The Orientalist approaches on the Coherence of the Qur'an: Historical evolution; features; factors

The study of the Qur'an, especially due to the commonalities of the subject with the content of the former scriptures, has always been of interest to Orientalists. Because the way in which the Qur'anic verses and their content composition are in contrast to the pattern of the holy books, the most distinctive style of the Qur'an, which is presented unconventional, is the incoherence. In this essay, the historical process of the approaches on the coherence of the Qur'an, the characteristics of the approaches and the factors of their genesis have been analyzed. The course of the historical evolution shows the three-stage process: the general negation of the coherence of the Qur'an; the admission of the coherence of the Meccan surahs; the emphasis on the necessity of examining the Medinan surahs with the supposition of coherence in them. The features of these approaches have undergone some changes: changing the polemical approach to the scientific approach; the alteration from understanding the Qur'an in the process of historical development to the understanding it in the canonical version; the transformation of the notion of a random combination to the hypothesis of surah's unity. The causes of the emergence and transformation of the approaches are various: the familiarity of Western mind with the Biblical and thematic order; referring to the Arabic text rather than the translation of the Quran; attention to the oral nature of the Qur'an, and the differences in views on how the Qur'an was collected.