The Koran

"The Koran" is the holy book of Islam, considered by Muslims to be the divine word of God and a spiritual guide for living. It is said that God revealed the Koran to Muhammad, the last great Muslim prophet and God's messenger, through the angel Jibril (or Gabriel). One day when Muhammad was 40 and meditating in a cave during Ramadan, he received his first revelation; these continued until his death in 632 CE.

Three years after the first revelation, Muhammad began preaching total surrender to God as the only acceptable path. Muhammad's followers recorded and memorized his teachings, eventually compiling them into one complete text after his death to form the Koran. The Koran is seen as proof of Muhammad's prophethood and contains instructions for how to live, recounts of historical events, and parables and moral lessons. This edition contains an Introduction and Preface, as well as a detailed Index.

JOHN MEDOWS RODWELL (1808-1900)was an English non-muslim Islamic scholar who translated the Qu'ran (transliterated Koran) in 1961 using a chronological method to sort verses. While the text is not considered the most accurate compared to more modern translations, it was extremely popular in its time, and was used in the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia.