An Oral Formulaic Study Of The Qur An

The Qur’an makes extensive use of older religious material, stories, and traditions that predate the origins of Islam, and there has long been a fierce debate about how this material found its way into the Qur’an. This unique book argues that this debate has largely been characterized by a failure to fully appreciate the Qur’an as a predominately oral product. Using innovative computerized linguistic analysis, this study demonstrates that the Qur’an displays many of the signs of oral composition that have been found in other traditional literature. When one then combines these computerized results with other clues to the Qur’an’s origins (such as the demonstrably oral culture that both predated and preceded the Qur’an, as well as the “folk memory” in the Islamic tradition that Muhammad was an oral performer) these multiple lines of evidence converge and point to the conclusion that large portions of the Qur’an need to be understood as being constructed live, in oral performance. Combining historical, linguistic, and statistical analysis, much of it made possible for the first time due to new computerized tools developed specifically for this book, Bannister argues that the implications of orality have long been overlooked in studies of the Qur’an. By relocating the Islamic scripture firmly back into an oral context, one gains both a fresh appreciation of the Qur’an on its own terms, as well as a fresh understanding of how Muhammad used early religious traditions, retelling old tales afresh for a new audience.

The essays in this volume discuss recent trends and issues in the scholarly study of the Qur’ān and its exegesis. The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented development in qur'anic studies in terms of both the number of volumes that have been produced and the wide range of issues covered. It is not an exaggeration to say that the field of qur'anic studies today has become the 'crown' of Islamic studies. In this book, scholars of diverse approaches critically engage with the Qur’ān and its exegesis, including questions about the milieu in which the Qur’ān emerged, the Qur’ān's relation to the biblical tradition, its chronology, textual integrity, and its literary features. In addition, this volume addresses recent scholarship on tafsīr (qur'anic exegesis), including thematic interpretation, diacronic and syncronic readings of the Qur’ān. Various approaches to understanding the Muslim scripture with or without tafsīr are also discussed.

The Medinan layer of the Qur’an occupies a key position in the formative period of Islam yet poses substantial interpretive challenges. This volume exemplifies a rich array of scholarly approaches to the Medinan Qur’an’s distinctive textual, literary, and theological features.

For Westerners the Qur'an is a deeply foreign book. Christians who venture within this sacred scripture of Islam encounter a world where echoes of biblical figures and themes resound. But the Qur'an speaks in accents and forms that defy our expectations. For it captures an oral recitation of an open-ended drama, one rooted in seventh-century Arabia. Its context of people, events and ideas strikes us not only as poetically allusive but as enigmatic. And yet the Qur'an and its contested interpretations scroll in shadowed text between the headlines of our daily news. In The Qur'an in Context Mark Anderson offers a gateway into the original world and worldview of the Qur'an. With keen attention to the Qur'an's character, reception and theology, he opens up a hermeneutical space for Christians and others to engage its fabric of religious claims. The Qur'an's theology, anthropology, soteriology, spirituality as well as its portrayal of Jesus are all carefully examined. Finally, the Qur'an's claim to be the Bible's sequel is probed and evaluated. Forthright in Christian conviction and yet sympathetically open to dialogue, The Qur'an in Context is a reliable guide for those who want to explore the holy book of Islam in its varied facets.

This volume showcases a wide range of contemporary approaches to the identification of literary structures within Qur’anic surahs. Recent academic studies of the Qur’an have taken an increasing interest in the concept of the surah as a unity and, with it, the division of complete surahs into consecutive sections or parts. Part One presents a series of case studies focussing on individual Qur’anic surahs. Nevin Reda analyzes the structure of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (Q 3), Holger Zellentin looks at competing structures within Sūrat al-ʿAlaq (Q 96), and A.H. Mathias Zahniser provides an exploration of the ring structures that open Sūrat Maryam (Q 19). Part Two then focusses on three discrete aspects of the text. Nora K. Schmid assesses the changing structural function of oaths, Marianna Klar evaluates how rhythm, rhyme, and morphological parallelisms combine in order to produce texture and cohesion, while Salwa El-Awa considers the structural impact of connectives and other discourse markers with specific reference to Sūrat Ṭāhā (Q 20). The final section of the volume juxtaposes contrasting attitudes to the discernment of diachronic seams. Devin Stewart examines surah-medial oracular oaths, Muhammad Abdel Haleem questions a range of instances where suggestions of disjointedness have historically been raised, and Nicolai Sinai explores the presence of redactional layers within Sūrat al-Nisāʾ (Q 4) and Sūrat al-Māʾidah (Q 5). Bringing a combination of different approaches to Qur’an structure into a single book, written by well-established and emerging voices in Qur’anic studies, the work will be an invaluable resource to academics researching Islam, religious studies, and languages and literatures in general. Chapters 3 and 6 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Qur'ānic Studies Today brings together specialists in the field of Islamic studies to provide a range of essays that reflect the depth and breadth of scholarship on the Qur'ān. Combining theoretical and methodological clarity with close readings of qur’ānic texts, these contributions provide close analysis of specific passages, themes, and issues within the Qurʾān, even as they attend to the disciplinary challenges within the field of qur’ānic studies today. Chapters are arranged into three parts, treating specific figures appearing in the Qurʾān, analysing particular suras, and finally reflecting on the Qur’ān and its "others." They explore the internal dimensions and interior chronology of the Qur’ān as text, its possible conversations with biblical and non-biblical traditions in Late Antiquity, and its role as scripture in modern exegesis and recitation. Together, they are indispensable for students and scholars who seek an understanding of the Qur’ān founded on the most recent scholarly achievements. Offering both a reflection of and a reflection on the discipline of qur’ānic studies, the strong, scholarly examinations of the Qur’ān in this volume provide a valuable contribution to Islamic and qur’ānic studies.

The Qur’an: A Guidebook is an updated English version of the work appeared in Italian (Rome 2021) Leggere e studiare il Corano which deals with the contents of the Qur’an, the style and formal features of the text, the history and fixation of it and an poutline of the reception in Islamic literature. The aim of the work is to give a reader a description of what he/she can find in the Islamic holy text and the state of the critical debates on all the topics dealt with, focusing mainly on the growing scholarly literature which appeared in the last 30 years. As such, the work is unique in combining the aim to give comprehensive information on the topic and, at the same, time, reconstruct the critical debate in a balanced outline also emphasizing confessional approaches and the dynamics in the study of the Qur’an. There is nothing similar in contemporary scholarship and the book is a handbook for students and scholars of Islam but also for readers in religious studies who need to know how the main questions related to the Islamic text have been discussed in recent scholarship.

This work aims to distill the findings of a wide variety of scholarly disciplines into a coherent narrative of the Qur’ān’s history, from the first oral recitation to the four published Variants in active circulation today. In the process of unraveling the complicated relationships between the oral Qur’ān and the written Qur’ān, it becomes clear that there are, in fact, two histories of the Qur’ān and that the overall history of the Qur’ān cannot be appreciated without understanding the interactions between these two occasionally intertwined but often independent component histories. Discrepancies between the four qur’ānic Variants that are in active use today are indexed and analyzed. While most scholarship views the Qur’ān either in relation to its past and its possible origins, or in relation to its contemporary status as a static, fixed text, this work adopts an organic, developmental approach recognizing that the Qur’ān is a living text that continues to evolve.