For believers in a resurrection of the body, there arises the question of what happens after death but before the Last Day: the intermediate state. For most Muslims, the intermediate state is the barzakh. It is a fantastical and frightening time in the grave. The present study will examine where the belief in the barzakh comes from through a study of the Qur'an.
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-0612-3
Publication Status: In Print
Publication Date: Apr 20,2017
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Page Count: 480
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-0612-3
What happens after death but before the final resurrection? This is the intermediate state. For most Muslims, it is called the barzakh, and it is a fantastical and frightening time in the grave. Throughout history and today this belief has been discussed and expressed in many forms: from Ṣūfī dreamscapes to theological tests of orthodoxy. But where does the barzakh come from first?
In A Place Between Two Places: The Qurʾānic Barzakh, George Archer reconstructs the barzakh's early history. Analyzing sixteen of the Qurʾān's sūras in search of oral formulae, subtextual hints, and concentric parallelisms, the early barzakh is exposed as a response to the saint cults of late antiquity, and most especially, the cult of the divine Christ. From here, the Qurʾānic vision of the barzakh is traced forward through later prophetic biographies, Islamic architecture, and the ḥadīth literature in order to show how the barzakh developed into the distinctive eschatological claims of the Islamic Middle Ages.
"A Place Between Two Places is a thought-provoking work that asks its readers to look again at the Qur'anic idea of the barzakh and the way that the structure of the scripture may be read to infer meaning."
Dr Ramon Harvey, Journal of Islamic Studies, 2019, Vol. 30, Issue 3
''Ihm gelingt es dabei, einen faszinierenden neuen Einblick in das Verständnis und die Lesarten des Barzakh im frühen Islam zu liefern. Mit seinem methodisch strukturalen und morphologischen Vergleich der relevanten Suren, die er mit jenen über Paradies und Hölle vergleicht, kann Archer spätantike, jüdische und christliche Einflüsse und Kontexte in der Entstehungszeit des Korans nachweisen... Die Monographie, A Place Between Two Places ist ein fruchtbarer Beitrag zum Verständnis der komplexen Eschatologie im Islam''
Dr Dorothee Pielow, Der Islam, 2019, Vol. 96, Issue 2.
'Winner of the 26th World Award for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran, honouring the best works on Islamic and Iranian Studies (2018)'
