Textual Relations In The Qur An

Textual Relations in the Qur'an

Representing a new development in the study of Qur'anic text, this book tackles the issue of Qur'anic text structure by fusing the fields of linguistics and Qur'anic studies. The Qur'an contains many long suras covering diverse topics but with no apparent common context within which such variety can be explained. This book proposes a new explanation of Qur'anic text structure, arguing that the long suras have structure that are explicable within a framework for the mechanisms of human verbal communication. Through a systematic step-by-step analysis of the cognitive process involved in verbal communication and comprehension of text, this work provides interesting and useful insights into methods of analysis, mechanisms and dynamics of the Qur'anic text structure. The unique application of a sophisticated linguistic theory to the Qur'an introduces an entirely new way of reading the Qur'an and with detailed analysis of two Qur'anic passages the book presents a solid working out of the theory that will be accessible to both linguists and scholars of the Qur'an.

Textual Criticism and Qur'an Manuscripts

This unique work takes a method of textual analysis commonly used in studies of ancient Western and Eastern manuscripts and applies it to twenty-one early Qur'an manuscripts. Keith Small analyzes a defined portion of text from the Qur'an with two aims in view: to recover the earliest form of text for this portion, and to trace the historical development of this portion to the current form of the text of the Qur'an. Small concludes that though a significantly early edited form of the consonantal text of the Qur'an can be recovered, its original forms of text cannot be obtained. He also documents the further editing that was required to record the Arabic text of the Qur'an in a complete phonetic script, as well as providing an explanation for much of the development of various recitation systems of the Qur'an. This controversial, thought-provoking book provides a rigorous examination into the history of the Qur'an and will be of great interest to Quranic Studies scholars.

Textual Relations in the Qur'an