From Ruin to Resurrection: the response of the Quran to ancient Arabic poetry
Final Report Abstract
The project ‚Ruin to Resurrection‘ successfully digitized and prepared for electronic publication the three most ancient collections of Arabic poetry, complete with vocalizations and translations for the Mufaḍḍaliyāt and Muʿallaqāt, according to the most reliable printed editions. It also researched specific elements in the poems pertaining to their history and geography (e.g. toponyms, anthroponyms). The project also researched the various affinities that some of these poems share with the Qurʾān and confirmed the starting hypothesis that the central axis of these affinities is the ubi sunt motif. The use of this motif is perhaps the central and common feature the two corpora and spills over into the existential and moral engagements of the pre-Islamic Arabs and informs the moral and religious commitments of the early Muslims’ beliefs about history and destiny. This affinity is a genuine and very important discovery of this project and unlocks the relationship that binds the Qurʾān to its poetic milieu. These elements were published in the monograph "The Meaning of the Word: al-āḫira" and informed Prof Neuwirth’s brilliant work the "Koran als Text der Spätantike".
Publications
- “Min al-baʿad ilá al-āḫira: Poetic Time and Qurʾanic Eschatology”, in Les origines du Coran, le Coran des origines: Proceeding of the colloquium François Déroche, Christian Julien Robin et Michel Zink (éds.)", Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 2015
Ghassan el Masri
(See online at https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtznq1.9) - “Maʾsal: what the ṭalal would tell us”, in New directions in Quranic Studies, M. Sells and A. Neuwirth (eds.), New York: Routledge, 2016
Ghassan el Masri
- (02 Jun. 2020) .The Semantics of Qurʾanic Language: al-Āḫira. Leiden, Niederlande: Brill.
Ghassan el Masri
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004428034)
