Research on Islamic asceticism frequently highlights practices and ideas described in premodern Islamic literature on renunciation (zuhd). This study redirects our attention to the Qurans ascetic dimension and its reception in the poems and sermons of the Kharijites, an early Islamic group known for extreme piety. It sheds light on the Qurans engagement with late antique ascetic ideas, notably regarding scriptural reading and recitation. In their reception of the Quran, the Kharijites developed practices of reading and recitation characterized by the interiorization and enactment of scripture. This book offers a new view of the religious culture of the first and early second centuries of Islam through the lens of an understudied group and its attempts to put the Quran into practice.
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Note on Translation, Transliteration, and other Formal Conventions
Introduction
Part 1 Ascetic Reading/Recitation in the Quran
1 Asceticized Arabia
2 Competing Recitational Paradigms in the Quran
3 Ascetic Dimensions of Reading/Recitation in the Meccan Suras
4 Internalizing and Enacting Gods Word: Ascetic Striving in Late Meccan and
Medinan Suras
Part 2 The Kharijites Reading/Reciting the Quran
5 Kharijite Origins between Myth, History, and Poetry
6 Internalization of Scripture and Kharijite Identity Formation
7 Scriptural Reading/Recitation and Enactment of the Quran in Early
Kharijite Poetry
8 Scriptural Reading/Recitation and Enactment of the Quran in Sermons of
Kharijites and Renunciants
Conclusion: Asceticism in the Quran and Kharijite Compositions
Appendix 1: A Tentative Classification of Late Antique Asceticism
Appendix 2: Select Sermons
Bibliography
Index
Nora K. Schmid (Ph.D. Freie Universität Berlin, 2018), is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen. She has previously held research and teaching positions at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Hamburg, and the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the Quran, Islamic asceticism, Islamic religious literature, and Islamic law.
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