CSI Monday Majlis: Orhan Elmaz
Monday, 04 May 2026 at 17:00
DIGITAL TOOLS AND METHODS IN (+/- CONTEMPORARY) QURANIC STUDIES
Event details
Abstract: Building on Ibn ?A?iyya’s (d. 541 AH/1147 CE) observation that the verb–preposition pairings ?arsala ?alā and ?arsala ?ilā appear in similar contexts in the Qur?ān, I will argue that the two constructions are nonetheless functionally differentiated. I will show that ?arsala ?alā occurs predominantly in passages of divine punishment or retribution, whereas ?arsala ?ilā is associated chiefly with divine communication and prophetic mission. A corpus-based analysis of all attestations of these verb–preposition collocations across the Qur?ān brings into view distributional and discourse-level regularities that are easily overlooked in traditional, manual exegesis. These findings call for a reassessment of variant readings (辩颈谤ā?ā迟), with particular attention to Q 17:68–69, where alternative dotting of the consonantal text (rasm) yields shifts in verbal subject. These findings, in turn, motivate a reassessment of variant readings (辩颈谤ā?ā迟), with particular attention to Q 17:68–69, where alternative dotting of the consonantal text (rasm) produces shifts in verbal subject. The paper thus demonstrates how digital, corpus-linguistic methods can sharpen our understanding of Qur?ānic stylistics while contributing to the evaluation of variant readings within the Qur?ān’s broader oral-written transmission history.
Bio: Orhan Elmaz is a Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where he teaches multilingual Digital Humanities and classical and modern Arabic language, literature, and culture. His research reflects a dynamic integration of linguistic tradition, digital methods, and cultural analysis. His area lies at the intersection of linguistics, intellectual history, and transcultural studies. He has published on the Qur’an (and its use and abuse), Arabic and Semitic linguistics, and One Thousand and One Nights. Currently, he is working on the emergence of feminist ideas and their translingual and transregional development, contrasting different Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority communities of the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
He is the author of Studien zu den koranischen Hapaxlegomena unikaler Wurzeln (Harrassowitz 2011), editor of Endless Inspiration: One Thousand and One Nights in Comparative Perspective (Gorgias 2020) and One Thousand and One Nights (Gale, 2027), and co-editor of Languages of Southern Arabia (Archaeopress, 2014) and New Directions in Digital Modern Languages Research (Liverpool University Press, 2023).
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Organiser
Centre for the Study of Islam