A Historian’s View of the Qurʾān

Abstract The Qurʾān, as a sacred text, poses distinctive challenges for the historian. The talk will begin by addressing briefly some of these challenges, in particular the limits of what the historian can say about sacred texts like the Qurʾān. The bulk of the talk will then discuss the challenges historians face in understanding the text’s transmission, as revealed both by Muslim tradition and from the evidence of the material record, and what implications the historian might draw from the Qurʾān’s content.