Uni-Tübingen

Dr. Nora K. Schmid

researcher

contact

Universität Tübingen
SFB 1391 „Andere Ästhetik“
Keplerstr. 17
D-72074 Tübingen

Room 25

+49 (0)7071 29-75111
nora.schmid@uni-tuebingen.de

short CV

Since 2024

Researcher, CRC 1391 “Different Aesthetics”, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

2023–2024

Departmental Lecturer in Islamic Studies, University of Oxford, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

2022–2023

Acting Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Hamburg, Asia Africa Institute

2019–2022

Researcher, ERC project QuCIP (Qur’anic Commentary: An Integrative Paradigm), University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies

2018

PhD, Freie Universität Berlin

2016

Global Humanities Junior Fellow, Network “Principles of Cultural Dynamics”, research stay at Harvard University

2012–2018

Researcher, SFB 980 “Episteme in Motion”, Freie Universität Berlin

2007–2012

Researcher, Corpus Coranicum, Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

research

research project

Law, Ethics, and Aesthetics in Islamic Narrative Traditions

In the first centuries after the proclamation of the Qur’an, stories served as instruments to communicate legal and ethical ideas. They often remained outside the processes of canonization occurring in the discipline of Islamic jurisprudence. This project examines thematic, structural, rhetorical, and compositional aspects of stories that made legal ideas aesthetically tangible. Relevant stories were preserved in different premodern Arabic and Islamic works. The focus of the project is on narrative material attributed to storytellers like Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and Wahb ibn Munabbih. This material was transmitted in philological and exegetical texts relating to the Qur’an, it was integrated in collections of stories about biblical figures and prophets, and it was also preserved in various historical works. Adopting an intercultural and interreligious perspective, I ask in which ways autological components (composition and rhetoric) and heterological components (performance and links to other forms of legal communication) contributed to the aesthetics of legal stories.

research focuses

  • Qur'an and Qur'anic Sciences
  • Islamic asceticism and renunciation
  • Arabic literature and Islamic religious culture (poetry, preaching, storytelling)
  • Islamic law
  • Intellectual history, Arabic and Islamic Studies

publications

Monograph

The Ascetic Qur’an and its Kharijite Readers, Leiden (forthcoming with Brill).

Collected Volume

Denkraum Spätantike. Reflexionen von Antiken im Umfeld des Koran, edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nora Schmidt, and Nora K. Schmid, Wiesbaden 2016.

Edited Series

Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān [Brill], edited by Alba Fedeli, Bilal Orfali, Nora K. Schmid, and Devin Stewart.

Articles in Journals and Collected Volumes

Moses in Egypt, in: Biblical Traditions in the Qur’an, edited by Nicolai Sinai and Marianna Klar, Princeton 2025 (forthcoming). 

Kharijite Qur’an Hermeneutics and Typological Thought, in: Prefiguration and Fulfilment in the Qur’an and its Biblical Milieu, edited by Islam Dayeh, Abingdon 2025 (forthcoming). 

Āyāt al-aḥkām in Early Ibadi Thought, in: Regulative Verses of the Quran. From Historical Trends to Contemporary Trajectories, edited by Karen Bauer, Robert Gleave, S. M. G. S. Fatemi, and Devin Stewart, Birmingham 2025 (forthcoming). 

Interrogative Rhetoric and Deliberative Discourse in the Medinan Suras, in: Unlocking the Medinan Qur’an, edited by Nicolai Sinai, Leiden 2022, pp. 164–198.

Louis Cheikho and the Christianization of Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Ascetic Poetry, in: Philological Encounters 6/3–4 (2021), pp. 339–373. Open Access: brill.com/view/journals/phen/6/3-4/article-p339_4.xml

From Ethico-Religious Exhortation to Legal Paraenesis. Functions of Qur’anic waʿẓ, in: Islamic Law and Society 28/4 (2021), pp. 317–351. Open Access: brill.com/view/journals/ils/28/4/article-p317_317.xml

Oaths in the Qurʾān. A Structural Marker under the Impact of Knowledge Change, in: Structural Dividers in the Qur’an, edited by Marianna Klar, Abingdon 2020, pp. 143–180.

Trajekte spätantiker Askese. Übungswissen in der frühislamischen Mahnpredigt am Beispiel von al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (21–110 AH/ 642–728), in: Übungswissen in Religion und Philosophie. Produktion, Weitergabe, Wandel, edited by Almut-Barbara Renger and Alexandra Stellmacher, Berlin 2018, pp. 119–140.

Der zweifache spätantike Kontext altarabischer Sehersprüche, in: Denkraum Spätantike. Reflexionen von Antiken im Umfeld des Koran, edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nora Schmidt, and Nora K. Schmid, Wiesbaden 2016, pp. 209–233.

Together with Nora Schmidt and Angelika Neuwirth, Spätantike. Von einer Epoche zu einem Denkraum, in: Denkraum Spätantike. Reflexionen von Antiken im Umfeld des Koran, edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nora Schmidt, and Nora K. Schmid, Wiesbaden 2016, pp. 1–35.

Lot’s Wife. Late Antique Paradigms of Sense and the Qur’ān, in: Qur’ānic Studies Today, edited by Angelika Neuwirth and Michael Sells, Abingdon 2016, pp. 52–81.

Abū l-ʿAtāhiya and the Versification of Disenchantment, in: The Place to Go. Contexts of Learning in Baghdād, 750–1000 C.E., edited by Jens Scheiner and Damien Janos, Princeton 2014, pp. 131–166.

Together with Esra Gözeler et al., Corpus Coranicum Projesi. Kur'an'ı Geç Antik Döneme Ait Bir Metin Olarak Okumak, in: Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 53/2 (2012), pp. 219–253.

Quantitative Text Analysis and its Application to the Qur’an. Some Preliminary Considerations, in: The Qur’an in Context, edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx, Leiden 2010, pp. 441–460.

Contributions to Lexicons and Encyclopaedias

Entries Qur’an, Law, Exhortation und Polemic, in: Yale Dictionary of the Qur’an, edited by Marianna Klar, Gabriel Said Reynolds, Hythem Sidky, and Munʿim Sirry, New Haven 2025 (forthcoming).

Contributions to Catalogues

Der kleine Koran (1798) des Thüringer Theologen Johann Christian Wilhelm Augusti, in: Der Orient in Gotha, edited by Feras Krimsti, Gotha 2024, pp. 88–89.

Spuren Friedrich Rückerts in einer Sammlung arabischer Dichtung der Herzoglichen Bibliothek, in: Der Orient in Gotha, edited by Feras Krimsti, Gotha 2024, pp. 90–91.

Reviews

Review of Sean W. Anthony, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith. The Making of the Prophet of Islam, Oakland 2020, in: Review of Qur’anic Research 6/9 (2020).

Review of Carlos A. Segovia, The Quranic Noah and the Making of the Islamic Prophet. A Study of Intertextuality and Religious Identity Formation in Late Antiquity, Berlin/Boston 2015, in: Der Islam 97/2 (2020), pp. 617–622.