Mattson - Story of the Quran: Its History and Place in Muslim Life 2 Edition

Ingrid Mattson offers fresh, thoughtful, and learned insights into the Quran that are rich in scholarly and historical detail, cultural depth and breadth, and personal meaning. This book will enlighten and engage the novice reader as well as those already familiar with the Quran. I recommend it as an excellent companion to the study of Islam or the Quran itself. Marcia Hermansen,Loyola University Chicago

Dr Ingrid Mattson takes her readers, effortlessly, through the Quran with her eloquent Zen-like writing style. The book takes its readers on a journey of discovery into Islams Holy Scripture. It is an excellent introduction for students of Islam as well as non-academic circles as it touches upon the personal effects of the Quran on the believer and its impact on society and culture, at the same time maintaining a historical perspective on its formation. Khaled Keshk,DePaul University

In The Story of the Quran, Second Edition, Professor Ingrid Mattson achieves a rare synthesis of cutting-edge scholarship and Islamic piety. With the Holy Quran as her guide and lens, Dr Mattson graciously introduces the reader to Islam in all its major facets, from its origins to the present. This valuable book written by one of the great leaders of North American Islam should be must-reading for Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all who would understand the Quran and its followers. Recommended for university, church, synagogue, and mosque classes and reading groups. Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky,Jewish Theological Seminary

Islam: A Brief History, second edition by Tamara Sonn

A New Introduction to Islam, by Daniel W. Brown

This second edition first published 2013
2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2008)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mattson, Ingrid, author.
The story of the Quran : its history and place in Muslim life / Ingrid Mattson. Second Edition.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-67349-2 (pbk.) 1. KoranTheology. 2. KoranHistory. 3. Koran
Criticism, interpretation, etc. 4. KoranTheology. 5. KoranHistory. 6. KoranCriticism,
interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BP132.M39 2013
297.12261dc23

2012042779

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque, Isfahan. tunart / iStockphoto
Cover design by Nicki Averill

The second edition of this book includes corrections to printing errors, misstatements of fact, infelicities of style, and missing citations in the first edition. This revised edition also includes additional discussion on suffering, death, mourning, and the afterlife as well as an expanded discussion of various hermeneutical approaches to the Qur an and controversial legal issues.

I am grateful to all those readers and reviewers whose comments on the first edition helped me improve the book. Special thanks are due to Professor Shawkat Toorawa for his extensive corrections and to HRH Ghazi Bin Muhammad for his valuable suggestions. I am greatly appreciative of Rebecca Harkin, my publisher at Wiley-Blackwell, who requested the second edition and who has always been responsive to my concerns and inquiries.

I chose to write this book after teaching an introductory, graduate-level course on the Quran at Hartford Seminary for a number of years. To that end, it reflects my interest in having an academically grounded but accessible introduction to the Quran. I have tried not to burden the general educated reader with too many specialized terms and concepts. At the same time, by referencing a number of important Islamic thinkers and providing annotations to specialized research, I have sought to make this book a starting point for those interested in a deeper study of the Quran and Islam. I have included both English-language studies and original Arabic sources in the Bibliography. When available, I have referred to English-language translations of Arabic sources to facilitate further study by a broader readership.

In many ways, this book reflects my personal perspective on the Quran. In an introductory work like this, the author can select only a small number of Quranic verses to discuss, refer to only a fraction of the important Muslim thinkers and writers in this field, and highlight only a handful of significant historical incidents and cultural developments. At the same time, the reader might notice that I approach the Quran from the perspective of a Western academic who is also trying to live as a faithful Muslim. This is not the only perspective on the Quran, but it is one that, perhaps, has been underrepresented in the literature.

The Quran has been a topic of great interest on the part of Western media and the general public in recent years. Unfortunately, many people take the liberty of speaking about the meaning of the Quran without having studied it. What is most remarkable is the rise of what I will call the non-Muslim Islamic fundamentalist. These are people who (perhaps because they read their own scripture in a literal and decontextualized fashion) open an English translation of the meaning of the Quran and, plucking a verse out of context, declare that this is proof that Muslims believe (this) or (that). Some of these individuals might honestly be interested in knowing what the Quran says. I hope that this book will be of some assistance to those people. Others, who are ideologically opposed to Muslims and Islam whether because of religious intolerance or for political reasons will continue to try to reduce the breadth and diversity of the Islamic experience to the views of an extremist, militant minority.