By the Pen and What They Write - Angelika Neuwirth

Scripture, Revelation, and Writing: The Qur’an’s Epistemic Recast of Arabian Late Antiquity The Qur’an, essentially the founding text of the religion of Islam, is rarely perceived in its more secular manifestation: as the document of a major epistemic shift of paradigm within Arabian culture. Not only is the ubiquity of Qur’an manuscripts almost immediately after the closure of the text amazing, but the Qur’an itself attests to a rapid adoption of the concept of writing as a means to authenticate its message. An assessment of the references to writing in ancient Arabic poetry and – for a comparison - an historical overview of the Qur’anic heterogeneous reflections on writing will throw new light on the earliest Muslim polity’s transition from ritual to textual coherence. Highlighting the complex theological debates surrounding the Qur’anic discourse of writing, this paper is meant to invite a rethinking of the position of Arabia within the cultural space of Late Antiquity. ANGELIKA NEUWIRTH studied Persian Language and Literature, Oriental Studies (Arabic Language and Literature and Comparative Semitics) and Classical Philology in Berlin, Teheran, Göttingen and Munich. She received her Ph.D. in 1972 with a thesis on ´Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi’s book on Aristotelian metaphysics (published 1976). In 1977 she received the highest academic qualification in Germany for a habilitation thesis with the title Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren (published 1981).