Fail-Lookng Women or Vine Trees? A critique of Luxenberg’s Syro-Aramic Reading of Hūri in Qur’an

The word "hūr" has been mentioned in four verses of the Qur'an, and in three cases, it has been modified by “īn” to produce the term " hūr īn". The sentence " And We shal wed them unto fair ones with wide, lovely eyes " (Ad-Dukhan, 54; Tūr. 20) leaves no doubt for Qur'anic commentators that the hūr īn refers to fair and lovey women that are wed onto men entering the Paradise. In 2000, an author alias Christoph Luxenberg published a book entitled "The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran" claiming that Muslims had misinterpreted the term hūr īn. In his view, Syriac-Aramaic words and phrases have been widely used in Qu’ran, and Muslims, regardless of the original meaning of such words (e.g. hūr) in Syriac, have assigned a new meaning to them.According to him, in the Syriac language, this word means white grapes, but Muslims - at a time when the Koran was written without any dots in the words – intepereted the word "Rāvāhna" as "Zāvājna (wives)" and thus assumed that hūr was a fair-lookng female figure in the paradise. Luxenberg argues that they have achieved these results based on his historical-comparative linguistic knowledge. This essay analyzed Luxenberg's claims regarding verses about hūr īn, concluding that historical-comparative linguistic research not only repudiates Luxenberg's argument, but also provides sound evidence that supports the common meaning of the term hūr īn in Muslim communities.