The Qur’an: A Guidebook

The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850 is a peer-reviewed book series with the EuQu project results. The volumes analyze the important role that the Qur’an has played in the formation of medieval and early modern European religious diversity and identity, deeply imbedded in the political and religious thought of Europe and part of the intellectual repertoire.

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The essay Reading and studying the Qur’an is an updated English version of the work appeared in Italian (Rome 2021) Leggere e studiare il Corano which deals with the contents of the Qur’an, the style and formal features of the text, the history and fixation of it and an poutline of the reception in Islamic literature. The aim of the work is to give a reader a description of what he/she can find in the Islamic holy text and the state of the critical debates on all the topics dealt with, focusing mainly on the growing scholarly literature which appeared in the last 30 years. As such, the work is unique in combining the aim to give comprehensive information on the topic and, at the same, time, reconstruct the critical debate in a balanced outline also emphasizing confessional approaches and the dynamics in the study of the Qur’an. There is nothing similar in contemporary scholarship and the book is a handbook for students and scholars of Islam but also for readers in religious studies who need to know how the main questions related to the Islamic text have been discussed in recent scholarship.