History of the Qur''an: Approaches and Explorations

The Qurn is the sacred religious book of Muslims around the world. Yet its history, from its inception in seventh-century Arabia to its transmission in the modern world, remains understudied. The twelve chapters in this book address this lacuna by examining multifaceted stages in the Qurns history and transmission through a broad range of methodological and theoretical approaches. The volume examines the earliest material evidence of the Qurn through its manuscript tradition and explores their content and form. This includes a focus on the Qurns unique orthography and insights into the Sanaa manuscripts. Additionally, this work provides new insights by broaching upon critical moments in the Qurns history, such as the codification of Abu Bakr. A crucial component of the book deals with approaches to the variant readings of the Qurn, understood as being sanctioned through narrations on the aruf. It explores fresh insights into how Muslim scholars theorised such variances and the way they related them to the qirat, including how they approached the variant codices of prominent companions. Furthermore, this work explores understudied non-Qurnic transmissions of the Qurn alongside the historical development of Qurn translations. This volume advances the field of Qurnic studies and Qurnic history.