That particular period of epic distance mentioned above left us, among other written documents later incorporated into diverse, broad textual assemblages and genres, one monument of extraordinary complexity and importance, which is the Qur’ān. Its documentary and testamentary value is both direct and oblique, requiring interpretation in terms both of its “plain sense,” here regarded as the attempted recovery of the sense of its words and statements as they will have been understood to its original audience, and in terms of references, direct or indirect, to events and conditions surrounding its inception. The text as we have it contains references to specific events, rarely, though, to events occurring before Muḥammad’s migration to Medina. Among others things, it refers to the defeat of the Byzantines and, presumably, to their loss of Jerusalem in 614; to the battles of Badr and Ḥunayn; to the reaffirmation in Paleo-Islam of pagan pilgrimage rituals at the time of al-Ḥudaybiyya; to Muḥammad’s expedition against Khaybar; to the expulsion from Medina of B. al-Naḍīr; and to Muḥammad’s interference with Mecca’s food supplies, and his marriage to Zaynab. It also refers, often in a contradictory sense that testifies to current developments, to a number of ritual and doctrinal matters. It tells us about Muḥammad’s revelations, his relationship to the unseen, and about theophany, and tells us not a little about the Arabic language. It is silent on a number of major events, such as the boycott of Banū Hāshim by the Quraysh and the emigration to Ethiopia, which might reflect the dynamics of the process of composition and canonisation discussed in The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity, where an interpretative model for it is suggested in ch. 7. Finally, the Qur’ān provides ethnological and religious documentation about the Arabs; among other things, its use of rhymed prose provides evidence of pagan soothsaying. It provides testimony about the religions of Arabia.

On present evidence, the text was redacted in writing very early. Moreover, if “formulaic density” be anything to go by, one might mention that the Qur’ān has been estimated to have a formulaic density of over 20 per cent, not as high a percentage as to warrant an oral-formulaic perspective, despite the fact that its oral-aural delivery, reiteration and reception were crucial, although it needs to be stated that writing intervened at many stages. For the purposes of the present argument, a number of brief preliminary comments would nevertheless be in order.