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Rating: 
Summary: what "Kitab" means
Review: Book is about the use of word Qur'an, kitab, mushaf in its various forms and in different context and locations. It is very interesting book for it pulls attention to very important details that you otherwise might have missed when you read the Qur'an or not recall how the same word was used in previous ayats.
Author also investigates the oral nature of the Qur'an and its written form and concludes that for Muslims the oral Qur'an was essential and therefore there was no push for written form.
Although it was more about if the Qur'an is the same as "kitab" or if it is part of it for author draws attention to both expressions used in Qur'an for me it was a reading lecture to catch the details.
Rating: 
Summary: What is the Quran according to itself?
Review: Madigan's sweeping literary analysis of the term 'kitab' and its Arabic root "k-t-b" will prove to be immensely valuable for uncovering the earliest Quranic conception of the nature of Muhammad's recieved revelation. What results in Madigan's analysis is a picture of a uniquely Quranic conception of divine revelation and given to humanity--one that itself points to the transcendent supratextual nature of the Qur'an itself. What appears to me to make this work even more balanced and useful is the dialogue that Madigan often enters into with other classical Islamic sources while constructing his own independent position. The discussion of al-Shafi'i's reatment of the Quranic trope "al-kitab wa-l-hikma" is particularly notable. The text itself is beautifully printed and includes both Arabic texts and translations of the sources quoted. One could hope that the high quality exhibited here will quickly become the standard rather than the exception in the field.
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