Qisas al-Anbiyāʾ
Qisas al-Anbiyā ' ( Arabic قصص الأنبياء, DMG qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ ' Prophet Tales') is a genre of books in Arabic , Persian and Turkish , in which stories about the pre-Islamic prophets are presented from an Islamic perspective . The material is usually arranged in chronological order, so that, ranging from the creation of the world to the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad , the picture of a closed Islamic prehistory emerges. The content overlaps with Islamic world chronicles, in which the same material can usually be found in the introductory parts of the pre-Islamic period, as well as with traditional Koran commentaries , which fall back on these narratives in the treatment of the narrative passages of the Koran.
Arabic Qisas-al-Anbiyā 'works
The first work of this genre is the book on the "Beginning of Creation and the Prophet Tales " ( Badʾ al-chalq wa-qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ ) by the Egyptian scholar Abū Rifāʿa ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma al-Fārisī (d. 902), of which, however only one manuscript has survived, which contains only the second part of the work. This manuscript is kept in the Vatican Library and was edited by RG Khoury in 1978. The author comes from a Persian family who immigrated to Egypt and has compiled in his work material that his father Wathīma, who himself was the author of a work on the Ridda Wars , had collected from various sources. The individual narratives are each introduced with chains of tradition , which indicate that a not inconsiderable proportion of the material goes back to the South Arabian narrator Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 732). The handwritten text begins with the story of al-Kidr and ends with the prophet Mohammed .
The second Arabic Qisas-al-Anbiya work comes from the pen of the Koran exegete Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad ath-Thaʿlabī (d. 1036), who worked in Nishapur . In contrast to al-Fārisī's work, this book gained great popularity in the Orient and was printed early. It is important that the author not only treats prophets in his work, but also those persons of the pre-Islamic period who distinguished themselves through piety and faithfulness. That is why Heribert Busse reproduces the expression Qisas al-Anbiya in the title of the work in its German translation as “Tales of the Prophets and Friends of God”. In Arabic, the book also has the jewelry title ʿArāʾis al-madschālis ("The Most Beautiful Teaching Sessions "), which refers to the fact that the book is divided into 30 chapters entitled "Teaching Sessions" ( madschlis ). These chapters are in turn divided into sections, usually called bāb . The book begins with the creation story and then deals with the Fall of Man , the Flood , the patriarchs , the Exodus from Egypt , the Israelites in the Holy Land, John the Baptist and Jesus and finally various early Christian legends such as those of the Dormice and Saint George . As with al-Fārisī, the individual narratives are introduced with chains of narrators.
Later, the Andalusian scholar Ibn Mutarrif at-Tarafī (d. 1062) and a certain al-Kisā'ī (around 1200) wrote well-known Arabic Qisas-al-Anbiyā 'works. The Shiite tradition also has its own Qisas al-Anbiyā 'works.
Persian and Turkish Qisas-al-Anbiyā 'works
The oldest surviving work of the genus in Persian is that of Abū Isḥāq Ibn Chalaf Neysāburi, which dates from the 11th century. His text was edited by Habib Yaghmai in 1961 on the basis of two manuscripts. The work has also been illustrated frequently (see the picture); Rachel Milstein, Karin Rührdanz and Barbara Schmitz presented a number of illustrated Neysāburi manuscripts in a joint publication in 1999. The content of the work is very similar to the Persian version of aṭ-Ṭabarī's world chronicle made by Bal'ami in the 10th century. The individual narratives primarily serve the purpose of preaching and edification and, unlike most of the Arab Qisas al-Anbiya works, are not introduced with chains of narrators. However, in the introduction to his work, the author names a number of teaching authorities who connect him with the well-known companion of the prophet and traditionarian ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbbās in the manner of an isnād .
In the 14th century, a certain Nāṣir ad-Dīn Rabghūzī, about whom little more is known than that he worked as a judge in Central Asia and had good relations with the ruling class of the Mongols there, wrote a Qisas al-Anbiya work in Central Turkish language . This is largely a translation of the Persian work by Neysāburi.
literature
- Raif Georges Khoury: Les legends prophétiques dans l'Islam. Depuis le Ier jusqu'au IIIe siècle de l'Hégire . Wiesbaden 1978.
- Marianna Klar: Interpreting Tha'labi's tales of the prophets: Temptation, responsibility and loss . London 2009.
- Rachel Milstein, Karin Rührdanz and Barbara Schmitz: Stories of the Prophets. Illustrated Manuscripts of Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ . Costa Mesa 1999.
- Tilman Nagel: The Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ: a contribution to the history of Arabic literature . Bonn 1967.
- Ján Pauliny: “Some Remarks on the Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ Works in Arabic Literature” in Andrew Rippin (ed.): The Qurʾan: Formative Interpretation . Ashgate, Aldershot et al. a., 1999. pp. 313-326.
- Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm aṯ-Ṯaʿlabī: Islamic narratives of prophets and men of God. Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ or ʿArāʾis al-maǧālis Translated and commented by Heribert Busse. Wiesbaden 2006.
- Roberto Tottoli: “The Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā 'of Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī (d. 454/1062): Stories of the prophets from al-Andalus” in al-Qantara 19 (1998) 131-160.
- Roberto Tottoli: The Stories of the Prophets by Ibn Mutarrif at-Tarafi . Schwarz, Berlin, 2003. Digitized