Recent manuscript evidence from al-Jami` al-Kabir in ?an ‘a’ suggests that the Qur’an took its final shape well before 671 CE. Irrespective, however, of who composed it or when it was compiled, questions remain about whether the Qur’an followed any kind of preconceived plan or compositional schema that makes sense in today’s world. In The al-Baqara Crescendo, Nevin Reda introduces a bold new avenue of research: the poetics of Qur'anic narrative structure. Focusing on Surat al-Baqara, the longest and most challenging of the suras, she explores the beauty and rationale behind the Qur'an’s unusual organization. Reda argues that the sura – often dismissed by Muslim traditionalists and Orientalist critics as a baffling collection of disjointed material – can be appreciated as a coherent composition if it is approached as a spoken text. Calling attention to oral organizational techniques such as repetition, this book’s repertoire of figures showcases Surat al-Baqara’s ingenious layout and pinpoints the sophisticated meanings that are embedded within it. Incorporating insights from literary theory and Biblical studies, the author advances inclusivity and intercultural bridge-building in the study of scripture. In an engaging narrative that is bound to captivate and challenge the reader, Reda communicates a deep love and thorough command of her subject, all while presenting a significant new development in Islamic feminist hermeneutics.

The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an offers an impressive and comprehensive overview of the formative scripture of Islam. Including a wide number of scholarly approaches to the Qur’an by both established authorities and emergent voices, the 40 chapters in this volume represent the latest word on the academic understanding of the Muslim scripture. The Qur’an is spoken of in scholarship across disciplines; it is the beating heart of a living community of believers; it is a work of beauty and a basis for art and culture; it is a profoundly significant historical artifact; and it is a mysterious survivor from the Late Ancient Arabic-speaking world. This Handbook accompanies the reader into the many worlds that the Qur’an lives in, from its ancient settings, to its internal drama, and through the 1,400 years of discussion and debate about its meaning. Bringing diverse approaches to the Qur’an together in one volume The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an represents the vibrancy of the field of Qur’anic Studies today. This Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and Islamic studies. It will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as area studies, sociology, anthropology, and history.

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.

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.

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.

Arabic Belles Lettres brings together ten studies that shed light on important questions in the study of Arabic language, literature, literary history, and writerly culture. The volume is divided into three sections. Early Narratives comprises: Joseph Lowry on the Qurʾan's allusive legal language; Abed el-Rahman Tayyara on matrilineal lineages in the context of Badr and Uhụd; Ruqayya Khan on the ramifications of public courtship in ʾUdhrī romances; and Philip Kennedy on firāsah (reading for signs and traces) in medieval narrative. Medieval Authors comprises: Shawkat Toorawa on ʿUbaydallāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir's History of Baghdād; Maurice Pomerantz and Bilal Orfali on Ibn Fāris and the origins of the maqāmah genre; Everett Rowson on al-Tawḥīdī and his predecessors (a reprint of his 1996 ZDMG article); and Ghayde Ghraowi on al-Khafājī and his Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ. Modern Egypt comprises: Roger Allen on a cultural controversy in the Cairo newspapers of 1902; and Devin Stewart on preposterous boasting and ingenuity in on modern Egyptian Arabic.

Overturns orthodox thinking about morality in Shakespeare's plays by updating our understanding of the human mind