Norman Calder (1950-1998) was a British historian.

Life

Norman Calder was born in Buckie, Moray, Scotland, United Kingdom. In 1969 Calder went to Wadham College, Oxford, and received a first in Arabic and Persian language in 1972. Then he went to the Middle East for four years where he worked as an English teacher. Back in Britain, he joined the

School of Oriental and African Studies The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

SOAS in London and made his Ph.D. under

John Wansbrough John Edward Wansbrough (February 19, 1928 – June 10, 2002) was an American historian of Islamic origins and Quranic studies and professor who taught at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he was vi ...

. In 1980 he went to the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

to the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. There, he was Senior Lecturer in Arabic until his death. As a student of Wansbrough, Calder belongs to the so-called "revisionist" school of Islamic Studies.

Research

Calder concentrated on Islamic Law in the early times of Islam. He analysed the earliest texts of Islamic Law applying

historical-critical method Historical criticism (also known as the historical-critical method (HCM) or higher criticism, in contrast to lower criticism or textual criticism) is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts to understand "the world b ...

, especially

literary criticism A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...

. He found that the earliest texts of Islamic Law were not written by a single author but were products of a longer process of editorial work of several authors. Only later had the texts been attributed to some authoritative personality. Calder determined the date of these texts to the first half of the third century in Islamic chronology, i.e. to the middle of the 9th century. This means that the earliest texts about Islamic Law were written 200 years after the founding of Islam itself. G. R. Hawting
Review of: Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence by Norman Calder
in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 59, No. 1 (1996), pp. 139-141 Calder was a representative of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.

Works

* ''Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence'' (1993). * ''Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature'' (2003), edited and translated, with

Jawid Mojaddedi Jawid Mojaddedi is an Afghan researcher and professor. Early life Mojaddedi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. At age five, along with his mother and brother, he moved to Great Britain. During the late 1980s and 1990s, Jawid Mojaddedi attended U ...

and

Andrew Rippin Andrew Lawrence Rippin, (16 May 1950 in London, England – 29 November 2016) was a Canadian scholar of Islamic studies and Quranic studies. Biography Rippin was Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Victo ...

. * ''Interpretation and Jurisprudence in Medieval Islam'' (2006; eBook 2022), edited by Jawid Mojaddedi and Andrew Rippin. * ''Islamic Jurisprudence in the Classical Era'' (2010), edited by Colin Imber.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calder, Norman 1950 births 1998 deaths Academics of SOAS University of London 20th-century British historians Scholars of medieval Islamic history Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford