Gregor Schoeler

Gregor Schoeler (* 1944 ) is a German Arabist and Islamic scholar . He has made a particular contribution to researching the biography of the prophets .

Gregor Schoeler held the Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Basel from 1982 until his retirement in September 2009 . He was visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études à la Sorbonne in Paris. In his research on the biography of the prophets, he used individual examples to reconstruct the ways in which the reports about the life of Muhammad were passed on and showed that many of these reports can be traced back to ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair (d. 712/13).

Publications (chronological)

• Arabic nature poetry. The Zahrīyāt, Rabʿ̄īyāt and Rauḍīyāt from their beginnings to Aṣ-Ṣanaubarī. A genre, motif and style historical investigation. Steiner et al., Wiesbaden et al. 1974, ISBN 3-515-01838-7 ( Beirut texts and studies 15), (revised version of the dissertation).
• Some basic problems of the autochthonous and Aristotelian Arabic literary theory. Ḥāzim al-Qarṭāğannī's chapter on the aims of poetry and the pre-history of the ideas it expounded. Steiner et al., Wiesbaden et al. 1975, ISBN 3-515-01966-9 ( Treatises for the customer of the Orient 41, 4).
• “Oral Torah and Ḥadīth in Islam. Tradition, prohibition of writing, editing ”, in: Der Islam 66 (1989) 213-251. - English translation in "Oral Torah and Ḥadīth: Transmission, Prohibition of Writing, Redaction", in: Harald Motzki (ed.): Hadith. Origins and Development . Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot / Burlington 2004, pp. 67-108.
• Character and authenticity of the Muslim tradition about the life of Muhammad. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1996, ISBN 3-11-014862-5 ( Studies on the Language, History and Culture of the Islamic Orient NF 14).
• Abū l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī: Paradise and Hell. The journey to the hereafter from the “Epistle on Forgiveness”. Translated from Arabic and edited. CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-48446-8 ( New Oriental Library ).
• Together with Andreas Görke: The oldest reports on the life of Muḥammad: the corpus ʿUrwa ibn az-Zubair . Darwin Press, Inc., Princeton, NJ, 2008.