This text examines the literary elements in the Qur'an and analyses how they function in conveying its religious message effectively.

This volume studies how the literary elements in the Qur'an function in conveying its religious message effectively. It is divided into three parts. Part one includes studies of the whole Qur'an or large segments of it belonging to one historical period of its revelation; these studies concentrate on the analysis of its language, its style, its structural composition, its aesthetic characteristics, its rhetorical devices, its imagery, and the impact of these elements and their significance. Part two includes studies on individual suras of the Qur'an, each of which focuses on the sura's literary elements and how they produce meaning; each also explores the structure of this meaning and the coherence of its effect. Part three includes studies on Muslim appreciations of the literary aspects of the Qur'an in past generations and shows how modern linguistic, semantic, semiotic, and literary scholarship can add to their contributions.

The Qur'an is the foundational sacred text of the Islamic faith. Traditionally revered as the literal word of God, its pronouncements and discussions form the bedrock of Islamic beliefs and teachings. Notwithstanding its religious pre-eminence and the fact that it is the sacred text for over one billion of the world's Muslims, the Qur'an is also considered to be the matchless masterpiece of the Arabic language. Its historical impact as a text can be discerned in all aspects of the heritage of the Arabic literary tradition. Over recent decades, academic engagement with the Qur'an has produced an impressive array of scholarship, ranging from detailed studies of the text's unique language, style and structure, to meticulous surveys of its contents, concepts and historical contexts. The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies is an essential reference and starting point for those with an academic interest in the Qur'an. It offers not only detailed reviews of influential subjects in the field, but also a critical overview of developments in the research discourse. It explores the tradition of Qur'anic exegesis and hermeneutics, making it a comprehensive academic resource for the study of the Qur'an. No single volume devoted to such a broad academic survey of the state of the field currently exists.

The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an is a reader’s guide, a true companion for anyone who wishes to read and understand the Qur’an as a text and as a vital piece of Muslim life. Comprises over 30 original essays by leading scholars Provides exceptionally broad coverage - considering the structure, content and rhetoric of the Qur’an; how Muslims have interpreted the text and how they interact with it; and the Qur’an’s place in Islam Features notes, an extensive bibliography, indexes of names, Qur’an citations, topics, and technical terms

The literature on Balaghah (the art of Arabic eloquence) and commentaries on the Qurān stress that the style of the Qurān is beautiful, eloquent and inimitable. This literature identifies word order as one of the most distinctive aspects of Qurānic style. One of the main reasons for this is that, compared to English, Arabic has fewer restrictions on word order, thanks to its elaborate verb inflection system and case marking. This flexibility allows for the foregrounding of some elements within the sentence, resulting in a marked (or non-canonical) word order and fulfilling certain discursive functions, including specification, restriction, emphasis, amplification/ glorification, and denial. Marked word order is used to highlight or downplay certain elements in speech or writing. It constitutes one way of delivering meanings to the addressee, as these meanings are ordered in the mind of the speaker in terms of their importance, making the style a precise reflection of the speaker’s mind and feelings. This book is a descriptive study which attempts to examine how translations of the Qurān have handled āyahs (verses of the Qurān) that feature lexical foregrounding, focusing on ten published translations into English, carried out by translators from different ideological and linguistic backgrounds. It offers a systematic comparison of the ways in which the selected translators deal with the linguistic feature of word order variation, and examines issues relating to the translator’s style. Specifically, the book identifies and examines the following: instances of marked word order discussed by commentators on the Qurān, and the function served by each case of lexical foregrounding; secondly, the options and/or patterns employed by translators to render the different functions of marked word order; thirdly, the recurrent options and/or patterns for rendering different types of word order variation. Finally, the book explores the factors which may have influenced the choice of particular strategies by different translators, including the translators’ motivations and the various historical contexts in which the translations were made.

"Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has a vibrant intellectual community that is undertaking interesting and challenging work on Islam. This volume brings together a cross-section of Muslim intellectuals, from traditionalists to neo-modernists, and makes their varied approaches to the Qur'an accessible in English to a wider, global audience for the first time."--BOOK JACKET.

Protest is an activity not associated with the pious and collectively-minded, but more often seen as an activity of the liberal and rebellious. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are commonly understood as paragons of submission and obedience following Abraham’s example. Yet, the scriptures of all three faiths are founded in the prophets protesting wrongs in the social order. The Qur'an claims that men and women, and the relations between them are a sign from God. The question is to what extent are women silenced in the text, and do they share with men in shaping the prophetic scriptures? This book finds that far from silencing women, the Qur'an affirms the female voice as protester for justice and as questioner of Theology. In this reading of the female role in divine revelation in the Islamic text, Georgina Jardim returns to the scriptures of the Judeo-Christian counterpart of the Abrahamic faiths, to investigate whether the Bible may claim women as brokers of revelation. The result is an enriched understanding of divine communication in the Abrahamic scriptures and a commonplace for reasoning about the female voice as speaker in the Word of God.

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.

A collection of articles and studies discussing early Islamic tenets and beliefs based on Islamic traditions and literature. A number of studies appear for the first time in English. The topics dealt with relate to the Islamic prostration in ritual prayer, Islamic traditions which are discussed through the analysis of hadith literature and reports and narratives related to the literary genre of the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā' (Stories of the Prophets). The readers of this collection of essays are scholars and students of early Islam, of the development hadith literature and of the narratives on Islamic prophets; all together the studies bring to light the dynamics between the formation of early traditions and their role in the origin and developments of Islamic literature.

The corpus coranicum eludes familiar categories and resists strict labels. No doubt the threads woven into the fabric are exceptionally textured, varied, and complex. Accordingly, the introductory chapter of this book demonstrates the application of form criticism to the text. Chapter two then presents a form-critical study of the prayer genre. It identifies three productive formulae and addresses distinct social settings and forms associated with them. The third chapter begins by defining the liturgy genre vis-à-vis prayer in the Qurʾān. Drawing a line between the hymn and litany forms, this chapter treats each in turn. Chapter four considers the genre classified as wisdom literature. It identifies sapiential formulae and sheds light on wisdom contexts. The fifth chapter examines the narrative genre writ large. It also surveys narrative blocks of the long saga. The subsequent chapter on the proclamation genre inspects a set of vocative formulae, which occurs in the messenger situation. The concluding chapter looks at the corpus through synchronic and diachronic lenses. In the end, Qurʾānic genres encapsulate the form-critical elements of formulae, forms, and settings, as well as an historical dimension.