The Living Qurn

This work aims to distill the findings of a wide variety of scholarly disciplines into a coherent narrative of the Qurns 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 Qurn and the written Qurn, it becomes clear that there are, in fact, two histories of the Qurn and that the overall history of the Qurn cannot be appreciated without understanding the interactions between these two occasionally intertwined but often independent component histories. Discrepancies between the four qurnic Variants that are in active use today are indexed and analyzed. While most scholarship views the Qurn 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 Qurn is a living text that continues to evolve.