An essential single-volume companion to the critical interpretation of Islamic scripture
This book provides detailed and multidisciplinary coverage of a wealth of key Qur-anic terms, with incisive entries on crucial expressions ranging from the divine names allah (-God-) and al-ra?man (-the Merciful-) to the Qur-anic understanding of belief and self-surrender to God. It examines what the terms mean in Qur-anic usage, discusses how to translate them into English, and delineates the role they play in expressing the Qur-an-s distinctive understanding of God, humans, and the cosmos. It offers a comprehensive but nonreductionist investigation of the relationship of Qur-anic terms to earlier traditions such as Jewish and Christian literature, pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and Arabian epigraphy. While the dictionary is primarily engaged in ascertaining what the Qur-an would have meant to its original recipients in late antique Arabia, it makes selective and critica
