文档介绍：the panion to the QUR ?ˉ A N As the living scriptural heritage of more than a billion people, the Qur ?ˉ an speaks with a powerful voice in our contemporary world. Despite the pre- dictions of sociological theorists that secularity would inexorably eradicate the social and political influences of religious belief, the effective force of faith-based rhetoric continues to expand. Nowhere is that more evident than with the religious tradition of Islam. Like its sibling faiths, Judaism and Christianity, Islam professes a belief in divine–munication as expressed and encoded in written form and has canonised a core set of documents as the repository of this revelation. Just as other scriptural reli- gions, Islam has also developed a centuries-long tradition of interpretation or exegesis of its holy writings. Generations of exegetes, shaped by their particular contexts and confessional orientations, have moulded meaning from the words of the Qur ?ˉan, tying traditional understandings to the ever- evolving task of reinterpretation. Nevertheless, efforts to introduce the Qur ?ˉan and its intellectual heritage to English-speaking audiences have been hampered by the lack of accessible and available resources. Scholarship in qur ?ˉanic studies, a field that has flourished in the last few decades, remains sequestered in specialised monographs and journals. The panion to the Qur ?ˉ an promises to remedy that situation. Jane McAuliffe, a distinguished scholar of the Islamic tradition, has brought together some of the best and most knowledgeable scholars in the field to explain plexities of this world-changing text. prises fourteen chapters, each devoted to a single topic of central importance to the study of the Qur ?ˉan. While rich in historical, linguistic and literary detail, chapters also reflect the influence of other disciplines as the field of qur ?ˉanic studies increasingly draws on the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philoso- phers, art historians and cultural crit