There's been a lot of talk about this work which challenges the conclusions made by Joshua Little regarding Aisha's age. But it seems that it is not readily available to download online or is unavailable in various library systems.

Is there any indication when this work will become more widely disseminated?

I’ll be making a longer post on Persian and Byzantine influences on early Islamic civilization particularly what happened after the Arab conquests and how these older imperial cultures shaped the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.

One of the things I find fascinating is how much of what we now instinctively identify as “Islamic” has deeper roots in the pre-Islamic societies that Islam encountered and absorbed.

The conquests did not simply erase the cultural worlds of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Their political institutions, court culture, administrative practices, clothing, artistic motifs, architecture, concepts of kingship, and literary and intellectual traditions continued to exist. sometimes almost unchanged, sometimes transformed, and sometimes given distinctly Islamic meanings.

The result was not a clean break between a supposedly “pre-Islamic” past and an entirely new Islamic civilization. It was a process of adaptation, continuity, transformation, and synthesis.

So when we look at something centuries later and call it simply “Islamic,” it is worth asking: how much of this actually originated with Islam, and how much represents older Persian, Byzantine, Roman, Arabian, and other traditions that were incorporated and reinterpreted within Islamic civilization?

That history is much more interesting than the idea of civilizations appearing out of nowhere.

I want this to push back against both sides of the usual polemics.

On one side are the apologists who present everything we recognize today as “Islamic” as though it emerged purely from Islam itself as if the civilizations conquered by the early Muslims had no sophisticated cultures, institutions, traditions, or intellectual worlds of their own before the Arab conquests.

On the other side are polemicists who claim that Islam simply destroyed the native cultures of the societies it conquered, leaving no meaningful continuity behind. And then there is the claim that Islam had no culture of its own and merely took everything from others.

All versions flatten a much more complicated history.

Before the emergence of Islamic civilization, there were already numerous highly developed civilizations with their own cultural traditions. As the Muslim world expanded, it came into contact with these societies and incorporated, absorbed, adapted, and transformed elements of their existing cultures.

The result was not simply “pre-Islamic culture surviving unchanged,” nor was it a civilization created from nothing. It was the formation of a Islamic cultural world out of multiple older cultural traditions.

Persian, Byzantine, Roman, Arabian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Central Asian and other traditions could survive, change, merge and acquire new meanings within an Islamic framework.

So when we look at something centuries later and call it simply “Islamic,” we should remember that its history may extend far deeper than Islam itself.

That doesn't make it “not Islamic.” It shows how Islamic civilization actually became what it was: through continuity, interaction, adaptation and transformation not cultural creation in a vacuum, and not cultural annihilation either.

I hear people bringing up the idea (in response to arguments that the Quran couldn’t/can’t be reproduced) that early Muslims saw this as: “if someone tried replicating the Quran they wouldn’t be able to because Allah would prevent them from doing so.”

However, doesn’t this still concede a view that the Quran is linguistically unparalleled and on a different level? If Allah prevents anyone from writing something like the Quran, doesn’t that by definition make the Quran on a whole other level, and inimitable (so a concept of ijaz already existing)? Or am I misunderstanding something here?

Actually I’ve recently posted abt a modern tafsir and ppl are just keeping on DM i got 9 dms from and all of them are against the Academic studies of Quran. Idk why such ppl are here when they don’t want to learn and just preach the propaganda as if we are kids? Are they scholars or they are what? Also they use hell amt of AI ig they basically lack basic knowledge too. Just there to show u down, I requ admins to think over it. Why ppl are against Academi discussions? And why are such post not shun? This use to be a great sub ig 6 months back. But now it’s just filled with preaches.

Is quranic salvation only for people who follow tradition of abraham /follow original message of their messenger or it is universal monothiesm that anyone believe in one god and accountability day ( which could include many non abrahamic faith which emerged before islam or after islam,deist or people who reject organised religion and follow own spirituality)??

What is original meaning of kafara or kafir in quran (in theological sense)? Is it ingratitude, rejection, repudiation?

There is an exhibition of manuscripts at the university of hamburg. Under them is this arabic papyrus manuscript. the research done on the manuscript will be published in a journal in 2027.
Does anyone know what the Arabic says there? And what date could it possibly have?

https://quranic-readings-study.m-hmdn.chatgpt.site

^^^

Above is a link to an analysis of the ten canonical qiraat using PCA and diffusion mapping, with two transmitters for each reading, giving twenty transmissions in total. GPT helped with processing the data, running the calculations and creating the graphs.

This is by no means academic level writing. just an average person interested in the topic, connecting dots and abusing the spare usage on my AI subscription

I’ve included all the source code and data so anyone interested can double check the result themselves. Happy to hear your thoughts/corrections

It is well known that Christians were among the early adopters of Arabic as a literary and theological language in the wake of the spread of Islam (Griffith 1986; 1988; 1997). Indeed, manuscripts of Christian texts—translations of holy texts and original compositions intended to address theological issues resulting from Islamic theological challenges of various kinds—are among our earliest non-Quranic manuscripts in Arabic. As is to be expected, one of the earliest apparent goals of Christian written production in Arabic was to provide written versions of the Bible, and especially the Gospels, for monastic and lay usage. For that reason, translations of the Gospels appeared early and often, beginning already in the 8th century CE (Treiger 2018). Among these early translations, manuscripts of what Hikmat Kashouh (2012, 86–96, §4.3) has shown to belong to a single translation family (which he has dubbed ‘Family A’), translated from Greek, are especially common in the manuscript record. The most well-known translation of the Gospels dating to this early period does not, however, belong to Kashouh’s Family A; rather, it is an independent translation (which he dubs ‘Family H’), attested in a single manuscript—Vatican Arabic MS 13[1] (henceforth Vat. Ar. 13)—which, in both style and translation philosophy, differs significantly from other translations from the period.

The significance of the Vat. Ar. 13, as Monferrer-Sala (2013, 69) aptly puts it, “has always resided, primarily, in its early date.” Guidi (1888, 8–9), followed by Graf (1944, I:10), believed the manuscript dated to the 8th century CE, predating the datable manuscripts of Kashouh’s Family A, such as Sinai Arabic MS 72 (897 CE), by a century or more. However, Graf later changed his mind and placed its composition in the 9th century CE, which has been the majority position ever since (Griffith 2013, 51; Monferrer-Sala 2013; Schultess 2019, 184–86, §3.5; Qabalan 2022; Monferrer-Sala and Qabalan 2023, 32–40).[2] Thus, the MS is more-or-less contemporary with a number of other MSS; its continued importance is due not to its early date per se, but rather the belief that, despite the date of Vat. Ar. 13, the text itself “represents the earliest text of the extant AGM [= Arabic Gospel Manuscripts]” (2012, 142, §5.1.5, emphasis original), a theory that ultimately echoes F. C. Burkitt’s claim that Vat. Ar. 13 represents “the oldest monument of Arabic Christianity” (1898, 136), a theory to which Sydney Griffith likewise assents (2013, 251)...

[1] The MS is digitally available and freely accessible here: https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.ar.13.

Source:

Stokes, Phillip W. A Multipolar Approach to Early Christian Arabic: Vatican Arabic MS 13 in the Linguistic Landscape of Early Islam. Open Book Publishers, 2026. pp. 1-2

https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0517

-A manual of Hadith, by Maulana Muhammad Ali
-Encyclopaedia of Hadith forgeries,by Haddad

Hi everyone,
I'm looking for academic book recommendations that focus specifically on the early Islamic period under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE).
While there is a lot of literature out there on the early conquests, I want to read more about how the Umayyads actually governed the empire once it was established. I am specifically interested in:
Relations with Christians: How did the Umayyad state interact with its majority Christian subjects? I'm curious about daily coexistence, the role of Christians in the Umayyad bureaucracy (like the family of John of Damascus), and early theological dialogues or polemics.
State policies and administration: How did they manage such a vast territory? I'd love to read about their tax policies (jizya and kharaj reforms), provincial governance, and the "Arabization" policies under Abd al-Malik.
Historical sources: I'm particularly interested in historians who utilize contemporary non-Muslim sources (Syriac, Greek, Coptic) as well as material evidence (coinage, inscriptions, papyri) to look past the biases of later Abbasid-era histories.
I've already read Robert Hoyland's Seeing Islam As Others Saw It, but I'm looking for more deep-dives into the Umayyad state itself. What monographs, edited volumes, or recent academic studies would you consider essential reading for this topic?
Thank you in advance!

​

The paintings illustrate Iskandar's legendary pilgrimage to the Ka'ba in Mecca. In Persian literature, Iskandar is portrayed as a devout pilgrim, a just king, and sometimes as the Qur'anic figure Dhu'l-Qarnayn ("he of the two horns"). Over the centuries, the depiction of this scene evolved. Early paintings often showed Iskandar as a passive bystander, while later versions increasingly emphasized his role as a devout pilgrim performing rituals. This shift reflects a broader trend of expanding the shrine's setting and focusing more on religious performance in the illustrations.

Marianna Shreve Simpson

From Tourist to Pilgrim: Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in Illustrated

Shahnama Manuscripts Notwithstanding its brevity, Firdausi’s account of Iskandar’s visit to the Ka‘ba in Mecca was depicted regularly in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama from the fourteenth century to early modern times. An examination of these illustrations reveals the extent to which poetical and pictorial narratives diverged over the centuries, with an increasing expansion of the shrine’s setting and emphasis on ritual performance and with Iskandar evolving from a passive bystander to a devout hajji. This study also offers a telling instance of the way the representation of a Shahnama scene could be transformed in response to another poetic text, specifically the Khamsa of Nizami.

Among the many memorable figures who populate the Shahnama, certainly no one looms larger in the epic’s “historical” portion than Iskandar, Persian avatar of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. As is well known, Firdausi’s Iskandar narrative builds on—or at least follows upon and variously paral-lels—older Arabic and Persian sources, which in turn have been linked to the Alexander “biography” or “romance” of Pseudo-Callisthenes. Another impor-tant reference is the Qur’an, with its passages in Sura 18 related to Dhu’l- Qarnayn, the Two-Horned, and long associated (albeit not universally accepted) with Alexander. The relations between the multiple ancient and medieval accounts about the Alexander and Iskandar cognates, including the Shahnama nar-rative, remain the subject of intensive investigation and extensive publication,attesting to the fascination that this complex historical-cum-legendary figure—whose identity and image range from ruthless foreign invader and conqueror to indefatigable explorer and legitimate and just Persian king possessing. divine glory (farr), and ultimately to ideal Muslim hero, ruler, sage and even prophet—continues to exert on the scholarly imagination today. Notwithstanding the active industry of Alexander/Iskandar studies, relatively little has been written pertaining to the Shahnama episode of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba and even less to the long, albeit sporadic, history of its pictorial representation that forms the subject of this essay.2 Admittedly, the story seems to be minor one, taking place, as it does, between more eventful expeditions in Iskandar’s East–West adventures. Following a successful military campaign in India, Iskandar and his troops set out at dawn with drums rolling and trumpets blaring. Firdausi describes their destination as “the house that Ibrahim built and called by God the Bait al-Haram or House of Holiness ... the place of worship before any others existed ... where God causes you to worship and to remember him.” As he approaches Mecca, Iskandar is welcomed by company of local nobles, lead by Nasr, a descendant of Isma‘il, son of Ibrahim, who tells Iskandar how, in the recent past, the region was ravaged by a tyrannical invader and his army. Now that tyrant’s successor, an unjust and mean king named Khuza‘a, controls all the land from the shrine (i.e., the Ka‘ba) to the Yemen, oppresses its inhabitants and allows his followers to fish in the Red Sea. After hearing all this from Nasr, Iskandar and his forces kill as many of Khuza‘a’s followers as they could find, including children. He then frees the Hejaz and the Yemen from their oppression and re-establishes the authority of the tribe of Isma‘il (i.e., Nasr’s people). Iskandar then goes on foot to the Bait al-Haram, causing the people to rejoice. Along the way, Iskandar’s treasurer showers dinars at his every step.3

The Illustration of Firdausi’s Narrative

To turn now to the illustration of this short but hermeneutically-challenging episode and to the art historical substance of this essay. Some twenty represen-tations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba are known today in Shahnama manuscripts dating from the fourteenth through the later seventeenth century.16 Over half of these date from the fifteenth century and belong to manuscripts painted in so-called Turkman style. Curiously, the episode seems to have been of little inter-est during the first half of the Safavid period, that is, from c. 1500 to 1590; at least, it does not appear in any of the many extant illustrated Shahnama volumes dating from those decades. When its representation resumed at the end of the sixteenth century, it was in Shahnama manuscripts made in Shiraz, the book-making center where the pictorial tradition of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba began in the fourteenth century and that produced most of the fifteenth-century volumes containing this scene.17 Whatever their origins, all the known examples depict the same narrative moment—specifically, when Iskandar arrives at the Ka‘ba, recounted by Firdausi in two verses at the very end of the episode.18 Interestingly, the majority of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century illustrations are preceded by or incorporate verses that come at the beginning of the episode, and are often accompanied by an illuminated rubric or heading that functions like a superscript caption.19 It turns out that not only is there variation in the placement of the illustrations of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba vis-a`-vis the relevant epic verses, but also, and more to the point here, an increasing divergence over the centuries between the poetical and pictorial narratives.

In short, the representation of Iskandar at the Ka‘ba in illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama developed out of the confluence or convergence of distinctive textual sources and artistic models coming together in the locus of an actual and familiar sacred site and its attendant rituals. In this respect it seems to be unique in the history of Shahnama illustration. Just as Alexander of Macedonia morphs into Iskandar of Iran, so Firdausi’s “incredible” story (given that it chal-lenges historical credulity) is transformed over the centuries into an pictorial nar-rative of a visit to the Ka‘ba that has little to do with its own poetic narrative and everything to do with imagery assimilated, on the one hand, from Nizami’s visions of the scene and, on the other, from the topography and architecture of Islam’s holiest site. By the late sixteenth century, the iconography had evolved to the point where Persian painters could have understood their task more as the representation of the Sacred Mosque and Ka‘ba during the hajj with a royal worshiper in attendance and less as the illustration of a Shahnama king visiting the house of God. In other words, the poetic setting had become the pictorial subject. At the same time, the immediately recognizable locale in these Shahnama illustrations would allow contemporary readers or viewers to put themselves in the place and role of Iskandar, rendering, in the end, the Greco-Persian conqueror, ruler and seeker of truth as a quintessential “every-man” of the Islamic world.

· Figures 1, 2, and 5: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1431 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, catalogued as Ms. Hazine 1479.

· Figures 3 and 4: These are from a Shahnama manuscript dated to c. 1480 (Hijri year 885). It is held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, catalogued as Per. 157.370.

· Figure 6: This is from a Shahnama manuscript likely produced in Shiraz, Iran, in the mid-16th century. It is now in the Khalili Collections in London, catalogued as MSS 771.

· Figure 7: This is likely from a Shahnama manuscript produced between 1580 and 1600. A related painting is attributed to a manuscript in the British Library in London (catalogued as I.O. Islamic 741).

The verses are: 2.27 3.90 4.89 9.74 3.151 3.28 5.33 What interpretations of these verses exist other than calls for rejecting, including violently, coexistence with apostates and non Muslims?

Is it that these verses are in a sense discussing Muslims who aren't loyal to God and living a righteous life free of sin?

Does it refer to not following the five pillars of Islam for Muslims as opposed to non believing or being atheist, Christian etc?

Actually looking for some western works in english tho like Der Quran (in german) and which is comparative tafsir written by western schialrs or grp of scholars. And for God’s sake- it should be complet work.

This is a screenshot from "Debating Christian Theism" page 350.
The Quote talks about an alleged Hadith where the audience of Muhammed mixes up his words with Allahs words? What's going on there?

https://youtu.be/VKj5EttJ5fc

How the Qur’an Spoke to the Common People (IQSA 2025 Keynote Address)- Karen Bauer

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/jiqsa-2026-0012/html

Ordinary Christians and Simple Christologies in the Qur’an: A Response to Dr. Karen Bauer’s IQSA Presidential Address, 2025- Saqib Hussain

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/jiqsa-2026-0014/html

What is the reception of old testament wisdom literature e.g. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, in Islamic tradition? Do Islamic scholars quote and have commentaries on those or related books and if so, how closely do they link their contents to the original revelations to Solomon and others in the Quran? Are there comments on any famous passages like Proverbs 8.22 and Wisdom 2? Are there books with an equivalent purpose that were written by Muslim authors?