Unlocking the Medinan Qur’an

Publisher: Brill, Leiden, Boston: 2022, 589pp. ISBN: 9789004509696.

The title of this heterogenous collection of thirteen articles points to two nonexisting entities: a Madinan Qur’an and an implied lock which supposedly needs unlocking. Both are non-existent because there is only one Qur’an and the so-called Madinan Qur’an, that is the portion that was revealed after the Hijrah to Madinah, has a seamless integration with what was revealed before that momentous event. Furthermore, there is no special lock in that portion of the revelation that is different from the portion revealed in Makkah; both have the same “lock” to which the Qur’an itself refers in Q 47:24: Do they, then, not reflect upon the Qur’an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?

Nicolai Sinai rationalizes his terminology on the basis of (i) a misconstrued subdivision which supposedly exists in the “pre-modern Muslim scholarship” and (ii) the 1844 publication of Gustav Weil (1808–1889), Historische-kritische Einleitung in den Koran (Historical-Critical Introduction to the Qur’an), which made this “distinction between Meccan and Medinan suras and passages a cornerstone of modern Western research on the Qur’an” (p. 1). The reference given for the “pre-modern Muslim scholarship” is a very late work in the history of Muslim scholarship on the Qur’an: Jalal al-Din [Abd al-Rahman al-Suyuti’s (ca. 849/1445–911/1505) al-Itqan fi [ulum al-Qur’an. In fact, the need to ascertain the chronology of revelation first appeared during the lifetime of the Companions in relation to the applicability of certain legal rulings which were abrogated or modified by later revelations. Yet no Muslim scholar has ever conceived a Makkan and a Madinan Qur’an as distinct entities; for them—and for every Muslim throughout the centuries—there is only one Qur’an. Thus, this reference to “pre-modern Muslim scholarship” is a non-starter.