Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun holds that the framing story suits the oral and written frameworks of knowledge in the Hijri centuries.
Explanation
The framing story is understood here as a narrative formulation that responds to a culture still moving between the oral and the written. For Arkoun, it is not presented as a stylistic ornament, but as an expressive form that accords with the conditions of reception and circulation within that historical horizon.
Thus, its suitability does not mean confining meaning to orality alone, but rather indicating that this narrative structure was able to operate within patterns of knowledge that had not yet settled into strict forms of codification. In this sense, the claim is connected more to the manner in which discourse takes shape than to its immediate content.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s concern to read forms of expression in early Islam within their historical and cultural conditions, not as fixed data outside time. It supports his broader thesis about the interweaving of the oral and the written in the Hijri centuries, and about the need to understand narrative structures in relation to the frameworks of knowledge that embraced them.
Limits of the Claim
This atom should not be burdened with a final judgment on the value of the framing story, nor should it be reduced to being merely an oral trace. It identifies the suitability of a narrative form to a historical epistemic context, without settling all of its functions or meanings.