KUR’ÂN-I KERÎM ÂYETLERİNİN TERTÎBİ HAKKINDAKİ ORYANTALİST SÖYLEME GENEL BİR BAKIŞ

A GENERAL OUTLOOK FOR ORIENTALISTIC DISCOURSE ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE QUR’AN

Late Nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries of Western literature on the Qur’an mainly concentrate on two issues. The first group try to seek to trace the influence of Jewish and Christian ideas on the Qur’an while the second group pay more attention to the reconstruction of the chronological order of the Qur’an. This article deals with mainly on the most important figures in the West whose works are still being read in the Universties. Theodor Nöldeke, Hartwig Hirschfeld, Richard Bell can be mentioned among these welknown Western students of Islam. Having disclosed their dissatisfaction with tradition, and acknowledged their exclusive reliance on the Qur’an, they developed different kinds of Qur’anic order. Although Nöldeke was the pioneer of the other two, they went further and rejected the unity of the Qur’anic surahs. Consequently, incontrast to Nöldeke’s overall scheme they preferred a chronological order which are limited exclusively to the passages of the Qur’an rather than surahs. Nonetheless, there are also differences between these two. The difference between Hirschfeld and Bell lies in their concept of the history of the Qur’an. While Hirschfeld focused on the dogmatic concern of Qur’anic passages, Bell tried to analyse from several aspects to order Qur’anic passages. This article displays their similarities and differences together with the conclusion they have reached