Surat al-Baqara: A Structural Analysis*
Raymond K. Farrin
American University of Kuwait
Kuwait City, Kuwait
D
uring the last quarter century or so, compositional studies have come to the
fore in Qur’anic scholarship.
1
Analyses of individual suras have done much to
dispel the notion, once widespread among Orientalists, that the suras —
especially the longer ones — fail to cohere. These studies have employed both
linguistic and literary approaches. An example of the former is Salwa El-Awa’s recent
Textual Relations in the Qur’an: Relevance, Coherence and Structure (2005), which
pays attention to linguistic markers in the text, such as repetition, and, by way of
application, focuses on Sura 33 ( Al-Ahzab
ɺ
¯ ) and Sura 75 (Al-Qiya ¯ma).
2
This article
takes a literary approach in examining Surat al-Baqara, the longest sura in the Qur’an.
It offers a structural assessment that highlights the sura’s overall cohesion and helps to
identify in it key themes.
Before proceeding, we may briefly review the contemporary work on Al-Baqara —
literary in approach — by Amı ¯n Islahı ¯ ¯ (d.1997; his analysis was published in Urdu, and
has been summarized in English by Mustansir Mir), Neal Robinson, A. H. Mathias
Zahniser, and David E. Smith. The analyses of the sura have appeared, respectively, in
Mir, “The Su ¯ra as a Unity: A twentieth century development in Qur’an exegesis” (1993);
Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text (1996); “Major
Transitions and Thematic Borders in Two Long Su ¯ras: al-Baqara and al-Nisa ¯ ’ ” (2000);
and “The Structure of al-Baqarah” (2001).
3
We shall first reproduce the interpretations of
Al-Baqara’s structure by these scholars, and then compare their interpretations.
According to Islahı ¯ ¯ , the structure of the sura may be represented as follows:
Introduction: 1–39
Address to the Israelites: 40–121
The Abrahamic Legacy: 122–62
The Sharı ¯‘a or Law: 163–242
Liberation of the Ka‘ba: 243–83
Conclusion: 284–86
Robinson finds the following arrangement:
The prologue: 1–39
Criticism of the Children of Israel: 40–121
S -B:AS A
© 2010 Hartford Seminary.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148
USA.
17