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| List of Transliterations | |
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| List of Maps and Illustrations | |
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| Preface to the Second Edition | |
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| Preface to the First Edition | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Phenomenology | |
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| The Qur'an as Experienced by Muslims | |
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| Listening to the Qur'an | |
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| Having the Qur'an by heart | |
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| The Qur'an in everyday life | |
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| Chronology | |
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| Anchoring the Revelations in Space and Time | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The miracles attributed to the Prophet | |
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| Combing the Qur'an for clues to its provenance | |
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| Qur'anic clues to the date of the revelations | |
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| Early biographies of Muhammad | |
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| A plausible chronological framework for the revelations | |
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| Concluding discussion | |
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| An Alternative Account of the Rise of Islam | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Stepping outside the Islamic tradition | |
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| Critical appraisal | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Traditional Resources for Determining the Chronological Order of the Surahs | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Reports about the occasions of the revelation | |
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| Literature about abrogating and abrogated ayahs | |
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| Traditional lists of Meccan and Madinan surahs | |
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| The surah headings in the standard Egyptian edition | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Western Attempts at Dating the Revelations | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The Noldeke-Schwally classification of the surahs | |
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| The difficulties involved in dating individual surahs | |
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| Bell's attempt at dating the surahs and surah sections | |
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| The best working hypothesis? | |
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| Concluding discussion | |
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| Morphology, Structure and Coherence | |
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| The Formal Elements in the 'Early Meccan' Surahs | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Surah openings | |
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| Oaths | |
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| Eschatological sections | |
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| Narrative sections | |
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| Signs sections | |
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| Revelation sections | |
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| Polemical sections | |
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| Didactic questions and answers | |
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| Messenger sections | |
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| Miscellaneous | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Structure of the Meccan Surahs | |
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| Introduction | |
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| 'Early Meccan' surahs in a single register | |
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| 'Early Meccan' surahs in two registers | |
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| 'Early Meccan' surahs in three registers | |
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| Bipartite 'early Meccan' surahs in four or more registers | |
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| Other 'early Meccan' surahs in four or more registers | |
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| 'Middle and late Meccan' surahs with narrative sections | |
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| Other 'middle and late Meccan' surahs | |
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| The interrelationships of the registers in the Meccan surahs | |
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| The Interrelation of Structure, Sound and Meaning in Three Meccan Surahs | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The integrity of Surah 103 | |
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| The role of word-play in Surah 104 | |
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| Structure, sound and meaning in Surah 78 | |
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| The Integrative Role of Sound and Intertextuality | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Surah 79: 'Has the account of Moses reached thee?' | |
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| Surah 17: The Night Journey | |
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| The Madinan Surahs | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The survival and adaptation of the six principal registers | |
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| The refrains which mention the divine names | |
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| Introduction to Surah 2 | |
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| Surah 2: The prologue (vv.1-39) | |
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| Surah 2: Criticism of the Children of Israel (vv.40-121) | |
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| Surah 2: The Abrahamic legacy (vv.122-152) | |
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| Surah 2: Legislation for the new nation (vv.153-242) | |
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| Surah 2: The struggle to liberate the Ka'bah (vv.243-283) | |
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| Surah 2: The epilogue (vv.284-286) | |
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| The Dynamics of the Qur'anic Discourse | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The implied speaker as both 'We' and 'He' | |
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| The implied speaker as 'I' | |
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| The implied speaker and embedded speakers | |
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| The omniscient perspective of the implied speaker | |
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| The implied privileged addressee | |
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| The objectification of the Messenger | |
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| Sudden changes in person and number | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Order of the Surahs: The Decreasing-Length Rule | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The surahs and their names | |
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| The decreasing-length rule: alleged precedents and parallels | |
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| Explaining the exceptions to the decreasing-length rule | |
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| The alleged order of the surahs in the manuscripts of Ibn Mas'ud and Ubayy | |
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| The dovetailing of consecutive surahs | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| The Order of the Surahs: Islahi's Explanation | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Summary of Islahi's views | |
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| Islahi's analysis of Surahs 50-66 | |
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| Evaluation of Islahi's approach | |
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| Islahi's approach and the exceptions to the decreasing-length rule | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Postscript | |
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| Table for converting ayah numbers | |
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| A note on English translations of the Qur'an | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Notes | |
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| Indexes | |
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| Index of references to the Bible and Pseudepigrapha | |
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| Index of Qur'anic passages | |
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| Index of persons | |
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| Subject index | |