Hanna Siurua and Abdalrahman Abulmajd around The Qur'anic Pagans

We have a fresh opportunity to reflect about The Qur'anic Pagans.

At this point Hanna Siurua isn’t going to speak only about The Qur'anic Pagans but she also speaks about Professor Crone’s passing, too.

Hanna Siurua.

Hanna Siurua (BA, School of Oriental and African Studies; MA, University of Sussex) is a professional editor based in Chicago.            
She specialises in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies and has edited numerous books and articles in these as well as other fields.

Q : First of all, we thank you for agreeing this interview, I wonder how did this book come about?

HS: This book, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, is the first part of a three-volume collection of Patricia Crone’s articles. The idea for the collection was born during a visit by Professor Crone to Leiden in 2013. During that visit she gave a lecture on how the field of Islamic studies has changed over her lifetime. Subsequent discussions about the publication of that lecture grew into the idea of bringing together and reprinting a number of her recent and forthcoming articles as well as several essays that she had not yet published anywhere—including the lecture she gave in Leiden, which appears in volume 3 of the collection.

Q: You've been editing numerous books and articles in these as well as other fields, I wonder how you got involved in the project.

HS: At the time the collection was being planned, several of the articles to be included in it were still in the process of publication in various journals and edited volumes. Others remained in typescript form and needed full editing. Unfortunately, by this time Professor Crone’s advancing illness prevented her from taking an active role in bringing the collection to completion (she died of cancer in July 2015). I thus stepped in as editor to finalize all articles and to prepare the manuscript for publication.

Q: Could you elaborate on editing The Qur'anic Pagans?

HS: A big part of my work on the collection consisted of editing the unpublished articles and checking the published ones for errors. In addition, I standardized transliteration and general formatting, chased up missing or out-of-date references and other details, obtained reprint permissions, indexed all three volumes, and compiled a list of Professor Crone’s publications.

Q: I want to know how long it took to edit and check this big collection.

HS: I did most of the work on the manuscript last fall over the course of about three months, with another couple of months this spring for indexing and proofreading.

Q: Could you elaborate on the contents of this and the other two volumes?

HS: Each of the three volumes in this collection is dedicated to a particular theme.

The first volume, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, focuses on the community from which the Prophet Muhammad emerged. Most of the volume’s fifteen articles are dedicated to examining the religious beliefs and historical context of the mushrikūn, the pagans to whom Muhammad’s early preaching is primarily addressed. Professor Crone emphasized that there is much that can be learned about this community from the Qurʾān itself, and that this information does not necessarily match that provided by the later historical and exegetical tradition. She also sought to connect the Qurʾān to religious trends in the broader Near East, for example by tracing echoes of para-Biblical narratives of fallen angels in the story of Hārūt and Mārūt in the Qurʾān. Sahih International: And they followed [instead] what the devils had recited during the reign of Solomon. It was not Solomon who disbelieved, but the devils disbelieved, teaching people magic and that which was revealed to the two angels at Babylon, Harut and Marut. But the two angels do not teach anyone unless they say, "We are a trial, so do not disbelieve [by practicing magic]." And [yet] they learn from them that by which they cause separation between a man and his wife. But they do not harm anyone through it except by permission of Allah. And the people learn what harms them and does not benefit them. But the Children of Israel certainly knew that whoever purchased the magic would not have in the Hereafter any share. And wretched is that for which they sold themselves, if they only knew. In addition to these studies, the volume includes two articles on the notion of religious freedom in Islam, which discuss the history of interpretations of the lā ikrāha fī ʾl-dīn verse Yusuf Ali: Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things..

The second volume in the collection is titled The Iranian Reception of Islam: The Non-Traditionalist Strands, and it investigates Iranian religious trends both before and after the arrival of Islam. Several articles in this volume focus on a Zoroastrian heresy that was inaugurated by a certain Zarādusht of Fasā and subsequently manifested itself in the revolts of such figures as Mazdak and Muqannaʿ as well as in the sects known to Muslim heresiographers as Khurramīs. Professor Crone teases out the beliefs and practices associated with various manifestations of the heresy from a source base that is in many cases clouded by polemic, innuendo, and incredulity. The volume also contains studies of other religious influences in the history of Muslim Iran, including that of Buddhism.

Finally, the third volume, Islam, the Near East and Varieties of Godlessness, analyzes Islam in the historical context of the ancient Near East. The volume pays special attention to sceptics, materialists, and other people who did not fit the monotheist mold. These people were often given labels such as Dahrīs and Zindīqs, and their ideas were influenced by Greek philosophy and other Near Eastern traditions. The influence of these Muslim “freethinkers” may have extended as far as Europe, where Emperor Frederick II was credited with a heresy that seems to originate in the Islamic world. This volume, and indeed the entire collection, highlights the myriad ways in which the history of Islam is connected to the histories of other religions and intellectual traditions.

Q: Well, these Dahrīs and Zindīqs were often seen as atheists. How do you see Professor Crone’s ideas on atheism and atheists?

HS: Professor Crone did a lot of work on various people and movements within the eastern Islamic world that were seen as heretical (see also her last monograph, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran). But only some of these people and movements were outright atheist, in the sense of denying the existence of a deity altogether. She shows that they were typically interested in philosophy and science and often believed in the eternality of the cosmos. Some of these deniers nonetheless held religion to be a useful thing because it guaranteed social order.

Abdalrahman: Thank you very much, Ms. Hanna Siurua, this is a fascinating collection of studies.

Hanna Siurua: Thank you for this conversation.