Scriptures & Texts

The Quran

the koo-RAHN

Also Known As Koran The traditional English spelling, and, before this, a search that returned nothing at all. · Qur'an The apostrophised scholarly spelling. · Al-Quran The Arabic form with its article.

Islamic Scriptures

Muslims hold the Quran to be the uncreated speech of God, revealed in Arabic to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over some twenty-three years from about 610 CE and preserved since without alteration. It runs to 114 suras of very unequal length, arranged broadly longest to shortest rather than in the order of revelation, and divided for reading into thirty roughly equal parts. It was made to be heard: it set the standard of literary Arabic, it is memorised entire by millions, and recited in prayer five times a day by well over a billion people. Translations appear as interpretations of the meaning, because the tradition holds that the Arabic is the revelation and cannot be carried across.

Facts

Open Questions

Structure

Fourteen of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, exactly half the alphabet, appear disjoined at the head of certain suras. What they signify has not been established. 1

The classical commentary tradition records a wide range of proposals for what the disconnected letters do and returns no agreed answer, and one position long held within that tradition is that the meaning was not disclosed. Modern scholarship has added further proposals without producing a consensus. This is not a case of two camps disagreeing; it is a case in which no reading has been established. Systematic collation of the earliest codices for whether and how the letters are set off, and a distributional study relating the sets of letters to the suras that carry them, would bear on it.

Origins

Era of Composition

610 to 632 CE 1

Language

Classical Arabic 1

Attributed Author / Compiler

Islam holds the Quran to be the literal, uncreated speech of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel over about twenty three years and preserved without human authorship at any stage. 1Islam

Text

Literary Form

Prophetic oracle 1

Attestation

Historicity

Historically attested 2

Status

Canonical Status

Qur'anic revelation 1Islam

Structure

114 surahs, 6,236 ayat (Kufan count); arranged roughly longest to shortest 1

Disputed

Attributed Author / Compiler

Academic and historical critical scholarship treats the Quran as a text that took shape across the seventh century, transmitted first among Muhammad's followers and gathered into a single standardised written text under the caliph Uthman within a few decades of Muhammad's death, with the precise stages of that compilation still argued over among specialists. 3

Learn More

Fourteen Hundred Verses Arranged the Wrong Way Round

The Quran is divided into 114 suras, conventionally translated chapters, each made up of numbered ayat, verses. The suras are not in the order Muslims believe them to have been revealed. After the short opening prayer, al-Fatiha, they run in rough order of decreasing length, from al-Baqara at 286 verses down to suras of three lines near the end. The effect is that the earliest material sits mostly at the back of the book and the latest mostly at the front, which is why a reader working front to back is not reading a chronology of Muhammad's career.

Every sura is classed Meccan or Medinan. The division is not primarily about place but about time: material held to have been revealed before the hijra, the migration to Medina in 622 CE, is Meccan, and material after it is Medinan, so a passage revealed at Mecca during the conquest in 630 is counted Medinan. The classifications come from the exegetical tradition rather than from the text, and a number of suras are held to be mixed. The two bodies of material read differently. The Meccan suras are shorter, more rhythmic, heavily concerned with the oneness of God, the resurrection and the judgement. The Medinan suras are longer and more prosaic, and carry most of the legal, communal and military material.

Cutting across the suras is a second division into thirty juz, made purely for reading a section a night through Ramadan, and further into sixtieths. Verse numbering is not quite universal: several counting traditions split the text slightly differently, which is why the total is variously given as 6,236 verses and other close figures.

The Codex of Uthman and What the Manuscripts Show

The traditional Muslim account is specific. Revelations were memorised and written on whatever came to hand during Muhammad's lifetime; after many memorisers were killed at the battle of Yamama, the caliph Abu Bakr had Zayd ibn Thabit gather the material; and under the third caliph Uthman, around 650 CE, a standard consonantal text was fixed, copies were sent to the main garrison cities, and divergent copies were ordered destroyed.

Early Arabic script wrote only a skeleton, the rasm, without short vowels and often without the dots distinguishing consonants, so a single written text still supported several oral renderings. These are the qiraat. Ibn Mujahid, at Baghdad in the tenth century, fixed seven as canonical; Ibn al-Jazari, in the fifteenth, extended the accepted set to ten, each transmitted through two named narrators. In practice one dominates: the reading of Hafs an Asim, standardised in the Cairo edition printed under King Fuad in 1924 after seventeen years of work by scholars of al-Azhar, is now the text of most printed Qurans worldwide. Warsh an Nafi remains in use across North and West Africa.

Two manuscripts anchor the early evidence. The Sanaa palimpsest, found in the Great Mosque in 1972, carries a washed-off lower text that differs from the Uthmanic text in word order and wording, the only substantial surviving witness to a non-Uthmanic tradition. The Birmingham folios, radiocarbon dated to 568-645 CE at 95.4 per cent confidence, are often reported as proving a date within Muhammad's lifetime. They do not. Radiocarbon dates the death of the animal that supplied the parchment, not the writing on it, and the range is wide; the folios agree with the standard text, and the honest conclusion is that they are very early, not that they are datable to a particular decade.

Inimitability, the Hafiz, and the Argument Over Origins

Central to Muslim doctrine is ijaz, the inimitability of the Quran: the claim that its language cannot be matched, which the text itself presses by challenging doubters to produce something comparable. From this follows a position with practical consequences. A rendering into another language is not the Quran but an interpretation of its meaning, and authorised English versions are titled accordingly. Ritual recitation must be in Arabic, whatever the reciter's mother tongue, and the discipline of tajwid governs how the sounds are produced. Someone who has committed the whole text to memory is a hafiz; the title is held by very large numbers of people, including many with no Arabic beyond the text itself, and this parallel oral transmission is regarded within the tradition as a check on the written one.

Western scholarship has not spoken with one voice. In 1977 John Wansbrough argued that the Quran was not fixed in the seventh century at all but crystallised gradually within a sectarian milieu over perhaps two centuries, the traditional origin story being retrojected later. The argument was influential in making the sources a problem rather than a given, and successors pushed it further. It has not, however, carried the field. The radiocarbon evidence, the early manuscript fragments including Sanaa, and detailed work on the rasm have moved the weight of academic opinion back towards an early fixing of the consonantal text, broadly within the period the tradition claims, while leaving genuinely open questions about the collection process, the status of variants and the reliability of the later reports that describe it.

Passages from This Text

Quran 1:1-7 (al-Fatiha)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)prayer

IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the day of judgment! Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to; not of those Thou art wroth with; nor of those who err.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 112:1-4 (al-Ikhlas)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)the oneness of God

Say, 'He is God alone! God the Eternal! He begets not and is not begotten! Nor is there like unto Him any one!'

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 17:24 (Palmer 17:25)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)family duty

And lower to them the wing of humility out of compassion, and say, 'O Lord! have compassion on them as they brought me up when I was little!'

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 2:255 (Ayat al-Kursi; Palmer 2:256)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)the oneness of God

God, there is no god but He, the living, the self-subsistent. Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. Who is it that intercedes with Him save by His permission? He knows what is before them and what behind them, and they comprehend not aught of His knowledge but of what He pleases. His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and it tires Him not to guard them both, for He is high and grand.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 2:256 (Palmer 2:257)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)religious freedom, contested

There is no compulsion in religion; the right way has been distinguished from the wrong, and whoso disbelieves in Taghut and believes in God, he has got hold of the firm handle in which is no breaking off; but God both hears and knows.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 24:35 (the Light Verse)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)light and guidance

God is the light of the heavens and the earth; His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star; it is lit from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the west, the oil of which would well-nigh give light though no fire touched it,, light upon light!, God guides to His light whom He pleases; and God strikes out parables for men, and God all things doth know.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 5:32 (Palmer 5:15 numbering)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)the value of a life

For this cause have we prescribed to the children of Israel that whoso kills a soul, unless it be for another soul or for violence in the land, it is as though he had killed men altogether; but whoso saves one, it is as though he saved men altogether.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 55:1-9The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)balance and order

The Merciful taught the Qur'an; He created man, taught him plain speech. The sun and the moon have their appointed time; The herbs and the trees adore; And the heavens, He raised them and set the balance, that ye should not be outrageous in the balance; But weigh ye aright, and stint not the balance. And the earth He has set it for living creatures;

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 96:1-5The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)revelation

READ, in the name of thy Lord! Who created man from congealed blood! Read, for thy Lord is most generous! Who taught the pen! Taught man what he did not know!

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Connections

Associated With

Fahd of Saudi Arabia

The Medina complex founded under him has printed the text and its translations in numbers no commercial publisher has approached.

Source The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi ArabiaDavid Commins

Hafiz

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Mount Hira

Traditional site of the revelation of the opening verses of Surah al-Alaq.

Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari

Zayd ibn Thabit

He wrote revelation down as it came, collected the text under Abu Bakr, and led the committee that produced the codex Uthman sent to the garrison cities.

Source Qurans of the Umayyads: A First OverviewFrancois Deroche

Attests

Alcohol and intoxicants are forbidden

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ark of the Covenant

Named as the Tabut (the ark) in Quran 2:248.

Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)

Ayat al-Kursi

Ayat al-Kursi is verse 255 of Surat al-Baqara.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Basmala

Opens all but one of the chapters of the Quran and stands as Quran 1:1.

Source The Qur'an

Prayer for Knowledge

The Prayer of Jonah is placed in the mouth of the prophet Jonah within the Quran.

Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)

Rabbana Atina

Rabbana atina appears in the second surah of the Quran, al-Baqara.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Shura

Source The Qur'an

Staff of Moses (Topkapi Palace)

The staff (asa) of Musa and its signs are recounted in the Quran.

Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)

Tablets of the Law

The tablets (alwah) given to Moses are mentioned in the Quran (7:145, 7:150, 7:154).

Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)

The Companions of the Cave

Source The Qur'an

Usury (riba) is forbidden

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Wudu (Ablution)

Wudu is commanded in the Quran as ritual ablution before prayer and other acts of worship.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Belongs to Tradition

Ahmadiyya

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Alawites

Alawites hold the Quran as scripture; the community's own core doctrinal texts beyond it remain closed to outsiders and are not reconstructed here.

Source The Nusayri-Alawis: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of the Leading Minority in SyriaYaron Friedman

Alevism

Alevism holds the Quran as scripture, read through its own esoteric, batini interpretive tradition rather than through Sunni or Twelver Shia jurisprudence.

Source The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic TraditionDavid Shankland

Ashari School

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Hanafi School

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Hanbali School

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Ibadism

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Islam

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ismailism

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Jafari School

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Kharijites

The Kharijites held the Quran as scripture in common with the early Muslim community they broke from over the question of leadership after Uthman's death.

Source The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh CenturyHugh Kennedy

Maliki School

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Mutazila

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam reads the Quran alongside Elijah Muhammad's own writings, which supply the movement's distinctive doctrine the Quran itself does not teach.

Source The Black Muslims in AmericaC. Eric Lincoln

Quranism

The Quran is the sole binding scripture in Quranist doctrine, held to be complete and clear in itself and needing no second body of text to interpret it.

Source Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in IslamAisha Y. Musa

Salafism

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Shafii School

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Shia (Twelver)

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Sufism

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Sunni

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Wahhabism

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Zaidiyyah

The Quran, held to be the literal and uncreated word of God revealed to Muhammad, is canonical scripture across every branch of Islam, including this tradition.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Commonly Conflated with (See Note)

The Council of Jerusalem

This edge's note restated a different dispute than the comparison it was attached to. The Acts-versus-Galatians reconciliation question over the Council itself is carried in full on the Council of Jerusalem's own contested-legacy fact; no comparison with the Quran is addressed by that fact or by this edge's prior citation.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Contains

11. Hud

38. Sad

Showing 1 to 50 of 206 in Contains, page 1 of 5.

Disciplines That Use This

Bibliomancy

Istikhara by the book, distinct from the prayer of the same name.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Tafsir

Source Encyclopaedia of the Qur'anJane Dammen McAuliffe, general editor

In Language

Classical Arabic

Instances

Samarkand Kufic Quran

An early manuscript copy of the Quran.

Source Qurans of the Umayyads: A First OverviewFrancois Deroche

Originates in Language

Classical Arabic

Source Wikipedia: Quran

Passages

Quran 1:1-7 (al-Fatiha)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 112:1-4 (al-Ikhlas)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 17:24 (Palmer 17:25)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 2:255 (Ayat al-Kursi; Palmer 2:256)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 2:256 (Palmer 2:257)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 24:35 (the Light Verse)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 5:32 (Palmer 5:15 numbering)

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 55:1-9

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Quran 96:1-5

Source The National Penal (Code) Act, 2017 (Muluki Aparadh Samhita, 2074)Parliament of Nepal

Related To

Alif ا

One of the fourteen letters, exactly half the alphabet, that occur disjoined at the head of certain suras. That they occur there is not in question. What they signify is unresolved, and the atlas records that as an open question rather than choosing among the readings the commentary tradition offers.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Andalusi Quran Manuscript

Andalusi Quran manuscripts normally carry the reading of Warsh from Nafi, the recitation standard of the Muslim west.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Ayn ع

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Ha (Pharyngeal) ح

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Ha ه

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Kaf ك

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Khatib

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Lam ل

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Madrasa

Source The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the WestGeorge Makdisi

Mim م

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Nun ن

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Qaf ق

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Ra ر

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Rehal

The rehal is a folding stand that holds a copy of the Quran open at reading height.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Sad ص

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Sin س

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Ta (Emphatic) ط

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

The First Revelation to Muhammad

The Quran is the text the tradition holds began with this revelation.

The Sacrifice of Ibrahim

The Shahada

Both clauses are Quranic in substance, though the two-clause testimony as a fixed formula is not a single Quranic verse.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Ummah

Source The Qur'an

Ya ي

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Studied By

Ibn Abbas

The tradition calls him the interpreter of the Quran; the corpus that grew under his name is enormous and is not all his.

Sources

1. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief), HarperOne, 2015translation and commentaryView the Source

2. The Quran (Wikipedia)

Lead section

Quote, Lead section

Shortly after Muhammad's death, the Quran was compiled on the order of the first caliph Abu Bakr (r. 632-634) by the companions, who had written down or memorized parts of it

View the Source

3. Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an

Jane Dammen McAuliffe, general editor, Brill, 2001

The Black Muslims in America

C. Eric Lincoln, Beacon Press, Boston, 1961View the Source

The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century

Hugh Kennedy, Routledge, 2016View the Source

The Nusayri-Alawis: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria

Yaron Friedman, Brill, Leiden, 2010

The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition

David Shankland, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003View the Source

Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam

Aisha Y. Musa, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008View the Source

The Qur'an

Homepage

Quote, Homepage

Quran.com is a trusted platform used by millions worldwide to read, search, listen to, and reflect on the Quran in multiple languages.

View the Source

Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source

Sahih al-Bukhari

Muhammad al-BukhariView the Source

Wikipedia: Quran

WikipediaOriginates in Language: Classical Arabic, Infobox, language field

Quote, Originates in Language: Classical Arabic, Infobox, language field

Classical Arabic

View the Source

Open Questions (1 open question)

What do the disconnected letters at the head of certain suras signify?

Fourteen of the twenty-eight Arabic letters, exactly half the alphabet, appear disjoined at the opening of a number of suras. The classical commentary tradition records a wide range of proposals for what they do and returns no agreed answer, and one position long held within that tradition is that the meaning was not disclosed. Modern scholarship has added further proposals without producing a consensus either. This is not a case of two camps disagreeing; it is a case in which no reading has been established.

What would resolve this Nothing in the manuscript record settles the meaning, and it may not be settleable. What would narrow it is evidence that bears on the openings as written objects rather than as a puzzle: systematic collation of the earliest codices for whether and how the letters are set off, and a distributional study relating the sets of letters to the suras that carry them.

Quranic studies, Arabic philology and early Islamic manuscript palaeographySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief), The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary

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