The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book.

• Author: Lawson, Todd
• Position: Book Review

The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book. Edited by IBN WARRAQ. Amherst, New York: PROMETHEUS BOOKS, 1998. Pp. 411.

This is a collection of articles in Qur[contains]anic studies by some of the more influential early pioneers in the field: Noldeke's famous article for the Britannica (9th ed., 1891); Caetani's study of the "Uthmanic recension tradition" (1915); Mingana's: "Three Ancient Korans" (1914) and "The Transmission of the Koran" (1916); four seemingly idiosyncratically chosen articles by Arthur Jeffery (1935-39); Margoliouth's study of variants (1925); Geiger's "What Did Muhammad Borrow from. Judaism" (1898); W. St. Clair-Tisdall's "The Sources of Islam" (1901); and Torrey's "The Jewish Foundations of Islam" (1933). The collection ends with Andrew Rippin's earnest discussion of the stimulating, controversial, daunting, and ill-starred work of John Wansbrough (1985). Here, one gets the impression that Wansbrough is the only post-war scholar to have taken the literary presuppositions and findings of the other earlier authors seriously enough to press these to some logical conclusions. Why this should be so is not addressed. But the discussion does yield a salubijous insight: the Qur[contains]an is first and foremost an instance of "Salvation History," not a book of history qua history, and that stabilization--and therefore a kind of canonization--of the text occurred at a much later period than generally assumed.

Gathered here together, it will become clear to the reader that each article is important also as a product of a specific time, place, and elan. Such is indeed signaled on the dustjacket where it is pointed out that "this penetrating work" begins with. "the first truly scientific study of the Koran" (i.e., Noldeke's). The editor, "Ibn Warraq" whom the same dustjacket identifies as "the author of Why I am Not A Muslim," has done a service for undergraduates and others who have difficulty in locating the originals of these groundbreaking-and, in some sense-relics of Qur[contains]anic scholarship. It will also quickly become clear to the contemporary student of...