Ibrahim Chabouh In the vast terrain of the Muslim world there lived people of many races and many creeds; people who - it is said – inherited the cultures and civilizations of the ancients. Across centuries of history, t...
Ḥamad Al-Jāsir God has favoured the Muslims by His promise to eternally preserve the Book of Islam. ‘We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and we will assuredly guard it (from corruption)’ (15:9). And it was He ...
Irfan Shahid The felicitous Qurʿānic phrase ʻahl al-kitābʼ, the ʻPeople of the Bookʼ, is applied in the Qurʿān to the Jews and Christians, but it is in fact even more applicable to the Muslims privileged place of the Qur...
François Déroche, with contributions by Annie Berthier, Marie-Geneviève Guesdon, Bernard Guineau, Francis Richard, Annie Vernay-Nouri, Jean Vezin, Muhammad Isa Waley Article contents:Not all books are codicesVolumen...
Angelo Michele Piemontese A manuscript is both a text that is, a written document of a certain literary genre, and a handwritten work, be it a codex or a scroll. A manuscript as a whole is endowed with an everlasting val...
Seyyed Hossein Nasr ‘Nūn. By the Pen, and that which they write.’ (Qur’ān, LXVIII: 1) ‘Say.’ Though the sea became ink for the Words of my Lord, verily the sea would be used up before the Words of my Lord...
Wilfred F. Madelung Human history, according to a common definition, begins with the written word. Before the age of writing, there was only prehistory. Archaeologists and experts dealing with prehistory have, to b...