However, whether in the case of the Qur’an or of any other text, understanding the Qur’an requires more than an understanding of the backdrop for the text (the anthroplogy, archaeology, epigraphology, political, social and cultural history of the environment in which the text is embedded), and more than an understanding of its literary structure (its vocabulary, grammar, styles, and its links with the languages which preceded and surround the text).

The face which emerged was not reassuring. […]. He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.

Proclaiming taste to be a learned as much as an inborn trait, they sought to establish themselves as aesthetic educators of the vulnerable, unschooled Parisienne.

Because of the flamelike undulations of its window tracery, the Norman archæologist, M. de Caumont, who had brought into use the name Romanesque, invented the equally useful term Flamboyant.