The word _Ḳur-án_ means the _crying_, _reciting_, _reading_, and is applied not only to the whole book, but to any chapter or section of it. The Ḳur-án is also called El-Furḳán, ‘the Distinguisher,’ and El-Muṣḥaf, ‘the Volume,’ and El-Kitáb, ‘the Book,’ and Edh-Dhikr, ‘the Admonition.’ The Ḳur-án contains, in its ordinary form, 114 chapters (_soorahs_), 6616 verses (_áyát_, literally ‘signs’ or ‘wonders’), 77,934 words, and 323,671 letters, according to the estimates of laborious Muslim divines, which differ, however, in a slight manner in consequence of the various divisions of verses. After the first chapter, which is a short prayer (the Fátiḥah), the soorahs gradually decrease in length from 289 verses in the second to from three to six in the ten concluding chapters. Each chapter is headed by a title, taken from same prominent word in it (as the ‘Chapter of the Striking,’ ‘of the Cow,’ &c.); beneath which is noted whether it was promulgated (according to tradition) at Mekka or Medina, and the number of its verses. Then follow the words:—‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful;’ after which the chapter begins. To twenty-nine chapters are prefixed certain letters (_e.g._, ch. ii. on p. 4), or a single letter, which have never been successfully interpreted. The Muslims believe them to conceal profound mysteries. In Soorah 55 a refrain is found, and traces of a like imitation in Soorahs 54 and 17. It is probable that the Ḳur-án was originally _chanted_ in somewhat the same manner as it is in the present day. The Ḳur-án is also divided in thirty sections, and these are again subdivided; and from this division rather than from chapter and verse do the Muslims generally quote.