How the Qur'ān Works

Abstract How the Qur’ān Works: Reading Sacred Narrative focuses on Qur’ānic narrative and, specifically, repetition in Qur’ānic stories. This book begins its analysis looking at repetition on a large scale—structure—and moves to a small scale—root letters. The book takes a journey through the Qur’ān, often expansive, moving from one verse to another, one story to another, focusing on narratological elements while conducting a fine reading of Qur’ānic material in order to understand how these techniques enhance a theological agenda. It helps us to better understand particular Qur’ānic stories, Qur’ānic literary style and Qur’ānic theology. Why does repetition matter? Results of repetition, as we will see, are scales, echoes, and the making of structure, all of which develop, complicate and comment on the Qur’ān’s messages. Repetition forges patterns, connections and layers of meaning throughout the Qur’ān. It is part of the art of Qur’ānic literary technique. In this book, I am looking at what kinds of repetition occur in Qur’ānic stories and what purposes they serve. This book compares different Qur’ānic stories across chapters and revolves around the specific technique of repetition, focusing on different types of repetition throughout the book. This book is an intratextual, rhetorical, semantic and narratological analysis of the Qur’ān. Most of the Chapters of the book examine multiple Qur’ānic chapters, and are comparative within the Qur’ān. The book includes a number of figures and tables to explain literary techniques in detail.