alt=""/>n to call him ibukum reorients our perspective. For his ab, 53:2 referred to a man with whom they walked, spoke, and ate. My companion, as I know him, has no face; he is more or less a fictional character in my dreams. For the companions of my companion, he had a face that could be observed and remembered; after his death, they shared memories of his eyes, cheeks, hair and beard, complexion, and even the sweetness of his breath. Muammad was their companion in lived reality beyond the verses, so it could not have been the Qur’n alone that made him their ib. Instead of decentering Muammad, therefore, his apparent marginalization in the Qur’n threatens to decenter us. We can choose to read ourselves as addressees of the your in your companion, or we can find the Qur’n speaking to its moment with an immediacy that pushes us out. The Qur’n first addressed people who did not need more information regarding a man who lived among them (or the man himself, who did not need to have his own biography reported to him). Grounded in its own urgent present—promising an end of the world that could come at any second and asking how believers might react if Muammad dies in the days to come, while neglecting to offer plans for such a scenario—we could question the Qur’n’s investment in its future readers. Reflecting on what the Qur’n does not say, the points at which it displays no need to contextualize itself or explain its references, I confront the gulf between the Qur’n’s world and mine: The Qur’n speaks to a here and now that I cannot touch. The Qur’n describes Allh’s production and storage of knowledge in terms of pens and tablets; relying on the technology of its moment, the divine archive cannot shift to digital storage or even graduate from papyrus to paper.
According to traditional sources, the Qur’n’s revelation occurred in bits and pieces over the course of twenty-three years. Many of these fragments explicitly referred to incidents and controversies in Muammad’s life, and, therefore, the lives of those around him, the people for whom the Qur’n calls him ibukum. The Qur’n does not read as Allh’s monologue, but rather as one half of a dialogue. When I read about the Companions, the boundary between their lives and the Qur’n dissolves. “They ask you” (yas’alnaka), says the Qur’n to Muammad, before giving him an answer; this occurs numerous times in the Qur’
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