Made up of a number of seminal articles that are translated for the first time in English, this prestigious book from Gregor Schoeler gives a reasoned, informed and comprehensive overflow of how the written and the spoken interacted, diverged and received cultural articulation among the Muslim societies of the first two centuries of the Hijra.
The author has succeeded in exploring some common bonds among a variety of subjects in a nuanced manner with a remarkable analytical acuity. The glossary is quite illuminating and the Bibliography rich... For all those interested in the interface and interaction between the oral and the written media in the transmission and documentation of the Islamic intellectual heritage in its inchoate stage, and indeed for all Islamicists and Arabists, Schoeler's effort is a masterpiece in the class of the Harvard historian of religion William Graham. - Amidu Olalekan Sanni; Middle Eastern Literatures: incorporating Edebiyat, 13:1, 117-119 (2010).
Editor's Introduction 1. The Transmission of the Science in Early Islam: Oral or Written? 2. The Transmission of the Sciences in Early Islam Revisited 3. Writing and Publishing: On the Use and Function of Writing in Early Islam 4. Oral Poetry Theory and Arabic Literature 5. Oral Torah and Hadit: Transmission, Prohibition of Writing, Redaction 6. Who is the Author of the Kitab Al-'Ayn