Siffin revisited: The motif of the Qur'an impaled on lances and Noth's Quellenkrirtische

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 23, 2012 at 18:16

Hi Ianus

first fitna and the battle of Siffin between Moawiya and Ali ibn Abu Talib? When Moawiya felt he was losing ground, he made his soldiers attach pages of the Koran to their spears and wave them asking for arbitration

I forgot to mention that you must read Albrecht Noth's great work "The early Arabic Historical tradition, a Source Critical Examination" or "Quellenkritische Studien" and indeed Noth was able to prove with ease that the Islamic literary sources written in the 3rd century of Islam in distant Mesopotamia by non Arabs (and most of them were Iranians) is all literary topoi and schemata and that much of it is not real history and it leads us no where

I'm almost certain after reading this work you will not believe any thing written by Muslim historians not a thing and you will understand why Wellhausen's work on the Islamic historical tradition and the Qur'an just did not work that well

Now let me tell you what he tells us about the so called Battle of Siffin and I quote

"Finally we make tentative suggestion. In Sasanian historical tradition there is a report on a battle which erupted because one of two parties had defaulted on a treaty. During the battle a copy of the treaty was struck on a lance and brought against the offending party. Might there not be a literary between this tradition and the well known motif of the copies of the Qur'an stuck on the lances of Mu'awiya's part at Siffin."

Sounds familiar right?

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".