In the Library
The Quran
Unknown, 610 CE
- Form
- Form Philosophy
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Demanding
- Reading time
- Reading time 12 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by J.M. Rodwell
- Chapters
- Chapters 12
- Length
- Length 159k words
£1.99
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PRAISE be to God, Lord of the worlds! The compassionate, the merciful! King on the day of reckoning!
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
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About the book
A merchant in middle age withdraws to a cave on Mount Hira above Mecca, fasts and meditates, and one night receives a command he cannot refuse: Recite. The recitations attributed to Muhammad began in 610 and continued for twenty-three years until his death in 632, gathered first in private memory and oral tradition before being fixed in written codex under the third caliph. The Quran is arranged not chronologically but by descending length of sura, opening with the brief Fatiha and closing with the shortest verses of the Meccan dawn. Its Arabic, by the testimony of Arabic itself, is a register no human pen could attain. The book is recited before it is read. The voice precedes the page.

