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Document Details :

Title: Manuscripts and Memory
Subtitle: The Fraught Nature of an Obvious Investigation into the Textual History of the Qur'ān
Author(s): BRUBAKER, Daniel Alan
Journal: Bibliotheca Orientalis
Volume: 78    Issue: 1-2   Date: 2021   
Pages: 80-94
DOI: 10.2143/BIOR.78.1.3289841

Abstract :
Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in Qur'ān manuscripts and qur'ānic textual criticism, bringing an underdeveloped topic, until recently the domain of a small handful of scholars, increasingly into view of a wider public. Here, I present some of the issues and interests that make this subject simultaneously so fascinating, yet fraught with emotional objections and road blocks. To illustrate the latter, in these pages I make brief reference to the reception of my small book Corrections in Early Qur'ān Manuscripts: Twenty Examples, including a review article that appeared in a scholarly journal soon after its publication. Then, I show and discuss some textual anomalies in manuscripts, before concluding with a partial roadmap of the current literary landscape in this field of study, describing some of what I imagine readers of Bibliotheca Orientalis may expect to see in days ahead.

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