J. 1994. “The consequences of genre: Narrative, lyric, and dramatic intelligibility.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62(3): 799–818. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LXII.3.799
Sakaedani, Haruko. 2004. “The correlation between definite noun phrases and verb forms in Qur'anic narrative texts.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 6(2): 56–68.
Saleh, Walid. 2004. The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition: The Qur'an Commentary of al-Tha'alibi (d. 427/1035). Leiden: Brill.
———. 2006. “‘What if you refuse, when ordered to fight?’ King Saul (Talut) in the Qur'an and post-Quranic literature.” Saul in Story and Tradition, edited by Carl S. Ehrlich, 261–283. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Smith, Jane I. and Yvonne Y. Haddad. 1989. “The Virgin Mary in Islamic tradition and commentary.” The Muslim World 79(3–4): 161–187.
Spencer, Beth. 2006. “The body as fiction / fiction as a way of thinking.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Ballarat, Australia. http://www.bethspencer.com/BethSpencerchapter2.pdf .
al-Tabari, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir. 2007. Jami' al-Bayan 'an Ta'wil al-Qur'an. 10 vols. Cairo: Dar al-Salam.
al-Tha'alibi, Abu Zayd 'Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Makhluf. 1996. al-Jawahir al- Hisan. 3 vols. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya.
Tlili, Sarra. 2012. Animals in the Qur'an. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
al-Tustari, Abi Muhammad Sahl bin 'Abd Allah. 2002. Tafsir al-Tustari. Beirut: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah.
Walker, Carol S. 2012. “Reading the Bible and the Qur'an together.” http://www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk/pages/centre/archive-seminar-papers.php.
Ward Gwynne, Rosalind. 2004. Logic, Rhetoric, and Legal Reasoning in the Qur'an: God’s Arguments. New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
Wheeler, Brannon M. 2002. Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis. New York: RoutledgeCurzon.
Yazicioglu, Isra. 2013. Understanding the Qur'anic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Zadeh, Travis. 2015. “Quranic studies and the literary turn.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135(2): 329–342. https://doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.2.329
Zahniser, A. H. Mathias. 1991. “The Word of God and the Apostleship of 'Isa: A narrative analysis of Al-'Imran.” Journal of Semitic Studies 36(3): 33–62.
al-Zamakhshari, Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn 'Umar. 2006. Al-Kashshaf. Beirut: Dar El-Fikr.
Zebiri, Kate. 2003. “Towards a rhetorical criticism of the Qur'an.” Journal of Qur'anic Studies 5(2): 95–120.
