Sura and verse

How this was made, and what it leaves out

Every published volume except the Korans themselves was read for references of the shape a name of the book, then a sura, then optionally verses — "Koran vi. 44", "Quran lix, 2", "Kor. ii, 6", "Koran, chap. III", "Sura ix. 28", "Sura XXIV, 5", "Sura xxii, 39-40", "Qur'an 2:255". A name alone never counts (Koranic), a bare Arabic number after "Koran" is not a sura unless a chapter word or a sura:verse pair goes with it (it is as often a page), and the sura must exist and the verse lie within Rodwell's count of it. The verse text is Rodwell's (1861), whose numbering follows Flügel, as the nineteenth-century books on these shelves do: his "Sura ii. 256" is the Throne Verse, which the Egyptian numbering calls 2:255. Where a citation was made against the modern numbering it will stand a verse or two off, and the verse beside it is still Rodwell's, so the reader can see both.

Rodwell prints each verse as a paragraph and heads each sura with its verse count. In 19 suras the transcription's paragraphs do not equal that count (2, 3, 6, 15, 20, 24, 26, 29, 37, 42, 43, 51, 55, 68, 69, 72, 84, 91, 96); a verse was split or joined in the copying, and the verse shown for those suras may be its neighbour. Each such sura says so on its page. The sura's own page in the reader is linked above its verses so the reader can go to the text itself. 2,444 volumes were scanned on 2026-10-29; every quoted sentence is checked against the page it cites before this page is built. Chapter and verse does the same for the Bible.