Full Description
Research on Islamic asceticism frequently highlights practices and ideas described in premodern Islamic literature on renunciation (zuhd). This study redirects our attention to the Qur'an's 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 Qur'an's engagement with late antique ascetic ideas, notably regarding scriptural reading and recitation. In their reception of the Qur'an, 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 Qur'an into practice.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Note on Translation, Transliteration, and other Formal Conventions
Introduction
Part 1 Ascetic Reading/Recitation in the Qur'an
1 Asceticized Arabia
2 Competing Recitational Paradigms in the Qur'an
3 Ascetic Dimensions of Reading/Recitation in the Meccan Suras
4 Internalizing and Enacting God's Word: Ascetic Striving in Late Meccan and Medinan Suras
Part 2 The Kharijites Reading/Reciting the Qur'an
5 Kharijite Origins between Myth, History, and Poetry
6 Internalization of Scripture and Kharijite Identity Formation
7 Scriptural Reading/Recitation and Enactment of the Qur'an in Early Kharijite Poetry
8 Scriptural Reading/Recitation and Enactment of the Qur'an in Sermons of Kharijites and Renunciants
Conclusion: Asceticism in the Qur'an and Kharijite Compositions
Appendix 1: A Tentative Classification of Late Antique Asceticism
Appendix 2: Select Sermons
Bibliography
Index
