The Qur’an and Scripture

This chapter provides a study of the Qur’an’s self-presentation as a revealed and proclaimed text. The concepts of “writing” (kitāb) as well as the various terms used within the Qur’an to refer to revelation and the proclaimer’s delivery of scripture are discussed, and the relevant Qur’anic texts are studied. This leads to a discussion of the somewhat controversial concept of “inlibration,” or the supposed becoming-book of the text. The resulting image of the self-understanding of the Qur’an as text is a complex one, in which the self-conceptions of earlier scriptures are adapted to the pre-Islamic Arabian conceptual area.