Devin J Stewart

Biographic Data

ID577195
NAMEDevin J Stewart
GIVEN NAMESDevin J
FAMILY NAMEStewart
SIGNATURESTEWART D J
AFFILIATIONSEmory University
ORCID0000-0002-1138-4834
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS75
TOTAL CITATIONS31
AUTHOR COUNT74
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1875
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX3

  • Envy and the Recounting of Misery in Arabic Autobiography

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEa/b Auto/Biography Studies2026

    This essay focuses on the autobiography of Shiite scholar Niʿmat Allāh al-Jazāʾirī (1050–1112/1640–1701 CE). It argues that one function of autobiographies is to deflect envy by recounting trials and tribulations one has suffered, so that one’s life appears unenviable on account of the difficulties one has faced.

  • Poetic License in al-Ṭabarī’s Quranic Commentary

    Devin J StewartARTICLEJournal of the American Oriental…2025

    This study examines the passages in Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, the quranic commentary of Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), that address apparent violations of the ordinary rules of grammar and style for the sake of end rhyme. Analysis shows that al-Ṭabarī assigns importance to end rhyme in the Quran and recognizes the effects that it has on the text. The term he uses for this quranic phenomenon is al-tawfīq bayna ruʾūs al-āyā…

  • Images of Writing in the Qurʾān and Sulṭān as a Royal Warrant

    Devin J StewartARTICLEDer Islam2024

    This study examines references to and images of writing in the Qurʾān, suggesting that some of them have been overlooked or de-emphasized in interpretations of the text. It then investigates the various Qurʾānic uses of the term sulṭān , usually translated as “authority,” and suggests that sulṭān , in some passages, refers to a document, a warrant or license that authorizes the bearer to carry out some task

  • Ignoring the Bible in Qur’anic Studies Scholarship of the Late Twentieth Century

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEReOrient2024

    This article discusses the major factors behind an oddity in the development of Western Qur’anic studies, the lack of attention to the relationship between the Qur’an and Biblical tradition in the latter half of the twentieth century. This topic represented an important focus in the field up until the 1930s, after which it was relatively neglected throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. It has been taken up again with renewed energy in…

  • General Remarks on Plagiarism and Authorship in Islamic Religious Texts and the Case of The Special Qualities of Friday by Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 965/1558)

    Devin J StewartARTICLEAsiatische Studien – Études…2024

    In medieval and pre-modern Arabic and Islamic letters there was a distinct divide between the issue of plagiarism in poetry, which was widely and thoroughly discussed in literary criticism and became the topic of standard chapters and focused treatises, and general plagiarism, which involved the appropriation of entire books and treatises in various disciplines. The latter phenomenon, though well-known and mentioned sporadically in scholarly disc…

  • The Meaning and Usage of laʿalla in the Qur’an

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Qur'anic Studies2023

    This study examines the use of laʿalla in the Qur’an, arguing that its most common meaning is ‘so that’ rather than ‘perhaps’, the common dictionary meaning. A few Western scholars have realised this, mainly on the basis of their independent inspection of the Qur’anic text, despite the fact that this meaning did not appear in any of the available dictionaries, grammars, and reference works in European languages until recent years. This interpreta…

  • Qurʾanic Periphrases for the Sake of Rhyme and Rhythm and the Periphrastic Use of Kull

    Devin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Near Eastern Studies2023References: 9

  • Of Poetry and Patronage: A Scholar’s Lament by Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿĀmilī (d. 984/1576)

    Devin J StewartARTICLEJournal of the American Oriental…2023

    This study analyzes a poem by the Twelver Shiʿi jurist Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿĀmilī (d. 984/1576) that has recently been discovered in a multiple-text manuscript in Iran. It is argued here that the poem dates from 961-63/1554-56 and expresses the author's disappointment and frustrations with patrons or intermediaries in his efforts to procure a position shortly after he arrived in Safavid territory

  • Gabriel Said Reynolds, Allah: God in the Qur’an

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Qur'anic Studies2022

  • Approaches to the Investigation of Speech Genres in the Qur'an

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Qur'anic Studies2022

    This contribution provides a methodological overview of the investigation of speech genres in the Qur’an. Drawing on Biblical form criticism, the ethnography of speech, and Bakhtin's theory of speech genres, as well as recent studies devoted to the form criticism of the Qur’an and earlier Qur’anic studies scholarship on individual genres, it points out the importance of generic conventions for the interpretation of Qur’anic passages, highlights t…

  • Mosquito Net Fishing as a Normal Accident and the Roles of Traditional and Bureaucratic Authority

    Rick Welsh, Elizabeth A Pickard et al.ARTICLESociety & Natural Resources2022References: 9

    In the 1980s, malaria researchers experimented with treating mosquito nets with pyrethroids chemicals to kill mosquitoes (insecticide-treated net or ITN). In the mid-2000s, world health agencies determined that ITNs should be distributed freely. Since then more than two billion ITNs have been distributed throughout malaria-endemic countries. In regions where fishing is an important economic activity the ITNs have been repurposed for fishing. The …

  • ʿĪsā b. Hišām’s Shiism and Religious Polemic in the Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamaḏānī (d. 398/1008)

    Devin J Stewart, Devin StewartARTICLEIntellectual History of the…2021

    This study reads the Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamaḏānī (d. 398/1008) against the background of the sectarian milieu of the fourth/tenth century. It begins with a thorough review of the preceding scholarship on al-Hamaḏānī’s sectarian allegiances, and it confirms the contention that Hamaḏānī was a Sunni by conviction. It then proposes that the names and attributes of the narrator of al-Hamaḏānī’s Maqāmāt , ʿ Īsā b. Hišām, reflect an attempt by…

  • The Historical Roles of Jihād in Sunnī-Shīʿī Relations

    Devin J StewartARTICLEThe Journal of the Middle East…2021

    This article provides a taxonomy of the ways in which jihād and jihād propaganda have been used in medieval Islamic history and in modern times within the framework of Sunnī-Shīʿī relations. It identifies five main relevant patterns of usage: I) Sunnī jihād against a Shīʿī foreign power; II) Shīʿī jihād against a Sunnī foreign power; III) Shīʿī use of jihād propaganda against a foreign power – usually a Christian power – as a means to gain legiti…

  • Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. By Kathryn A. Miller

    Devin J StewartARTICLEJournal of the American Oriental…2021

    Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. By Kathryn A. Miller. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Pp. xv + 276. $55, £38

  • The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History. By Ahmed El Shamsy

    Devin J StewartARTICLEJournal of the American Oriental…2021

    The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History. By Ahmed El Shamsy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 253. $90

  • Speech Genres and Interpretation of the Qur'an

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEReligions2021References: 53

    This essay provides an overview of the investigation of genres in Qur'anic studies to date and argues for the utility of the theory of speech genres for the interpretation of the Qur'an generally. Drawing on this approach, it addresses several Qur'anic passages whose interpretation has been a matter of debate. Attention to the generic conventions of the various types of speech that are contained in Islam's sacred text may help resolve a number of…

  • Introductory Oaths and the Question of Composite Surahs

    Devin J StewartCHAPTERStructural Dividers in the Qur'an2020

    This chapter deals with a feature of the Qur’an’s style which the author have identified and named “suspension of composition pattern.” It conducts a synchronic survey of the Qur’anic text, examining textual indices of mantic authority that occur frequently at the beginnings of surahs. The chapter then examines surahs of middle length that contain potential indications that two originally separate passages have been spliced together. The Qur’an’s…

  • Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿĀmilī's draft letter to his teacher: The culture of scholarly correspondence and the Islamic republic of letters in the sixteenth century

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEBulletin of the School of…2020References: 12

    This study focuses on a draft letter by Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿĀmilī (d. 984/1576) for his teacher Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 965/1558); both were prominent Twelver Shiite jurists from the region of Jabal ʿĀmil in what is now Lebanon. Yūsuf Ṭabājah, who first published the text, argued that Ḥusayn wrote the letter while he was in Iraq c . 957/1550 and that it describes Zayn al-Dīn's legal work al-Rawḍah al-bahiyyah . It is argued here that th…

  • Angelika Neuwirth, Scripture, Poetry and the Making of a Community: Reading the Qur'an as a Literary Text

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Qur'anic Studies2016

  • Consensus, Authority, and the Interpretive Community in the Thought of Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Qur'anic Studies2016

    Examination of al-Ṭabarī’s oeuvre as a whole reveals certain patterns that cut across fields. The following article addresses the concept of ḥujja, which is related to his understanding of consensus. It has been pointed out that al-Ṭabarī uses the term ḥujja (‘proof’) with two quite different meanings in his Qur'anic commentary, Jāmiʿ al-bayān. In one sense, ḥujja designates a proof such as a Qur'anic verse, a ḥadīth report, or an instance of con…

  • God Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Qur'an / Navid Kermani

    Open AccessDevin J Stewart, Devin StewartARTICLEAmerican Journal of Islamic…2016

  • Twelver Shiism: Unity and Diversity in the Life of Islam, 632 to 1722 By Andrew J. Newman

    Devin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Islamic Studies2015

    Edinburgh University Press has produced a large number of introductory surveys in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies over the years that have varied widely in quality, ranging from George Makdisi’s The Rise of Colleges , an outstanding original work that undoubtedly exceeded the press’s expectations for a commissioned survey of Islamic education, to deeply disappointing, slapdash texts such as Montgomery Watt’s survey of Islamic influence on Euro…

  • Cognate and Analogical Curses in Moroccan Arabic: A Comparative Study of Arabic Speech Genres

    Devin J StewartARTICLEArabica2014

    This study describes the form and function of Moroccan Arabic cognate and analogical curses. Drawing on scholarship on curses in other Arabic dialects, it provides a comparative discussion of the Moroccan variety and analyzes a corpus of cognate curses that includes many of the standard members of the genre. It then defines the analogical curse, arguing that this particular type of curses derives from proverbs based on the simile. It suggests tha…

  • Divine Epithets and the Dibacchius: Clausulae and Qur'anic Rhythm

    Open AccessDevin J StewartARTICLEJournal of Qur'anic Studies2013

    Scholars of the Arabic rhetorical tradition and commentators on the rhetorical aspects of the Qur'an made important observations regarding the verse-final word (al-fāṣila) in Qur'anic verses, which in most cases corresponds to the final metrical foot of the verse. They noted when its morphological pattern (wazn, ṣīgha) either matched or did not match those of the verse-final words in adjacent verses and also discussed the deviations from ordinary…

  • La disimulación en el islam sunní y la taqiyya morisca

    Open AccessDevin J Stewart, Devin StewartARTICLEAl-Qanṭara2013

    Este trabajo ofrece un resumen de la doctrina religiosa de taqiyya o disimulación en el islam sunní, recurriendo a comentarios del Qur’ān, compendios de ḥadīṯ, obras de ley islámica y tratados de principios éticos. En las fuentes andaluces antes de la conquista cristiana aparecen discusiones acerca del concepto de taqiyya y del de coerción (ikrāh), ambos exenciones legales, y algunas de ellas continuaron estando a disposición de los moriscos y de…