From the first moment the revelation resounded in the Cave of Hira, the history of the Qur'an began not only as a sacred text, but as a living movement in the heart of the Islamic nation, establishing knowledge, guiding behavior, and shaping cultural and spiritual awareness. The Companions, their followers, and scholars throughout the ages devoted a unique attention to it, unprecedented for any divine book, in terms of memorization, recitation, compilation, interpretation, and precise script and readings. This led the Qur'an to become a comprehensive center for diverse sciences and a starting point for an intellectual renaissance spanning time.
This book offers an extensive reading of the historical trajectory of the Qur'an, from the time of its revelation, through the stages of its compilation during the era of the Prophet and the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and up to the efforts of Muslim scholars to document and interpret its sciences. It then traces the preoccupation of Orientalists, particularly in Germany, with this great book, their efforts to collect its versions, monitor its differences, and examine its interpretation within a rigorous academic context. This work transcends the confines of historical narrative to become a contemplative and cognitive window into how the relationship between the divine text and the Muslim mind was formed, and into how Quranic awareness was born within the embrace of history and developed in the shadow of scientific research. It is presented today as an authentic study that reconstructs our understanding of the history of a book that changed the face of the world, and continues to do so.