Uni-Tübingen

B8: Aesthetics of Legal Narrative Communications in the Qur’an and in Pre-Modern Islam

Project B8 focuses on the narrative aesthetics of premodern Islamic legal narratives, with special attention given to the Qur’an and to Islamic narratives (qiṣaṣ, Sg. qiṣṣa) on determining justice in historical, exegetical and philological texts of the seventh to the tenth century CE.

Communicating law through formal features and through narratives constitutes the figure of aesthetic reflection at the centre of this project. We analyse how the aesthetics of Islamic legal communication is conveyed both through the narrated practice of determining justice (heterological dimension) and through the practice of narrating about determining justice (autological dimension). The central question we ask is which formal, structural and performative dimensions constitute the narrative aesthetics of legal communication.

It is the goal of the project to deepen our understanding of the linguistic representations and the communication of legal norms, and thereby of the function of these norms in premodern Islamic societies in the broader context of late antique practices and ideas. To this end, we will identify legal narratives in premodern Islamic literatures, especially in the Qur’an and among the classical narrators (e.g. Wahb ibn Munabbih, Kaʿb al-Aḥbār), and we will analyse their compositional modes. The narrative materials will then be compared to Jewish and Christian narrative traditions in order to foreground their cross-cultural entanglements.

Ringvorlesung: Andere Ästhetik - Kunst und Gesellschaft in der Vormoderne

Dr. Nora Schmid: Rechtserzählung und Ästhetik im vormodernen Islam (Zugriff über das Intranet der Universität Tübingen)


Team

principal investigator:

Prof. Dr. Holger Zellentin

researchers:

Dr. Shuaib Ally
Dr. Nora K. Schmid


Activities

Events

2024

Lecture: Ally, S.: The Interpretation of „It is they who are the successful ones“ (al-Baqara 2:5) in al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshāf and the Metacommentary Tradition, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA, 24.11.2024.

Lecture: Schmid, N. K.: Rechtserzählung und Ästhetik im Vormodernen Islam, Ringvorlesung: „Andere Ästhetik – Kunst und Gesellschaft in der Vormoderne“, Universität Tübingen, 11.11.2024.

Lecture: Schmid, N. K.: Ethics, Law, and Aesthetics in the Ḥadīth al-Ifk, Workshop: „An Aesthetic Hermeneutics of the Law? Comparing Religious and Secular Legal Approaches“, International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues, Universität Bonn, 19.08.2024.

Lecture: Zellentin, H.: Jesus and the Law: Confirming the Torah in the New Testament, the Talmud and the Qur’an, University of Tokyo, 23.02.2024.

Lecture: Ally, S.: Theories of Verbal Irony: From Arabic Literary Theory to Qur’an Commentary, Modern Language Association Annual Convention 2024, Philadelphia, PA, 05.01.2024.

 

2023

Lecture: Ally, S.: The Development of Arabic Rhetoric and Shifting Interpretation of the Qurʾān, Zentrum für Islamische Theologie, Universität Tübingen, 30.11.2023.

Lecture: Zellentin, H.: Law in the Medinan Qur’an, Jahrestagung der International Qur’anic Studies Association, San Antonio, TX, 17.–20.11.2023.
 

Publications

2025

Ally, S.: Arabic Rhetoric and Literary Theory (Balāghah), in: The Cambridge History of Rhetoric [im Erscheinen].

Ally, S.: Do Not Henceforth Test Scholars in Verse! Mamluk Literary Exchanges and the Negative Assessment of Contemporaries, in: Mamluk Studies Review [im Erscheinen].

 

2024

Ally, S.: The Development of Rhetoric in Mamlūk Damascus and the Rise of Communicative Approaches to Qurʾānic Discourse, in: Arabica. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies / Revue d'études arabes et islamiques 71 (2024), S. 1–50.
 

Teaching

SoSe 2024

Zellentin, H.: Einführung in Talmud und Koran (Vorlesung, Mo 10–12).