History of the Qur'an : Approaches and Explorations

The Qur’an is the sacred religiousbook of Muslims around the world. Yet its history, from its inception in seventh-centuryArabia to its transmission in the modern world, remains understudied. Thetwelve chapters in this book address this lacuna by examining multifacetedstages in the Qur’an’s history and transmission through a broad range ofmethodological and theoretical approaches. The volume examines the earliestmaterial evidence of the Qur’an through its manuscript tradition and explorestheir content and form. This includes a focus on the Qur’an’s uniqueorthography and insights into the Sanaa manuscripts. Additionally, this workprovides new insights by broaching upon critical moments in the Qur’an’shistory, such as the codification of Abu Bakr. A crucial component of the bookdeals with approaches to the variant readings of the Qur’an, understood asbeing sanctioned through narrations on the a?ruf. It explores freshinsights into how Muslim scholars theorised such variances and the way theyrelated them to the qira’at, including how they approached thevariant codices of prominent companions. Furthermore, this work exploresunderstudied non-Qur’anic transmissions of the Qur’an alongside the historicaldevelopment of Qur’an translations. This volume advances the field of Qur’anicstudies and Qur’anic history.