“The Quran is for Muslims the verbatim Word of God, revealed during the twenty three-year period of the prophetic mission of the Prophet Muhammad through the agency of the Archangel Gabriel (Jibrīl or Jabra’īl). The meaning, the language, and every word and letter in the Quran, its sound when recited, and its text written upon various physical surfaces are all considered sacred…Considered the Book (al-Kitāb) by all Muslims, it has many names, such as al-Furqān (“the Criterion”) and al-Hudā (“the Guide”), but its most commonly used name is al-Qur’ān, which means “the Recitation.” In the same way that Christians refer to their sacred scripture as the Holy Bible, Muslims usually refer to theirs as al-Qur’ān al-Majīd (“the Glorious Quran”; 50:1; 85:21) or al-Qur’ān al-Karīm (“the Noble Quran”; 56:77). Known in English as the Quran (also Koran), it is the central theophany of Islam and the basic source and root of all that is authentically Islamic, from metaphysics, angelology, and cosmology to law and ethics, from the various arts and sciences to social structures, economics, and even political thought…The Quran is an ever present source of blessing or grace (barakah) deeply experienced by Muslims as permeating all of life.”

~Seyyed Hossein Nasr~  (taken from the Introduction to the Study Quran)