Video: The Islamic Conception of Arabness, A New Reading of the Qur’ānic Discourse on the a‘rāb

July 27, 2023

Center for the Study of World Religions hosted a talk by Raashid Goyal, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In his talk, Goyal proposes that the term a‘rāb signified “Arabs” and not “nomads,” and that the former entity were originally considered as apart from the nascent community of believers.

The Islamic Conception of Arabness: A New Reading of the Qurʾānic Discourse on the aʿrāb

[SOFT GUITAR MUSIC]

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: The Islamic Conception of Arabness, a New Reading of the Qur'anic Discourse on the Arab, July 20, 2023.

GOSIA SKLODOWSKA: Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Gosia Sklodowska. I'm the associate director here at the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Divinity School. And we're thrilled to be partnering with Professor Mohsen Goudarzi and Raashid Goyal for this very special talk.

Professor Ghoudarzi is a faculty member here at Divinity School, a religion scholar, and specializing in Quranic studies. And it is a special event because for those of you who have been following CSWR events, we usually don't do much programming over the summer. Summer is considered to be a slow time here on campus. And this makes it even more special, to see how much interest there is in Raashid's talk today.

We have a gathering here on campus and more than 90 people who have registered. And are there virtually joining us from across the Boston area and the world. So thank you all for being here.

Before I hand it over to Professor Goudarzi, I will just mention that we have some fantastic programming on the horizon for the next academic year. And this will include our very popular Gnosiology and Poetry series, Psychedelics and the Future of Religion series, lectures, annual lectures, music, performances, and art exhibits, and more. So please stay tuned for this information.

We'll be including lots of information about this programming in one of our August newsletters. And for those of you who haven't joined us yet, through our mailing list, please do so. So with this, I'm going to hand everything over to Professor Goudarzi. Thank you all for being here. And welcome.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Thank you so much. Welcome, everyone. Welcome to those who are present here today and to those who are joining us online, by Zoom. It's wonderful to be here. I'm really grateful to Professor Charles Stang for hosting this event, to Gosia Sklodowska, for integrating it within the CSWR's programming, and to Laurie Sedgwick, if I can find her for a thank you, coordinating and promoting the event. We're really excited about this talk.

The speaker today is Raashid Goyal. Raashid is a scholar of the languages, literatures and the history of early Islamic and pre-Islamic Arabia. He is interested, in particular, in the development of political and legal ideas and thought in the first centuries of Islam.

And he's going to finish-- he's on the cusp of finishing his PhD at Cornell University's Near Eastern Studies department. I believe the defense is within the next week or so. And then after that, he'll be taking up a postdoctoral position at the University of Tubingen, in Germany, under the QaSLA project, which stands for the Quran as a Source for Late Antiquity, and directed by Professor Holger Zellentin, who I think may be joining us online today. So if he is-- hello, Holger. Nice to have you with us.

So the title of the talk today is the Islamic Conception of Arabness, a New Reading of the Quranic Discourse on the Arab. This is a really important topic, in general, in the past few decades, the study of early Islam and the Quran has been very much dynamic and active. And one of the questions that scholars have had is, how did the prophet Muhammad's earliest followers conceptualize their own identity, their ethnic identity, their tribal identity, their religious identity?

So this talk goes to the heart of that important subject. And we're really excited to hear it. So without further ado, I'll just ask you to welcome Raashid Goyal, and ask him to take the podium. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

RAASHID GOYAL: Thank you all for being here, virtually and in person. And Thank you to Professor Goudarzi, and to Gosia, and to Laurie for their gracious invitation and for having me.

So the Islamic conception of Arabness takes us to the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the Quran. So the Quranic Arab is the topic of our discussion. Who, indeed, are these [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] that appear in 10 passages in the Quran, all of which are in [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] or chapters, that are traditionally held to be amongst the last to be revealed?

The traditional reading tells us that they are Bedouin. And that's more or less the consensus in modern scholarship as well. And just to clarify, the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] has always-- or the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] has always denoted Arabs, and denotes Arabs today. There's no problem there. This is a different term. This is [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

And this belongs strictly to the classical Islamic discourse. One cannot, today, speak in any modern colloquial dialect and say such and such people are [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and be understood as intending that they are Bedouin. It would be unintelligible. And in formal, modern Arabic, only in the context of citing the Quran or citing the classical discourse is this word used.

And the possibility that the Quran is speaking of Arabs instead of Bedouin is not really ever been given much-- has not been considered seriously very much at all, partly because the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are a disliked and disparaged group. So they don't have a very good status in the Quran.

And according to Islamic tradition, they are nomads. And nomadism is, in itself, associated with a lack of sophistication, a lack of piety, a coarseness of character-- antithetical, basically, to urban Islam. So was this attitude already in place at the time of the Quran's revelation? And if not, what does that mean for our understanding of Quran and our understanding of arabness?

OK, so the most frequently cited passage in the Quran tells us that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] say, we have faith. But prophet tell them, you do not have faith. You should instead say, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] we have submitted for faith has not yet entered your hearts. This is in-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] And this is one of the very last [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to be revealed, according to tradition.

In [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] typically considered as to be either the last of all or the penultimate [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to be revealed, we learned that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in the context, is describing people who did not participate in fighting. Some of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] also come to make excuses. And they ask to be granted exception. Those who lied to God and his messengers stayed behind, at home.

A painful punishment will afflict those of them who disbelieved. And then we have some qualifications for those whose status is not blameworthy. And later, in the same chapter, the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are the most stubborn of all peoples in their disbelief and hypocrisy. They are the least likely to recognize the limits, the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] that God has sent down to his messenger. And God is knowing and all wise.

Some of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] consider what they give, of charity or what they contribute to the community, to be an imposition. They are waiting for fortune to turn against you. But fortune will turn against them.

Finally, though, there is a qualification. There are also some [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] who believe in God in the last day. And they consider their contributions as bringing them nearer to God. So besides this passage, this verse 99, however, in every instance that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] appear, the tone is decidedly negative.

OK, I did not translate it, the term, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] but in any European translation of the Quran, we find something just like this. And Gabriel Reynolds' translation was actually based on an earlier one. So it's not specific to this translation.

But as you see here, the Bedouins say, Blachére, the Bedouin-- in fact, Blachére even subscribes to this view that the conversion of these Bedouin was superficial, that these Bedouin-- that are intended by all of these passages. They are intended because they did not convert wholeheartedly. This is a very problematic view for many reasons, as we will see.

You also sometimes see the desert Arabs. Now that seems to be considering the possibility that they are, in fact, Arabs. But in fact, it really isn't because the word "desert" is nowhere in the Quran. So Abdel Hallem, for example, he's saying that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is specific to this group, that are in the desert, and no other. And so this is saying, more or less, the same thing.

The Swedish theologian, Ringgren, earlier proposed a similar view. Ringgren proposed a meaning of Islam and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] that I think Professor Goudarzi has now shown to be problematic. And Professor Goudarzi proposes that this was not some kind of theological conception of the Divinity, but one that was focused on cult and expressions of piety.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], belief, as opposed to Islam, submission-- this discourse will need to be altered even more if we relinquish the conception of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] as specifically nomads, and consider what the verses are telling us, if the addressees are certain Arabs.

OK, so the Quran is regarded as the superlative illustration of spoken, or formal Arabic, of the sixth and seventh century CE. Arabic, and particularly Quranic Arabic, is frequently the basis for how we decipher Semitic materials for which we have a much more limited sample. For instance, inscriptions in ancient Semitic languages, from North and South Arabia, are read very much in the light of Arabic.

Poetry, which dates to the pre-Islamic era, as well as the Islamic era, has of an opposite scenario because we have a lot of poetry. But generally-- and I think here, there's an impact of the classical view of the Quran's sanctity, as precluding it being held to the direct light of poetical specimens. And so poetry really doesn't get used very much.

So what is and is not attested in the Quran, or to put it differently, what we think the Quran tells us has guided much of modern scholarship, so for instance, the fact that the Quran is concerned with these Bedouin groups has been assumed, more or less, as just that the text, at a prima facie level.

And in the Quranic studies paradigm, especially as it exists today and in the last few decades, the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or the oral and written tradition, broadly, is usually considered as inadmissible evidence, or evidence fit to be entertained only speculatively.

So what I'm going to do today, really, is focus very much on those two sources, that I just mentioned, poetry and epigraphy. And I will not cite, today, any traditions-- exegetical traditions or legal traditions, not because I think that's the way to proceed, not at all, but because I think the burden of evidence is so great, it's important to clarify that the language itself does not point us in the direction that the tradition has arrived at.

So I'll begin by just reading this passage by David Heinrich Muller, published in an Austrian newspaper, Neue Freie Presse, in 1894. Oh, this is very small for me to read. OK, so I'll read the translation, here. It is a widespread and deeply rooted error, which is here exposed and corrected for the first time, that the peoples and tribes of the Peninsula have always called themselves Arabs.

In fact, the masses of people who have proudly professed and called themselves Arabs, since the advent of Muhammad, did not know the names Arabs and Arabia in pagan times. When the pagan poets extolled the virtues of the individual tribes, the national or geographical term, "Arabia" is unknown to them.

If they want to speak of all Arab tribes, if they want to express that something is common property of the entire Arab race known to them, they say all of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] knows it. And this [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is at least the mythical and common ancestor of the North Arabian race, not [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

It was only Muhammad, who United the Arab-- Arabian tribes into one nation, and formed them into a religious and state community, who spoke of an Arabic language and an Arabic Quran. The abstract Arabia is also not known in the Quran.

So this, incidentally, appeared in a very normal newspaper-- as you can see, there are patent-leather chair ads and chocolate ads-- in the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or the ground floor of the front page. And so on some day in 1894, April, Austrians had their coffee and croissant or-- I don't know. Is that what they have in Vienna-- in the morning.

And they read about pre-Islamic Arabia and the meaning of Arabness, which I find that just incredible because this is an exceedingly learned article. It's not really toned down at all. And it invited a response from Theodor Noldeke, another very well-known orientalist, who said, "this silence that you speak of is not really the case.

And there are many [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or witnesses, for a concept of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Arabness, in the pre-Islamic period. And so by my count, Noldeke, in The Encyclopedia Biblica, mentioned nine different witnesses.

Following Noldeke, this topic has been looked at very fleetingly-- [? Watt ?] von Grunebaum. But no one has really gone back to see, what can we really say about this corpus, is there something we can add to it or is this the final word, or is there something wrong with it, until Peter Webb, in 2016, wrote Imagining the Arabs. And he actually tried to see if he could find more. And he did.

According to him though, Noldeke has only six [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to which he adds a seventh. But I could not figure out exactly how he counted six. So some of these, I think he never saw. Some of the Hassan verses, he probably discounted because they don't speak of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] but [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which he must have read as Bedouin, and therefore dismissed. But he also double counted, I think, number two.

So I'm not sure exactly how he gets to six. But the reality is, whether we have two or-- according to Webb, in fact, two of these only are free of serious problems. And I admit, quite a few of these are very problematic, like the one by Zuhayr, for instance.

But some of these that got the axe, they really are deserving of more thought. And some of the problems that Webb points out have answers. But be that as it may, whether we have 2 or 7 or 10, it remains the case that Arabness does not seem to have had much currency in the pre-Islamic period.

And when we see late texts, such as the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. But the reality is that we can probably triple Noldeke's list if we include derivatives of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] that are not commonly thought to denote Arabness, but in fact do, as I will argue today.

So this is a fragment from the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], when it's considered as such by Abid ibn al-Abras, in which he says-- he mentions a number of toponyms in three verses. And then he says, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. There is not an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] left there, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

And this kind of negation of the presence of any [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is a common topos throughout the Arabic poetry. And I will propose that this [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is not any different from what, in modern Arabic, is an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

Lyall translates this. And incidentally, Lyall, as he points out very nicely in his introduction, these two [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] of Abid ibn al-Abras and of Amir ibn at-Tufail are amongst the most reliable [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] attributed to a single poet that have come down to us.

So he translates it here as no soul is left of them there. This is the translation in meaning. And it's perfectly accurate. That is exactly what the poet wants to convey. But the word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] should have an actual meaning, besides the sense in which it's used. And that actually meaning is certainly not any man.

al-Khansa is a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] poetess of Suwaylim. And so she says, here, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. A desolate ruin, not an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] residing there, in times of hardship or ease. This occurs in [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] commentary on Khansa's Diwan. And he says something very interesting, if you see here. He says, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. An [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is someone who speaks Arabic.

But this definition is really almost unknown in Islamic tradition. And al-Azhari, whose dictionary is probably the most important single work of its kind, written in the fourth century, all he has to say about this term is [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is an idiomatic expression by which it's meant, there is no one in the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], no one in the land.

al-Zabidi, who writes [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the 18th century CE, he adds that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is the equivalent of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and both of these are not to be used except negatively. Very strange thing to prescribe.

But if we go back to Khalil and his [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], he also knows of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] only as used in a negative expression. But he's aware of a different or maybe original meaning, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So he considers it equivalent of an Arab.

And these expressions-- so in this case, we have [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. But in other cases, we have a number of other terms-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], et cetera, all of which seem to have been kind of forgotten over time. Their intelligibility is reduced to just this type of idiomatic usage.

And so there's a degree of fossilization here. But there's also, I think, a degree of error. If you see on the right, [? al-Azmeh ?] says, in this report attributed to him, he says, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So he's saying, this is the correct expression and not this, which is a very different thing to say. But I think it has been misunderstood. And so led to this kind of rule that Zabidi proposes.

And you can see this is a list of all the terms Zabidi says are equivalent in meaning to [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and are only known from this same kind of expression. And many of these terms, I'm very certain, actually had very different meanings that are basically lost to the lexicographers. And [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] does not occur at all in classical-- in Islamic-era poetry.

This is incidentally-- this is the cover that I used for the presentation. And you can see here, right there is the verse. And this is produced by a Mustafa [? Al-Adam, ?] who died in 1933. He rendered it as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] because he didn't the word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And I don't know much about this [? Adam. ?] Perhaps he didn't know Arabic poetry very well. But the term has basically lost its intelligibility, more or less. It mainly figures, in Islamic times, as a proper name.

So if we see here, in this poem from the Mufaddaliyat, this poet says-- and he's a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] either of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] or of a different tribe, Abd al-Qays. He says, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So he says, my brother and your brother, which is a common literary device to say you and I, and to speak of battle.

So let's meet in the belly of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Valley, where there isn't an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to interfere with us. Now here again, he's using it in the negative sense. But it's very valuable because he's saying there is not an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] can be of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

But maybe an arib can be of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] or of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] So arib is a type. It's not a proper noun, whereas [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is a proper noun.

And the same poet-- oh-- yeah, I somehow skipped this. So this same poet, earlier in the same poem, actually, he says, even if an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] shall wrong me, he shall remain to me or I shall nevertheless treat him as if he were most dear and close. So he's very gracious, has these great manners. Then he very graciously invites this same [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to battle. That is at least-- that is my reading of it. He's saying any man-- if any man shall wrong me.

But the commentators actually have something else to say. They say this [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is his horse. Another one says this [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is some man. But nothing in the poem actually alludes to that. And I think there's a degree of unwillingness to see this term being used outside of the idiomatic expression. Notice he does not negate, here, the presence of an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

OK, so finally we have Dhi l-Rumma, who's not a pre-Islamic poet by any means. He died in 117 of the Islamic era. But he's very well known for preserving that same pre-Islamic, classical idiom. And he says here, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], not [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] which [? abu-Amer ?] basically interprets as wandering, people who just wander. They have no destination.

So if we accept that, we would read it as wandering [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] who avoid every town, afraid of what may befall them. And he's alluding here to the idea of the desert as a place of salubrity, and the town as a place of illness and plague, something Lawrence Conrad has discussed extensively.

But here, a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is, I think, the plural of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. This is not something anyone has proposed. In fact, the lexicographers tell us this is-- sometimes they tell us this is the plural of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is already a group. It's already a plural. And then this is a compound plural. It's a group of groups.

That is, I think, to be rejected out of hand. And I think this has much to do with just the antiquity of this term. But a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] form like [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] would produce a plural just like this, whereas this is some kind of compound plural, I think, is just being creative and trying to figure out what it means.

OK, so the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], to conclude, is much more reliably attested than [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and really changes our perception of what the poets had to say. Noldeke proposed that it's equivalent or comparable in meaning to [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And Noldeke did this without seeing any of the verses I have just shown. And he did it very tentatively, actually.

But he was right. I think he was exactly right. And the plural form, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], should correspond to the same singular [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], rather than the plural form, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is likely a dialectal variant. Actually, I don't think that any longer. So I think they were both used together, by people speaking the same Arabic, same dialect. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], however, is a plurale tantum. It has no singular.

And unlike the name [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and variant forms have no genealogical component, as shown by their usage in poetry. They appear, rather, to point primarily to a common ethno-linguistic identity. And so this is why they're so rare. Whereas [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] designated a large, tribal confederation, and so it's frequently attested in poetry, terms such as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] had little utility in the paradigm of personal or tribal identity.

If someone belonged to [? Tamim, ?] for instance, they were no less or more foreign from someone who belonged to [? Sulaym ?] than a Persian or a Roman. It was your tribe that identified who you were.

So we can see that Arabness was very much known to the pre-Islamic poets, even if it did not have the same significance it acquired in Islamic times. Possibly the decline and extinction of this older terminology is related to the generation of a new Arabo-Islamic terminology, in which Arabness was no longer related to the production of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], meaning a common language, but to an ethnos, an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] ethnos.

So I'm going to continue now, to look at [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] rather than Arabness. And so while [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] falls out of usage in Islamic times, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] actually becomes a very important term. And it becomes a legal term that defines someone's status. In Umayyad times, to take to the desert and have an independent life outside of the town was criminalized as to [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

And the main view, you could say, goes back to al-Azhari. It's encapsulated perfectly by al-Azhari. So this is the classical view of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. One says an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] man to describe a Bedouin-- a Bedouin, someone who seeks pasture and land where rainfall is collected, whether he be one of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] or they're [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So even [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in the time of al-Azhari's writing, were typically not even Arabs. They didn't have a proper Arab descent, a pedigree.

So he's saying there's no genealogical connection whatsoever. The plural forms of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. Now this is sounds-- what he's saying is reflecting the reality of spoken Arabic at that time. But this is not actually-- this is a vulgar derivation. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] cannot derive from [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in fact. You cannot have a common noun that produces the singularness by form. And the poets never used it this way, never. It doesn't ever exist in poetry.

So he continues to say, whoever takes up residence in the open country, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or its environs, tends to a flock as do its people, and perpetuates their customs. And such are the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So it's almost a scientific definition, almost. It means exactly nomadism. And there's no linguistic component. There's no genealogical component.

On the other hand, those who belong, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], meaning by descent to the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and take up residence in fertile lands, living in cities and villages and the like, then such are the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], whether or not they are fluent speakers of the language.

So you will not see anything different from this in any Arabic lexicon produced after Azhari's time. In fact, Azhari is frequently-- this passage is replicated with or without attribution in all of them. Regarding the Quran, he says-- this is the verse, the first verse we looked at, that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] should not claim that they're believers. He says, these are people from the Bedouin Arabs who came to the prophet at Medina, seeking charity, and not actually having any interest in Islam. And thus, God called them [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

Notice, to say that God called them [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is making a very different comment than saying [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means Bedouin. It's almost implying that it has some other meaning. And those intended in the other verses, such as 9:97 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. They are of like character.

We also find Azhari claiming that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] can be relinquished very easily, where the people of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] who reside in the country, to come to the city and assimilate, they are called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and no longer called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

But a very different view does exist in the literature. And this is that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is actually a plural of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And it means the full expanse of the tribes. So al-Wazir al-Maghribi in his [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

He writes-- he lists 13 distinct etymologies and ways for [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And he weighs the evidence for each. And based on the frequency of attestations, he prefers the view that the Arabs were called that for their linguistic ability, that basically Arabness is connected to the production of language.

And he says about [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] though he's very careful to not speak of the Quran at all. He doesn't bring the Quran into his discussion whatsoever. But he says the word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is used to denote the whole of the Arab. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] based exclusively on poetical sources.

This is also the view of a al-Tibrizi, who is yet later, fifth century [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and then al-Radiyy al-Astarabadhi, who is seventh century. And these are very late. But they are views to be taken very seriously because these authorities were not interested, except in the linguistic dimensions of these terms. They were not trying to apply it to the Quran or to any religious text.

And Tibrizi is probably one of the most acclaimed commentators on pre-Islamic poetry. So he says [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is the plural form of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is the plural form of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. People differentiated between the two meanings by relegating [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to one who possesses a sound [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] pedigree, even if he resided in the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the Garrison towns.

And the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] were identified as the people of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], even though the linguistic basis of the two terms is one. However, it seems that a distinction was drawn between the two similar names in order to achieve greater precision of meaning.

So I'm going to look here at some verses that actually substantiate precisely what we just read. These are not actually cited by those sources. And these are, in every case, Islamic-era poets. The word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], to my knowledge, is never used in pre-Islamic Arabia. But these are people writing in the early-Islamic era. And ostensibly, their understanding of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is precisely what we see in the Quran.

I will say Hassan ibn [? Thabit, ?] like this verse, for instance, this poem, is a very doubtful attribution to Hassan. His corpus, in particular, is plagued with problems. But in many cases, to use the poetry as a linguistic proof text is really not a problem because poetry required the poet to confine himself to this classical idiom. And they rarely deviate from it.

So he says here, our swords and lances we made for them, a shelter and refuge from the aggression of the army and the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] So the collocation of army and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] does not fit well with us reading [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] because the army obviously also comprises [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So here, it would be fair to say it's implying that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are Bedouin, some kind of mercenary unit or auxiliary-area unit or something like that. But like I said, this verse is really not-- this is, as [? Walid ?] [? Arafat ?] has shown, this is written by a much, much later on Saudi poet. And is not from Hassan's time.

So the verses we will see now are roughly in increasing order of reliability. So Hassan-- he says here, Hassan is the quintessential Mukhadram poet. He was the prophet's own poet. And he wrote poetry before Islam and after Islam. So he says here, they targeted with their attack the Prophet, gathering against him the people of the town and the Bedouin of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

Notice if you're saying-- if the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are Bedouin, he would be saying the Bedouin of the Bedouin. In another poem, he-- and this was cited by Noldeke. Noldeke cited this one and the next two. So he says here, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So the vilest amongst the settlers of the garrison towns are their settlers. So this is a Lampoon against Hawazin, one of the great confederations. And the vilest Bedouin of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], their Bedouin. Now he could easily say, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the vilest of the Bedouin are their Bedouin.

But [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] can only be intelligible here if it means something else, something besides Bedouin, meaning, just as [? Wazir ?] [? al-Maghribi ?] for example, if we insert his definition here, it's the expanse of Arabic tribes, Arab tribes. So he's saying the vilest Bedouin of the different tribes are their Bedouin.

Hassan also has a lot of poems that celebrate the Hassan to which he was attached-- his tribe was attached to the Hassan, who were Roman clients. And these are usually thought to be amongst the most reliable part of his whole corpus. In fact, however, this poem is probably not written by him, but by [? Abu ?] [? Norman ?] Bashir ibn Sa'd.

But that really doesn't take anything away from its value because this is contemporaneous with Hassan. Very likely, it's a case of the more acclaimed poet's name being attached to a less illustrious poet's name, just to promote the poetry.

So he says here, the water-- alluding to the Hassan. Hassan were frequently given this metaphorical treatment in poetry. It hurried by night, then alighted at Yathrib, near to dawn. And in the land through which they coursed were [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the desert and at their camps.

OK, so the water, he says about it, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. Now if [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] here, means Bedouin, he would be saying that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the Bedouin, are Bedouin, and settled. And in fact, this is a conservative rendering of it. It's possible that the bad-- because [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], or to be Bedouin, it wasn't considered as something entirely separate from the lifestyle of the settled.

There was a lot of porosity between these. And this was more of an activity than it was a state of being. So someone is out at the desert or someone is at their camps, which was considered being settled. And then they would go back to being Bedouin again.

But he may very well be speaking about [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which is pre-Islamic Medina, in which case he would possibly be saying that you have Bedouin peoples and you have settled peoples all of which he calls [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

And so the final [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], I think, is the most valuable of all. First of all, this is a lampoon, a lampoon with purely local relevance. It's not really conceivable someone would produce this kind of poetry after this time, much less attribute it to Hassan. It also does not make use of any cognate of being Bedouin, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], nothing like that.

So this is directed at al-Harith ibn Hisham ibn al-Mughira, who is a Meccan, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. He says your meanness makes it evident your mother was not born, except of a mixture of the vilest of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So he's pointing out that your lineage is mixed and impure because your mother's lineage. People insult people's mothers, I guess. This is just what people do.

So this person he is alluding to is [? Asma, ?] the daughter of [? Muharraba ?] who is [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] clan of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] I don't know if you can see the very top. And [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], one of the largest and most powerful tribes in North Arabia.

So what he's alluding to is, according to [? Barkuki, ?] who writes a commentary on this [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], he's alluding to a genealogical defect that lies two generations above. Lampoons were usually based on exposing [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which are defects that are almost always genealogical.

So this Asma was allegedly the daughter of a slave of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and was appropriated, at some point by [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So on that, you can see poem 178. And actually, MJ Kister wrote an article on this topic, called On the Wife of the Goldsmith From Fadak. So this person who appropriated this girl, fathered, with her, an unnamed daughter, whose ownership, while a slave woman, passed from the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And then she would come to be the wife of Amr and the mother of Asma.

[COUGHS]

Excuse me. So whether this story is to be accepted at face value or not, the point is that, why is this woman, of this clan, being associated with this term, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]? And so if we try to insert Bedouinness in here, it makes no sense at all. It makes absolutely no sense. To think that your mother was not born except of a mixture of the vilest of nomads does not make any sense.

For one, this tribe, so [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in Islamic usage, is always negative. It's always negative. There's no positive connotation to it. And this tribe, Darim of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], was considered immensely prestigious. Many of Muhammad's companions had brides that were of precisely this tribe.

So there was nothing-- there was no stigma attached to the tribe. However, if we go by [? Barkuki's ?] explanation, it would seem that it's a stab at his lineage because of the very fact that this mother of his, or grandmother of his, the sexual defilement of this woman made her-- his standing-- her standing, and then by consequence, his standing, precarious. So he could not claim a clear lineage.

So it remains possible to force a reading of these kinds of poems, to force a reading of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in Hassan's poetry, as Bedouin. But the poetry does not allude to any concern with Bedouins. And such a reading appears to pervert the intended meaning of the poetry.

We come up with things like this, the people of the village and the nomads of the nomads. And we come up with, and the nomads are nomads and settled or your mother was of a mixture of nomads. Nomadism-- exogamy was practiced more by the settled people than by the nomadic people. On its face, it makes no sense to bring up nomadism here.

And so those who opposed Azhari were speaking of precisely such materials as we have just looked at. And they did not consider, as Azhari did, how the Quranic Arabia was impacted by the definition they proposed. And so it would appear that Arabia really did not acquire the meaning imputed to it by Azhari until some later stage.

OK, so I'm going to be I'm going to bridge a little here. I'm going to bridge a little and run through this. So here's a painting that we will pretend is called Oranges on China. OK? What is common about these two terms? Anyone can take a guess? And I will give you a hint, OK, for the non Arabists. And Arabic is called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in Arabic. So if we think of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and china, what do these have in common?

OK, well if you think of something, let me know. Otherwise, I'll give it away soon enough. OK, so this is what Arabia looks like today, as far as languages spoken. The blue, it's all Arabic. But on the right, you can see there are these pockets of other languages that remain spoken today, in South Arabia. And these go back to a time of immense linguistic diversity.

In the South, what the Greeks thought of as Arabia Felix, this was not Arabia, really. This was not the land of the Arabs. They did not consider themselves Arabs. They did not speak Arabic. And even in the North, you had many different strains of either dialects or languages that were in the desert, in the oases. And they were not necessarily related very closely to each other.

One of them is Safaitic that you see here. And so we've had immense growth in our study of Safaitic texts. One of the scholars who has at the forefront of that is Ahmad Al-Jallad who recently published two Safaitic texts for the first time in which someone uses the word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] as a means of self identification.

So this person, whose name is Dahban, the son of Yamlek, et cetera, et cetera, he camped and took possession of the watering hole the year thirst afflicted [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

His brother, Moquim-- notice it's the same pedigree-- he also says that he camped and took the watering hole the year thirst afflicted [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. So [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is used here-- Jallad concludes, basically, that this is good evidence to conclude that it's not only an exonym. People did identify as Arabs. It wasn't just a term applied to them from outsiders.

But on the question of whether [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in these texts, pertains to Arabness or Bedouinness, he remains more equivocal. Perhaps he proposes the common lifestyle of the Safaitic Bedouin is what led them to conceive of themselves as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

He does, however, observe that there is no evidence in these inscriptions to indicate that there is any dichotomy between nomad and settled. And he also observes that there are a number of indications that the language spoken by the Safaitic Bedouin was thought of as Arabic. It was called Arabic.

So I would rule out entirely that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] here, means Bedouin. It means Arabs. And part of the evidence is what just preceded, that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are a conglomeration of tribes of Arabs. Drought did not strike just one tribe. It struck everyone in the region. This is exactly where you would use that term.

Another reason is that the poets never seem to-- they don't evince any kind of recognition of themselves as nomads. And this isn't very different from ourselves today. We are all settled people. We don't really pay attention to the fact that we're settled. But if we see a Bedouin group, we become obsessed with the fact that they are Bedouin. That becomes exactly who they are.

And the poets were just like that. They had words for settled people because they had big, tall buildings. They watered crops. They looked different. And so they paid no attention, except to what conflicted with their own worldview. Their own poetry, however, was aimed at-- just like the Safaitic texts, they are aimed at a local audience, to be consumed by others who are just like them.

In South Arabia-- and I will probably run through just two examples. We have many, many texts in which the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] feature as part of the-- now we're not looking at Safaitic now. This is the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], script or the Sabaic script from South Arabia, which goes back to the 8th century BCE.

This text is [? Ideani ?] 32. It comes from the mid or late fourth century. It describes the war for the conquest of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And this is a time in which the different polities in South Arabia-- if we go back to this map, you see here the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], they were employing large numbers of mercenaries from North Arabia. And these were called, most frequently, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So scholars, I think, have been impacted by the fact that the meaning of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in the Quran, in Islamic usage, is very stable, as it's presumed. So some, such as Muhammad [? Bayhaqi, ?] he says every time you see [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in a South Arabian text, it means Bedouin. But [? Jan ?] [? Rezzo ?] says, every time you see [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], it does not mean Bedouin.

Christian Robin, meanwhile, says both meanings can coexist and that the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] usually implies nomads or nomadic warriors. But [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means just Arabs. And I think this is a much more realistic scenario. But I have an intervention there as well. I don't think [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] ever means Bedouin. It evokes with Bedouin. But it never means anything except Arabs.

So this text illustrates perfectly what Robin is saying. The fluidity in the usage, if you compare-- so this is [INAUDIBLE], of the-- he was the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. He's the chief of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- of the King of Saba and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. Everything is transliterated directly. So the vowels are not there.

But if you see the bold text, I'm going to compare that with the-- and there's bold text down here and at the bottom. And I'm going to compare that with this underlined text. Notice here, contingent of our [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And notice here, 300 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] soldiers.

On the other hand, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] of the King of Saba [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] we know very little about. But this underlined portion would suggest that these are Arabs who have fealty to the King of Saba, and belong to these different groups, meaning they are a part of these different groups because [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] was an Arab tribe. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], they were Arab-speaking populace.

But when he uses [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], they are a type, a contingent of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] soldiers. Right? So the problem is, however, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] shows up where you would expect [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. And [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] shows up where you would expect [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

If we go back to this inscription from the Temple of Awwam, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- which goes back to, actually, the seventh century BCE, but in this case, our inscription is from the first century-- this person is speaking about nomads. We know that because he was dispatched to the land of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in order to seek out and seize some Bedouin auxiliaries.

The term "Bedouin auxiliaries," that is all indicated by the term [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which in Arabic, would mean people who accompany you, has the same meaning in Safaitic. So they captured these people and. They confiscated their riding animals. And they marched them back to Marib.

So these people were not happy with whatever job they had been given. You can see that the [? Sabaeans ?] are lording it over them. This is a much earlier stage, when probably interactions with North Arabians were much less. So notice, the only time any derivative of Arab appears is to describe the land of the Arabian.

And a final pair of texts comes from the opposite end of our spectrum, from the sixth century CE, when a monotheist [? Himyar ?] had basically achieved full dominion over the South. These are two authors writing about the same events. They say, I was standing on guard with the tribe of Hamdan, citizens, and nomads, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

It must be the participle because of how it's used with the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], something I have not seen attested anywhere else. And then Reichmanns 508. Instead of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] he uses [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So I propose that it's a matter of usage, not a matter of meaning, and that both terms were actually considered synonymous. You can see the two authors are using both the two different terms to say exactly the same thing. so? One is saying I stood guard with the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

The other one's saying, the settled of them, the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], mirroring precisely, in Islamic times, the antithesis between the emigrants and the non-emigrants, the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

So both derivatives really are used in a manner that implies a military function. Any neat distinction ultimately proves unsustainable, whether it's the military aspect or the Bedouin aspect. And these ideas, the military role and the Bedouin character, they have a dedicated vocabulary.

I'll just say this in summary form. There's an actual terminology for those meanings. But Arab may satisfactorily stand in for camel-mounted warriors or something like that, if that is what they typically did.

And so the increasing reliance of the South Arabian polities on Bedouin troops, I think, strengthened this association. And it resulted in the stereotypical conception of the Arabs.

Most of our epigraphic materials come from that time of intense interaction, late second to early third century CE. Every inscription I just showed is from that period, excepting the very early one. And so by the fourth to sixth centuries, the Arab tribes such as Kinda and Madhhij were increasingly enmeshed in the Himyarite South. And the stereotype was very widespread.

And so you can see it's amplified to where-- and I'm going to ask, once again, the china and orange question very quickly. But I'm giving you a clue, here-- where something is turning into something else. OK, so anyone have the answer now, now that we've gotten this far?

[? MOHSEN GOUDARZI: ?] Is there an online answer?

[? SPEAKER 2: ?] There's one suggestion. Oranges originally come from China?

RAASHID GOYAL: That's almost there. But no. The china comes from China. Right, so-- so OK, I'll give it in just another moment. So this is how the North Arabians imagined themselves. Or this is how they depicted themselves.

OK, this is a chariot. And you can see how-- notice how the horses are painted in this very idiosyncratic way. And of course, the camels were an emblem, and have always been, of the North Arabians. And here is another one for good measure.

So what I'm suggesting is that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are to the nomads what Portugal is to the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and what China is to the Chinese. At some point, the Portuguese started importing this fruit. it was called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] because it was the Portuguese fruit. And when you ate it, you thought about that fact. You knew that it was the Portuguese fruit. But today, you could talk about [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and Portugal in the same breath and no one would draw any connection because the fruit has-- the name has become its name and that's it.

And the same with china. China was-- originally, could not have china except from China. It had to be from China. Today, it doesn't have that meaning at all.

So what we're seeing in these inscriptions, I think, is the beginning of that process, where the noun, the proper noun, is being turned into this generic type. But it's not a process that is ever completed.

And so how were the two divorced? How did we arrive at the Islamic usage of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]? And as I said today, I didn't cite any traditions, any exegetical traditions, any legal traditions. But that is how, in fact, we understand how we arrive there.

I don't know if I can show this. It's too small, really, to make sense of. So let's not do that.

So in summary, Arabo-Islamic identity took some time to congeal. And this process was shaped fundamentally by two things. One is [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in which a number of tribes who had claimed Islam either decided not to pay taxes or they followed antiprophets who competed with Muhammad or they had never really abandoned their paganism at all.

And this occurred towards the end of Muhammad's career, and took up the caliphate of Abu Bakr, who was victorious against these tribes and successfully conquered them, and thereafter, the conquest of Mesopotamia and Persia, and forays into Byzantium.

At this time, Arabness really came to mean something very different because the typical subjects of the Arabs were non-Arabs. And so by the turn of the first century, Arabness could be juxtaposed with foreignness, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. But this concept had no place in tribal Arabia.

As I said before, a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] was no more or less foreign from a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] than he was from a Persian or a Roman. Tribe-- one's tribe was all the nation or ethnos or polity that one needed.

There is a sensitivity perceptible, in the Quran and Islamic tradition, against this very close bond to one's tribe. For instance, one of-- it's perfectly illustrated by the experimental policy that Muhammad established in Medina, by which you did not inherit except by choosing residence in Medina. So someone's father would not bequeath his own son, even if they both were Muslims, unless they both resided in Medina.

And the early caliphs definitely went much further by, in fact, intentionally destabilizing the tribal structure, by encouraging the abandonment of a nomadic lifestyle, and even by forced settlements.

And so coinages such as Arab, as Bedouin, and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] as Bedouinization, they belong, really, to no earlier stage than the caliphate of Umar, and are likely even later. In the first case, it is likely later. In the second case, it is certainly later.

And so someone as late as [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], who died in 311, he's talking about the verse in the Quran in which God is speaking about the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to come. It is a prophetic prophecy of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to come, in which the Arabs revolt. And God will deliver them by sending a better people. So Tabari prefers that these people are the Yemenis. He says God made true on his promise. And he delivered the Muslims by way of the Yemenis in the time of Umar.

The Yemenis' position, vis a vis Islam, was the best for they were supporters of the people of Islam, and much more beneficial than those who apostatized after the prophet. the scum of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and the coarse people of the country, who were a burden upon Islam and not a benefit to it. So even at this very late stage, the connection of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] to this title still has echoes.

And so what do we get from Arabness being inserted into the Quran in this way? If [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means Arabness, we have to conclude that Arabo-Islamic identity, not Islamic identity, but Arabo-Islamic identity, was not a fundamental part of Muhammad's vision of the new community. Only an Islamic identity, devoid of any kind of real connection to an ethnic group.

If at all Arabness was a component of the early Islamic polity, it was restricted to affording a privileged status to [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], to recognizing the military strength and prestige of the dominant tribes. And in fact, this is where we get a very good explanation for why the Quran is so harsh against the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].

Muhammad's actual policy was to attract the chiefs of the tribes. He gave them great gifts, camels, hundreds of camels, lands of grant, a policy that made many very unhappy. It's, I think, very plausible that the kind of rhetoric against the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the Quran is giving the stick to which the carrot was actually the policy of what was called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], the softening of the hearts, by giving these gifts.

Possibly, Arabness has something to do with whether or not you belong to the ancient religious classes of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] or [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in pre-Islamic times. I won't get into what that entails, exactly. But it's interesting to note none of the tribes that are called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the exegetical tradition-- there are about eight tribes that are typically associated with the verses-- they all belong to [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and not to the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] coalition or the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] group that belong to [? Hums. ?]

But is [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] really a type at all in the Quran? It's very possible that it's not I'm willing to consider both options. And I don't really conclude one way or another. But the masking of individuals' identities and groups' identities is characteristic of the Quran. Quranic titles are almost all extra tribal. And they center on acts of piety or impiety. The [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are the emigrants. The [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are the helpers. Those who make a big show of giving and being pious, they are actually hypocrites. And the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] et cetera.

So the ambiguous term, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], was likely understood by the Quran's audience is directed at certain groups due to events that had transpired. To mention those names would have been permanently offensive. The tribe's name would have been blemished.

So it's not at all surprising that the intent is purposely concealed. But it was probably known who the addressees are. The exegetes think they know. I think that's very plausible. It just keeps going, doesn't it?

And so to the degree that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] comprised a distinct type, if that is the case, it would have denoted tribal groups that maintained their internal hierarchy and semi-independence. So these groups, who played a very important role in early Islam, they all had their own chiefs. They didn't live in Medina. And their allegiance was still to their own tribes.

The full believers were those who had relinquished their natural ties of fealty, either by emigrating and settling in Mecca, or by becoming committed helpers of the Meccan emigrants. So the obfuscation of tribal identity that the Quran intends to do, it created the opportunity for the term to be remolded, to fit, later, substantially different circumstances. Bedouinness, in the Qur'anic period, simply did not matter. And with that, I arrive at the end. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Do you have questions?

[? SPEAKER 2: ?] I do you have some questions. Would you like to take some questions? OK, absolutely.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: I have [? 14 ?] questions. So let me first-- thank you so much for this really informative and provocative and thought provoking presentation. Let me first solicit questions from the room and then we'll go to the online audience. So are there any questions from participants, here? Yes, please.

AUDIENCE: Thank you. That was a very intense presentation. And it's lovely to see [? all ?] this work. How did you make sense of the distinction between the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]?

It occurs in two instances, I think, in either 101 and 120. What's your reading of that? Are the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] separate from the Arab, if you're saying that group word is applicable and--

RAASHID GOYAL: Right.

AUDIENCE: --it's calling Arabs generally. What's going on there? How do you how do you understand that?

RAASHID GOYAL: Yeah, thank you for that question. If I understand correctly, I think what you're asking is-- there's an implication in the Quran that the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are not the people in Medina. They're excluded from the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. Is that-- is that--

AUDIENCE: May I read the verse--

RAASHID GOYAL: Yeah

AUDIENCE: --for you? And I think I have [? Abdu ?] [? Halim's ?] translation.

RAASHID GOYAL: Desert Arabs, yep.

AUDIENCE: Yes. "The people of Medina and their neighboring desert Arabs should not have held back," da, da, da, da-da.

RAASHID GOYAL: Right, right, right.

AUDIENCE: So it's that distinction between the Medinese and the group that you were interested in.

RAASHID GOYAL: Right. So in , Arabic you can say, for instance, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], and mean, by it, not that all the young people went to the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], but only three specific ones. You can do that. And I think that's what's happening here.

When the Quran is speaking of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], everyone knows that it's speaking of certain specific groups who are intentionally not named. And probably-- well, the exegetes like to propose [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- they mentioned those two very often. In specific verses, they mention Assad and specific verses, Tamim I mean it usually revolves around these four groups.

Now [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] were very loyal tribes, very loyal tribes. They did not participate in the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. They never deviated, basically. They were always true to their attachment to Islam.

It would make a lot of sense if, in fact, groups like that are intended here because it's only to those whose fealty is basically confirmed that you can use such a harsh rhetoric and expect them to fall in line rather than rebel, which is, I think, what's happening here. I don't think these are real opponents. I think these are laggards or people who were somehow deficient in showing up on time and having all the--

And so it was understood by everyone-- and the verse alludes to the fact that they are [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], because these are tribes who lived in the vicinity of Medina-- who are being blamed for their actions, specific actions and specific groups.

Everyone knows what is being talked about. And I think that is what fits. To think that this is speaking of nomads at large, I think is absurd. Why? Why? Why should this verse and other verses like it be directed at all if-- I don't think nomadism has anything to do with the picture at all.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Are there questions Here? I think we have a few questions from the online audience that also revolve, or close to, [INAUDIBLE] question, in the sense that if [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are used as people who are outsiders, what does that tell us about the identity of the prophet and his followers? How would they-- were they also [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]?

RAASHID GOYAL: Yeah, so like I said, it's possible that the Quran is just going out of its way to conceal the identity of who is being spoken of. And so it's always understood the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] are those [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in which case, we are also [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], is part of that implicit understanding, meaning if you live in Medina, you are still--

But it is also possible that Muhammad, at least, or everyone in Medina, or some number of Muslims, conceived of themselves as just something totally different, something that could no longer be spoken of and attached to Arabness. And if this is the case-- there's a lot of evidence that is suggestive of that.

The Quran does not call anyone anything except almost that the term is brand new, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] for instance, has no importance in pre-Islamic poetry. No one is talking about [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. But [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], in the Quran, is one of the greatest acts of piety. And a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is a believer par excellence.

So I think it is-- and the fact that one did not-- so many of these Medinans had either wives or relatives who were of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. They were intermarried amongst each other for many generations. And they were their allies even before Islam.

And the exegetes reliably inform us on this point, that in the early years of Islam, one could not inherit from such relatives even if they were Muslims because they didn't live in Medina. You had to live in Medina.

So I think this-- it fits with this state of affairs, that you would think of the Arabs as something else altogether. We are just-- we are the believers, period. And so that's, I think, one way of reading it.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Thank you. There's one-- there are few questions from, actually, Professor Zellentin who's joined us online. And one of them is that he says, "I find almost all of this very persuasive. But you mentioned some caliphs took steps against tribal structures, perhaps only the tribal structures of others in order to strengthen their own tribes."

RAASHID GOYAL: Oh, yeah, I'm not-- even not just the caliphs, but like I said, even though Muhammad had this attitude towards tribalism-- and there are many traditions. Which of them are to be accepted as plausibly genuine or is not a question to get into right now. But I think by and large, this is an attitude not implausibly imputed to the prophet himself.

But even so, Quraysh were the preeminent tribe. So there's two sides to it. Your fealty for your tribe is often blameworthy. But still, have to recognize that the Quraysh are Quraysh. So it can go both ways. And if there's a contradiction there, sometimes there's a contradiction there.

Umar and Abu Bakr and the different caliphs absolutely, I think, recognized the status of Quraysh and were very lenient with the Meccans in line with the prophet's own policies. But they were very hostile in some ways, Umar especially, to many of the tribes who moved to the new garrison towns.

And he split them up in a manner that really-- just disrupted their whole structure. So the tribe has to be together, for one. He forced them into different groups, which obviously had a negative impact on the cohesiveness of the tribe.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Very good. [? Abdullah ?] [? Galadari ?] has a couple questions. I'll read one of them, in which he has an interesting suggestion. So he first says, "Thanks, Roger, for a wonderful and insightful talk. Just a crazy food for thought, not that I agree to it yet, but it's just something that came to my mind.

The word "Arab," in many Semitic languages, such as Ugaritic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician, and Ge'ez, can also mean a guarantor or a trader from which even the Arabic, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], meaning deposit, is derived.

Is it possible to think of the Quranic [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] as guarantors or traders, especially when taking into context verse 11 in the Surah, [? al-fatiha, ?] Surah 48, where the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] expressed that they were busy with their money, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], because Bedouins would not have typically used money, but cattle to trade, or as a status of wealth. Many religious traditions usually viewed rich people negatively. And perhaps the Quran is no different."

RAASHID GOYAL: Wow. Yeah. Wow. Well, that's-- and thank you. Thank you, Abdullah for that-- and I'm not surprised that you have this very provocative view. The issue with that, without giving it a lot of thought, is that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] is Arabized very superficially. It has no verbal form.

So in Arabic, yes, to give someone a down payment that remains with them if you choose not to purchase is called an [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] even today. But there's no verbal form for that, no verbal form. So I would-- just on the face of it, I would say this the Syriac usage cannot-- has very limited currency in Arabic. And this is a typical Syriac usage. They have verbal forms for it. So that's that. this there's a separation here.

And another thing I should clarify is that I have no idea where the name [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] comes from. I don't have a claim as to what it originally meant. It could have been a mountain called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. It could have been anything. I don't have a clue. And I don't think it really makes a big difference. And the word [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] goes back so far that-- but only this word is used to describe this people by all these different cultures. Every other word is always local.

So that-- and as Michael-- [? MCM ?] McDonalds has argued, that is good evidence, right there, that this is what they call themselves. And that's from where the language has its name, et cetera. And so this connection to language, the production of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], it sounds banal. But I find it convincing. This is what everyone has always said. This is what the lexicographers will tell you. They're Arabs because they speak Arabic. Of course.

It's not of course. I disagree with the of course. But I do conclude that, yes-- however, they don't say [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] has anything to do with that, of course. So that's where the deviation is.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Thanks, [INAUDIBLE]. How much time do we have?

SPEAKER 3: It's 1:29.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: 1:29. So maybe I'll field one more question, which is-- Holger has asked if you could comment on either Peter Webb's theory or Andrew [INAUDIBLE], or even Robert Hoyland's reading of [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the Quran as vernacular versus [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] as sacred language. So any of these that you want to comment on.

RAASHID GOYAL: Well, I think there's the phenomenon that all of those scholars have noticed are obvious, I think. And we all have to-- we can all appreciate that. There was a process of ethnogenesis in which Islam really transformed what it meant to be Arab.

But to go so far as to negate its existence previously, as if it came out of this vacuum and just developed in Islamic times, and then some imagination of Arabness was then retrograded-- retroactively projected to the past, I don't think the sources support that. I don't think the sources support that.

And so what Arabness meant transformed radically-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] and [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], to me, is so thinly attested in this kind of antithesis that I really have no opinion on it, very strongly, one way or another. But that [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means sacred language-- perhaps it does in some contexts. But does it mean that always? That, I find problematic.

So once again, in some cases, the very banal explanation is still, I think, a good one.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Perfect Thanks so much.

RAASHID GOYAL: Thank you. If anyone has a question that I couldn't address, I would be happy to take an email.

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Excellent. So please feel free-- I'm sorry that we couldn't get to all the questions online. Feel free to reach out to by Raashid at his email address.

SPEAKER 3: And I will send all the questions in the Q&A right to you.

RAASHID GOYAL: OK, excellent. OK, thank you. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

MOHSEN GOUDARZI: Well, thank you so much.

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Center for the Study of World Religions.