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This article highlights two features of Qur'anic style and content: duality/opposition and typological figuration, which can be seen as providing a continuous and consistent ‘narrative stream’ through the Qur'an. It is of some interest that both of these features have been singled out as distinctive of apocalypse as a genre in the study of numerous religious and cultural traditions. As debate on whether or not the Qur'an is a bona fide example of apocalyptic literature quietly continues, the interplay of conceptual and substantive oppositions and dualities is discussed in order to highlight the importance of this prominent feature to both the form and contents of the Book. It is suggested that its function is profoundly related to the typological figuration indispensable to the Qur'anic depiction of, for example, the character of the prophets and therefore prophethood. Whether or not this represents a genuine instance of apocalyptic literature, it nonetheless remains that the prominence of the motif renders the Qur'an susceptible of a reading expressive of something called an apocalyptic imagination. It is hoped that this article succeeds in demonstrating that in fact these apparently familiar subjects are stimulated to new life by considering them as defining, interlocking, structural elements of a distinctive Islamic apocalypse.

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Part 3 The Afterlife in Sunni Tradition and Theology 14 "Are Men the Majority in Paradise, or Women?" Constructing Gender and Communal Boundaries in Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj's (d. 261/875) Kitāb al-Janna 311 Aisha Geissinger 15 The 'Eight Gates of Paradise' Tradition in Islam: A Genealogical and Structural Study 341 Christian Lange 16 Temporary Hellfijire Punishment and the Making of Sunni Orthodoxy 371 Feras Hamza 17 Paradise and Hell in the Kitāb al-Jihād of ʿAlī b. Ṭāhir al-Sulamī (d. 500/1106) 407 Niall Christie 18 Al-Ghazālī on Resurrection and the Road to Paradise 422 Wilferd Madelung