The Real Satanic Verses?

Whatever its other ramifications, Salman Rushdie’s novel has, by its very title, served to focus attention on an alleged incident in the life of the Prophet Muhammad. The traditional sources depict him as having been tempted by the Satan to utter a Quranic recitation which included material that was not part of the Holy Writ – a damaging situation that was put right only by the intervention of the archangel Gabriel. After a summary of the arguments put forward by Islamic and western sources, the focus of the article is on the wider problems of the revelation, more particularly, whether the story preserved by aṭ-Ṭabarī is compatible with the text of the sūra as it survives in the ʿUṯmānic recension or in any earlier version that can be discerned behind this.