An old-fashioned English spelling of the Quran, the holy book of Islam containing the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.
From Arabic 'al-Qur'ān' meaning 'the recitation' or 'the reading', with 'al-' being the definite article. The term passed through European languages during medieval and early modern times with various Latinized spellings like 'Alcoran' and 'Alkoran'.
Medieval Europeans spelled this word in wildly different ways—Alcoran, Alkoran, Alcuran—because they were encountering Arabic sounds through different languages and had no standardized transliteration! This shows how spelling reflects cultural contact and the challenges of representing unfamiliar languages.
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