" The Koran, or, to give it its strict transliteration, the Qur'an, is the sacred book of Islam. For Muslims it is the word of God revealed in Arabic by the archangel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad and thence to mankind. For them Muhammad is the last of the prophets and thus the Qur'an is the final expression of God's message to mankind.

Non-Muslims are unlikely to share this view, but they too will recognise that the Qur'an is one of the most important and influential books known to mankind and that its influence is continuing to increase with the spread of Islam.

On that basis alone the Qur'an is worthy of study, but its outstanding literary merit should also be noted: it is by far the finest work of Arabic prose in existence. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the Qur'an is not an easy book to read. There are several reasons for this: the subject matter is complex and much of the language is highly charged; the order of the suras (chapters) presents the contents in a way that those with no previous knowledge of the book often find confusing; the way material is presented within a sura is often surprising; the background of the work is very alien to the English-speaker; much of the power of the original is lost in translation - indeed most Muslims believe that the Qur' an cannot be translated properly and therefore should not be translated at all..."

"Muhammad is believed to have been born about 570 AD. As had long been the case, most of the Arabian peninsula was the domain of nomadic bedu, with occasional settlements where there was water, cultivation, trading or a cultic centre. The north-western, Syrian march was controlled by the Ghassanids, Arab vassals ofthe Byzantines; whilst to the north-east the Lakhmids of Al-Hira, in what is now southern Iraq, were under the suzerainty of the Sassanians of Persia.

Only in the high upland - that of the Yemen in particular - was life anything other than harsh. The extreme climate was no less trying then than it is today, and from time to time there were earthquakes in the western mountains that rise from the Red Sea.The desert terrain, though healthy, was inhospitable, but malaria was endemic in most of the settlements, though apparently not in Mecca and the high, lush al-Ta'if.

Most trade that involved the bedu was local barter, but various commodities came from abroad. These included wine (from Syria, Iraq and Persia), weapons (spears etc. from India) and slaves (from Africa). There were long-distance caravan routes for spices and cloth from the Yemen to Syria and to Iraq, for which Mecca was a crucial staging point. There was also trade by sea' along both the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea. On the latter, Jedda, the port of Mecca some fifty miles distant, was also an important entrepot.

The religious situation in the peninsula was complex. There were communities of Jews in the Yemen and in the Hijaz, and there were some Christians in the Yemen, particularly at Najran. On the periphery there were large numbers of Christian Arabs in Syria (Monophysites) and in Iraq (Nestorians). In southern / Page xii / Arabia several monotheistic cults had established themselves, including one to al-Rahman 'the merciful', a name that was to find prominence in the Qur'an as one of the most favoured descrip- tions of God. In the Hijaz, in particular, idol-worship had developed in several settlements: Nakhla, al- Ta'if and, most important of all, Mecca. The bedu had little or no religion. Their poetry makes it clear that their basic belief was that Fate ruled their destiny and that sooner or later Fate would bring death. They knew about gods and idols, but there are lines of poetry that show that the gods, even Allah, were less important to the bedu than Fate. The people of the settlements appear to have had some conviction that visiting their idols and performing rituals, includ- ing animal sacrifice, might induce the idols to intercede with Fate on their behalf. These rituals have something of the appearance of pilgrimage, because they were normally held when the local population was swollen by influxes of visitors to annual fairs, the main purpose of which was trading. Surviving poetry makes it clear that such visitors did take part in the rituals, but this appears to be due more to their links with the people of the settlements and respect for their traditions than to firmly held religious belief.

Though the bedu seem to have had little expectation that Fate might be propitiated in this manner, they appear to have sought to avoid its final, fatal appearance in somewhat less formal ways, and divination and soothsayers (kahins) were all popular. The kahins had their own form of diction, a highly charged and often cryptic kind of prose, marked by rhythmic clauses and assonance. There were also two types of orators: tribal spokesmen, with an important role in inter-tribal relations; and itinerants preaching either a religious message or exhorting people to good. Finally: there w.ere storytellers ~ho told and retold ~tories and legends of tnbal life. All three kinds of prose were the oral tradition. Writing, however, was known and used in the settlements for archival and legal purposes, but apart from a few scraps, all this prose material has disappeared. There can, however, be no doubt of its influence and importance in providing several types of prose discourse that were comprehensible over a wide area and were largely, though not entirely, free of dialectal features.

What has survived in a reasonable quantity is pre-Islamic poetry. This is often of the highest quality, for Arabic poetry was at its zenith from 525 to 650. Like storytelling, poetry was part of the fabric of tribal society, and poets were highly esteemed for / Page xiii / their ability to sing the praises of their own tribe and feared for their ability to satitise or even curse. It was generally believed that each poet was inspired by his own individual inspirational spirit, a jinn.

The survival of considerable amounts of poetry, together with the later use made of it by commentators on the Qur'an, has tended to divert attention away from the importance of the prose genres in paving the way for the Qur'an. Yet the briefest comparison will show that poetry and the Qur'an are not closely linked. For example, the treatment of such key factors as narrative and homily are totally different; it is only rarely and coincident-ally that a Quranic phrase fits one of the metres of poetry; and though poetic diction does occur from time to time in the Qur'an, normally when it is the most appropriate way of expressing an idea, it is not a major feature. For its part, the Qur'an also strongly denies that Muhammad was a poet or inspired by the jinn. The basic objection it makes is clearly to the assertion that must have been made by Muhammad's Meccan opponents: that he was possessed by the jinn and not inspired by God."

Pagexviii

" When reading the Qur'an it is crucial to remember that the text was originally intended to be read aloud and that this is still its most effective form. Recitation to an audience gives the text a / Page xix   / dimension that does not come across in silent reading, frequently showing up lines of thought that do not stand out clearly when one peruses the text. Translators often have to tackle this problem by adding to their translations bridging phrases that they normally draw from the numerous, and lengthy, commentaries on the Qur'an that have been written over the centuries in Arabic.

In the standard form in which we have it today, the Qur'an is divided into 114 chapters of very unequal length, called suras. The suras are the working units of the revelation. They are largely composite. All but one (sura 9, which may well be unfinished) begin with the formula bi-smi llahi l-rahmani l-ra-himi 'in the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate'; and in 29 suras this formula is followed by a group of letters of the Arabic alphabet (e.g. alif, lam, mtm, found at the beginning of suras 2, 3, 2.9,30,31 and 32), whose function is unknown but which seem to be of mystical import.

The text was originally revealed in pieces of varying length, most of them apparently containing a relatively short number of verses (ayas). There are vivid descriptions of Muhammad's state during a revelation, but they are too brief for us to work out what happened. For example, an account that is traced back to one of his wives, A'isha a, tells us, 'He was gripped by a spasm, and the sweat ran down him like pearls - and that on a winter's day', but that is all.

The basic revelations then took their places in the working units of the Qur'an, the suras, in a way which has never been understood. There are traditions that tell us that at Medina he would dictate to scribes and tell them how to arrange the revelations, sometimes inserting a new revelation into an older' passage. A simplified and more pious tradition tells us that Gabriel used to go over the revealed text once a year with Muhammad and that this happened twice during the last year of Muhammad's life. Revelations are believed to have occurred over a period of years from 610 AD to Muhammad's death in June 632 AD.

The Qur'an was originally revealed orally, but in quite early passages it refers to itself as 'the Book', and there is some evidence of pieces being committed to writing whilst Muhammad was still at Mecca. There is no evidence that he used scribes at Mecca, but / Page xx / in the later years at Medina he appears to have had a group of them, each with a special responsibility for a part of the text. It is not clear what happened to their material after Muhammad's death, but in comparison with other religions the sacred text moved very quickly towards the form in which we have it today. A single version that rendered void a mass of variants that had arisen through widespread oral transmission was declared to be authoritative by the caliph Uthman some twenty years after Muhammad's death, and to a very large extent the only changes that have taken place since that time are connected with the improvements in Arabic script that took place in the eighth century AD.

It has become traditional to divide the suras into four or five periods: Early Meccan, Middle Meccan, Late Meccan and Medinan being the most popular schema. Though there is some justification for this, particularly as far as the Medinan period is concerned, it has two serious drawbacks: many of the suras contain material from at least two periods, and the criteria for classification, particularly for the Middle Meccan and Late Meccan periods, are somewhat vague and impressionistic. More- ver, the groupings by and large ignore the composite nature of the suras.

The grouping that is most widely known and referred to in the West is that of Noldeke. It is of some use, provided that it is realized that such a grouping can act only as a rough guide and cannot be refined further. It also has to be said that it is no real advance on the traditional Muslim dating, on which it is heavily dependent. With the suras put in numerical order to eliminate some of the pseudo-preciseness, his division of the Meccan suras is:

Early Meccan: I, 51-53, 55-56, 68-70, 73-75, 77-97, 99-109,111-114 (48 suras)

Middle Meccan: 15, 17-21, 23, 25-27, 36-38,43-44, 50, 54, 67,71-72,76 (21 suras)

Late Meccan: 6-7,10-14,16,28-32,34-35,39-42,45-46 (21 suras)

It is only with the Medinan suras that one can have any confidence about relating material in the suras to external events. Even then there are a fair number whose position in the list is / Page somewhat doubtful. The most common ordering, again first put forward by Noldeke, is:

2.,98,64,62.,8,47,3,61,57,4,65,59,33,63,2.4,58,2.2.,48,66, 60,110,49,9,5 (24 suras)

The standard order, i.e. the one used in this printing, appears to have been drawn up precisely to avoid questions of chronology. The first sura is short but ritually important. After that the suras are arranged in rough order of length, from longest to shortest. This puts much of the material that is important for legal purposes early in the arrangement; but it has to be said that many readers find the lack of chronological guidance confusing. This is where an attempted ordering, such as that of Noldeke set out above, is of some use. However, it is only with some of the Medinan suras that it is possible to relate suras to the events of Muhammad's life.

Stylistically the Qur'an calls on four main registers that were current in seventh-century Arabia: the clipped, gnomic style of the kahins, the admonitory, exhortative and argumentative style of the khatibs, the narrative techniques of the storytellers and the dramatic style of some poetry. In the Medinan period the verses, containing social legislation appear to approximate to the style ;;~ used in formal agreements.

It is the accepted view that much of the earliest material has a vigour that is terse and abrupt and that as time passed the terseness and to some extent the abruptness - and the verve - gradually diminished. The style thus broadened, eventually moving to the diffuse expression of the Medinan material. It is not unreasonable to see in this evolution of style differing mixtures of the registers of the soothsayers, preachers and storytellers and the eventual addition of the documentary style. But even the addition of the documentary style does not greatly diminish the oral and rhetorical nature of the other registers that gives the Qur'an its distinctive linguistic stamp. It is the rhetorical focus that leads to one of the most characteristic features of the Qur'an: the use of assonance to round off verses. The assonance may change after a few verses or remain constant throughout a longish sura. Its use had almost certainly been made popular by sooth- sayers and preachers, but the scale of its use in the Qur'an was / Page xxii / new and remarkable. It is most striking in early material, particularly when the verses are short; but it is still effective in the late material at Medina when it may well be rounding off legal material composed in a flat documentary style. Unfortunately, there is no realistic possibility of conveying this feature in translation.

Two points of detail should be noted. Firstly, those reading the Qur'an only in translation usually find the terse formulation of the early material difficult to follow. In reading this material, it helps if one remembers the oral nature of the revelation. Secondly, it is a point of both content and style that Mu~ammad is at the centre of the revelation. In particular, he is the focal point for the dialectic that frequently occurs. Thus it is common to find passages that are introduced by the command 'Say'; and a high proportion of these are answers to clauses beginning 'they ask you' or 'they say', frequently referring to Muhammad's opponents, sometimes to his followers. See, for example, 17:87: 'They will ask thee concerning the Spirit. Say, "The Spirit is by command of my Lord. . .".'

 CONTENT

The central theme of the Qur'an is the belief in one God, the merciful God who is the Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things and beings therein and whose omnipotence is to be seen everywhere in His signs (ayat [as mentioned above, this word is also used to refer to individual verses of the Qur'an]). Dis-obedience will lead to an apocalypse, which will be the prelude to the Day of Judgement. At the Judgement each individual will be judged and the righteous conveyed to Heaven and the unrighteous to Hell. Righteousness requires both belief and general rectitude.

Along with the passages that tell of God and His signs, there are also stories of peoples and prophets. Some of the earliest of thse refer to Arabian legends: the destruction of the tribes of Ad, Thamud and Madyan after they failed to respond to the messages of their prophets (Hud, Sali and Shu ayb respectively). These stories were later to be afforced by other disaster/punishment stories drawn from Old Testament material: Noah and the flood, Lot and his people, and Moses and the Egyptians. In fact, Old Testament stories, often in a guise somewhat different from that in the Bible, dominate much of the narratives of the Qur'an. Among the best known are: Adam and Eve; the Fall; the / Page xxiii   / disobedience of Satan; Cain and Abel; Abraham; Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob, Joseph and his brothers; Moses, Aaron and the Israelites; Solomon and David; Jonah and Job. By far the most important of these prophetic figures are Moses, the leader who freed the Israelites from the yoke of the Egyptians and led them to the promised land, and Abraham, who, having turned his back on idolatry, built with his son Ishmael the Ka ba as a shrine to the one God.

There is much less material from the New Testament and Christian apocryphal sources. Apart from the story of Zacharias and the birth of John the Baptist and some references to the disciples (who are treated as a group and not named individually), the references are to Mary and, above all, to Jesus. The miraculous birth of Jesus is one of the signs of God, and mention is made of his ability to perform miracles such as raising the dead and healing the leper. However, Jesus is basically treated as one in the series of God's prophets, his description as al-Mast~ 'the Messiah' apparently having little special force. The Qur'an specifically rejects the doctrine of the Trinity (see, in particular, 5:17). It also denies the Crucifixion (4: 157) at the beginning of a passage that appears to imply the following sequence of events: apparent death of Jesus, Ascension, and then, at some later time, second coming, natural death and general Resurrection.

There are some parables, but they are of little significance in comparison with the narrative material. The majority are in effect extended similes very similar to a form used with great success in early Arabic poetry (see, for example, 2: 17,2: 19, 16:75, 16: 112, 18:45,24:35, 29:41, 30:28, 39:29,66:10). For the rare longer parables see 14:24-7 (the good and bad trees); 18:32-44 (the two gardens); 36:13-32 (the unbelieving city); and 68:17-33 (the blighted garden).

In addition, Sura 18 includes two stories from the Christian periphery to the north of Arabia: the so-called legend of the Seven Sleepers and extracts from the Alexander romance. There is also material that looks like traditional wisdom literature (cf. the material about Luqman in Sura 31).

The narratives are crucial in underpinning two doctrines that evolved during the period of revelation: the first, that God had sent a series of believing prophets to their peoples over the ages, all conveying the same message; and the second, that Mut.tammad was the last in this series of prophets. Linked to this is the doctrine / Page xxiv that Muhammad is the prophet sent to the Arabs in particular and that his message is in Arabic lisan arabiyy mubin 'clear Arabic language' (16:103, 26:195), qur'an arabiyy 'an Arabic recita- tion' (12:2, 20:113, 41:3, 42:7, 43:3), lisan arabiyy 'Arabic language' (46:12), hukm arabiyy 'an Arabic judgement' (13:37).

In addition -to biblical stories, there are a number of passages that are obviously parallel. From the Old Testament one may cite Q. 24:50 and Deut. 26:17; Q. 53:45 and 49 and I Sam. 2:6-7; Q. 53,39-42 and Ezek. 18:20; and, at greater length, Q. 17:23- 40 and Ex. 20:2-17IDeut. 5: 6-21. There are slightly more passages where the parallel is with the New Testament. See, for example, Q. 2:274 and Matth. 6:3-4; Q. 21:20 and Rev. 4:8; Q. 36:53 and I Thess. 4:16; Q. 48:29 and Mark 4:29; and, at greater length, Q. 2:49-64 and Acts 7:36-53. However, in none of these passages is there a close verbal relationship. There is more of that' in such Semitic sayings as 'an eye for an eye' etc. (Q. 5:45 and Ex. 21:23-7) and 'before the camel will pass through the eye of a needle' (Q. 7:38 and Matth. 19:24); but it is only in Q. 21:105 'And now, since the Law was given, have we written in the Psalms that "my servants, the righteous, shall inherit the earth" , that we have a close parallel: Psalms 37:29 reads 'The righteous shall inherit the land and shall dwell therein for ever'. Remarkably the previous verse (Q. 21: 1°4) 'On that day we will roll up the heaven as one rolleth up written scrolls' is a fairly close approximation to part of a quite separate verse (Isaiah 34:4) 'and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll'. However, by far the most interesting and instructive parallel is between Sura 12 and Genesis 37-47: the story of Joseph. The Quranic narrative, which includes details from the Midrash as well as Genesis, may at first seem rather sketchy, but in Arabic terms it is beautifully judged and effective. It is, incidentally, the only longish sura to be devoted to the telling of a single story.

As has been mentioned, exhortation to belief and rectitude is common from the earliest revelations onwards, but after the hijra it became necessary to offer more specific guidance on religious and legal matters.

Three of the five Pillars of Islamic faith (arkan al-din), witness to the one God (shahada), prayer (salat) and alms-giving (zakat), are mentioned in a fairly general way in Meccan material. Medinan material adds some detail about prayer: that it should be towards Mecca (2:142-50); that there should be ritual purifi- Page xxv / cation before prayer (4:43, 5:6), and so on, though the specific requirement to pray five times a day is nowhere mentioned. There is more detail on the two Pillars added in Medina, fasting (sawm 2.,183-5 and 187) and the pilgrimage (hjj, 2.: 196-2.00 and 203). There are passages too numerous to mention about fighting the infidel and the sharing of booty. Disturbances within the com- munity are dealt with in passages on retaliation (e.g. 2.: 178-9, 4:92.-3) and on theft (5:38). A less serious matter, but one dealt with severely, is usury (2.:2.75-80, 3:130). There are regulations on bequests and inheritance (2: I 80-82, 5: 106-8) and the assignment of debts (2.:2.82.-4). There are fifteen or so passages about marriage, and others about the position of women in society, of which 4:34 is now thought by many to be problem-atical. There is regulation of the calendar (9:36-7) and ten passages on food and drink. The two passages commenting on wine are an interesting example of how changes were sometimes gradually introduced, with the latest passage being deemed to abrogate previous ones. Sura 2:219 reads, 'They question thee about strong drink and games of chance. SAY, "In both there is great sin, and utility for men, but the sin of them is greater than their usefulness".' In 5:90-91 this is sharpened to: 'Strong drink and games of chance are an abomination of Satan's handiwork. Avoid [this abomination] so that you may succeed. Satan seeks to cast enmity among you by means of strong drink and games of chance and to turn you from remembrance of God and from prayer.'

SOURCES

Orthodox doctrine renders discussion of the sources of the Qur'an irrelevant for Muslims: the Qur'an is the word of God. They are also able to dismiss discrepancies between the Bible and the Qur'an by recourse to the doctrine that if there are differences between the Jewish, Christian and Muslim versions of the Scripture the Jews and the Christians have mangled the Message and Muslims have not. This doctrinal stance is, however, not without its problems. It is difficult to reconcile the very specific references to, for example, Muhammad 's family (cf., for example, Q. 33:28-33) with the belief that each prophet has received the same message.

For non-Muslims the Muslim standpoint is untenable, and non-Muslim scholars have given much thought to the question of / Page xxvi / how Muhammad might have acquired his knowledge of the Bible. The most commonly accepted view is that Muhammad received most of his information about biblical stories through informants who talked to him; that this material was digested, meditated on and then absorbed into what became the text. There are two passages in the Qur'an itself that support this view. The first is Q. 16:103: 'We also know that they say, "Surely, a certain person teacheth him". But the tongue of him at whom they hint is foreign while this is in plain Arabic.' Secondly, Q. 25:4 reads: 'And the infidels say "This is a mere fraud of his own devising, and others have helped him with it, who had come hither with outrage and lie".' The allegation of fraud is strongly denied in Q. 25:6: 'Say, "He hath set it down Who knoweth the secrets of Heaven and Earth."'; but the question of help is ignored. It should be added that there is some corroboration in hadtth that Muhammad received stories and information from various individuals, includ-ing Jews and Christians, and that the material he received from them found its way into Quranic form.

Be that as it may, the question of sources is one where there is an unbridgeable chasm between Muslim and non-Muslim. Toler- ance requires us to recognise the chasm and to respect the views of those on the other side, wherever our basic stance may be.

The Qur' an in English

The Qur'an was first translated into English in 1649 by Alexander Ross, who based his work on the French version of Andre du Ryer. The first translation directly into English was that of Sale in 1734. Since that time there have been four important translations by non-Muslim scholars: Rodwell (1861), Palmer (1880), Bell (1937-9) and Arberry (1955); and there have been over thirty translations by Muslims, mainly from the Indian sub-continent. The best and most influential translation by a Muslim is undoubtedly that of a British convert, Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, which was first published in 193°. The translation of Ross has little interest other than its position as first in the field, but there is something of value in the others I have mentioned. Given the difficulties associated with translation of the work, all have strengths and weaknesses; but they are all worth consulting, something I would hesitate to say of those that I have not mentioned by name.

 The strengths of Rodwell are very much the strengths of a nineteenth-century positivistic approach, which the reader will very soon see. Where he is much better than others is in his cross- referencing to biblical material, information that is crucial to one's understanding of the Qur'an." Alan Jones

 Page 226

Then the numbers slip out, first One and Eight, then Two and Seven, Three and Six, and finally Four and Five, in pairs, to take their place around the sigma circle.

The farthest away are given the most movement, to cut and dance across the inner space of the circle, as we saw in the shape of multiplications. The other numbers have less movement as they come nearer to Nine: One and Eight just move around the circum- ference of the circle. And the ninth spot remains unmoving.

In this secret world of arithmetic, nine controls the other numbers, releasing them into the world yet holding onto them tightly. And the sigma circle is its crucible into which all secret arithmetic flows, im-printed by a hidden code. The beauty of NINE is that it is the Alpha and the Omega of these fabrications, an organising power of vanishing and emergence.

Page 227 / Nine is the centre and binding rim of the prayer wheel of numbers.

And the last movement of nine never seems to come, each revelation or discovery simply deepens the mystery. The fascination grows. Like a spiral the shape of nine continues to evade a simple end, winding itself further into enigma and exploration. Enjil said that the Mandala and his quest for nine was but a reflection on life: Who is the man or woman, he asked, who would not like to know the hidden path that holds on to all movement? Was he not right?

In the labyrinth of appearances with all its shout-ing, twists and turns, most of us become lost and bewildered. To find our way we need a code. On the surfaces of bent experience the straightness of our logic is not enough - there are no clues to a deeper understanding, no whispers that we must hear to make our inner world hold strong and have meaning.

At the heart of the story of Enjil and the Mandalas is the simple truth, that a secret in itself is beautiful and once that is known, then somehow the fact gains power and multiplies. The world that grows around it is never barren or wasted, for in every part we see the trace of the original idea. The many that is one has always been the greatest treasure to find.

In the eternal abstraction of points, number 9, will always find connections. To those who know how to look, the insights will grow.

There is no end, as long as there are the numbers.  

Page xix 

In the standard form in which we have it today, the Qur'an is divided into 114 chapters of very unequal length, called suras. The suras are the working units of the revelation. They are largely composite. All but one (sura 9, which may well be unfinished) begin with the formula bi-smi llahi l-rahmani l-ra-himi 'in the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate'; and in 29 suras this formula is followed by a group of letters of the Arabic alphabet (e.g. alif, lam, mtm, found at the beginning of suras 2, 3, 2.9,30,31 and 32), whose function is unknown but which seem to be of mystical import.

"All but one (sura 9, which may well be unfinished) begin with the formula bi-smi llahi l-rahmani l-ra-himi 'in the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate'; and in 29 suras this formula is followed by a group of letters of the Arabic alphabet (e.g. alif, lam, mtm, found at the beginning of suras 2, 3, 2.9,30,31 and 32), whose function is unknown but which seem to be of mystical import."  

 "All but one (sura 9,"

 (e.g. alif, lam, mtm, found at the beginning of suras 2, 3, 2.9,30,31 and 32), whose function is unknown but which seem to be of mystical import."  

2+ 3 + 2 + 9 + 30 + 31 + 32 = 109  

Page xxiv "...However, by far the most interesting and instructive parallel is between Sura 12 and Genesis 37-47: the story of Joseph. The Quranic narrative, which includes details from the Midrash as well as Genesis, may at first seem rather sketchy, but in Arabic terms it is beautifully judged and effective. It is, incidentally, the only longish sura to be devoted to the telling of a single story."

Page xxiii / "...In addition, Sura 18 includes two stories from the Christian periphery to the north of Arabia: the so-called legend of the Seven Sleepers and extracts from the Alexander romance."