Arabic literary papyri and Islamic renunciant piety

Zabūr and hadith in Vienna papyrus AP 1854a–b

Bibliographic Data

ID12564342
AuthorsUrsula Hammed (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), David R Vishanoff (University of Oklahoma, corresponding author), David Vishanoff
Year2025
Volume35
Issue2
Pages309-347
Publication date2025-01-27
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-1863 • E-ISSN: 1474-0591
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1356186324000208
OpenAlexW4406847236
LanguageEN
References cited12

To the limited materials available for the study of the early Muslim tradition of renunciant piety ( zuhd ) may now be added the papyrus P.Vindob. AP 1854a–b of the Austrian National Library in Vienna, which is edited, translated, and annotated in this article. Its two incomplete and damaged leaves contain four texts that constitute a small anthology of meditations on the imminence of death and judgment: psalms 7–13 of the Islamic ‘Psalms of David’ ( Zabūr Dāwūd ); a collection of narratives surrounding the death of the Prophet Muḥammad; a collection of material about grief over the deaths of the Prophet and Fāṭima and over the slaughter of al-Ḥusayn's party at Karbala; and a dialogue between God and the prophet David about the rewards of the afterlife. The papyrus confirms that the long Muslim tradition of rewriting the ‘Psalms of David’ originated in early renunciant circles. It also illustrates the process whereby a ninth-century preacher could compile a notebook of sermon material from a wide range of sources, including poetry, hadith, and an apocryphal scripture. It also shows how much the still-underdeveloped study of early Islamic piety stands to benefit from the even less-studied resource of Arabic literary papyri

Ancient history · Arabic · Archaeology · Art · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Papyrus · Piety · Theology · Classics · Families in Therapy and Culture · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy

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