![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article presents the history of Arabic-Islamic studies in Norway, within the wider framework of Scandinavia and Europe. While Semitic studies reach well back into the sixteenth century in Sweden and Denmark, it was only in the early nineteenth century that the study of Arabic was introduced into Norway with the establishment of a university in 1811. From their inception, Arabic and Semitic studies were instrumental in reaching out into the world as well as in defining the national self-identity. I discuss these developments and the role and function philology played in various studies, programmes and disciplines, taking into account the shifting historical and sociocultural contexts. Issues of relevance and utility value as well as diverse political and economic concerns have throughout history formed the structural frameworks. Simultaneously, however, I demonstrate how individual motivation and impetus have continued to be of vital importance to the development of the fields. Finally, I discuss some of the current challenges and prospects for philological studies, and argue for the continued relevance for these methodological approaches.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See Ahmed (Citation2016, esp. 113–297), for a discussion of Islam as a historical, theological and analytical concept.
2 See also discussions in Johansen (Citation2006) on the possible tension between confessionality and secularism.
3 In Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's (ca. 1058–1111) scheme (al-Ghazālī Citation1993, 1: 25–26), normative knowledge emanates from the prophets, while non-normative knowledge is rational or experimental.
4 See, for instance, on-going discussions on the ethical guidelines from the Norwegian National Research Ethics Committee, on their website https://www.etikkom.no/en/ (accessed 31 August 2018).
5 The research conference ‘Islam i Norge: status for forskningen, blinde flekker?’, organized by Culcom with the Faculty of Theology, 26–27 May 2008. http://folk.uio.no/leirvik/Forskingskonferansen_Islam_i_Norge_2008.htm (accessed 31 August 2018).
6 Later, in 1874, this professorship was redefined as Professor of Semitic Languages. Malmberg’s (Citation2007) presentation of these first few generations of scholars shows that it was quite common for a professor of Oriental languages to move to a professorship in theology.
7 See also Roling (Citation2017, 97–101), who holds that this importance was attached only to the pre-qur’anic language. The decline and cultural breach started in their view with the Prophet Muhammad, and re-emerged as a scholarly language only when the Arabs served as guardians of the classical tradition under the ʿAbbasids.
8 For instance, Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Lund Carl Johannes Tornberg (1807–1877) was a theologian and priest in the Church of Sweden until he stepped down in 1861, while Henrik Gerhard Lindgren (1801–1879), who had been appointed temporarily as Professor of Oriental Languages in Uppsala, left the academic scene to take up ordained ministry (Toll Citation2007, 210).
9 The most famous of these shorter and longer expeditions is the expedition to Southern Arabia 1761–1767, from which Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815) was the only one to survive and return.
10 See an overview of manuscripts brought back to Denmark in Rasmussen (Citation1996).
11 Rasmussen's text was translated into several languages (see Wikander Citation1974).
12 On Ibn Faḍlan's travelogue and its role in historical research, see Montgomery (Citation2000); Duczko (Citation2004); Hraundal (Citation2013).
13 Mikjel Sørlie (Citation1944) shows that there was an interest in this geographical knowledge in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
14 Generally, German universities were something of an ideal prototype (Collett Citation2011, 468) and the Prussian model played a decisive part in modernizing the old universities in Copenhagen (from 1477), Uppsala from 1479) and Lund (from 1668) and in the foundation of new ones, such as the University of Oslo (Christiania), Det Kongelige Frederiks Universitet, from 1811 (Rüegg Citation2004, 66).
15 J. Th. Zenker's (1811–1884) Bibliotheca Orientalis (1846) testifies to the breadth in scholarship.
16 In the period between 1624 and 1925, Oslo was called Christiania/Kristiania. The Royal Frederick's University was renamed the University of Oslo in 1939.
17 This was, however, an indirect translation via the French translation by Garein de Tassy (1822). Holmboe also published the two translations Antar (1881) and Kalila og Dimna (1880).
18 Incidentally, he was treated and paid as a professor but could not formally take up his professorship until he had learned Norwegian, which he did within a short period. It was the then student, and later influential theologian Gisle Johnson (1822–1894) who saw to it that Caspari applied for and took up the chair at the University of Oslo, to counter the strong Grundtvigian tendency that had influenced the faculty in the early years (Danish theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig, 1783–1872). Johnson was to become Caspari's best friend in Norway, as portrayed in the autobiographical account by Caspari's son Theodor Caspari (1853–1948) (Caspari Citation1929).
19 In Leipzig, Caspari had also reedited and retranslated Burhān al-Dīn al-Zarnūjī's (d. 602 AH/1223) pedagogical work Taʿlīm al-muʿallim wa-ṭarīq al-taʿallum in Enchiridion Studiosi (1838) (Gilliot Citation2012, XV).
20 Pierre Larcher (Citation2014) traces the history of this work and portrays it as a collective orientalist endeavour.
21 Even Jørgen A. Knudtzon (1854–1917), Professor of Semitic Languages 1907–1917, an Arabist, but primarily known for his contributions to Assyriology, contributed likewise to the development of this grammar, with comments to the 1884 edition (Aartun Citation2009).
22 Seippel also studied in Halle and Leipzig from 1882 to 1884.
23 He also had the good fortune to discover a unique Arabic manuscript by the Persian medical doctor and scientist Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (854–925) (Holck Citation2009). Fonahn assumed this text was identical to one of al-Rāzī's lesser known texts written for lay persons, entitled by Ferdinand Würstenfeld as Liber de medicamentis: quae ubique facile inveniri possunt (Würstenfeld Citation1940, 45). No Arabic title is given. Fonahn (Citation1908, 685) acknowleded that the text had been printed in India in 1886, and hence was known in the Orient, but he held that the manuscript at hand was the only known manuscript in Europe. The present whereabouts of this manuscript are not known, and I have not found it listed in Die Quellenkunde (Fonahn Citation1968).
24 Beside the fact that Schencke was an outspoken opponent to theology as an academic discipline, it was argued that he had not yet sufficiently documented his academic qualifications (Finnestad Citation2001, 246; Halden Citation2007, 157–173).
25 One of his predecessors in the field of religious studies, Simon Michelet (1863–1942), had studied Arabic in Leipzig, but had not made it a topic of academic investigation (Halden Citation2007, 46–48; Kyllingstad and Rørvik Citation2011, 172).
26 See also on this general trend, Hjelde (Citation2000); Gilhus and Jacobsen (Citation2014).
27 Lindberg had studied with both Seippel and Schencke, and contributed to numismatic studies (Knirk Citation2003, 348–350). He had an extensive private collection, including two grammars printed in 1636 in Rome and Amsterdam, which were donated to the University Library in Bergen (notice in Nordisk Midtaustenbulletin, 12 December 1994).
28 Birkeland had applied for Schencke's post after the latter stepped down in 1939, but after some complications due to World War II, he remained in his own position.
29 For an overview of translations of the Qur’an into Norwegian, see Eggen (Citation2017).
30 The position was held in held in 1966–1996 by Ebbe Egede Knudsen (b. 1932). Kjell Aartun (b. 1925) had taught Arabic from 1961–1966 (Mejdell Citation1984, 11).
31 Gunvor Mejdell was a research assistant at the Institute from 1981, associate professor from 1988, full professor from 2006, and is emerita from 2017.
32 From 1992 to 1994 held by James E. Montgomery as assistant professor and from 1996–2004 by Professor Michael G. Carter (b. 1934).
33 Semitic: Elie Wardini senior lecturer 1996–2002; Edzard Lutz professor 2002–2016 and professor II 2016–. Arabic: Gunvor Mejdell; Janet Watson visiting fellow 2004–2005; Friederike Pannewick associate professor 2005–2007; Albrecht Hofheinz associate professor 2004–; Stephan Guth, associate professor from 2007, full professor from 2009–; Teresa Pepe associate professor 2017–; Jacob Høigilt associate professor 2018–.
34 Other relevant Scandinavian journals are Babylon, Chaos, Dīn, Nordic Journal of Religion and Society and Tidsskrift for islamforskning, all with different orientations but also including philological approaches.
35 There are currently two associate professors of Arabic at the University of Bergen: Ludmila Ivanova Torlakova (1995/2000–) and Esmira Nahhri (2014–). Frank Weigelt was appointed temporarily in 2016–2017.
36 See recent discussions addressing the conceptualization of Islam in modern academia in Jung (Citation2011) and Ahmed (Citation2016).
37 See for instance a collection of Angelika Neuwirth's articles (Citation2014) compared with a special issue of the Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 17/3 (2015) on translation.
38 See discussions for instance in journals such as Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Numen and Temenos, recently articulated in an on-going debate between Omid Safi (Citation2014) and Aaron Hughes (Citation2014), with several follow-ups in a special issue of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion (43/4: 2014) and in Reynolds (Citation2014).
39 See an observation by Olsson and Stenberg (Citation2015, 213) that regrettably ‘textual studies are not regarded as being as important as is the study of the religion lived by many’.
40 See for instance how textual studies and the study of lived religion are contrasted in the statement: ‘Schencke's intention was to study lived religion, but he ended mostly up studying texts’ (Halden Citation2007, 19–200). See Ammerman (Citation2016) for a concise appraisal of three decades of ‘lived religion’ as a distinct field of study.
41 I borrow this notion from Shawkat M. Toorawa (Citation2005), who developed the term ‘writerly culture’ to describe the medieval transition from predominantly oral culture to an increasingly written production of scholarly and literary text.