RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER STUDY:

• Sells, Michael Anthony. Approaching the Qurʼán : The Early Revelations. 2nd ed. Ashland, Or.: White Cloud, 2007. This is a must-read for those interested in the poetic and oral power of the early revelations of the so-called Meccan period. Sells offers his own translations and analysis of the orality and form of these early sūras.
• Graham, William A. Beyond the Written Word : Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge UP, 1987. In this book, Graham argues for expanding the category of "scripture" from merely a literary one (and, therefore, a textual one), to a religio-historical one (thereby including oral and aural aspects of scripture). He turns to various case studies from the Christian, Jewish, and South Asian traditions before examining his own area of speciality: the Islamic religious tradition. From his analysis, it becomes clear that scripture was primarily performative and thus experienced rather than merely declarative and static. In fact, it would be safe to say that our own horizon of understanding, that is, how we "moderns" encounter texts in print (papers, books, and now digitally) is historically an exception and rather anomalous to the larger history of encountering texts, and especially sacred texts such as scriptures
• Esack, Farid. The Qurʼan : A User's Guide : A Guide to Its Key Themes, History and Interpretation. Oxford: Oneworld, 2005. In this book, Esack does an excellent job of introducing the key themes of the Quran, explaining its historical and cultural context while also examining controversial aspects. We will be reading chapters of this book later in this course.
• Kermani, Navid. God is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran,  Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014.
• Robinson, Neal. Discovering the Qurʼan : A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown UP, 2003. Another fine introduction to the study of the Quran.
• McAuliffe, Jane Dammen. The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʼān. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. This is a solid volume that offers a series of essays about the Quran, from the formation of the Quranic text to modern, contemporary interpretations.
• McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, and Graham, William A. Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān. Leiden: Brill, 2001. This is one of the best reference works for the study of the Quran.