COBHUNI
Contemporary Bioethics and the History of the Unborn in Islam (ERC Consolidator Grant)
Duration: 2015-2021
The project analyzed how imaginations of prenatal life developed in the course of Islamic History.
Team members: Doru Doroftei, Khaoula Trad, Florian Jäckel, Melanie Guénon, Alicia Gonzalez, Tilman Josua, Jenny Brakel, Tatiana Samorodova, Julia Rössing, Luisa Neumann
Publications:
Doru Doroftei, "When the Angel infuses the Soul... Some aspects of Jewish and Christian embryology in the cultural context of Late Antiquity", Judaica. Beiträge zum Verstehen des Judentums, 74, Heft 1-2 (März Juni 2018): 23-68.
This article analyses the tradition of the soul-infusing angel, a recurrent motif in early Islamic embryology, in pre-Islamic biblical traditions. The analysis aims at providing a short evaluation of the relationship between early Islamic and late antique biblical (Jewish and Christian) embryology. The article argues that the motif of the soul-infusing angel represents a widespread embryological element of the late antique religious and cultural landscape, circulating beyond religious borders in a plurality of versions and variations. Being related to the apocalyptic heritage, the motif seems to have been increasingly viewed with reservations by the emerging 'orthodoxies', both Christian and Rabbinic. Finally, this article underlines the deep interlacing of early Islamic thought with the late antique religious-cultural heritage.
Thomas Eich / Doru Doftei, Adam und Embryo. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Adamsgeschichte in jüdischen, christlichen und islamischen Texten bis zum Ende des ersten Jahrtausends. Baden Baden 2023.
This book critically analyzes the notion that there are passages in the 7th-century text of the Qur’an that reflect medical ideas of the time about the origin of human beings through pregnancy. It turns out that the Qur’an draws on a rich heritage of motifs, on the one hand baptismal theological motifs that had developed by the 7th century and on the other hand Jewish-Christian polemical debates about the nature of Jesus. The unquestionable embryological passages of the Qur’an text are to be located in this polemic, in which an image known from Jewish-Palestinian texts of the 6th century is central: the growth of every embryo occurs in the same way as God created the first human being. The image of "Adam and Embryo" accompanied the early Islamic intellectual history for several centuries before it gradually fell into oblivion.
Thomas Eich, "Patterns in the history of the commentation on the so-called ḥadīth Ibn Masʿūd", Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 18 (2018): 137-162
This paper analyzes the so-called Ibn Masʿūd ḥadīth (see below) on two levels: the specific wording of the ḥadīth on the one hand and a significant portion of the commentation written about it since the 10th century until today on the other. This aims at three things. First, I will show how the ḥadīth’s exact wording still developed after the stabilization of the material in collections. Although this development occurred only on the level of single words, it can be shown that it is a reflection of discussions documented in the commentaries. Therefore, these specific examples show that there was not always a clear line separating between ḥadīth-text and commentaries on that text. Second, the diachronic analysis of the commentaries will provide material for a nuanced assessment in how far major icons of commentation such as Nawawī and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī significantly influenced following generations in composing their respective commentaries. Third, I will argue that in the specific case study provided here significant changes in the commentation can be witnessed since the second half of the 19th century which are caused by the spread of basic common medical knowledge in that period.
Thomas Eich, "The term nasama in ḥadīth with a focus on material about predestination and the unborn." In: Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 108 (2018): 21-47.
This article analyzes the use of the term nasama in hadith material with a major focus on two hadiths related on the authority of Abd Allah b. Umar and Anas b. Malik. Both hadiths describe predestination during an angel's visit to the nasama (Abd Allah) or the unborn (Anas) respectively. The article argues that the exact meaning of nasama was ambiguous in this context since it was also used in hadith material expressing the idea of the creation of souls before all time. This idea became contested. In the hadith's transmission history nasama was eventually disambiguated as referring to a creation in time. I argue that the two hadiths should be analyzed together as contributions to the same theological debate developing further the same sort of source material. In this sense they can be differentiated from other hadith material describing predestination of the unborn.
Thomas Eich, "Zur Abtreibung in frühislamischen Texten", Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 170:2 (2020): 345-361
This article analyzes approaches toward abortion in hadith collections covering a time span 2nd - 4th centuries AH / 8th - 10th centuries CE. It shows that three approaches can be distinguished which I label „gradualist“, „binary“, and „expiation“ approach. In later sunni fiqh discourse the first did not have a lasting impact and the second and third were merged into one standard approach. Shi'i collections from the 10th century show a strong emphasis on the gradualist approach and a much smaller interest in the binary approach while the expiation approach is entirely lacking. Further, this article argues that traces can be detected which help to situate the abortion material in Sunni and Shi'i collections in the larger framework of Late Antiquity discussions about ensoulment. These discussions knew three possible points in time, when the soul could be imagined to reach the new (emerging) human being: conception, pregnancy, and birth. The Sunni material clearly excludes conception from the discussion, but apparently had no fixed stand concerning the pregnancy-vs.-birth-debate for some time. The Shi'i material includes early pregnancies much more consistently into its reflections. It can be shown that the concept of ensoulment at the 120th day of pregnancy which eventually became the overarching concept structuring the abortion debates of Muslim religious scholars, was not an intrinsic part of the debates 8th – 10th centuries CE.
Thomas Eich „The topos of the unborn in early Islamic predestination debates: A study of the ḥadīth of Ḥudhayfa b. Asīd in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim”, Rocznik Orientalistyczny/Yearbook of Oriental Studies, LXXIV (2021), S.5-57.
This article provides an isnād cum matn analysis of a ḥadīṯ transmitted by Ḥuḏayfa Ibn Asīd describing how an angel visits the unborn in the womb. During the visit, several things are predestined. The ḥadīṯ has a prominent position at the beginning of the chapter on predestination in the ḥadīṯ collection of Muslim. The article shows, how the arrangement of the material in that opening section, which has to be dated to the 9th century CE, had the effect of closing a debate whether the individual’s destiny in the hereafter is predestined.
Melanie Guénon, Wunderhafte Embryos. Moderne Naturwissenschaft und ungeborenes Leben im Islam. Baden Baden 2024.
This study examines late 20th century depictions of embryonic development derived from the Quran, which are referred to as a scientific miracle of the Qur'an. This approach of harmonizing religious and scientific knowledge has so far only been evaluated as a marginal phenomenon. Using the example of the interpretation of ʿAbd al-Maǧīd az-Zindānī, however, the perspective on this specific approach to the interpretation of the Qur'an is broadened. The first analysis of the content and underlying processes and structures of his activities draws attention to the activist connections between modern natural science and Islamic daʿwa as well as Islamic bioethics.
Melanie Guénon, "ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Zindānī’s iʿjāz ʿilmī Approach : Embryonic Development in Q. 23:12–14 as a Scientific Miracle." In: Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 21.3 (2019): 32-56.
This article focuses on contemporary scientific exegesis of the Qur'an, analysing ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Zindānī's unique model of embryonic development derived from Q. 23:12 –14. Since the majority of Muslim legal scholars consider the three main stages of embryonic development mentioned in Q. 23:12–14 to take place within 120 days, this view has been considered as the majority Muslim view in academic research. However, I claim that since the 1980s al-Zindānī has successfully disseminated the perception that the embryonic stages mentioned in the Qur'anic text take place over 40 days. An examination of al-Zindānī's work and publications by the Commission on the Scientific Miracles in the Qur'an and Sunna (CSMQS) demonstrates that al-Zindānī uses an iʿjāz ʿilmī approach (i.e. seeking to establish harmony between the Qur'an and modern natural science) to advocate a new interpretation of the Qur'anic stages of embryonic development in order to validate the connection between modern science and the Qur'an. I argue that his model rests on three hermeneutical strategies: first, the reformulation of Ibn al-Qayyim's (d. 751/1350) model of embryonic development; second, the modification of the last Qur'anic stage from khalq to nashʾa; and third, his preference for the variant of the so-alled Ibn Masʿūd ḥadīth canonised in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Accordingly, he does not follow the fiqh tradition and excludes the stage of the embryo's ensoulment from his model. It is this exclusion of the ensoulment and the reformulation of the developmental stages that enables al-Zindānī to align his model with both the Qur'anic text and modern scientific findings.
Florian Jäckel, „Wenn wir sagen, dass der Tropfen Mensch wird“. Vorstellungen ungeborenen Lebens bei Bar ʿEbrāyā (1226–1286 n. Chr.). Baden Baden 2022.
About the book: Ideas of the unborn have been found in medical, philosophical and theological texts since antiquity. Previous research has examined the similarities and differences between these ideas in various scholarly and religious contexts, but there is a gap in the Syriac-Christian literature. This book represents a fundamental contribution to closing this gap and to the transcultural history of philosophy. It examines several important works by the important polymath Bar ʿEbrāyā and traces his literary adaptation of Greek philosophical, Christian and Islamic models into an independent ‘embryological synthesis’.
Florian Jäckel, "Re-negotiating interconfessional boundaries through intertextuality : The Unborn in the Kṯāḇā ḏ-Huddāyē of Barhebraeus (d. 1286)." In: Medieval Encounters, 26.2 (2020): 95-127.
The article analyzes the Kṯāḇā ḏ -Huddāyē, a legal work of the Syriac polymath and ecclesiastic leader Barhebraeus. The intertextual strategies are assessed, such as compilation, redaction and adaption of the Huddāyē’s source material, i.e. legal compendia by al-Ghazālī, by the Ḥanafī al-Qudūrī and texts from Christian tradition. It is argued that the different normative boundaries established by these source texts and then intertextually reworked by Barhebraeus in the Huddāyē can be read as (re-)negotiation of communal identity for a Christian community in an Islamic environment. Two treatments of unborn life and pregnancy are taken as an example: the funeral prayer for the miscarried child and financial compensation in case of induced miscarriage.
The study analyses the conceptualization of prenatal life in the Islamic West, particularly in medieval Andalusi and Maghrebi hermeneutics. It focuses on the ideas developed by Abū Bakr Ibn al-‘Arabī and Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ, who relied on embryonic passages in qur'anic verses and ḥadīths. By situating these two scholars within their geographic, historical, and intellectual contexts, the book scrutinizes and compares the sources of their respective embryological approaches. Eventually, the study traces the dissemination of the investigated ideas as well as their impact on the scholarly milieus of the Islamic West.
Khaoula Trad, "The Impact of Maghribi Ḥadīth Commentaries on the Mashriq." Maribel Fierro und Mayte Penelas (eds.): The Maghrib in the Mashriq. Knowledge, Travel and Identity. Berlin & Boston 2021: 213–236.
This article provides a diachronic overview of the introduction of hadith collections in the Maghreb and the fundamental importance of this region for the development of the genre of hadith commentaries. The focus is on the hadith collection of Muslim.
Tools
The COBHUNI tools for computational linguistics
In this section, you can find information about and links to differnet computational linguistic tools that are developed by the COBHUNI project team in the course of the ERC project until 2020.
Yakabikaj Algorithm Docker Version
Yakabikaj is a text search utility for Arabic-scripted texts. The search algorithm was developed by by Alicia Gonzalez Martinez within the ERC-Project COBHUNI in Hamburg University in collaboration with Thomas Milo from the company DecoType. It performs string-search in any text in Arabic script. It focsed on Arabic and Persian languages and it is aimed at Academic uses.
https://gitlab.com/kabikaj/yakabikaj
2016:
Wiki to json export
Python program for exporting OCRed and post-corrected texts from the COBHUNI wiki and converting them into json format by Dr. Alicia Gonzalez
Links:
https://gitlab.com/alrazi/wiki_export/
https://github.com/cobhuni/wiki_export
Initial XMI converter
Java program to convert json files from the COBHUNI Corpus into xmi format in order to prepare them for the annotation in WebAnno by Dr. Alicia Gonzalez
Links:
https://gitlab.com/alrazi/ini_xmiconverter
https://github.com/cobhuni/ini_xmiconverter
2017:
Pepper Module for COBHUNI
Custom JSON Importer from COBHUNI Corpus into Annis by Dr. Alicia Gonzalez
Links:
https://gitlab.com/alrazi/pepperModules-CUBHUNIModules
https://github.com/cobhuni/pepperModules-CUBHUNIModules
XMI to JSON converter
Java program to convert xmi files to JSON for data in the COBHUNI Project. by Dr. Alicia Gonzalez
Links:
https://gitlab.com/alrazi/jsonxmihandler
https://github.com/cobhuni/jsonxmihandler
Errors fixer
Python project for fixing typos annotated in WebAnno for COBHUNI Corpus and adjusting all offset annotations by Dr. Alicia Gonzalez
Links:
https://gitlab.com/alrazi/errors_fixer
https://github.com/cobhuni/errors_fixer
Expand data
Creates COBHUNI Corpus with metadata, tokenized text and annotations in JSON format by Dr. Alicia Gonzalez
Links:
https://gitlab.com/alrazi/expand_data
https://github.com/cobhuni/expand_data