The Composition of Surat Maryam: Rhetorical Analysis

This book studies the composition or structure of Sūrat Maryam – the 19th sūra of the Qur’an – according to the principles of Semitic rhetoric.

Sūrat Maryam has, in recent decades, been the subject of numerous studies by scholars of Islamology and Qur’anology. The general structure of the sūra, however, is not unanimously recognized among researchers, due to certain inconsistencies in rhyme and content of the text. This book takes a literary approach to the Qur’an, following the rules of a method well known in Qur’anic studies – rhetorical analysis. The book first analyses the sūra as it appears in the Qur’an today in the Muslim world, before focusing on a large section which shows a great literary unity, isolatable from the rest of the sūra. Through the assiduous and detailed reading of the sūra, its complex structure is gradually revealed. Other contexts are also considered: first, that of other sūras of the Qur’an, if they can shed light on the meaning of the sūra under study; and second, that of the Bible or the Jewish and Christian apocrypha.

The book will be of particular interest to scholars working in Qur’anic studies and Biblical studies, and those focused on Christian–Muslim relations.

Michel Cuypers is a member researcher at the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies, Cairo. He specialized in the study of the composition (naẓm) of the Qu’ran and received an international prize for his book The Banquet: A Reading of the Fifth Sura of the Qur’an (2009).

A.H. Mathias Zahniser, Ph.D., 1973, a student of Georg Krotkoff, completed his dissertation on al-Jāhiz's Kitāb al-'Uthmāniyya, and has taught at Central Michigan University, Asbury Seminary and Greenville College, where he is Scholar-in-Residence.