Qur'an

The Qur'an ({{lang-ar|أَلْقُرآن}} al-qur'ān literally "the recitation"; also called Al Qur'ān Al Karīm or "The Noble Qur'an"; or transliterated Quran, Koran, and less commonly Alcoran) is the holy book of Islam. It is a tenet of Islam that the Qur'an is the literal word of God in Arabic and the culmination of God's revelation to mankind, revealed to Muhammad, the final prophet of Islam, over a period of 23 years through the angel Jibril (Gabriel).

Origin and development of the Qur'an

This is a topic of some delicacy, since Islamic scholars proceed with the assumption that the Qur'an is a divine and uncorrupted text, while secular scholars see it as a human text like any other.

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According to secular scholars

Many scholars believe that Muhammad put forth verses and laws that he claimed to be of divine origin; that his followers memorized or wrote down his revelations; that numerous versions of these revelations circulated after his death in 632 CE, and that Uthman ordered the collection and ordering of this mass of material in the time period (650-656) described by the Islamic scholars. These Western scholars point to many characteristics of the Qur'an -- the repetitions, the arbitrary ordering, the mixture of styles and genres -- as indicative of a human collection process that was extremely respectful of the original sources. There has been no evident organizing and harmonizing of the text.

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These scholars account for the many similarities between the Qur'an and the Jewish and Hebrew scriptures by saying that Muhammad was teaching what he believed a universal history, as he had heard it from the Jews and Christians he had encountered in Arabia and on his travels. Differences between the Qur'an and the Judeo-Christian scriptures can usually be explained by Muhammad's reliance on folk traditions rather than the actual text of the scriptures. There have been many studies of Muhammad's sources in the Jewish Mishnah, Gemara, and Midrash, and the Christian Apocrypha. This contradicts the Islamic teaching that it is the Judeo-Christian texts that are corrupt.

Related Topics:
Mishnah - Gemara - Midrash - Apocrypha

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Secular scholars also dispute the Islamic belief that the whole of the Qur'an is addressed by God to humankind. They note that there are numerous passages where God is directly addressed, or mentioned in the third person, or where the narrator swears by various entities, including God.

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: "Some asked what need there was for God to take oaths like any mortal being, as when he swears by the fig and olive, and by Mount Sinai (95:1); by the declining day (103:1); and by the stars, the night and the dawn (81:15-18). Above all, they asked why the Almighty had to swear on himself ..." (Walker, cited in Foundations of Islam, Peter Owen, 1998 p. 156)

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Secular scholars have also pointed out obscurities in the text, claiming that Muslim commentators have invented explanations rather than admit that they don't know what a word means. Some Western scholars have been actively trying to interpret these obscure words by reference to languages that Muhammad might have encountered, such as Aramaic and Syriac, and from which he might have adopted words not then found in Arabic. Some scholars have tried to resolve obscurities by positing textual corruption, and advancing plausible replacements -- which is, of course, anathema in Muslim eyes. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is complete, perfect, and uncorrupted.

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Some Secular scholars are less willing to attribute the entire Qur'an to Muhammad. They argue that there is no real proof that the text of the Qur'an was collected under Uthman, since the earliest surviving copies of the complete Qur'an are centuries later than Uthman. (The oldest existing copy of the full text is from the ninth century http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/quran/index.shtml.) They see Islam as being formed slowly, over the centuries after the Muslim conquests, as the Islamic conquerors elaborated their beliefs in response to Jewish and Christian challenges.

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One influential proponent of this point of view was Dr. John Wansbrough, an English academic. Wansbrough wrote in a dense, complex, almost hermetic style, and he has had much more influence on Islamic studies through his students, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone than he has through his own writings. In 1977 Crone and Cook published a book called Hagarism, which argued that,

Related Topics:
John Wansbrough - Michael Cook - Patricia Crone

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: The Qur'an is strikingly lacking in overall structure, frequently obscure and inconsequential in both language and content, perfunctory in its linking of disparate materials, and given to the repetition of whole passages in variant versions. On this basis it can plausibly be argued that the book is the product of belated and imperfect editing of materials from a plurality of traditions. (Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge, 1977, p. 18.)

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Hagarism was extremely controversial at the time, as it challenged not only Muslim orthodoxy, but the prevailing attitudes among secular Islamicists. Crone and Cook have since retreated from their extreme claims that the Qur'an evolved over several centuries, but they still believe that the Sunni scholarly tradition is extremely unreliable, as it projects current Sunni orthodoxy onto the past -- much as if New Testament scholars were dedicated to proving that Jesus was a Presbyterian or a Methodist.

Related Topics:
New Testament - Jesus - Presbyterian - Methodist

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Fred Donner has argued against Crone and Cook, and for an early date for the collection of the Qur'an, based on his reading of the text itself. He points out that if the Qur'an had been collected over the tumultuous early centuries of Islam, with their vast conquests and bloody squabbles between rivals for the caliphate, there would have been some evidence of this history in the text. However, there is nothing in the Qur'an that does not reflect what is known of the earliest Muslim community. (Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Donner, Darwin Press, 1998, p. 60.)

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Recent archaeological finds have also shed some light on the origins of the Qur'an. In 1972, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of San'a, in Yemen, laborers stumbled upon a "paper grave" containing tens of thousands of fragments of parchment on which verses of the Qur'an were written. (Qur'ans were and still are disposed thus, so as to avoid the impiety of treating the sacred text like ordinary garbage.) Some of these fragments were the oldest Quranic texts yet found http://www.derafsh-kaviyani.com/english/quran1.html. The European scholar Gerd-R. Puin has studied these fragments and published not only a corpus of texts, but some preliminary findings. Interestingly enough, the variations from the received text that he did find seemed to match variations reported by Islamic scholars, in their descriptions of the variant Qur'ans once held by Abdallah Ibn Masud, Ubay Ibn Ka'b, and Ali, and suppressed by Uthman's order. ("Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San'a", Puin, in The Qur'an as Text, ed. Wild, Brill, 1996)

Related Topics:
San'a - Yemen - Gerd-R. Puin - Ali

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According to Islamic scholars

Muhammad, according to tradition, could neither read nor write, but would simply recite what was revealed to him for his companions to write down and memorize. Adherents to Islam hold that the wording of the Qur'anic text available today corresponds exactly to that revealed to Muhammad himself: words of God delivered to Muhammad through Jibril (Gabriel).

Related Topics:
Muhammad - Jibril

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According to some Muslim traditions, the companions of Muhammad began recording suras in writing before Muhammad died in 632; written copies of various suras during his lifetime are frequently alluded to in the traditions. For instance, in the story of the conversion of Umar ibn al-Khattab (when Muhammad was still at Mecca), his sister is said to have been reading a text of sura Ta-Ha. At Medina, about sixty-five companions are said to have acted as scribes for him at one time or another; the prophet would regularly call upon them to write down revelations immediately after they came.

Related Topics:
632 - Umar ibn al-Khattab - Mecca - Ta-Ha - Medina - Companions

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One tradition has it that the first complete compilation of the Qur'an was made during the rule of the first caliph, Abu Bakr. Zayd ibn Thabit, who had been one of Muhammad's secretaries, "gathered the Qur'an from various parchments and pieces of bone, and from the chests (i.e. the memories) of men." This compilation was kept by Hafsa bint Umar, one of Muhammad's widows, as well as the daughter of Umar, the second caliph.

Related Topics:
Caliph - Abu Bakr - Zayd ibn Thabit - Hafsa bint Umar

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During the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan, there were disputes about the recitation of the Qur'an. In response, Uthman decided to codify, standardize, and write down the text. Uthman is said to have commissioned a committee (including Zayd and several prominent members of Quraysh) to produce a standard copy of the text.

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Some accounts say that this compilation was based on the text kept by Hafsa. Other stories say that Uthman made his compilation independently, Hafsa's text was brought forward, and the two texts were found to coincide perfectly. Still other accounts omit any reference to Hafsa.

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Some Muslim scholars say that if the Qur'an had been collected by the order of a caliph, it would never have been relegated to the status of a keepsake for one of the prophet's widows. Possibly the story was invented to move the time of collection closer to Muhammad's death.

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When the compilation was finished, sometime between 650 and 656 CE, Uthman sent out copies of it to the various corners of the Islamic empire. He ordered the destruction of all copies that differed from it.

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Several manuscripts, including the Samarkand manuscript, are claimed to the original copies sent out by Uthman http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Mss/; however, many scholars, Western and Islamic, doubt that any of the Uthmanic originals remain.

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What were the different copies that were destroyed? Islamic traditions say that Abdallah Ibn Masud, Ubay Ibn Ka'b, and Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, had preserved versions that differed in some ways from the Uthmanic text that is now accepted by all Muslims. Muslim scholars record certain of the differences between the versions; those recorded consist almost entirely of orthographical and lexical variants, or different verse counts. All three (Ibn Masud, Ubay Ibn Ka'b, and Ali) are recorded as having accepted the Uthmanic text as authoritative.

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Uthman's version was written in an older Arabic script that left out most vowel markings; thus the script could be interpreted and read in various ways. This basic Uthmanic script is called the rasm; it is the basis of several traditions of oral recitation, differing in minor points. In order to fix these oral recitations and prevent any mistakes, scribes and scholars began annotating the Uthmanic rasm with various diacritical marks -- dots and the like -- indicating how the word was to be pronounced. It is believed that this process of annotation began around 700 CE, soon after Uthman's compilation, and finished by approximately 900 CE. The Quran text most widely used today is based on the Hafs tradition of recitation, as approved by the eminent Al-Azhar University in Cairo in 1922. (For more information regarding traditions of recitations, see Quranic recitation, below.)

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