ABSTRACT
From a comparative perspective, the Qur'ān plays a particularly unique role within the devotional lives of Muslims. As the very uncreated and eternal word of God, both the written and oral manifestations of Qur'ānic scripture are theologically imbued with a transcendental sacrality. The centrality of the Qur'ān can be felt throughout various practices of devotion, from the somatic performance of ritual recitation to the calligraphic inscriptions in architectural regimes of sacred space. Several scholars have argued that the theological status of the Qur'ān as the eternal speech of God is analogous to the sacramental person of Christ as uncreated Divine Logos (Söderblom 1933: 326–27; Smith 1981: 37; cf. Ess 1996: 193). Admittedly, such analogies have their limitations, particularly with respect to analyzing the forms of ritual performance in which the Qur'ān is enacted as a sacred scripture. Following a similar line of thought, William Graham (1987: 87–88, cf. 217) saw in the daily performance of the ritual recitation of the Qur'ān theological parallels to the sacramental consumption of the body of Christ tran-substantiated in the Eucharist.
