The Qur’an

The storyThe Green Book on the Top Shelf — Amira's grandfather reaches for a book that is kept higher than all the other books.

The storyA Bee and an Elephant — Yusuf finds two chapter names in the Qur'an that sound like a trip to the zoo.

The storyThe Camels Come to Town — A boy sits on a rock and watches a long line of camels walk into a city in the sand.

The storyWrap Me Up — A man runs down a dark mountain and asks his wife to cover him with a blanket.

The storyFour Words Before Lunch — Yusuf opens his lunch box, and before the first bite, he whispers something.

The storyThe Ant Who Warned Her Friends — A tiny ant sees a king's army coming and calls out to all the other ants.

The storyThirty Bookmarks — On the first night of Ramadan, a family sets thirty paper strips inside one book.

The storyNadia Knows It by Heart — A fourth grader in Chicago stands up with no book in her hands, and the room goes quiet.

The storyA Voice from the Rooftop — A man who was once enslaved climbs up high and calls his friends to prayer.

The storyThe City That Changed Its Name — A town called Yathrib takes in some tired travelers and gets a new name.

The storyEleven Stars, the Sun and the Moon — A boy has a strange dream, and his father tells him to keep it secret.

The storyA Surah Read to a King — A small group of Muslims stands before a Christian king far from home, and one of them begins to recite.

The storyA Walk with Luqman — A wise man walks with his son and gives him seven pieces of advice.

The storyThe New Moon over Chicago — The first crescent moon of Ramadan is spotted, and phones light up across the city.

The storyThree Lines and Forty — Two surahs sit on facing pages. One is over in a breath. The other runs on and on.

The storyTwo Pages Older Than Anyone Thought — In a university library in England, two sheets of parchment turn out to be among the oldest Qur'an pages in the world.

The storyA Merchant's Word — In a caravan city where a promise was a kind of money, one merchant's promise turned into a new kind of message.

The storyThe Verse After the Dispute — In the market of Medina, a buyer and a seller argue over a measure of dates, and the argument becomes the subject of a surah.

The storyLook at the Camel — A middle-school class reads four lines that point at four ordinary things and ask one question.

The storyOne Verse, Then the Verse Before It — A student finds a short verse online, then opens the book and reads what stands on either side of it.

The storyThirty Volumes for One Book — A student goes looking for one verse and finds a whole wall of books written about it.

The storyA Life Story That Begins with a Surah — In 1831, an enslaved man in North Carolina picked up a pen and began his life story with the words of Surah 67.

The storyThree Lines, One Lifetime — The shortest surahs are the first a Muslim child learns, and the ones a scholar never finishes reading.

The storyThe Best of Stories — One surah tells a single story from beginning to end, and the Qur'an gives it a title of its own.

The storyOne Verse, Fourteen Centuries — The longest chapter in the book contains a short line that readers have argued over since the seventh century.

The storyNations and Tribes — One verse in a short surah says people were made into peoples so that they might know one another; readers keep returning to it.

The storyThe Son on the Mountain — One father, one knife, one ram in the thicket. Three scriptures tell it, and the son does not always have the same name.

The storyThe Bookseller's Notebook — In a Baghdad hall around the year 950, three scholars argue about scripture, and the man selling paper in the corner writes it all down.

The storyFour Shelves, One Verse — Four scholars, four centuries, one verse about light, and four different first sentences.

The storyA Sermon in New York — A woman stands to give the Friday sermon in 2005, and cites the Qur'an on both sides of the argument about whether she may.

The storyA Few Hundred Verses and a Library — A student counts the verses that give rules, then sees how many shelves grew from them.

The storyThe Verse and the Sentence After It — A scholar and a terrorist quote the same nine words. Everything depends on what each one says next.

The storyOne Vowel, One Breath — In a packed hall, a reciter stretches a single sound until the room forgets to breathe.

The storyOne Ayah, Many Readers — A student spends three weeks with nine Arabic words and finds a thousand years of conversation.