Religiöse Vorstellungen im frühen Islam (Papyrus Heidelberg A 506)

Abstract

While the large size of Arabic papyri is documentary and reflects administration, business and private life, literary papyri are the exception. Some outstanding literary papyrus rolls from the Heidelberg Papyrus Collection were published by the late Raif Georges Khoury. Less spectacular, but no less interesting is the Heidelberg papyrus leaf from the late 8 th or early 9th century ce presented here which bears witness to Muslim religious ideas in the formative period of Islam. Recto of the papyrus contains pious invocations of God, many of them consisting partly or wholly of Qurʾānic quotations, while verso as well as the last lines of recto contain reminders of the Prophet Muḥammad about religion and everyday life transmitted by Abū Hurayrah (d. 678 ce). All of these traditions, written in suggestive language, can be found in a collection of Abū Hurayrah traditions cited by the mystic Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240 ce) without isnād in the last chapter of his Meccan Revelations, which means that he must have used a similar but probably more extensive collection of Abū Hurayrah traditions of this kind. It is this Abū Hurayrah collection which Ibn al-Ǧawzī (d. 1201 ce) in his Book of the invented (traditions) among the traditions ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad declares non-authentic due to the doubtfulness of the isnād , citing only the first seven traditions, which, however, exactly correspond to those of Ibn ʿArabī’s text. Obviously the Abū Hurayrah traditions of the Heidelberg papyrus are part of a collection an extended version of which was available to Ibn al-Ǧawzī and Ibn ʿArabī four centuries later.