al-Shubuhat al-Mazuma Hawl al-Quran al-Karim fi Dairatay al-Maarif al-Islamiyya wal-Britaniyya
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- King Fahd Complex for Printing the Holy Quran
al-Shubuhat al-Mazuma Hawl al-Quran al-Karim fi Dairatay al-Maarif al-Islamiyya wal-Britaniyya (The Alleged Doubts Surrounding the Holy Quran in the Encyclopaedias of Islam and Britannica) is a critical scholarly treatise by Muhammad al-Saeed Jamal al-Din examining and refuting Orientalist claims, errors, and doubts regarding the Quran in major international encyclopedias .
Context and Purpose
The study was originally prepared as a research paper presented at the Symposium on the Care of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the Holy Quran and its Sciences, held between 3 and 6 Rajab 1421 AH under the auspices of the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran in Medina .
Jamal al-Din chose to focus on two major reference works representing Western scholarship: one specialized, the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam published in Leiden by Brill, and one general, the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica published in 1974 . His stated objective was to investigate the broad acceptance and intellectual authority these encyclopedias hold among researchers and students, while exposing how their entries transmit distorted depictions of Islamic scripture, the Prophet Muhammad, and foundational tenets of the faith .
Methodological Framework
The author traces the origins of modern Orientalist approaches to the Quran to the nineteenth-century European development of higher and lower biblical criticism . German and broader European scholars initially applied higher criticism to the Old Testament by treating sacred texts as purely human historical products, leading them to conclusions such as denying Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, identifying composite human authorship in prophetic books like Isaiah, and isolating multiple historical source strata .
Jamal al-Din argues that Orientalists subsequently attempted to replicate these results by mechanically applying the same text-critical rules to the Quranic revelation . He contends that while such critical methodologies may be valid for human and historically altered compilations, they are inherently inapplicable to divine revelation .
Structure and Contents
The work is organized into an introduction, an analysis of the nature of international encyclopedias, an exposition of the Orientalist critical method, two main analytical sections dissecting the entries in both encyclopedias, and a concluding synthesis .
Section on the Encyclopaedia of Islam
The author analyzes the thirty-three-page article "al-Kur'an" authored by Alford T. Welch in the second edition . The treatise addresses the article's principal headings and subheadings, including :
- The etymology and Quranic usage of the term quran, as well as synonymy in the text .
- The portrayal of Muhammad's relationship to the text .
- The history of the Quran after 632 CE, focusing on the collection of the text, variant readings, companions' codices, and the establishment of the standard text .
- General composition, including surahs, names, the Basmala, and the mysterious disjointed letters (al-huruf al-muqatta'a) .
- Textual history, including historical references and traditional versus modern Western chronologies .
- Language and style, addressing foreign vocabulary, rhymed prose (saj'), repetition, and narrative structures .
- Literary genres and primary themes, such as oaths, symbolic elements, legislative injunctions, and prophetic narratives .
Jamal al-Din refutes the article's presupposition that the Quran derived its narratives and concepts from earlier Near Eastern folklore or Jewish and Christian lore, highlighting instances where the encyclopedia casts unsupported doubt on matters corroborated by empirical and historical research, such as the account of Noah's flood in Surah Hud .
Section on Encyclopædia Britannica
The treatise examines the entry on the Quran in the fifteenth edition (1974), which spans roughly five two-column pages signed by the initials "H. R." (tentatively identified by the author as Hellmut Ritter) . The author reviews the entry's six main divisions: its introduction, form and content, sources of the Quran, conclusions of Orientalist studies, Quranic commentaries, and translations . He critiques the entry for framing Islamic revelation exclusively through Western rationalist and materialist assumptions to appeal to non-specialist general readers .
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