The European Qur'an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850

Project Information

EuQu

Grant agreement ID: 810141

DOI

10.3030/810141

Project closed

EC signature date 21 February 2019

Start date 1 April 2019

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 9 842 534,00

EU contribution

€ 9 842 534,00

Coordinated by

AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - EuQu (The European Qur'an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

“The European Qur’an” (EuQu) studies the place of the Muslim holy book in European cultural and religious history (c.1150-1850) situating European perceptions of the Qur’an and of Islam in the evolving religious, political, and intellectual landscape of this long period. The Qur’an played a key role not only in polemical interactions with Islam, but also in debates between Christians of different persuasions and was central to the epistemological reconfigurations which are at the basis of an emerging European modernity from the Iberian Peninsula to Russia and portions of the former Byzantine Empire. The Qur’an was deeply imbedded in the political and religious thought of Europe and part of the intellectual repertoire of Medieval and Early Modern Europeans of different Christian denominations, as well as of European Jews, freethinkers, atheists and of course of European Muslims. The project, involved of researchers from various disciplines, studies how the Qur’an was interpreted, adapted, and used in Christian European contexts – often in close interaction with the Islamic world.
EuQu will produce, over a six-year period:

1. A GIS-mapped database of the European Qur’an, containing extensive information about Qur’an manuscripts and printed editions (in Arabic, Greek, Latin, and European vernaculars) produced between 1143 and 1800 as well as prosopographical data about the principal actors involved in these endeavours (copyists, translators, publishers).

2. A series of publications: PhDs, monographs written by postdocs and PIs, special issues of academic journals, and animated digital publications for a wider audience and educational uses. These publications will make pathbreaking contributions in their fields, dealing with aspects of the transmission, translation and study of the Qur’an in Europe, on the role the Qur’an played in debates about European cultural and religious identities, and more broadly about the place of the Qur’an in European culture.

3. A major exhibition during the final year of the project, “The European Qur’an” to be held online and at a number of renowned museums in Europe and a Docu-BD (non-fiction comic book) devoted to the Qur’an in European culture.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The EuQu project’s highly successful launch conference at the Università di Napoli L’Orientale (October 2019) created for us new contacts and further collaboration possibilities with other research groups from different countries, institutions and disciplines. Other major dissemination achievements of the project include the international conference on the Latin Qur’an organized in collaboration with Islamolatina, one of the pioneering research groups in the study of the European Qur’an, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (March 2020). The discussion started at Barcelona continued with a conference on the Qur’an and the Bible held in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame (IN, US).

Relevant workshops and conferences have been held since then, many of them run by the postdoctoral researchers of the team: “The Iberian Qur’an “, CSIC, Madrid May, 2021;” Visions of the Qur’an in the Middle Ages “, Nantes, May 2021; “The Morisco Diaspora and Morisco Networks across the Western and Eastern Mediterranean”, University of Amsterdam 6-17 September 2021; “The Turkish Wars and the Study of Islam in Early Modern Europe”, 15 ,November to 6 December 2021 University of Copenhaguen; “Humanizing digitalization, digitalizing humanities”, October 20-21, 2021 (CSIC, Madrid); “European perspectives on the Qur’an (16th-18th C.): polemics and beyond”, 2-3 December 2021, Nantes; “The Qur’an in Rome. Catholicism and the Study of Islam in Early Modern Era”, 1-2 March 2022; “The Holy Book of the Ishmaelites in the World of Eastern Christianity”, May 11-12, 2022, University of Copenhagen; “Jews, the Qur’an and Islam: Contacts and Influences”, 1st to the 2d of February 2023, University of Copenhagen, “ Cataloguing Multilingual Manuscripts by the Examples of European Qurans and Tafsirs,” University of Naples (26-28 February 2023).
In May 5-6, 2022 at the NYUAD Campus in Abu Dhabi the seminar “Recognizing Sacred Scriptures – the Qur’an and the Bible”, the first in-person event organized within the framework of Recognizing Religions, an international research initiative embedded in the Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World program. In collaboration with the ERC funded project The European Qur’an. this event showcased ongoing research projects into Muslim readings of the Bible and Christian and Jewish approaches to the Qur’an. A strong collaboration link has been established with the NYUAD. In in April 2023 the conference Cataloguing Multilingual Manuscripts by the Examples of European Qurans and Tafsirs” took place in Naples and in May 2023 was held the conference “What is the European Qur’ān? Definitions, descriptions, representations (12th-19th c.)” at the UN.

EuQu first summer course “The European Qur’an” was succesfully held in Santander (Spain) in collaboration with the prestigious UIMP (Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo) in June 2021. In June 2022 the Summer School “The Qur’an in inter-Christian polemics (14-17 )” was held in Nantes, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange Guépin, in June 2023 the latest summer school took place in Copenhaguen: Holy Scriptures: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Up to now four titles have been published in DeGruyter The European Qur’an Series: Volume 1, The Latin Qur’an, 1143-1500. (2021). Edited by John Tolan and Cándida Ferrero. Volume 2 in the series is The Qur’an: A Guidebook (2023) by Roberto Tottoli. The aim of the work is to give a reader a description of what he/she can find in the Islamic holy text and the state of the critical debates on all the topics dealt with, focusing mainly on the growing scholarly literature which appeared in the last 30 years. Volume 3, The Iberian Qur’an. From the Middle Ages to Modern Times. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers and European Muslims and the Qur’an. Practices of Translation, Interpretation, and Commodification, edited by Gülnaz Sibgatullina and Gerard Wiegers (UvA), released on 2023.

The Nantes team is piloting a Docu-BD (non-fiction comic book) devoted to the Qur’an in European culture. Maurizio Busca and John Tolan are coordinating the project, in which the whole team of post-docs, PIs and PhD students are participating. The publication will be first in 2024 in French, with Petit à Petit publications, which specializes in “Docu-BDs” on historical topics (see https://www.petitapetit.fr/). Translations into English and other languages are planned.

EuQu is organizing a series of exhibitions on the Qur’an in European culture in different cities in Europe and North Africa. The exhibition in Vienna, at the Weltmuseum, will open in September, 2024; another exhibition will open at the Bibiliothèque nationale Tunisienne in November, 2024. Each of these exhibitions will stress common themes of EuQu research into the place of the Qur’an in European culture and will highlight the key research findings of the project. Yet each exhibition will be unique, developed with the partner institution in order to highlight local material relevant to the theme of the exhibition. We plan on organizing an academic conference to mark the opening of each exhibition as well as activities for school groups and the general public. Negotiations for the organization of other exhibitions are under way with institutions in Nantes, Lyon, the Vatican, Budapest, Granada and Rabat. We plan on publishing a catalogue bringing together the material from all these exhibitions as well as an online exhibition. The PIs, post-docs and PhD students have devoted a great deal of time an effort in the conception of these exhibitions.

Each of the EuQu’s working teams at the institutions of the consortium have held monthly research seminars attended by all researchers and post-docs of the project. Members of the research teams have been invited individually and in groups to workshops and seminars in prominent universities and research centres throughout the world.

All members of the project have been pursuing their research projects. This has involved, for example, digitizing early modern collections and analyzing annotated Qur’an manuscripts and editions, identifying book readers by comparing handwriting with other annotated volumes, reconstructing the sources they used from citations in their marginalia and comparison of glossing/notes with earlier translations to, finally, compile all this information in a database. The research of the team members focuses on both published and unpublished material. Scholars in all teams have already discovered numerous hitherto unknown texts which reveal new aspects of the practices of early modern oriental philology and the reception of the Qur’an outside the contexts considered in research so far. Researchers have undertaken fieldwork trips to archives and libraries across Europe, though access has been limited by COVID-19 restrictions for a long period. As a consequence, a fair amount of material has been digitalized.

The main output of this period has been the design and implementation of the database of Qur’an manuscripts, editions and translations. Up to date, 1438 nodes and 2800 relationships have been registered in the network database. Currently, the database has 52 contributors. The project has also worked to join the FAIR standards. The data will be released in a digital repository, open and accessible at the end of the project in different types of files.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

A central aspect of our work stems from a realisation of the profound impact of confessionalisation on early modern European culture, that we can now calibre in a better way through our work on the Qur’an. Even from the perspective of a study of the Qur’an in Europe, for most of the early modern period, the theological tension in Western and Central Europe did not primarily pivot on Christianity versus Islam, but rather on the confessional rift between Catholicism and various forms of Protestantism – and the latter among themselves. This becomes essential for the understanding of the significance of the Qur’an in many European debates in the aftermath of the Reformation. The Qur’an often played a role as an instrument in inter-confessional doctrinal debates. It becomes significant (surprisingly perhaps for modern observers) in early modern debates on Church history, exegesis, Mariology, and other contested topics in post-Reformation European Christianity. The Qur’an and Confessional culture reveals itself to be a pivotal aspect of the European Qur’an into which we are going to delve further.

An additional important and understudied topic in which we are now involved in, is the role played by European Muslims, their books and their knowledge in the Christian study of the Qur’an. To this should be added the role played by Oriental Christians and their strong presence in Rome – as well as their less numerous but highly influential presence north of the Alps – from the beginning of the 17th century onwards.

The interdisciplinary approach of EuQu, arising, among other things, from the large number of researchers from different fields of expertise, is clearly demonstrating the rich variety of historical, cultural and social significance and roles of the (direct and indirect) knowledge of the Qur’an and Islam and its uses from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century from Iberia and the British Isles to the provinces of the Russian Empire.

EUQU logo with emblem