Abstract
There is certain dislike of anonymity apparent in the work of the classical Muslim authors, in commentaries to the Quran and other literature, as evident in the conscientious reporting of the sources, and in some cases the sources of the sources, and so on. This is firmly connected to the idea of truth and reliable information, though in a different way than it is in the academic world nowadays.
In fanfiction, on the other hand, the emphasis on authorship takes a different form, where the true name of the author usually remains hidden, yet the high degree of interaction with the readers makes the fact of authorship itself more evident than in most other kinds of literature. In some ways, authorship is treated in precisely opposing ways here than in the classical Quranic commentaries or other similar works.
This paper will attempt to examine whether there is, behind those seeming dissimilarities, some common ground in how authorship is regarded in both settings, and if so, what it means for the source material.