The Making of Religious Texts in Islam: The Fragment and the Whole

This volume offers an interdisciplinary study of the modalities, actors, technicalities and consequences of the evolving of religious texts within the perspective of the fragment versus the whole. The focus is on fragmentary texts from Islamic religious sources, and includes contributions on Qur'anic manuscripts, early graffiti, the formation of the Qur'anic canon, the Hadith literature, and Old Babylonian extispicy texts. Three main topics are addressed: the text and its materiality; the structure of the text and the dynamic relationship between the fragment and the whole; and methods of shaping and reshaping traditions. The hermeneutical experience of the fragment versus the whole is explored in depth throughout, and the consequences addressed for the history of the religious text, its composition, its reception and its interpretation.