Premodern predecessors While formal works on Quranic studies had not emerged until multiple centuries after the death of
Muhammad, key topics were addressed within other disciplines earlier own. Early exegetical works (
tafsīr) included discussions on
asbāb al-nuzūl (occasions of authorship),
qirāʾāt (readings), and linguistic nuances. Jurists incorporated interpretations of Qurʾānic verses into legal reasoning, while grammarians analyzed the text for its syntactic and
phonological features. By the 10th century, early independent treatises began addressing the sciences of the Qurʾān. Figures like Muḥammad ibn Khalaf
al-Marzubān (
al-Ḥāwī fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān) and others compiled extensive discussions on topics such as abrogation, ambiguous verses, and linguistic peculiarities. These works were often encyclopedic however, incorporating earlier scholarship and organizing it into coherent frameworks.
Al-Suyūṭī’s
al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān expanded on al-Zarkashī’s framework, identifying 80 sciences and incorporating discussions on previously neglected areas. Al-Suyūṭī emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of Qurʾānic studies, linking
linguistic analysis,
legal theory, and spiritual reflection. His work became a cornerstone of Arabic-language Quranic studies literature.
Modern Quranic studies The modern discipline of studying the Quran may be considered to have begun in 1833, with the publication of the book
Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (‘What Did Muhammad Take Over from Judaism?’) by
Abraham Geiger. The primary objective of this book was to demonstrate that the Quranic reception of biblical narratives did not occur directly via a reception of the books of the canonical Bible, but through parabiblical intermediaries such as
midrash (traditional Jewish exegesis of biblical texts). Geiger, being a rabbinic scholar, focused on the Qurans correspondence with the Jewish literary tradition. This approach continued in the works of Hartwig Hirschfeld, Israel Schapiro, and others, before finally culminating in Heinrich Speyer's
Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran, published in 1931. This mode of scholarship however came to an end with
World War II, when a mass of Jewish academics were dispersed from
Nazi Germany, and the primary contributors transitioned to working in adjacent areas of research. During this period, a different but smaller school of research emphasizing the influence of Christian texts (prominently including Tor Andrae); while research on pagan influences was not entirely absent from this time, it was comparatively severely understudied. In recent years, a trend that has been called the "New Biblicism" or "Syriac Turn" of Quranic studies has emerged, refocusing on the intertextuality of the Quran with a much greater attention paid to Christian intertexts. The current paradigm of research was initiated by
Christoph Luxenberg; though his thesis was universally rejected among academics, it generated considerable new interest in studying the Quran in light of its historical context. The primary historians of this new wave of scholarship have included
Gabriel Said Reynolds,
Holger Michael Zellentin, Emran El-Badawi, and
Joseph Witztum. In 1844,
Gustav Weil published the first critical introduction to the Quran in Europe, with a second edition in 1878. The work was titled
Einleitung in den Koran. This work succeeded an earlier book three-part book of his which treated the subjects of Muhammad, the Quran, and then Islam. In 1858, French Académie des Inscriptions announced a European-wide competition for a work on the history of the Quran. Three people jointly won:
Theodor Noldeke,
Aloys Sprenger, and
Michele Amari. While Amari's work was never published, that of Sprenger and Amari would become foundational publications in the emerging field of Quranic studies. In 1860, Noldeke published his thesis as a book titled
Geschichte des Qorans (
History of the Quran). Subsequent editions of the book were published by
Friedrich Schwally,
Gotthelf Bergsträsser, and
Otto Pretzl between 1909 and 1938. This work had a major influence and, for a significant time, resulted in a consensus among Western scholars that the Quran reflected the preaching of Muhammad in
Mecca and
Medina, and that it should be chronologically periodized into four main types of surahs: Meccan surahs, which were divided into Early Meccan, Middle Meccan, and Late Meccan surahs, followed by
Medinan surahs. Noldeke also accepted a canonization event during the reign of the third caliph,
Uthman. (These views have been categorized by some as the "Noldekian paradigm". One of the first to question this paradigm was Hartwig Hirschfeld in his 1902 work
New researches into the composition and exegesis of the Qoran.) As for Sprenger, his work was published in 1861–65 in three volumes under the title
Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad, nach bisher größtenteils unbenutzten Quellen. Both Noldeke and Sprenger owed much to the ''Al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur'an
of Al-Suyuti which had summarized hundreds of works of the medieval Islamic tradition. Other important publications from this early time included the Die Richtungen der Islamischen Koranauslegung
of Ignaz Goldziher, which founded the critical study of the tafsir (commentary, exegesis) of the Quran and the Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Quran The Old Codices'' by Arthur Jeffrey in 1934.
After WW2 After World War II, there was no primary locus for the study of the Quran. The major scholars from this time period, including Arthur Jeffrey,
W. Montgomery Watt,
William Graham, Rudi Paret, and others, thought it best to treat the Quran as Muslims do (as sacred) and so avoided discussion of its relationship with earlier Jewish and Christian literature. In light of this, decrials of research that focused on the origins of the Quran, efforts towards promoting Christian-Muslim dialogue, the move to read the Quran in light of traditional exegesis instead of earlier tradition, the disbandment of the primary locus of Quranic research in Germany after the war, and other reasons, the study of the historical context of the Quran would descend into obscurity for the remainder of the twentieth century, until being revived by the turn of the twenty-first century. During this period, many works from this time sought to foster good relations with Muslims; for example,
Johann Fück wrote works about the originality of Muhammad. In addition, growing attention was paid to the tafsir (in which important progress was made) in part to avoid thorny critical issues surrounding the Quran and Muhammad. This continued well into the twentieth century, the latter period of which was best characterized by the works of
Andrew Rippin,
Jane McAullife, and
Brannon Wheeler (as in his book
Moses in the Quran and Islamic Exegesis). Books that critically appraised traditional sources concerning the origins of the Quran only began to appear in the 1970s, starting with the revisionist writings of
Günter Lüling (1974),
John Wansbrough (1977), and Patricia Crone and Michael Cook (1977). Though the theses advanced in these books were rejected, they resulted in a considerable diversity of new perspectives and analyses. The present phase of Quranic studies began in the 1990s and, since then, the field has witnessed an explosion of interest and popularity. This has coincided with the formation of new journals such as the
Journal of Qur'anic Studies, societies such as the International Qur'anic Studies Association (IQSA), and the publication of major resources like
The Encyclopaedia of the Quran (2001–6). 2007 saw the initiation of the
Corpus Coranicum project, led by Angelika Neuwirth,
Nicolai Sinai, among others. In 2015, the publication of
the Study Quran by HarperCollins included an English translation of the text, accompanied by a massive collection of traditional interpretations for each verse from a total of several dozen Islamic exegetes. Despite the progress, there is still significant work to do in the field. For example, a critical edition of the Quran, which has been available for the
Bible for decades, is still unavailable, despite an effort towards producing one in the first half of the twentieth century that was cut short by the second world war. Only one critical translation of the Quran has so far been published, by Arthur Droge in 2014. == Notable publications ==