SUAD-CEFREPA Diwan The Qur’an in the Arabic graffiti from early Islam (7th – 8th c. AD)

Thursday 4 March 2021
5:00 pm (UAE/Oman time)  4:00 pm (Kuwait time) 2:00 pm (France time)
Online conference

Join Prof. Frédéric Imbert for a discussion on The Qur’an in the Arabic graffiti from early Islam (7th – 8th c. AD)
Please click here to register, the link to attend the conference will be sent upon registration

The Diwan series is a collaboration with CEFREPA (Centre Français de Recherche de la Péninsule Arabique)

Conference abstract

We invite you to a journey back to the origins of Islam, in the first two centuries of the hegira (7th and 8th century AD) when the first generations of Muslims were engraving inscriptions and graffiti on rocks along of the main roads of the Arabian Peninsula. This presentation will focus on what we call the “Quran of the stones”, consisting of quotations of the Quran engraved by anonymous Muslims. We will also focus on the value of these short extracts (some of them are dated) and try to give a definition of what a “Quranic graffiti” is. Based on several examples we will also try to present the most complete typology of these texts, in order to understand the strategy of implantation and use of these Quranic verses in the graffiti. We will also be interested in a few verses found isolated, without any basmala and out of context: what can they tell us about the knowledge that these early Muslims had of their sacred text? Finally, we will give some statistics concerning this research (still in progress) which give us a fairly concrete image the ancient Quran, resulting from historical and geographical fragmentation.