Exegesis across Denominational Borders

To confirm the thesis that the Qur’an—though manifest as a textual fait accompli—is essentially the mirror of a historical event, a real Prophetical communication, Qur’anic scholarship needs to identify individual stages of development. One important such stage is the Middle Meccan “orchestration” of the earlier dominant form of liturgy which consisted in the recitation of the prophetically communicated texts, cf. Q. 73:4: […] wa-rattili l-Qurʾāna tartīlā, “and chant the Qur’an in measured rhythmic tones”, by a proper introduction. It is Q. 1, al-Fātiḥa, that for the first time presents such an introduction. The text is not a sura proper since the speakers are the worshippers themselves—God being the addressee. Q. 1 is a prayer which, on closer look, turns out to be an introit, very much like the beginning verse groups of the ancient Christian liturgies; it is indeed an echo of theirs—though theologically setting new accents.The liturgical character of the Qur’an has rarely been focused in recent scholarship. The paper in its first part demonstrates the microstructural analoga between the introits of Christian liturgies and the unique introductory text of Q. 1 that should have been composed at an almost determinable date, due to the rapprochement of Byzantine culture during the Great Byzantine-Persian war culminating in the Byzantine loss of Jerusalem in 614 - a number of newly emerging references, theological and liturgical, to Byzantine culture can be noted.The short second part of the paper is devoted to the case of the Qur’anic “absorption” of the Jewish and the Christian credos in the Medinan sura Q. 112, al-Iḫlāṣ. Again, the neighboring texts are mirrored in the Qur’an, being theologically negated but kept audible as a reminder of the “otherness” of the older religions.