How do people understand the Quran to be divine revelation? What is it about the text that inspires such devotion and commitment in the reader/believer? Todd Lawson explores how the timeless literary genres of epic and apocalypse bear religious meaning in the Quran, communicating the sense of divine presence, urgency and truth. Grounding his approach in the universal power of story and myth, he embarks upon a fascinating inquiry into the unique power of one of the most loved, widely read and recited books in the world.

Knowledge and Education in Classical Islam: Religious Learning between Continuity and Change is a pioneering collection of essays on the historical developments, ideals, and practices of Islamic learning and teaching in the formative and classical periods of Islam (i.e., from the seventh to fifteenth centuries CE). Based on innovative and philologically sound primary source research, and utilizing the most recent methodological tools, this two volume set sheds new light on the challenges and opportunities that arise from a deep engagement with classical Islamic concepts of knowledge, its production and acquisition, and, of course, learning. Learning is especially important because of its relevance to contemporary communities and societies in our increasingly multicultural, “global” civilizations, whether Eastern or Western. Contributors: Hosn Abboud, Sara Abdel-Latif, Asma Afsaruddin, Shatha Almutawa, Nuha Alshaar, Jessica Andruss, Mustafa Banister, Enrico Boccaccini, Sonja Brentjes, Michael Carter, Hans Daiber, Yoones Dehghani Farsani, Yassir El Jamouhi, Nadja Germann, Antonella Ghersetti, Sebastian Günther, Mohsen Haredy, Angelika Hartmann, Paul L. Heck, Asma Hilali, Agnes Imhof, Jamal Juda, Wadad Kadi, Mehmet Kalayci, Alexey Khismatulin, Todd Lawson, Mariana Malinova, Ulrika Mårtensson, Christian Mauder, Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Maryam Moazzen, Angelika Neuwirth, Jana Newiger, Luca Patrizi, Lutz Richter-Bernburg, Ali Rida Rizek, Mohammed Rustom, Jens Scheiner, Gregor Schoeler, Steffen Stelzer, Barbara Stowasser, Jacqueline Sublet, and Martin Tamcke.

The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an offers an impressive and comprehensive overview of the formative scripture of Islam. Including a wide number of scholarly approaches to the Qur’an by both established authorities and emergent voices, the 40 chapters in this volume represent the latest word on the academic understanding of the Muslim scripture. The Qur’an is spoken of in scholarship across disciplines; it is the beating heart of a living community of believers; it is a work of beauty and a basis for art and culture; it is a profoundly significant historical artifact; and it is a mysterious survivor from the Late Ancient Arabic-speaking world. This Handbook accompanies the reader into the many worlds that the Qur’an lives in, from its ancient settings, to its internal drama, and through the 1,400 years of discussion and debate about its meaning. Bringing diverse approaches to the Qur’an together in one volume The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an represents the vibrancy of the field of Qur’anic Studies today. This Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and Islamic studies. It will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as area studies, sociology, anthropology, and history.

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.

In all religions, in the medieval West as in the East, ideas about the past, the present and the future were shaped by expectations related to the End. The volumes Cultures of Eschatology explore the many ways apocalyptic thought and visions of the end intersected with the development of pre-modern religio-political communities, with social changes and with the emergence of new intellectual and literary traditions. The two volumes present a wide variety of case studies from the early Christian communities of Antiquity, through the times of the Islamic invasion and the Crusades and up to modern receptions, from the Latin West to the Byzantine Empire, from South Yemen to the Hidden Lands of Tibetan Buddhism. Examining apocalypticism, messianism and eschatology in medieval Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist communities, the contributions paint a multi-faceted picture of End-Time scenarios and provide their readers with a broad array of source material from different historical contexts. The first volume, Empires and Scriptural Authorities, examines the formation of literary and visual apocalyptic traditions, and the role they played as vehicles for defining a community’s religious and political enemies. The second volume, Time, Death and Afterlife, focuses on key topics of eschatology: death, judgment, afterlife and the perception of time and its end. It also analyses modern readings and interpretations of eschatological concepts.

Traditionally revered as the literal word of God, the Qur’an serves as Islam’s sacred book of revelation. Accordingly, its statements and pronouncements rest at the core of the beliefs and teachings that have inexorably defined expressions of the Islamic faith. Indeed, over the centuries, engaging with and poring over the contents of the Qur’an inspired an impressive range of traditional scholarship. Notwithstanding its religious pre-eminence, the Qur’an is also considered to be the matchless masterpiece of the Arabic language and its impact as a text can be discerned in all aspects of the Arabic literary tradition. Presenting contributions from leading experts in the field, The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies offers an authoritative collection of chapters that guide readers through the gamut of themes, subjects, and debates that have dominated the academic study of the Qur’an and its literary heritage. These range from chapters that explore the text’s language, vocabulary, style, and structure, to detailed surveys of its contents, concepts, transmission, literary influence, historical significance, commentary tradition, and even the scholarship devoted to translations. With the aim of serving as an indispensable reference resource, the Handbook assesses the implications of research discourses and discussions shaping the study of the Qur’an today. There exists no single volume devoted to such a broad review of the scholarship on the Qur’an and its rich commentary tradition.

The Prophet's Whistle is a study of the ancient, nonliterary features of the Quran. George Archer uses observations from the anthropologies of living oral cultures, the cognitive sciences of literacy, and the study of other dead oral cultures. When the Quran appeared in the seventh century, it was a vocal recital performed by an unlettered man named Muhammad. The Prophet's Whistle shows that the thought systems of the Quran are oral, through and through, but by the end of the life of its Prophet, the Quran likewise hints at a personal and cultural embrace of writing and the mindsets of literate people.

In Tafsir as Mystical Experience, Todd Lawson shows how the Quran may be engaged with for meaning and understanding, the usual goal of mystical exegesis, and also how it may be engaged with through tafsīr in a quest for spiritual or mystical experience. In this earliest of the Báb’s extended works, written before his public claim to be the return of the hidden Imam, the act of reading is shown to be something akin to holy communion in which the sacred text is both entrance upon and destination of the mystic quest. The Quran here is a door to an “abode of glory” and an abiding spiritual encounter with the divine through the prophet, his daughter Fāṭima and the twelve Imams of Ithna-ʿasharī Shiʿism who inhabit the letters, words, verses and suras of the Book. Cover calligraphy by Burhan Zahrai of Quran 53:11

The lead essay in this book is the first effort to approach the historical figure of Muhammad in a manner comparable to the investigations that biblical scholars have made in the effort to recover the historical figure of Jesus. Using comparable methods and approaches, this study demonstrates that despite a widely held belief that Islam was born "in the full light of history," we in fact know considerably less about both Muhammad and the beginnings of Islam than we do about the historical Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity. Also included are republications of four previously published essays dealing with such topics as the Qur'an's status as a late ancient biblical apocryphon, the relation between the Jerusalem Temple and the Holy House revered by the Qur'an, and the imminent eschatology of the Qur'an and the early Islamic tradition.