Whatever she writes about prints is wrong.
Sometimes the translator, Samuel Wilder, improves the text: In the original she renders
qiraʾa as "Vokalisierung" (S.30), Weber has "the textual tradition of Ḥafṣ" (p.8)
Sometimes he makes it even worse.
Lithographien des Hafs-Textes näherten sich im Laufe der Zeit mehr und mehr der standardisierten Orthographie profaner Texte an. Die erste im Nahen Osten gedruckte Koranausgabe sollte dieser Tendenz mit puristischen Prinzipien entgegenwirken. (S.275)
Lithographs of the Ḥafṣ [text] over time assimilated more and more to the standardized orthography of secular texts. The first printed Qur’an edition in the Near East (Qurʾān Karīm, 1344/ 1925) backed this tendency with purist principles
To begin with, something only librarians fuss over:
No
Qurʾān Karīm was published in 1344/1925.
The King Fuʾād Edition has no title page, no half-title, nothing on the spine, the title is infered = it is the prefered title = has to be in brackets:
[al-Qurʾān al-Karīm] 1342/ 1924 – dropping the definite article is a no no for Arabs, Persian might say Qurʾān-e Karīm, but the King Fuʾād Edition was published in Egypt ...
The translator rendered "sollte ... entgegenwirken/ should counter" with "backed", which is the opposite of what AN said.
Lets look at her first statement, the gradual secularisation of lithographies.
AN gives no source, cites no example.
Is not correct.
And I am not sure what exactely she means. Indian lithographs (since 1829), Persian one (since 1827), Ottoman lithographs or Cairene one (both starting around 1975)? Does she mean what she says – that the lithographs gradually adopted a more common orthography for the Qurʾānic text, or that they used a text more standard than the manuscripts had three hundred years earlier?
Below you see that the last 500 years did not mean secularisation (year by year until 1342h.)
In any case, she is wrong:
Even in the latest Ottoman lithographes, or the last Egyptian one before 1342 you find
ṣalāt صَلَوٰة ,
zakāt زَكَوٰة ,
ḥayāt حَيَوٰة , الرِّبَوٰا
ar-ribā, مِشْكَوٰة
miškāt
and both كلمت and كلمة and
نعمت and نعمة
at the same places as in Indian, Morroccan and modern Sa'udi prints.
Neuwirth writes complete nonsence: the orthography has nothing to to with the technique (hand writing, lithography, offset).
Yes, there is a difference: While Indian and Moroccan
maṣāḥif (calligraphed or printed) follow Abū Dāʾūd Sulaimān Ibn Naǧāḥ resp. al-ʾĀrkātī faithfully, Persian and Ottoman scribes have about 43543 alifs while Indian and Moroccans have 5157 less (in
ʿalāmin, kitāb, ṣirāt but not in
rahmān, ṣalāt, ribā etc.)
And if you look at the recent history in Egypt before 1924, there was an important lithography that was not more secular than the one before, but less:
So far I was in my field, the printed
maṣāḥif.
Now a bit on what is important to her:
Angelika Neuwirth’s project rests on three major pillars. Only the first is broadly accepted; the other two are highly debated. Together, they form her attempt to place the Qur’an within the cultural and literary world of Late Antiquity.
1.) The Qur’an emerged within a Late Antique environment
Islam belongs to the shared intellectual, religious, and literary world of Late Antiquity—a world shaped by:
- Jewish exegetical traditions
- Christian liturgy and homiletics
- Syriac and Arabic poetic culture
- expectations of the end of the world
- Scriptural reasoning as a cultural practice
Hence
- The Qur’an participates in the same discursive universe as other Late Antique texts.
- It responds to, reworks, and debates themes circulating in that world.
- It is not foreign but a scripture among other scriptures.
Pillar One: The Qur’an in Late Antiquity
Strengths
- It rightly rejects the outdated view of the Qur’an as an “Arabian anomaly.”
- It highlights real intertextual resonances with Jewish, Christian, and Syriac traditions.
- It situates the Qur’an within a shared scriptural culture.
But “Late Antiquity” can mean:
- a period (3rd–7th century)
- a cultural formation
- a set of literary practices
- a theological discourse
Neuwirth shifts between these meanings without clarifying which one is operative.
The direction of influence is often assumed, not demonstrated
Parallels are frequently treated as evidence of dependence, but:
- parallels do not prove borrowing
- shared motifs may reflect a broader Near Eastern repertoire
- some supposed parallels are generic rather than specific
The pillar is broadly correct, but its explanatory power is sometimes overstated.
2) Early Meccan surahs as a form of “Arabic psalmody”
(Highly controversial)
Neuwirth argues that the earliest Meccan passages are psalm-like.
She sees them as:
- short, rhythmic, highly allusive
- focused on praise, divine majesty, eschatology
- structurally similar to Late Antique hymnody and psalmody
Calling early surahs “psalmody” risks:
- importing biblical categories into an Arabic context
- flattening differences between Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic traditions
- ignoring indigenous Arabian poetic forms
The analogy is evocative but not philologically rigorous.
The comparison is typological, not genetic
Neuwirth moves from “this resembles a psalm” to “this is modelled on psalm.”
The model underestimates the autonomy of Arabic poetic culture
Michael Zwettler’s work on oral Arabic poetry shows that early Qur’anic style can be explained within Arabic oral poetics without invoking biblical psalmody.
Devin Stewart’s analysis of
saǧʿ (rhymed prose) demonstrates that the Qur’an’s early style fits Arabic rhetorical traditions, not psalmic ones.
Fred Donner sees early Qur’anic proclamations as prophetic oracles, not psalms.
3.) Middle Meccan surahs as “communal productions”
(Even more controversial)
Neuwirth proposes that as the early community around Muhammad formed, the Qur’an’s discourse became:
- more dialogical
- more argumentative
- more engaged with communal identity formation
She interprets some middle Meccan passages as reflecting the voice and concerns of an emerging community, not solely the voice of a single prophetic figure.
- The Qur’an becomes a site of communal reflection.
- The text incorporates responses to internal debates and external challenges.
- Revelation is seen as a process involving interaction between the prophet and his audience.
- It challenges traditional Islamic views of revelation as top-down.
- It raises questions about authorship and compositional layers.
Nicolai Sinai sees the Qur’an as a prophetic discourse, not a communal one.
Guillaume Dye criticizes Neuwirth for underestimating redactional complexity.
He argues that the Qur’an shows signs of later editorial activity, not communal co-production in Mecca.
Fred Donner sees the early community as monotheistic but not yet distinctly Islamic.
Sean Anthony stresses the prophetic authority structure of early Islam.
Der Text des Koran liegt mittlerweile in zahlreichen Druckausgaben vor, unter denen der für seine Vokalisierung nach der Tradition des Ḥafṣ (gest. 180/796) von ʿAṣim (gest. 128/ 745), Hafs ʿan ʿAsim, zurückgeführte Text dank des einflußreichen ersten innerislamischen Korandruckes der Azhar-Hochschule (Kairo 1925) besondere Verbreitung erfahren hat (S.30)
the Ḥafs ʿan ʿĀṣim text, has become particularly widespread due to the impact of the first inner-Islamic Qur’an printing prompted by the Azhar school (Cairo 1925)(p.8)
She writes twice that the 1924 edition was the first by Muslims, and the first in the Middle East – something sooooooo absurd for the readers of this blog, that I abstain from disproving her.
Ḥafṣ became dominate after non-Arabic empires (Ottoman, Safavid, Timurid) prefered it because it is closest to common Arabic.
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