Charging Steeds or Maidens Performing Good Deeds: In Search of the Original Qur'a¿n brings an important contribution to understanding the development of the Qur'a¿nic corpus. Through a selection of meaningful case studies, the author convincingly argues for a different interpretative approach to the Qur¿a¿nic text. Taking as a starting point the consonantal skeleton of the holy text, known as the ¿Uthma¿nic rasm , and offering a critical reading of the Muslim interpretive tradition, such an approach produces a clearer understanding of parts of the Qur¿a¿n which have defied Muslim and non-Muslim scholars since the early days of Islam.