The History of the Qur'an By Theodor Noldeke [PDF]

This first complete translation of Theodor Noldeke's "The History of the Quran" offers a foundational work of modern Quranic studies to the English-speaking public. Noldeke's original publication, as revised and expanded over nearly three quarters of a century by his scholarly successors, Friedrich Schwally, Gotthelf Bergstrasser and Otto Pretzl, remains an indispensable resource for any scholarly work on the text of the Quran.

Noldeke's segmentation of the surahs into three Meccan periods and a Medinan one has shaped all subsequent discussions of the chronology of the Quran. The revisions and expansions of Noldeke's initial discussions of the orthography and variant readings of the text have found a new audience among those contemporary scholars who seek to create a more sophisticated understanding of the Quran's textual development.

Theodor Nöldeke (2 March 1836 - 25 December 1930) was a German orientalist, who was born in Harburg and studied in Göttingen, Vienna, Leiden and Berlin. In 1859 his history of the Qur'an won for him the prize of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and in the following year he rewrote it in German (Geschichte des Korans) and published it with additions at Göttingen.