Quran
Central religious text of Islam, considered by Muslims to be the literal word of God (Allah), revealed in fragmentary fashion to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over some twenty-three years, from 610 until his death in 632 AD, first in Mecca and then in Medina, and compiled into the definitive written form we know under the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan, roughly two decades after the Prophet's death. Structured in one hundred and fourteen chapters (surahs) of widely varying length, arranged broadly by decreasing length rather than chronologically, the Quran combines narratives about earlier prophets — many shared with the Jewish and Christian biblical tradition, such as Abraham, Moses, Joseph and Jesus, the latter recognised as a prophet but not as the Son of God — ethical and spiritual exhortations, civil and criminal legislation, eschatological descriptions of the Last Judgement, paradise and hell, and theological affirmations centred on tawhid, the absolute, indivisible oneness of God, regarded as the most fundamental principle of all Islam. Ritually recited and memorised in Classical Arabic — a language Muslims consider an inseparable part of the revelation itself, so that translations are traditionally regarded as mere approximate interpretations of meaning, not the Quran proper — its literary beauty and stylistic perfection are held by Muslims as proof of its divine nature, an argument known as i'jaz al-Qur'an, the 'inimitability' of the Quran. The supreme source of Islamic law (sharia) together with the Prophet's Sunnah, the Quran has been exhaustively commented on by an exegetical tradition (tafsir) spanning centuries and diverse currents, and is, by number of readers and memorisers, probably the most read and memorised book in all of human history.