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Papers by Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort
Religions, 2021
Since the earliest studies of Islam by non-Muslims were carried out, variant traditions (aḥādīth)... more Since the earliest studies of Islam by non-Muslims were carried out, variant traditions (aḥādīth) have been regarded as a proof of forgery or editing within the ḥadīth material. Early studies have shown that variances are the result of different processes, some intentionally and others mistakenly; some caused by editing processes, while others through the process of transmission across the first centuries of Islam. During the transmission process, or the genesis of a tradition, accounts are constantly shaped and adjusted. The use of topoi forms a part of this process as well as the inclusion of motifs in different accounts. The present article will explore one of these motifs, specifically, the instruction of the Prophet Muḥammad, on his deathbed, to bring him writing materials so that he could prepare a document for his community. This motif appears in a number of accounts with different settings, characters and details on the nature of the document itself. This article examines whether there exists a direct relationship between the different accounts and, if so, what does this mean. Through this study, we will see that additional motifs have been added to this tradition during its transmission process and that some of these motifs can be attributed to regionalisation or specific transmitters.
Muslims commonly refer to the beginning of Islam as the archetype golden era of their religion bo... more Muslims commonly refer to the beginning of Islam as the archetype golden era of their religion both in terms of piety and pre-eminence. This period comprised the career of the Prophet Muḥammad and the subsequent first four leaders of the Islamic community, known as the "rightly guided caliphs". According to Islamic Tradition, the Qurʾān was put into writing during this period, which also the nascent stage in the transmission of the sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions, transmitted by generations of Muslims and still considered authoritative today. To many Muslims, the period of the Prophet and the first four caliphs is normative and, therefore, the most important part of their history. The primary source of information for Muslims is the Qurʾān, immediately followed by the sunna of the Prophet, that includes his deeds, saying and tacit approval, preserved by consecutive generations of Muslims. How did the concept of sunna develop within the formative period of Islam? Was it derived from the exemplary behaviour of the Prophet or is it a mixture of different manifestations of sunna, for example, the living tradition of the Muslim community, the exemplary behaviour of Companions of the Prophet or caliphs with the pre-Islamic concept of sunna? The present article will contribute to the discussion about the development of sunna by comparing the concept of sunna in historical and sīra works, i.e. works dealing with the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad, from the first three centuries of Islam. However, since these works cover differ periods of time, the analysis of the concept of sunna is limited to those traditions or their parts that deal with the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad and the reigns of the first four caliphs of the Islamic empire, Abū Bakr (r. 11-13/632-634), ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13-23/634-644), ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23-35/644-656), and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 35-40/656-661). The terms under scrutiny are the noun sunna, its plural sunan, and derivatives of the verb sanna. 1 I would like to thank Adam Walker for his careful revision of the English text and for his valuable suggestions to improve this article. Any inaccuracy or mistake is, of course, my fault. The first part of this article is dedicated to the discussion about the origin and the development of the concept of sunna from pre-Islam to the end of the second Islamic century, as well as the relationship between the sunna of the Prophet and the "living tradition", or the generally agreed practice, of the community. The second part consists of an analysis of the three above mentioned terms in the source material, followed by a discussion of the different types of sunna as represented by the terms sunna, sunan and sanna in the sīra and historical works of the first three centuries of Islam. The debate about the development of prophetic sunna The classical Islamic view on the development of prophetic sunna during the first three centuries of Islam is that already during the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad Muslims imitated the Prophet's conduct. The subsequent generations continued this custom and preserved the Prophet's sunna in oral or written tradition. While Islamic scholars certainly played an important role in the preservation of the sunna, the ordinary Islamic community was also instrumental in the preservation of practices. 2 Joseph Schacht was not the first to oppose the classical Islamic view on the origin and the development of the sunna of the Prophet, but his study of the concept of sunna in the work of the Islamic legal scholar al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/819) brought about many scholarly publications by Muslims as well as non-Muslims. 3 Schacht coins "living tradition" as a collective name for several concepts of sunna in the ancient school of laws, ranging from "generally agreed practice" to the original pre-Islamic meanings of "precedent" or "way of life". 4 He argues that sunna originally denoted the normative practice of the community and was from the time of al-Shāfiʿī onwards (i.e. from the end of the second Islamic century) formalised and eventually restricted to the normative behaviour of the Prophet Muḥammad. 5
Nog steeds warden de islamitische bronnen zowel met elkaar als met niet-islamitische bronnen verg... more Nog steeds warden de islamitische bronnen zowel met elkaar als met niet-islamitische bronnen vergeleken.
Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh & Joas Wagemakers (eds.), The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, 2011
Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture; An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, Fitzpatrick, Coeli & Walker, Adam (Eds.), Apr 2014
Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture; An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, Fitzpatrick, Coeli & Walker, Adam (Eds.), Apr 2014
Transmission and dynamics of the textual sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, ed. N. Boekhoff-van der Voort, C. Versteegh & J. Wagemakers
Many books and articles have been written about the life of the Prophet Muḥ ammad. As is the cas... more Many books and articles have been written about the life of the Prophet Muḥ ammad. As is the case with other founders of a major religion, the information about Muḥ ammad's life is based on accounts that his followers passed from one generation to the next until they were finally collected and recorded in compilations. Most of these compilations, which were used as sources for the biography of the Prophet and which are available to us nowadays, were compiled at least two centuries after the death of Muḥ ammad. Through the ages, the Sīra of Ibn Isḥ āq (d. 150/767) in the edition of Ibn Hishām (d. 218/834) has been and still is one of the major sources of information for Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. It is also one of the earliest existing sources. Other important sources are the section about the Prophet from Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk of al-Ṭ abarī (d. 310/922) and a volume of Kitāb al-ṭ abaqāt of Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845). Muslim and non-Muslim scholars consider al-Wāqidī's (d. 207/823) Kitāb al-maghāzī less reliable, but it is still used-although less than the works mentioned above. 2
![Research paper thumbnail of ’Strijd tegen hen […] totdat ze naar vermogen onderdanig de schatting betalen’: De positive van christenen en joden in het vroeg-islamitische rijk (2011)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/33875008/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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in H. Motzki with N. Boekhoff-van der Voort & S. Anthony, Analysing Muslim traditions: Studies in legal, exegetical and maghazi Hadith, 2010
Hind bint /Utba/ de /levereetster/ Verhalen over een invloedrijke vrouw uit de tijd van de profee... more Hind bint /Utba/ de /levereetster/ Verhalen over een invloedrijke vrouw uit de tijd van de profeet Muhammad Nicolet van der Voort 1{
Books by Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort
"Since its inception, the study of Ḥadīth conducted by scholars trained in the Western academic t... more "Since its inception, the study of Ḥadīth conducted by scholars trained in the Western academic tradition has been marked by sharp methodological debates. A focal issue is the origin and development of traditions on the advent of Islam. Scholars' verdicts on these traditions have ranged from “late fabrications without any historical value for the time concerning which the narrations purport to give information” to “early, accurately transmitted texts that allow one to reconstruct Islamic origins”. Starting from previous contributions to the debate, the studies collected in this volume show that, by careful analysis of their texts and chains of transmission, the history of Muslim traditions can be reconstructed with a high degree of probability and their historicity assessed afresh.
On GoogleBooks:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TghRcqivmvwC&lpg=PR1&ots=qDj19yc2c2&dq=%22analysing%20muslim%20traditions%22&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false"
Books and edited volumes by Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort
Opinion articles by Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort
ZemZem: Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam, 2019
Religions, 2021
Since the earliest studies of Islam by non-Muslims were carried out, variant traditions (aḥādīth)... more Since the earliest studies of Islam by non-Muslims were carried out, variant traditions (aḥādīth) have been regarded as a proof of forgery or editing within the ḥadīth material. Early studies have shown that variances are the result of different processes, some intentionally and others mistakenly; some caused by editing processes, while others through the process of transmission across the first centuries of Islam. During the transmission process, or the genesis of a tradition, accounts are constantly shaped and adjusted. The use of topoi forms a part of this process as well as the inclusion of motifs in different accounts. The present article will explore one of these motifs, specifically, the instruction of the Prophet Muḥammad, on his deathbed, to bring him writing materials so that he could prepare a document for his community. This motif appears in a number of accounts with different settings, characters and details on the nature of the document itself. This article examines whether there exists a direct relationship between the different accounts and, if so, what does this mean. Through this study, we will see that additional motifs have been added to this tradition during its transmission process and that some of these motifs can be attributed to regionalisation or specific transmitters.
Muslims commonly refer to the beginning of Islam as the archetype golden era of their religion bo... more Muslims commonly refer to the beginning of Islam as the archetype golden era of their religion both in terms of piety and pre-eminence. This period comprised the career of the Prophet Muḥammad and the subsequent first four leaders of the Islamic community, known as the "rightly guided caliphs". According to Islamic Tradition, the Qurʾān was put into writing during this period, which also the nascent stage in the transmission of the sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions, transmitted by generations of Muslims and still considered authoritative today. To many Muslims, the period of the Prophet and the first four caliphs is normative and, therefore, the most important part of their history. The primary source of information for Muslims is the Qurʾān, immediately followed by the sunna of the Prophet, that includes his deeds, saying and tacit approval, preserved by consecutive generations of Muslims. How did the concept of sunna develop within the formative period of Islam? Was it derived from the exemplary behaviour of the Prophet or is it a mixture of different manifestations of sunna, for example, the living tradition of the Muslim community, the exemplary behaviour of Companions of the Prophet or caliphs with the pre-Islamic concept of sunna? The present article will contribute to the discussion about the development of sunna by comparing the concept of sunna in historical and sīra works, i.e. works dealing with the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad, from the first three centuries of Islam. However, since these works cover differ periods of time, the analysis of the concept of sunna is limited to those traditions or their parts that deal with the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad and the reigns of the first four caliphs of the Islamic empire, Abū Bakr (r. 11-13/632-634), ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13-23/634-644), ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23-35/644-656), and ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 35-40/656-661). The terms under scrutiny are the noun sunna, its plural sunan, and derivatives of the verb sanna. 1 I would like to thank Adam Walker for his careful revision of the English text and for his valuable suggestions to improve this article. Any inaccuracy or mistake is, of course, my fault. The first part of this article is dedicated to the discussion about the origin and the development of the concept of sunna from pre-Islam to the end of the second Islamic century, as well as the relationship between the sunna of the Prophet and the "living tradition", or the generally agreed practice, of the community. The second part consists of an analysis of the three above mentioned terms in the source material, followed by a discussion of the different types of sunna as represented by the terms sunna, sunan and sanna in the sīra and historical works of the first three centuries of Islam. The debate about the development of prophetic sunna The classical Islamic view on the development of prophetic sunna during the first three centuries of Islam is that already during the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad Muslims imitated the Prophet's conduct. The subsequent generations continued this custom and preserved the Prophet's sunna in oral or written tradition. While Islamic scholars certainly played an important role in the preservation of the sunna, the ordinary Islamic community was also instrumental in the preservation of practices. 2 Joseph Schacht was not the first to oppose the classical Islamic view on the origin and the development of the sunna of the Prophet, but his study of the concept of sunna in the work of the Islamic legal scholar al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/819) brought about many scholarly publications by Muslims as well as non-Muslims. 3 Schacht coins "living tradition" as a collective name for several concepts of sunna in the ancient school of laws, ranging from "generally agreed practice" to the original pre-Islamic meanings of "precedent" or "way of life". 4 He argues that sunna originally denoted the normative practice of the community and was from the time of al-Shāfiʿī onwards (i.e. from the end of the second Islamic century) formalised and eventually restricted to the normative behaviour of the Prophet Muḥammad. 5
Nog steeds warden de islamitische bronnen zowel met elkaar als met niet-islamitische bronnen verg... more Nog steeds warden de islamitische bronnen zowel met elkaar als met niet-islamitische bronnen vergeleken.
Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh & Joas Wagemakers (eds.), The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, 2011
Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture; An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, Fitzpatrick, Coeli & Walker, Adam (Eds.), Apr 2014
Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture; An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God, Fitzpatrick, Coeli & Walker, Adam (Eds.), Apr 2014
Transmission and dynamics of the textual sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, ed. N. Boekhoff-van der Voort, C. Versteegh & J. Wagemakers
Many books and articles have been written about the life of the Prophet Muḥ ammad. As is the cas... more Many books and articles have been written about the life of the Prophet Muḥ ammad. As is the case with other founders of a major religion, the information about Muḥ ammad's life is based on accounts that his followers passed from one generation to the next until they were finally collected and recorded in compilations. Most of these compilations, which were used as sources for the biography of the Prophet and which are available to us nowadays, were compiled at least two centuries after the death of Muḥ ammad. Through the ages, the Sīra of Ibn Isḥ āq (d. 150/767) in the edition of Ibn Hishām (d. 218/834) has been and still is one of the major sources of information for Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. It is also one of the earliest existing sources. Other important sources are the section about the Prophet from Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk of al-Ṭ abarī (d. 310/922) and a volume of Kitāb al-ṭ abaqāt of Ibn Saʿd (d. 230/845). Muslim and non-Muslim scholars consider al-Wāqidī's (d. 207/823) Kitāb al-maghāzī less reliable, but it is still used-although less than the works mentioned above. 2
in H. Motzki with N. Boekhoff-van der Voort & S. Anthony, Analysing Muslim traditions: Studies in legal, exegetical and maghazi Hadith, 2010
Hind bint /Utba/ de /levereetster/ Verhalen over een invloedrijke vrouw uit de tijd van de profee... more Hind bint /Utba/ de /levereetster/ Verhalen over een invloedrijke vrouw uit de tijd van de profeet Muhammad Nicolet van der Voort 1{
"Since its inception, the study of Ḥadīth conducted by scholars trained in the Western academic t... more "Since its inception, the study of Ḥadīth conducted by scholars trained in the Western academic tradition has been marked by sharp methodological debates. A focal issue is the origin and development of traditions on the advent of Islam. Scholars' verdicts on these traditions have ranged from “late fabrications without any historical value for the time concerning which the narrations purport to give information” to “early, accurately transmitted texts that allow one to reconstruct Islamic origins”. Starting from previous contributions to the debate, the studies collected in this volume show that, by careful analysis of their texts and chains of transmission, the history of Muslim traditions can be reconstructed with a high degree of probability and their historicity assessed afresh.
On GoogleBooks:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TghRcqivmvwC&lpg=PR1&ots=qDj19yc2c2&dq=%22analysing%20muslim%20traditions%22&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false"
ZemZem: Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en islam, 2019