A Text and a Mysterious History

What follows is the Persian translation of an article which has been published as the introduction to the French Dictionary of Quran. This dictionary is written for the western general readership. The aim of this article is to make the non-expert readership familiar with the history of the Quranic text and its development in its historical context. What makes this writing remarkable for Iranian expert readership is the coherent and comprehensive picture it offers of the attempts made by the western scholars for the past one century and a half. Based on different methods and orientations, the attempts of these scholars have been to put forward a coherent theory of the history of the Quran which is aimed to have the utmost consistency with historical accounts. The most important characteristic of this article is its coverage of the three Germanic, French, and English-speaking arenas which provides the readers with an overview of the researches carried out by western scholars.