Qur’ānic Stories: God, Revelation and the Audience

• Explores the use of storytelling and narrative devices in the Qur’an
• Draws on narratology, rhetoric and Qur’anic studies to develop a new methodology
• Examines the interaction of the text, audience, characters and narrator
• Analyses Qur’anic commentary: classical and modern; Sunni, Sufi and Shi‘i
• Studies stories that represent the variety of Qur’anic narrative: Surat Yūsuf; Surat Āl ‘Imrān; Surat Maryam; Surat Ṭaha; and Surat al-Qaṣaṣ

Leyla Ozgur Alhassen approaches the Qur’an as a literary, religious and oral text that affects its audience. She looks at how Qur’anic stories function as narrative: how characters and dialogues are portrayed; what themes are repeated; what verbal echoes and conceptual links are present; what structure is established; and what beliefs these narrative choices strengthen.

Ozgur Alhassen argues that, in the Qur’an, some narrative features that are otherwise puzzling can be seen as instances in which God, as the narrator, centres himself while putting the audience in its place. In essence, this makes the act of reading an interaction between God and the audience.