Cont Islam (2010) 4:351–352 DOI 10.1007/s11562-009-0089-8 The Qur’an: a biography Bruce Lawrence. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006. xvi, 231 pp. ISBN 0-87113-951-0 Brannon Wheeler Published online: 2 June 2009 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009 As one would expect from his previous work, Bruce Lawrence has produced a unique and insightful study not of the Qur’an per se but of how the Qur’an has been understood and used from its origins in seventh-century Arabia to its use as a source of healing for women with AIDS. Lawrence treats the Qur’an as scripture, meaning that he explores the variety and multiplicity of messages that Muslims and others have taken differently from the Qur’an as a ‘unitary, coherent source of knowledge’ (13). Lawrence divides his analysis into five major sections which move in a rough chronological order from the prophet Muhammad to contemporary users of the Qur’an. The first section, the ‘Arab Core’ focuses on the prophet Muhammad, Aysha, and the use of the Qur’an on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The chapters on the prophet Muhammad provide readers with an overview of the major events usually highlighted in standard histories of early Islam. Lawrence uses the character of Aysha in a brief chapter (50–61) as emblematic of how integral women were in the early Islamic community and in the earliest application of the Qur’an to social life. The chapter on the Dome of the Rock introduces readers to the use of the Qur’an to shape the collective identity of the Muslim community by delimiting its relationship to the religious community of Christians with whom Muslims shared a scriptural heritage. The second section of the book examines two early and influential Muslim exegetes. Lawrence’s chapter on Ja‘far al-Sadiq, the fifth Imam, serves to give an outline of the events leading to the separation of the Shi‘i and Sunni communal identities vis-à-vis the Qur’an and its interpretation. The explication of how the Shi‘ah interpreted the Qur’an to legitimize the authority of their Imams and their right practice of Islam is carefully laid out for readers. Lawrence portrays the well- B. Wheeler (*) Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, Department of History, United States Naval Academy, 106 Maryland Ave, Mahan Hall Room 211, Annapolis, MD 21402, USA e-mail: bwheeler@usna.edu 352 Cont Islam (2010) 4:351–352 known exegete and historian al-Tabari as having a more universalist perspective as a balance to the sectarian approach of Ja‘far al-Sadiq and the Shi‘i tradition of Qur’an exegesis. In the third section of his book, on later interpretations, Lawrence begins to show the originality and scope of his specific perspective on the history of using the Qu’ran as scripture. He begins with the earliest translation of the Qur’an into Latin by Robert of Ketton in twelfth-century Christian Europe. Lawrence’s choice of selections from this Latin rendering are precise and illuminating of this early interreligious dialogue. The chapter on the twelfth-century Spanish mystic Ibn Arabi is equally compelling not the least because of the coincidence of both he and Robert of Ketton reading the same Qur’an, at the same time, in the same place, in very different ways. The final chapter of this section treats the famous thirteenth-century poet Jalal al-Din Rumi. Lawrence focuses on the transformation of the Arabic Qur’an into not only the Persian language but also the Persianate cultural context of Rumi’s broad-ranging works. In the fourth section of the book, ‘Asian Echoes,’ Lawrence turns to the use of the Quran in the historical context of Indian identity. He examines the use of the Quran in the architecture of the Taj Mahal, the writings of the nineteenth-century Indian educator Ahmad Khan, and the poetry of the Pakistani poet Muhammad Iqbal. Knowledgeable readers will recognize in the depth of these chapters that the study of Indian Islam is central to the lifetime research of Lawrence. Placing these chapters in the middle of his biography of the Qur’an, Lawrence offers a highly important corrective to the common conception that the Qur’an is only or most significant in its native Arabic-speaking world. The fifth and final section of the book, ‘Global Accents,’ brings the biography of the Quran into the modern world with chapters on the African-American Muslim W. D. Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, and the application of the Qur’an to the treatment of women suffering from AIDS. Lawrence helpfully juxtaposes these three contemporary examples of Qur’an use, in these cases aimed at the West and its role as a globalizing culture, with the earlier studies of the Qur’an in India and the Middle East. The chapters on W.D. Mohammed and Bin Laden are particularly instructive because of the clarity Lawrence provides on how interpreting the Qur’an can often be not only selective but also creative and destructive in its synthesis of the old and the new with issues relevant to one’s particular context. Readers should be aware that this book is part of a larger series devoted to ‘Books That Shook the World,’ all written by acknowledged experts in their fields, and all giving attention not to traditional first-hand interpretation and explication of these books but to how these books were received and what effect they had on the world into which they made their entrance. The abbreviated style of the chapters and the readable style of the book (if sometimes lacking in what specialist readers might want in the way of details and nuance) is to be attributed to its inclusion in this series aimed at a very general audience. Lawrence’s epilogue is particularly moving beyond its insightful synopsis of how the use of the Qur’an exemplifies the multiple meanings made possible by the preservation and canonization of a text with a rich and varied history like the Qur’an. Lawrence also shows readers why the Qur’an in particular is a book that has had such impact on the history of the world.