Doctoral Travel Grants: Unlocking the Medinan Qur'an

Nicolai Sinai Discussion
Type: 
Call for Papers
Date: 
November 28, 2016
Location: 
United Kingdom
Subject Fields: 
Arabic History / Studies, Islamic History / Studies, Middle East History / Studies, Religious Studies and Theology

Doctoral travel grants

Unlocking the Medinan Qur’an

19–21 March 2017, Pembroke College, Oxford

Convened by Nicolai Sinai

Up to three travel bursaries are available for doctoral scholars to participate in an international workshop on the Medinan Qur’an. The bursaries involve accommodation and board as well as economy-class travel costs up to a maximum of 800 British pounds.

Rationale: Many of the Qur’anic surahs and passages that Islamic and Western scholars have associated with the Medinan stage of Muhammad’s career display a distinctive stylistic, thematic, and doctrinal profile, endowing the hypothesis that they form a discrete layer of the Islamic scripture with at least prima facie plausibility. The Medinan Qur’an occupies a key position in the formative history of Islam. It fundamentally shaped later convictions about the paradigmatic authority of Muhammad; it constitutes the scriptural basis for Islam’s development into a religion with a strong focus on law; and it is by and large only in the Medinan surahs that we can detect an incipient demarcation of the Qur’anic community from Jews and Christians. This portion of the Qur’an will be the object of an international workshop held at Pembroke College on 19–21 March 2016 and funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Guiding questions: Is there indeed a distinct Medinan layer of the Qur’an, as tentatively posited above? If so, which texts and passages should it be considered to comprise, and what is the best explanatory model for understanding their relationship to the remainder of the Qur’anic corpus? What is the compositional logic underlying the literary organisation of the Medinan texts, especially the long surahs Q 2–5 and 8–9, whose structure is still far from being fully understood despite pioneering work done by Neal Robinson and Mathias Zahniser? Can they be satisfactorily analysed without invoking fairly complex processes of literary growth and redactional expansion? What are the precise contours of the theology of the Medinan Qur’an with regard to such core issues as the understanding of righteous behaviour, the Qur’anic Messenger’s prophetic and political authority, the function and remit of the Qur’anic revelations, the nature of the Qur’anic community, and the duty to engage in military ‘struggle on the path of God’? Which Rabbinic and Christian concepts, traditions, and patterns of expression do the Medinan proclamations presuppose, invoke, and appropriate?

Provisional list of participants: Marianna Klar; Angelika Neuwirth; Gabriel Reynolds; Neal Robinson; Behnam Sadeghi; Walid Saleh; Nicolai Sinai; Devin Stewart; Joseph Witztum; Holger Zellentin.

Application requirements and procedure: Students at any stage of a doctorate in Qur’anic Studies or a neighbouring discipline are invited to apply for one of the three available awards. Students who hold a relevant graduate degree and are still in the process of applying to doctoral programs or applicants who have submitted their thesis within the last year are also eligible. Please submit the following documents to medinanquran@orinst.ox.ac.uk by 28 November 2016 in a single pdf file: (i) a CV; (ii) a letter by your supervisor (or prospective supervisor) explaining how attendance of the conference will help your research; (iii) a writing sample of no more than fifteen pages (which may well be an excerpt from a longer text); and (iv) a one-page paper proposal. Preliminary inquiries should be directed to nicolai.sinai@orinst.ox.ac.uk. The successful applicants will be chosen by a panel of four academics. In reviewing applications, due allowance will be made for each applicant’s stage in the doctoral process.

Contact Info: 

Dr Nicolai Sinai

Associate Professor of Islamic Studies

Oriental Institute, University of Oxford; Pembroke College