Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Representation of Animals in the Qur'an and the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt

The Representation of Animals in the Qur'an and the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt The position that the Qur'an allocates to animals has been studied either according to the principles of internal criticism, or within the framework of theologians’ reception of the Qur'an. Departing from these two options, this paper will draw a comparison with the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, an anthology gathering poems relatively near to the Qur'an in space and time. It will be shown that neither poetry nor the Qur'an possess a word that refers to animals as a class, but the latter sketches a cursory categorisation system of the living world. In contrast to widespread opinion, the poets are not more meaningfully interested in animals, with the noticeable exception of mounts, than the sacred book. Furthermore, network modelling enables us to discover that both documents depict sharply contrasting bestiaries. We should therefore revise the generally accepted idea that the Qur'an appeared in a Bedouin society similar to that of the poets. However, close textual comparison between the representation of animals in the Qur'an and the poems in the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt gives us a better understanding of Q. 22:27, which would not be possible without recourse to poetry. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Qur'anic Studies Edinburgh University Press

The Representation of Animals in the Qur'an and the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt

Payen, Nicolas
Journal of Qur'anic Studies , Volume 23 (2): 47 – Jun 1, 2021
Download PDF
47 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/the-representation-of-animals-in-the-qur-an-and-the-mufa-aliyy-t-NwR1JbVVwK

References (8)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
1465-3591
eISSN
1755-1730
DOI
10.3366/jqs.2021.0467
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The position that the Qur'an allocates to animals has been studied either according to the principles of internal criticism, or within the framework of theologians’ reception of the Qur'an. Departing from these two options, this paper will draw a comparison with the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, an anthology gathering poems relatively near to the Qur'an in space and time. It will be shown that neither poetry nor the Qur'an possess a word that refers to animals as a class, but the latter sketches a cursory categorisation system of the living world. In contrast to widespread opinion, the poets are not more meaningfully interested in animals, with the noticeable exception of mounts, than the sacred book. Furthermore, network modelling enables us to discover that both documents depict sharply contrasting bestiaries. We should therefore revise the generally accepted idea that the Qur'an appeared in a Bedouin society similar to that of the poets. However, close textual comparison between the representation of animals in the Qur'an and the poems in the Mufaḍḍaliyyāt gives us a better understanding of Q. 22:27, which would not be possible without recourse to poetry.

Journal

Journal of Qur'anic Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Jun 1, 2021

There are no references for this article.