A lecture by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (Sorbonne University) held in Central European University (September 21, 2017, Budapest) and organised by CEU Center for Religious Studies.

The Quranic text is problematic. The Quran presents itself as the continuation of the Torah and the Gospels, but contrary to these Scriptures, it says almost nothing about its central characters, Muḥammad and his contemporaries. Despite its very strong apocalyptic dimension, the Quran says nothing about the important figure of the Messiah either. Why? These questions preoccupied very early Muslim thinkers, and since the 19th century, Orientalists tried to find the reasons for its enigmatic data.
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi proposes, in his lecture, a hypothesis considering several inseparable elements: first, the civil wars of the beginnings of Islam during which the Quran was elaborated; secondly, the apocalyptic and messianic dimensions that form the basis of Muḥammad's message and which the political powers of the first centuries of Islam tried to conceal; and finally, the fact that the figure of ‘Ali and his followers seem to occupy a central place in these events.