ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that thematic reading necessarily reflects on the accumulative development of ayt in the Quran. The oath clusters, rhetorical questions and language of sign form a nucleus of images and metaphors within the early Makkan surahs that establish the Quran's iconography. John Wansborough compared Islamic exegetic processes to that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, concluding that the Quran drew from a traditional stock of imagery adapted as reference for its own schemata of revelation. Angelika Neuwirth argues that the temporal and spatial settings of cultic practice and the changes in significance of cultural reminders are presented in the Quran as a canonization of cultic pronouncement in the early Makkan phase. Thus, although Koshul echoes Islamic feminist critique of the dichotomous divisions between the sacred and profane spheres of life that disregard the materiality of existence, he stops short of considering the consequences of the Quran's semiology for the materiality of the world into which it is received.
