Textual Silences and Literary Choices in al-Kisāʾī’s Account of the Annunciation and the Birth of Jesus

Blatherwick, Helen

Abstract

The story of the Annunciation to Mary and the birth of Jesus in the Qurʾān and the Bible has been the subject of several recent literary studies that bring up the use of textual silences, and the significance of speech and speechlessness as themes in the text. This paper focuses on three recensions of the story available to us in printed editions of al-Kisāʾī’s Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ in similar vein, through intertextual comparison of these accounts with Mary stories as told in the Qurʾān, premodern qiṣaṣ collections, and Islamic historiographical sources. By comparing al-Kisāʾī’s accounts of the Annunciation with those told in the Qurʾān and the wider Islamic Mary corpus it is possible to gain insight into the author’s literary agenda, and also into the ways in which he draws on the wider narrative pool for his material, makes reference to the Qurʾān, and manipulates theme and characterisation.

Citation

Blatherwick, H. (in press). Textual Silences and Literary Choices in al-Kisāʾī’s Account of the Annunciation and the Birth of Jesus. Arabica: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 66(1), 1-42. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341519

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 31, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 11, 2019
• Deposit Date: Mar 5, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 5, 2019
• Print ISSN: 0570-5398
• Electronic ISSN: 1570-0585
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 66
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-42
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341519
• Keywords: al-Kisāʾī; Annunciation; Mary; Mary in the Qur’an; qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ; Islamic legends of the prophets; Sūrat Āl ʿImrān; Sūrat Maryam; Isaac Eisenberg; al-Ṭāhir b. Sālima; Ḫalid Šibl
• Publisher URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/arab/arab-overview.xml
• Related Public URLs: https://brill.com/