The One and the Many

Reviewed by: Muzaffar Iqbal, Center for Islamic Sciences, Canada

Published by: New Haven: Yale University, 2022, 328pp. ISBN: 978-0300251326.

Translated by: Malcolm DeBevoise

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In The One and the Many: The Early History of the Qurʾān, François Déroche—one of the foremost codicologists of Arabic manuscripts—presents what he claims to be a fresh interpretation of the Qurʾān’s early transmission, one grounded in palaeographic and material analysis. Yet despite his technical expertise, the overarching narrative of the book retreats into a tired and now widely discredited paradigm: that of textual instability, delayed standardization, and an evolving canon only secured centuries after the Prophet’s death. Rather than building upon the growing scholarly recognition of the Qurʾān’s early integrity, Déroche effectively turns the clock back, reviving a form of scriptural skepticism that even many Western Qurʾānic scholars have moved beyond.

Indeed, the last two decades of Western academic work—driven in part by manuscript discoveries, radiocarbon dating (such as the Birmingham fragment), and rigorous comparative textual analysis—have produced a more nuanced appreciation of the Qurʾān’s remarkable early fixation. Scholars like Nicolai Sinai, Angelika Neuwirth, and even Michael Cook have acknowledged, albeit cautiously, the robust and stable transmission of the Qurʾānic text. Déroche’s work, by contrast, sidesteps these developments in favour of older, orientalist anxieties—packaged now with codicological authority. For Muslim readers and scholars, this book is not just deeply problematic in theological terms, it is also methodologically regressive, misrepresenting both Islamic tradition and the trajectory of academic Qurʾānic studies itself.