A Place Between Two Places: The Qurʼānic Barzakh By
 George Archer
Publisher Gorgias Press Pub Date 2017 Pub Location US Isbn 0 Course(s)
   26

Description

For believers in the resurrection of the body, there arises the question of what happens after death and before the Resurrection Day: an interval between the time of death and the Resurrection day. Most Muslims know this interval as Barzakh. Barzakh is a hallucinatory and frightening time in the grave marked by angelic visitations, reward, and torment. A Place Between Two came into being through the study of the oral structure of Qurʾan and the investigation of the history of early Islam. In A Place Between Two Places: The Quranic Barzakh, George Archer reconstructs the Barzakh's early history and analyzes sixteen Suras of Quran in search of oral orders, sub-textual hints, and convergent coincidences, the early Barzakh against the sacred religions of late antiquity, especially Saint Christ’s religion. From here, the Quranic vision of the Barzakh is traced forward through later prophetic biographies, Islamic architecture, and the hadith literature in order to show how the concept of Barzakh was developed based on eschatological claims of the Islamic Middle Ages.