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 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.

Eurocentrism, Qurʾanic Translation and Decoloniality contributes to the understanding of Eurocentrism in Translation Studies and engages with the concept through the lens of scholarship on Arabic and Qurʾan translation. This book calls for a deeper consideration of Eurocentrism as essential for several debates in the discipline, including its scientific character and future development. It claims that the angle of Arabic and Qurʾan translation is a valuable – and nearly unexploited – area where tensions in translation scholarship can play out in revealing ways. The book also draws connections between Eurocentrism, Qurʾan translation and decolonial thought in order to highlight ‘decoloniality’ as a useful framework for imagining a post-Eurocentric discipline. The book will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students and researchers interested in Translation Studies, particularly within the areas of Arabic, Qurʾanic, Islamic and religious translation.

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

This book is about the articulation of ethics in the Qurʾān and the tafsīr tradition. Based on an examination of several apparently problematic Qurʾānic narrative pericopes and how the exegetes grappled with them, the book demonstrates that the moral world of the Qurʾān is polyvalent and non-linear, owing, above all, to its intrinsic ethical antinomies and textual ambiguities. That is, the book contends that paradox and uncertainty are both constituents of the Qurʾān’s ethical architectonics, and that through these constituents the Qurʾān charts a system of ethics that seeks to tread in the midst of a non-ideal world rife with uncertainty. The book also argues that the tafsīr tradition tends to erode the hermeneutical openness of the Qurʾān and, thereby, limits the Qurʾān’s ethical potential. The book, thus, advances our understanding of Qurʾānic ethics and contributes to the field of tafsīr studies and to the scholarship on Qurʾānic hermeneutics.

The book investigates modern Qur’an commentaries in South Asia and engages with how Muslim scholars have imagined and assessed their past intellectual heritage. The research is focused on British India from the time of the Mutiny of 1857 to the moment of the Partition of united India in 1947. Offering critical scrutiny of Muslim exegesis of the Qur’an in North India, the study especially focuses on the Qur’anic thought of Sayyid Ahmed Khan (d. 1989), Ashraf Ali Thanawi (d. 1943), and Hamid al-Din Farahi (d. 1930). The volume challenges widespread assumptions of an all-pervasive reform and revivalism underlying the academic study of Islam. Instead of looking for Muslim revivalism and reform as epistemological foundations, it stresses the study of modern Qur’an commentaries, in particular local and cosmopolitan contexts. Departing from the oft-repeated explanations of Muslim scholarship and modern Islam through the lens of traditionalism and modernism, it discovers how Muslim scholars viewed themselves in relation to the Islamic tradition, and how they imagined and assessed their past intellectual heritage. Studying the history of the interpretation of the Qur’an in the multiple contexts of nineteenth and early twentieth-century British India, the book will be of interest to readers of Qur’anic studies, modern Islam and South Asian studies.

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.

This edited volume aims to advance a Muslim-centered perspective on the study of Islam in Europe. To do so, it brings together a range of case studies that illustrate how European Muslims engaged with their Sacred Scripture while being part of a Christian-dominated social and political space. The research presented in this volume seeks to analyse Muslims’ practices of translating, interpreting and using the Qur’an as a sacred object and, thus, pursues three main research agendas. Part I focuses on the issues of Muslim-Christian relations in Europe and studies how these relations have engendered discursive connections between Muslim- and Christian-produced texts related to the study and interpretation of the Qur’an. Part II aims to bring scholarly attention to the under-represented cases of Muslim communities in Europe. This part introduces new research on Polish-Belarusian, Daghestani, Bosnian and Kazan Tatars and examines local traditions of producing vernacular Qur’ans and commodification of Qur’anic manuscripts. The final section of the volume, Part III, contributes to filling in the gaps related to the theoretical and conceptual framing of Muslim translation activities. The history of religious thought and practice in European history is in many ways still uncharted territory. This book aims to contribute to a better understanding of the cultural history of the Qur’an and Muslim agency in interpreting, transmitting and translating the Sacred Scripture.

This book studies the political and institutional project of Al-Qur’an dan Terjemahnya, the official translation of the Qurʾān into Indonesian by the Indonesian government. It investigates how the translation was produced and presented, and how it is read, as well as considering the implications of the state’s involvement in such a work. Lukman analyses the politicisation of the Qurʾān commentary through discussion of how the tafsīr mechanism functions in this version, weighing up the translation’s dual constraints: the growing political context, on the one hand, and the tafsīr tradition on the other. In doing so, the book pays attention to three key areas: the production phase, the textual material, and the reception of the translation by readers. This book will be of value to scholars with an interest in tafsīr studies, modern and Southeast Asian or Indonesian tafsīr sub-fields, the study of Qurʾān translations, and Indonesian politics and religion more broadly.

This volume explores the relationship between the Qur’an and the Jewish and Christian traditions, considering aspects of continuity and reform. The chapters examine the Qur’an’s retelling of biblical narratives, as well as its reaction to a wide array of topics that mark Late Antique religious discourse, including eschatology and ritual purity, prophetology and paganism, and heresiology and Christology. Twelve emerging and established scholars explore the many ways in which the Qur’an updates, transforms, and challenges religious practice, beliefs, and narratives that Late Antique Jews and Christians had developed in dialogue with the Bible. The volume establishes the Qur’an’s often unique perspective alongside its surprising continuity with Judaism and Christianity. Chapters focus on individual suras and on intra-Qur’anic parallels, on the Qur’an’s relationship to pre-Islamic Arabian culture, on its intertextuality and its literary intricacy, and on its legal and moral framework. It illustrates a move away from the problematic paradigm of cultural influence and instead emphasizes the Qur’an’s attempt to reform the religious landscape of its time. The Qur'an's Reformation of Judaism and Christianity offers new insight into the Islamic Scripture as a whole and into recent methodological developments, providing a compelling snapshot of the burgeoning field of Qur’anic studies. It is a key resource for students and scholars interested in religion, Islam, and Middle Eastern Studies.