The Prophet's Whistle

Late Antique Orality, Literacy, and the Quran

George Archer

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781609389468
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

The Quran is certainly one of the most important texts in human history. But it wasn't originally a text at all. When the Quran appeared in the seventh century, it was a vocal recital performed by an unlettered man named Muhammad. It remains an oral performance for Muslims all over the world to this day. The Prophet's Whistle is a study of the ancient, nonliterary features of the Quran, many of which are often overlooked by historians and the public. George Archer corrects this striking absence by using observations from the anthropologies of living oral cultures, the cognitive sciences of literacy, and the study of other dead oral cultures. The Prophet's Whistle shows that the thought systems of the Quran are oral, through and through, but by the end of the life of its Prophet, the Quran likewise hints at a personal and cultural embrace of writing and the mindsets of literate people.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Conventions
• Chapter 1. The Quran as an Oral Performance
• Chapter 2. Orality Is Not (Necessarily) Illiteracy
• Chapter 3. The Early Oral Quran: The Early First Meccan Period
• Chapter 4. The Meccan Quran and Literature: The Late First and Early Second Meccan Periods
• Chapter 5. Ayatology: The Late Second and Third Meccan Periods
• Chapter 6. The Pen and the Tablet: The Medinan Period
• Chapter 7. Speaking Volumes
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index