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Koran. See Alcoran

Index: El milagro secreto; La busca de Averroes; Abenjacán el Bojarí, muerto en su laberinto.

Fishburn and Hughes: "From the Arabic Qu'ran, meaning recitation. The Koran is the sacred book of Mohammedanism, believed in Islam to be the infallible word of God as revealed to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. Tradition dates it to the year 610. The Koran teaches the oneness of God, his righteousness and omnipotence, and his divine mercy and forgiveness. Averroës’ Search, CF 237: Abulcasim's reflection 'that the Lord possesses the key to all hidden things and that there is not a green or withered thing on earth which is not registered in His Book' is probably a reference to the five Pillars of Islam (the Kalima, or belief that there is no God but Allah, prayer, almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage) and a paraphrase of 'Not an atom's weight in earth or heaven escapes your Lord nor is there any object smaller or greater but is recorded in a glorious book' (Sura 10, Jonah, 61). The idea of the Koran as the mother of the Book deposited in Heaven and persisting in the centre of God in the words of Ghazali, 'unaltered by its passage through human written pages and human understanding’, stems from Sura 13, The Cave, 139: 'God abrogates, establishes and joins what he pleases; and with him is the Mother of the Book.' Borges discusses various interpretations of the Eternal Book in TL 358. The Secret Miracle: 'And God had him die for a hundred years.' This quotation from the Koran (ch. 2, v. 259) is taken from the Sura named 'The Cow' and refers to an incident in which Allah gave proof of his power to an unbeliever by altering the passing of time. Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth: the epigraph stems from the chapter in the Koran entitled The Spider. The whole sentence reads: 'The false gods which the idolaters serve besides Allah may be compared to the spider's cobweb. Surely the spider's is the frailest of all dwellings, if they but knew it.'" (108-09)