Aldebaran,
Regarding DAbr393032@aol.com
He sounds almost like you.
I think, maybe, you had better call for Tamerlane to help out here.
Unless you’d like me to assist?
Grey,
The studies still used by people like me and to whom you shall find reference in publications on this subject worldwide are:
**Régis Blachère
Introduction au Coran **
I have the second edition (Paris 1977) . It was recently re-edited in Rabat.
and
**Theodor Nöldeke, edit. Friedrich Schwally
Geschichte des Qorans **
I have the third edition printed by Hildesheim - New York, 1981
I’m not informed it fhey are also available in English translations.
Maybe you can inform yourself about this at the Princeton University. I know the library has both works in the original language. (I’m not informed about Universities in Canada)
Those two works can answer all your questions, also the ones you express in your last sentence.
Searching those answers in some kind of popular so called scientific work is in my opinion waist of your time and intellect.
Salaam. A.
Could you list the names of these professors? Where do they teach? Have they had any works published? Have they been peer reviewed? Is there a place on the Internet you could direct me to to read their views?
And I’m still waiting for you to provide some citations for this remarkable comment:
How about you quit rambling (and learn how to format your posts) and give some proof for your moronic statements.
Grey: You might want to check out this reading list:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=198523
I don’t think I have anything exactly like what you are looking for in there, but you might other material of interest.
- Tamerlane
Tamerlane
I looked at your list. If it comes to the MENA region, I can add a very interesting study to it:
A Political Economy of The Middle East
Alan Richards and John Waterbury
Second Edition,
Westview Press Oxford/Boulder,Colorado, ISBN 08133-2411-4
I find this among the best studies I’ve read.
On the Arab history
A History of the Arab Peoples
Albert Hourani
(Don’t have the editor available.)
Then there is
What went Wrong?
Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
Bernard Lewis.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, UK
and on the history of the Middle East in General
The Middle East
Bernard Lewis.
(No editor available. Maybe Orion, Londen)
On the Taliban and related issues
Taliban
Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid
I.B. Tauris Publishers, London/New York.
This is the comment of a journalist who worked since 1979 in Aghanistan and is of course not an academic study. Yet is is a very interesting work to read for those who want to gain information on the subject.
Salaam. A
Aldeberan Akhi,
I suspect that “alms” is a clumsy, uneducated reference to the mysterious “Alif Lam Mim” yhat begins a chapter or two of the Qu’rant
Salaams
Martin
Aldeberan
…Qur’aN
Spellcheck is your friend
Martin
Chapter and verse, sil vous plait?
Dude, it’s Alif Laam Miim, IIRC.
A good example of translation errors. Even if you spell these Hebrew letters this way in American, they certainly do not get pronounced this way in Hebrew. DAb has spelled these letters in the way they are meant to be pronounced (except Lamid is Lamed).
Long time follower, first time subscriber - be gentle.
Yes, you are right, it is proper to be gentle. But it is hard through not on purpose because of the social and religious context in which most people learn their religious ‘truths.’ They learn them out of the context of the history in which they happened and from someone who claims authority from god and most of the time reality plays no part in that. Most of the time if a muslim were to ask me if we believed the koran was ‘the word of god’ I could answer simply yes. To tell them that it is the world of G-d quoted from the Talmid out of context in 4 word clauses here and seven word phrases there is too much knowledge for them to receive at one time. Cordially, Daniel
Daniel,
Are you going to answer my questions, or just continue with the incoherent drive-bys?
** Tamerlane** and ** Aldebaran**, thanks very much for the reading list.
Really I suppose I’d like to have a book that provides an overview of the history of the Qur’an along the lines of this amazing Staff Report.
Grey,
Of course there are many non academic books on this issue, but I don’t think that is what you are looking for (and I don’t know which one I could recommend in English if any at all).
Al Qur’an as text is a much argued and very lively discipline upto this day. Not only among Western specialists, but even already in the Hadith.
But you can find the answers to your questions in the two works I refered to (Nöldeke and Blachère).
Like I said, I can open a topic on the issue and answer your questions in a month or two from now.
Maybe Tamerlane is informed if there are eventually English translations of the works of Nöldeke and Blachère or reliable studies in English.
Salaam. A
Well, we are talking about Arabic here. The combination
Alif Laam Miem
= A L M if translated in Roman script. I think you call that Latin script.
Salaam. A
The American Heritage Dictionary spells it “Koran”. But of course, it’s an Arabic word which was not originally spelled with Roman letters. So why give it some ridiculous, exotic spelling with a Q and an apostrophe instead of a straightforward one?
Scrabble.
Because the English (and some other languages aren’t that good in it either) translation is incorrect.
The first character is Qaf which is in Roman script Q
Next: between QUR and what is written short as AN but what is pronounced as a long A there is - following the grammar rules of the alif madda - a stop required before pronouncing this long A.
This stop is - when using normal Roman script - indicated by writing QUR ’ AN.
So I’m sorry, but what you call a “ridiculous exotic spelling” is the correct translation of the original word. And I’m sorry, it is the one Muslims use, and the one I use in every non Arabic language that uses the Roman script.
Maybe you could write to the editor of your dictionary that they should learn to translate foreign words correctly instead of calling the correct translation prematurely ridiculous exotic ?
Salaam. A.
So what are you going to do, Aldebaran, when you encounter a language which doesn’t use a latinate script? Why, you’ll probably do what everyone else in the world who transliterates a word from another language does: use the word’s spelling as the users of that language spell it. Like it or not, English spelling is not tied to Arabic spelling. The spelling with the Q and the apostrophe are actually an attempt at transliterating into English, not Arabic, but rather the IPA.
So, I’ll beat the dead horse some more: both Koran and Qur’an are legitimate spellings in English of a word borrowed from another language. Are you now going to whine about the way we spell orange?
I’ve always liked the 17th century spelling, “Alcoran”, but that’s just ne. 
Monty,
You argue besides the question.
My reply was about the ignorance that made member sqweels use the term “riciculous exotic” spelling.
Which is a rather arrogant remark seen the fact that I can refer with every reason to the spelling “Koran” as “riciculous incompetent”. Because it shows the translators absolute ignorance of the original language.
Salaam. A