The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Thursday, 30 January 2025, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium

Ömer Özsoy, Misbahur Rehman, Sercan Üstündağ (Goethe University)
»Reconstructability of the Historical Qur’an Based on Early Islamic Traditions«

Abstract
The findings of historical-critical Qur’anic research suggest that the Hejaz region and the first half of the 7th century CE were the time and place of the Qur’an’s emergence. This aligns with the Muslim historiographical narrative regarding the Qur’an. The Qur’anic text comprises individual revelatory passages that responded to specific historical and social circumstances between 610 and 632 CE. Consequently, it documents not only the internal developments of the early Muslim community but also its multifaceted relationships with other religious groups, including Jews and Christians. These interactions were characterized by both, peaceful engagement and conflict, which explains the Qur’an’s ambivalent statements about these groups.

The origins of the Qur’an and Islam have been thoroughly investigated in Orientalist Islamic studies, particularly in relation to local traditions and intertexts. Valuable contributions have been made through the analysis of sources that do not belong exclusively to the Islamic textual tradition. However, a systematic and comprehensive examination of early Islamic traditions remains a desideratum. As a result, critical insights embedded in these sources regarding the life and mission of the Prophet, as well as the religious and socio-cultural realities of the Qur’an’s formative context, remain largely underexplored. To address this gap, the »Linked Open Tafsīr« project was realized in Frankfurt between 2018 and 2022 under Ömer Özsoy’s direction. Within this project, the earliest extant compilation of exegetical traditions, the *Tafsīr* of aṭ-Ṭabarī (d. 923), was digitized and made accessible for scholarly use. Additionally, doctoral dissertations supervised in Frankfurt examine the reconstruction of the historical Qur'an from both a source-critical and hermeneutical perspective.

During the colloquium, Prof. Ömer Özsoy will provide a brief statement on the significance of exegetical traditions for Qur'anic studies. Dr. Misbahur Rehman will present the »Linked Open Tafsīr« project, and Dr. Sercan Üstündağ will discuss the findings of his recently completed dissertation, which examines the challenges of Qur’anic interpretation.

The speakers
Ömer Özsoy has been a professor of Qur’anic exegesis at the Department of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2009, and is also the director of the University’s Institute for Studies in the Culture and Religion of Islam. He has been a Goethe Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften since 2021.

Dr. Misbahur Rehman is Coordinator of the »Linked Open Tafsir« project.

Dr. Sercan Üstündağ is Research associate for Qur’anic exegesis.

Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de).