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Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another.: Oral Tradition as History (1985), reported statements from present generation which "specifies that the message must be oral statements spoken, sung or called out on musical instruments only"; "There must be transmission by word of mouth over at least a generation". He points out, "Our definition is a working definition for the use of historians. Sociologists, linguists or scholars of the verbal arts propose their own, which in, e.g., sociology, stresses common knowledge. In linguistics, features that distinguish the language from common dialogue (linguists), and in the verbal arts features of form and content that define art (folklorists)."Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: "Methodology and African Pre-history", 1990, UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa; James Currey Publishers, , 9780852550915; see Ch. 7; "Oral tradition and its methodology" at pages 54–61; at page 54: "Oral tradition may be defined as being a testimony transmitted verbally from one generation to another. Its special characteristics are that it is verbal and the manner in which it is transmitted." The transmission is through or song and may include , , , or . The information is by oral repositories, sometimes termed "walking libraries", who are usually also performers. Oral tradition is a medium of communication for a society to transmit , , and other knowledge across generations without a , or in parallel to a writing system. It is the most widespread medium of human communication. They often remain in use in the throughout for cultural preservation.

Religions such as , , , and have used oral tradition, in parallel to writing, to transmit their canonical , , and mythologies.

(1987). 9780521337946, Cambridge University Press. .
African societies have broadly been labelled oral civilisations, contrasted with literate civilisations, due to their reverence for the and widespread use of oral tradition.

Oral tradition is memories, knowledge, and expression held in common by a group over many generations: it is the long preservation of immediate or contemporaneous . It may be defined as the recall and transmission of specific, preserved textual and cultural knowledge through vocal utterance. Oral Tradition , Encyclopædia Britannica, John Miles Foley Oral tradition is usually popular, and can be or . It speaks to people according to their understanding, unveiling itself in accordance with their aptitudes.

As an academic discipline, oral tradition refers both to objects and methods of study.Dundes, Alan, "Editor's Introduction" to The Theory of Oral Composition, John Miles Foley. Bloomington, IUP, 1988, pp. ix–xii It is distinct from , which is the recording of personal testimony of those who experienced historical eras or events. Oral tradition is also distinct from the study of , defined as and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of (writing and print) are unfamiliar.Ong, Walter, S.J., Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, 1982, p. 12. is one albeit not the only type of oral tradition.. American Folklore and the Mass Media. Bloomington: IUP, 1994, p. 31 Folklore in the Oral Tradition, Fairytales, Fables and Folk-legend , Julie Carthy (1984), The Oral Tradition, Volume IV, Yale University, Quote: "Folklore is said to be in the oral tradition. Dundes states that the most common criterion for a definition of folklore is its means of transmission that is, orally. He clarifies however that materials other than folklore are also orally conveyed. Therefore oral transmission itself is not sufficient to distinguish folklore from non-folklore."

History
According to John Foley, oral tradition has been an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of the world". Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures:

Before the introduction of text, oral tradition remained the only means of communication in order to establish societies as well as its institutions. Despite widespread comprehension of in the recent century, oral tradition remains the dominant communicative means within the world.

Africa
In Africa, the oral tradition includes proverbs, folktales, songs, dances, customs, traditional medicine, religious practices, and cultural sayings that are told and expressed to teach lessons about life, social systems, religion, and spirituality. All indigenous African societies use oral tradition to learn their origin and history, civic and religious duties, crafts and skills, as well as traditional myths and . It is also a key socio-cultural component in the practice of their traditional spiritualities, as well as mainstream Abrahamic religions. The prioritisation of the spoken word is evidenced by African societies having chosen to record history orally whilst some had developed or had access to a . differentiates between oral and literate civilisations, stating: "The attitude of members of an oral society toward is similar to the reverence members of a literate society attach to the . If it is hallowed by authority or antiquity, the word will be treasured." For centuries in Europe, all data felt to be important were written down, with the most important texts prioritised, such as , and only trivia, such as song, legend, anecdote, and proverbs remained unrecorded. In Africa, all the principal political, legal, social, and religious texts were transmitted orally. When the in Cameroon invented a script, the first to be written down was the and the code of . Most African courts had archivists who learnt by heart the royal genealogy and history of the state, and served as its unwritten constitution.

The performance of a tradition is accentuated and rendered alive by various gesture, social conventions and the unique occasion in which it is performed. Furthermore, the climate in which traditions are told influences its content. In , traditions were short because most of them were told at informal gatherings and everyone had to have his say during the evening; in neighbouring , many narratives were spun-out because a one-man professional had to entertain his patron for a whole evening, with every production checked by fellow specialists and errors punishable. Frequently, glosses or commentaries were presented parallel to the narrative, sometimes answering questions from the audience to ensure understanding, although often someone would learn a tradition without asking their master questions and not really understand the meaning of its content, leading them to speculate in the commentary. Oral traditions only exist when they are told, except for in people's minds, and so the frequency of telling a tradition aids its preservation. These African ethnic groups also utilize oral tradition to develop and train the human intellect, and the memory to retain information and sharpen imagination.

West Africa
Perhaps the most famous repository of oral tradition is the west African (named differently in different languages). The griot is a hereditary position and exists in , , , , , , , and societies among many others, although more famously in . They constitute a and perform a range of roles, including as a historian or library, musician, poet, of family and tribal disputes, spokesperson, and served in the king's court, not dissimilar from the European . They keep records of all births, death, and marriages through the generations of the village or family. When founded the , he was offered Balla Fasséké as his griot to advise him during his reign, giving rise to the . Griots often accompany their telling of oral tradition with a musical instrument, as the Epic of Sundiata is accompanied by the , or as the kora accompanies other traditions. In modern times, some griots and descendants of griots have dropped their historian role and focus on music, with many finding success, however many still maintain their traditional roles.

East Africa
Kenya safeguarded its oral tradition by ratifying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in October 2007.

North Africa
Central Africa
Southern Africa
Europe
Albania
Albanian traditions have been handed down orally across generations.; ; ; . They have been preserved through traditional memory systems that have survived intact into modern times in , a phenomenon that is explained by the lack of state formation among and their ancestors – the , being able to preserve their . This distinguished them from civilizations such as , and , who underwent state formation and disrupted their traditional memory practices.

Albanian epic poetry has been analysed by Homeric scholars to acquire a better understanding of epics. The long oral tradition that has sustained Albanian epic poetry reinforces the idea that pre-Homeric epic poetry was oral. The theory of oral-formulaic composition was developed also through the scholarly study of Albanian epic verse. The Albanian traditional singing of epic verse from memory is one of the last survivors of its kind in modern ,. and the last survivor of the Balkan traditions..

Ancient Greece
"All ancient Greek literature", states Steve Reece, "was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so".Reece, Steve. " Orality and Literacy: Ancient Greek Literature as Oral Literature", in David Schenker and Martin Hose (eds.), Companion to Greek Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2015) 43-57. . 's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, "was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally".
(1999). 9789004112735, BRILL Academic. .
As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in the stories with local characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect with the audience, but making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition unreliable.
(1999). 9789004112735, BRILL Academic. .
The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an exclusive product of an oral tradition.
(2025). 9783515088541, Franz Steiner Verlag. .

Ireland
An Irish seanchaí (plural: seanchaithe), meaning bearer of "old lore" , was a traditional storyteller (the equivalent being the seanchaidh, as shanachie). The job of a seanchaí was to serve the head of a lineage by passing information orally from one generation to the next about and history, particularly in medieval times.

Rome
The potential for oral transmission of history in is evidenced primarily by , who discusses the significance of oral tradition in works such as Brutus,Cicero, Brutus, (75) translated by E. Jones (1776) Attalus, available at: Attalus Tusculan Disputations,Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, (1.3) translated by J. King. Loeb Classical Library. London: Heinemann, 1927 and On The Orator.Cicero, On The Orator, (3.197) translated by E. Sutton. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942 While ’s reliance on Cato’s Origines may limit the breadth of his argument,Wiseman, T. Historiography and Imagination. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994 he nonetheless highlights the importance of storytelling in preserving . also references oral tradition in Memorable Doings and Sayings (2.1.10).Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, translated by D. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000

Wiseman argues that celebratory performances served as a vital medium for transmitting Roman history and that such traditions evolved into written forms by the third century CE. He asserts that the history of figures like the house of Tarquin was likely passed down through oral storytelling for centuries before being recorded in literature.Wiseman, T. Roman Legend and Oral Tradition, The Journal of Roman Studies, 79, 129-137. Available at: JSTOR Although Flower critiques the lack of ancient evidence supporting Wiseman's broader claims,Flower, H. (1995). Fabulae Praetextae in Context: When Were Plays on Contemporary Subjects Performed in Republican Rome? The Classical Quarterly, New Series, 45(1), 170-190. Available at: JSTOR Wiseman maintains that dramatic narratives fundamentally shaped historiography.

Asia
In Asia, the transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient India, in different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved with precision with the help of elaborate :

According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a literate society". Mostly recently, research shows that oral performance of (written) texts could be a philosophical activity in early China.

It is a common knowledge in India that the primary Hindu books called Vedas are great example of Oral tradition. Pundits who memorized three Vedas were called Trivedis. Pundits who memorized four vedas were called Chaturvedis. By transferring knowledge from generation to generation Hindus protected their ancient Mantras in Vedas, which are basically Prose.

The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.

Middle East
In the Middle East, oral tradition has significantly influenced literary and cultural practices.
(2025). 9789518585872, Finnish Literature Society. .
Arabic oral tradition encompassed various forms of expression, including metrical poetry, , ( saj'), and —a combination of prose and poetry often employed in historical narratives. held a position of particular importance, as it was believed to be a more reliable medium for information transmission than prose. This belief stemmed from observations that highly structured language, with its rhythmic and phonetic patterns, tended to undergo fewer alterations during oral transmission.
(2025). 9789518585872, Finnish Literature Society. .

Each genre of rhymed poetry served distinct social and cultural functions. These range from spontaneous compositions at celebrations to carefully crafted historical accounts, political commentaries, and entertainment pieces. Among these, the folk epics known as (singular: sīra) were considered the most intricate. These prosimetric narratives, combining prose and verse, emerged in the early Middle Ages. While many such epics circulated historically, only one has survived as a sung oral poetic tradition: Sīrat Banī Hilāl. This epic recounts the westward migration and conquests of the tribe from the 10th to 12th centuries, culminating in their rule over parts of North Africa before their eventual defeat.

(2025). 9789518585872, Finnish Literature Society. .
The historical roots of Sīrat Banī Hilāl are evident in the present-day distribution of groups claiming descent from the tribe across North Africa and parts of the Middle East. The epic's development into a cohesive narrative was first documented by the historian Ibn Khaldūn in the 14th century. In his writings, Ibn Khaldūn describes collecting stories and poems from nomadic Arabs, using these oral sources to discuss the merits of colloquial versus classical poetry and the value of oral histories in written historical works.
(2025). 9789518585872, Finnish Literature Society. .

The and other ancient Jewish literature, the Judeo-Christian Bible and texts of early centuries of Christianity are rooted in an oral tradition, and the term "People of the Book" is a medieval construct.

(2025). 9780521007207, Cambridge University Press. .
(2025). 9789004207264, BRILL Academic.

(1961). 9780802843661, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
This is evidenced, for example, by the multiple scriptural statements by Paul admitting "previously remembered tradition which he received" orally.
(2025). 9783161484544, Mohr Siebeck.

Oceania
Australia
Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through thousands of years. In a study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago. Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence. A basalt stone axe found underneath in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.

Americas
Native American
Native American society was always reliant upon oral tradition, if not , in order to convey knowledge, morals and traditions amongst others, a trait Western settlers deemed as representing an inferior race without neither culture nor history, often cited as a reason behind indoctrination.

Writing systems are not known to exist among Native North Americans before contact with Europeans except among some Mesoamerican cultures, and possibly the South American and North American , although those two are debatable. Oral storytelling traditions flourished in a context without the use of writing to record and preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices.

(2025). 9781405115414, Blackwell Publishing. .
While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned as practical lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral, social, psychological, and environmental issues.
(2025). 9781405115414, Blackwell Publishing. .
Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as a means of teaching. Plots often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at particular people known by the story's audience. In this way, social pressure could be exerted without directly causing embarrassment or .
(2025). 9781405115414, Blackwell Publishing. .
For example, rather than yelling, parents might deter their children from wandering too close to the water's edge by telling a story about a sea monster with a pouch for children within its reach. One single story could provide dozens of lessons.
(1991). 9781555910945, Fulcrum Publishing. .
Stories were also used as a means to assess whether traditional cultural ideas and practices are effective in tackling contemporary circumstances or if they should be revised.
(2025). 9781405115414, Blackwell Publishing. .

Native American storytelling is a collaborative experience between storyteller and listeners. Native American tribes generally have not had professional tribal storytellers marked by social status.

(1995). 9780684807003, Scribner.
Stories could and can be told by anyone, with each storyteller using their own vocal inflections, word choice, content, or form. Storytellers not only draw upon their own memories, but also upon a collective or tribal memory extending beyond personal experience but nevertheless representing a shared reality. Native languages have in some cases up to twenty words to describe physical features like rain or snow and can describe the spectra of human emotion in very precise ways, allowing storytellers to offer their own personalized take on a story based on their own lived experiences.
(1995). 9780684807003, Scribner.
Fluidity in story deliverance allowed stories to be applied to different social circumstances according to the storyteller's objective at the time. One's rendition of a story was often considered a response to another's rendition, with plot alterations suggesting alternative ways of applying traditional ideas to present conditions.

Listeners might have heard the story told many times, or even may have told the same story themselves. This does not take away from a story's meaning, as curiosity about what happens next was less of a priority than hearing fresh perspectives on well-known themes and plots. Elder storytellers generally were not concerned with discrepancies between their version of historical events and neighboring tribes' version of similar events, such as in origin stories. Tribal stories are considered valid within the tribe's own frame of reference and tribal experience. The 19th century Oglala Lakota tribal member was known for his justification of the oral tradition and criticism of the written word.

(1995). 9781562943820, Millbrook Press. .
(1990). 9780938737209, Denali Press. .

Stories are used to preserve and transmit both tribal history and environmental history, which are often closely linked. Native oral traditions in the Pacific Northwest, for example, describe natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. Various cultures from Vancouver Island and Washington have stories describing a physical struggle between a Thunderbird and a Whale. One such story tells of the Thunderbird, which can create thunder by moving just a feather, piercing the Whale's flesh with its talons, causing the Whale to dive to the bottom of the ocean, bringing the Thunderbird with it. Another depicts the Thunderbird lifting the Whale from the Earth then dropping it back down. Regional similarities in themes and characters suggests that these stories mutually describe the lived experience of earthquakes and floods within tribal memory. According to one story from the , was created when an earthquake expanded the channel as a result of an underwater battle between a serpent and bird. Other stories in the region depict the formation of glacial valleys and moraines and the occurrence of landslides, with stories being used in at least one case to identify and date earthquakes that occurred in 900 CE and 1700.

Further examples include origin stories of emergence from an "underworld" of persistent darkness, which may represent the remembrance of life in the Arctic Circle during the last ice age, and stories involving a "deep crevice", which may refer to the Grand Canyon. Despite such examples of agreement between geological and archeological records on one hand and Native oral records on the other, some scholars have cautioned against the historical validity of oral traditions because of their susceptibility to detail alteration over time and lack of precise dates. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act considers oral traditions as a viable source of evidence for establishing the affiliation between cultural objects and Native Nations.

Transmission
Oral traditions face the challenge of accurate transmission and verifiability of the accurate version, particularly when the culture lacks written language or has limited access to writing tools. Oral cultures have employed various strategies that achieve this without writing. For example, a heavily rhythmic speech filled with enhances memory and recall. A few useful mnemonic devices include , repetition, , and proverbial sayings. In addition, the verse is often metrically composed with an exact number of syllables or —such as with Greek and Latin prosody and in found in Hindu and Buddhist texts.
(2025). 9780191643446, Oxford University Press. .

The verses of the epic or text are typically designed wherein the long and short syllables are repeated by certain rules, so that if an error or inadvertent change is made, an internal examination of the verse reveals the problem.

(1995). 9780791416686, State University of New York Press. .
Oral traditions can be passed on through plays and acting, as shown in modern-day by the Graffis or Grasslanders who perform and deliver speeches to teach their history through oral tradition.
(2015). 9789783703681
Such strategies facilitate transmission of information without a written intermediate, and they can also be applied to oral governance.

Oral transmission of law
The law itself in oral cultures is enshrined in formulaic sayings, proverbs, which are not mere jurisprudential decorations, but themselves constitute the law. A judge in an oral culture is often called on to articulate sets of relevant proverbs out of which he can make equitable decisions in the cases under formal litigation before him.

's The Jungle Book provides an excellent demonstration of oral governance in the Law of the Jungle. Not only does grounding rules in oral proverbs allow for simple transmission and understanding, but it also legitimizes new rulings by allowing extrapolation. These stories, traditions, and proverbs are not static, but are often altered upon each transmission, barring any change to the overall meaning. In this way, the rules that govern the people are modified by the whole and not authored by a single entity.

Indian religions
Ancient texts of , and were preserved and transmitted by an oral tradition.
(2025). 9789004125568, BRILL Academic. .
(2025). 9780141909370, Penguin Books. .
For example, the śrutis of Hinduism called the , the oldest of which trace back to the second millennium BCE. explains this oral tradition as follows:

Ancient Indians developed techniques for listening, memorization and recitation of their knowledge, in schools called , while maintaining exceptional accuracy of their knowledge across the generations.

(2025). 9789004125568, BRILL Academic. .
Many forms of recitation or pathas were designed to aid accuracy in recitation and the transmission of the and other knowledge texts from one generation to the next. All hymns in each Veda were recited in this way; for example, all 1,028 hymns with 10,600 verses of the was preserved in this way; as were all other Vedas including the Principal Upanishads, as well as the Vedangas. Each text was recited in a number of ways, to ensure that the different methods of recitation acted as a cross check on the other. Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat summarizes this as:
  • Samhita-patha: continuous recitation of Sanskrit words bound by the phonetic rules of euphonic combination;
  • Pada-patha: a recitation marked by a conscious pause after every word, and after any special grammatical codes embedded inside the text; this method suppresses euphonic combination and restores each word in its original intended form;
  • Krama-patha: a step-by-step recitation where euphonically combined words are paired successively and sequentially and then recited; for example, a hymn "word1 word2 word3 word4...", would be recited as "word1word2 word2word3 word3word4 ...."; this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Gargya and Sakalya in the Hindu tradition and mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini (dated to pre-Buddhism period);
  • Krama-patha modified: the same step-by-step recitation as above, but without euphonic-combinations (or free form of each word); this method to verify accuracy is credited to Vedic sages Babhravya and Galava in the Hindu tradition, and is also mentioned by the ancient Sanskrit grammarian Panini;
  • , and are methods of recitation of a text and its oral transmission that developed after 5th century BCE, that is after the start of Buddhism and Jainism; these methods use more complicated rules of combination and were less used.

These extraordinary retention techniques guaranteed an accurate Śruti, fixed across the generations, not just in terms of unaltered word order but also in terms of sound.Wilke, Annette and Moebus, Oliver. Sound and Communication: An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism (Religion and Society). De Gruyter (February 1, 2007). P. 495. . That these methods have been effective, is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the ().

(2025). 9781402023217, Springer. .

Poetry of Homer
Research by and indicates that the verse of the Greek poet has been passed down not by rote memorization but by "oral-formulaic composition". In this process, extempore composition is aided by use of stock phrases or "formulas" (expressions that are used regularly "under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea").Milman Parry, L’epithèt traditionnelle dans Homère (Paris, 1928), p. 16; cf. Albert B. Lord, The singer of tales (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 4 In the case of the work of Homer, formulas included eos rhododaktylos ("rosy fingered dawn") and oinops pontos ("winedark sea") which fit in a modular fashion into the poetic form (in this case six-colon Greek hexameter). Since the development of this theory, of oral-formulaic composition has been "found in many different time periods and many different cultures",Dundes, Fables of the Ancients?, 2003: p.17 and according to another source (John Miles Foley) "touched on" over 100 "ancient, medieval and modern traditions."Foley, John Miles. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington: IUP, 1991, p 36.Catherine S. Quick, ‘Annotated Bibliography 1986-1990’, Oral Tradition 12.2 (1997) 366-484Bannister, Oral-Formulaic Study, 65-106.

Islam
The most recent of the world's major religions, claims two major sources of divine revelation—the and —compiled in written form relatively shortly after being revealed:
  • The —meaning "recitation" in Arabic—is believed by Muslims to be God's revelation to the Islamic prophet , delivered to him from 610 CE until his death in 632 CE. It is said to have been carefully compiled and edited into a standardized written form (known as the ) about two decades after the last verse was revealed.
  • —meaning "narrative" or "report" in Arabic—is the record of the words, actions, and the silent approval, of Muhammad, and was transmitted by "oral preachers and storytellers" for around 150–250 years. Each hadith includes the (chain of human transmitters who passed down the tradition before it was sorted according to accuracy, compiled, and committed to written form by a reputable scholar.

The oral milieu in which the sources were revealed, and their oral form in general are important. The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith were orally transmitted.Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.2 Few Arabs were literate at the time and paper was not available in the Middle East.Michael Zwettler, The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry, Ohio State Press, 1978, p.14.

The written Quran is said to have been created in part through memorization by Muhammad's companions, and the decision to create a standard written work is said to have come after the death in battle (Yamama) of a large number of Muslims who had memorized the work.

For centuries, copies of the Qurans were transcribed by hand, not printed, and their scarcity and expense made reciting the Quran from memory, not reading, the predominant mode of teaching it to others. To this day the Quran is memorized by millions and its recitation can be heard throughout the Muslim world from recordings and mosque loudspeakers (during ). Muslims state that some who teach memorization/recitation of the Quran constitute the end of an "un-broken chain" whose original teacher was Muhammad himself. It has been argued that "the Qur'an's rhythmic style and eloquent expression make it easy to memorize," and was made so to facilitate the "preservation and remembrance" of the work.The Qur'an, verses 44:58; 54:17, 22, 32, 40. Arab-news-27-2-2015

Islamic doctrine holds that from the time it was revealed to the present day, the Quran has not been altered, its continuity from divine revelation to its current written form ensured by the large numbers of Muhammad's supporters who had reverently memorized the work, a careful compiling process and divine intervention. (Muslim scholars agree that although scholars have worked hard to separate the corrupt and uncorrupted hadith, this other source of revelation is not nearly so free of corruption because of the hadith's great political and theological influence.)

At least two non-Muslim scholars ( and Andrew G. Bannister) have examined the possibility that the Quran was not just "recited orally, but actually composed orally".Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.1 Bannister postulates that some parts of the Quran—such as the seven re-tellings of the story of the and , and the repeated phrases "which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?" in sura 55—make more sense addressed to listeners than readers.

Banister, Dundes and other scholars (Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh)Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.1-4 have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran consistent with "oral-formulaic composition" mentioned above.Dundes, Fables of the Ancients?, 2003: p.16 The most common formulas are the attributes of Allah—all-mighty, all-wise, all-knowing, all-high, etc.—often found as doublets at the end of a verse. Among the other repeated phrases are "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran).The Quran, 6:14, 79; 7:54, 10:3, 12:101, 14:10, 19, 32; 17:99, 29:44, 61; 30:8, 31:25, 32:4, 35:1, 39:38, 46; 42:11, 45:22, 46:33, cf. 2:117, 6:101Dundes, Fables of the Ancients?, 2003: p.32

As much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas", according to Dundes' estimates.Dundes, Fables of the Ancients?, 2003: p.65 Bannister, using a computer database of (the original Arabic) words of the Quran and of their "grammatical role, root, number, person, gender and so forth", estimates that depending on the length of the phrase searched, somewhere between 52% (three word phrases) and 23% (five word phrases) are oral formulas.Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.6-7 Dundes reckons his estimates confirm "that the Quran was orally transmitted from its very beginnings". Bannister believes his estimates "provide strong corroborative evidence that oral composition should be seriously considered as we reflect upon how the Qur'anic text was generated."Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.10

Dundes argues oral-formulaic composition is consistent with "the cultural context of Arabic oral tradition", quoting researchers who have found poetry reciters in the (the region next to where the Quran was revealed) using "a common store of themes, motives, stock images, phraseology and prosodical options",Bannister, "Retelling the Tale", 2014: p.68 and "a discursive and loosely structured" style "with no fixed beginning or end" and "no established sequence in which the episodes must follow".

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