9781573929455

Islam has world-wide influence, and even in the United States is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth. Its sacred book, the Koran, is the subject of voluminous commentary, yet it rarely receives the kind of objective critical scrutiny that has been applied to the texts of the Bible for over a century. To correct this neglect of objective scholarship, Ibn Warraq has assembled this excellent collection of critical commentaries on the Koran published by noted scholars from the beginning of the 20th century to recent times. This outstanding volume will be a welcome resource to interested lay readers and scholars alike.

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. 13
Transliteration and Other Technical Matters	p. 17
Introduction
Introduction	p. 23
What Is the Koran?	p. 107
Background
Towards a Prehistory of Islam	p. 131
A Question of Language
Syriac Influence on the Style of the Koran	p. 171
Some Additions to Prof. Jeffery's Foreign Vocabulary of the Quran	p. 193
The Arabic Readers of the Koran	p. 201
The Beginnings of Classical Arabic	p. 211
The Role of the Bedouins as Arbiters in Linguistic Questions and the Masala Az-Zunburiyya	p. 228
Some Suggestions to Quran Translators	p. 238
Sources of the Koran: Essenian, Christian, Coptic
Introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls	p. 245
The Qumran Scrolls and the Quran	p. 251
An Essenian Tradition in the Koran	p. 268
A Qumranian Expression in the Koran	p. 283
A Possible Coptic Source of a Quranic Text	p. 288
Introduction to Raimund Kobert	p. 296
The Shahadat az-zur: The False Witness	p. 301
On the Meaning of the Three Final Words of Sura XXII.30-31	p. 303
Early and Later Exegesis of the Koran: A Supplement to Or 35	p. 311
Suras, Suras, Suras
Introduction to Sura IX.29	p. 319
Some Minor Problems in the Quran	p. 322
Koran IX.29	p. 343
A Propos de Quran IX.29: Hatta Yutu L-Gizyata wa-hum Sagiruna	p. 348
The Ancient Arab Background of the Koranic Concept al-Gizatu an Yadin	p. 350
"An Yadin" (Quran IX.29): An Attempt at Interpretation	p. 364
Koran and Tafsir: The Case of "an Yadin"	p. 372
Koran XXV.1: Al-Furqan and the "Warner"	p. 387
The Buddha Comes to China	p. 391
The Secret Identity of Dhu 1-Kifl	p. 394
Emendations, Interpolations
Studies Contributing to Criticism and Exegesis of the Koran	p. 399
A Qur'anic Interpolation	p. 436
Regarding Qur'an CI.6	p. 462
Three Difficult Passages in the Koran	p. 466
A Strange Reading in the Qur'an	p. 481
Some Proposed Emendations to the Text of the Koran	p. 488
Richard Bell: Introduction and Commentary
Introduction to Richard Bell	p. 517
From Introduction to the Qur'an	p. 524
From A Commentary on the Qur'an	p. 553
Poetry and the Koran
The Strophic Structure of the Koran	p. 625
On the Koran	p. 647
On Pre-Islamic Christian Strophic Poetical Texts in the Koran: A Critical Look at the Work of Gunter Luling	p. 653
Manuscripts
The Problem of Dating the Early Qur'ans	p. 713
Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in Sana	p. 739
Appendices
Abbreviations	p. 747
Converting Flugel Koranic Verse Numbers into Standard Egyptian	p. 751
Glossary	p. 753
The Genetic Relationship among Semitic Languages	p. 763
Semitic Languages Family Tree	p. 764
Origin of the Alphabet	p. 765
Development of Aramaic Scripts	p. 766
A Comparative Table of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic Scripts	p. 768
A Comparative Table of Nabataean and Arabic	p. 769
Nabataean and Arabic Inscriptions	p. 770
The Arabic Alphabet	p. 774
A Dot or Two Can Make All the Difference	p. 775
Arabia and the Near East	p. 776
List of Contributors	p. 777
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

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What the Koran Really Says

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