The Muslim Holy Book:
The Quran
Islam appeared in the form of a book: the Quran.
Muslims, consider the Quran (sometimes spelled "Koran")
to be the Word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel, in the
Arabic language, through the Prophet Muhammad. The Muslim view,
moreover, is that the Quran supersedes earlier revelations; it is
regarded as their summation and completion. It is the final
revelation, as Muhammad is regarded as the final prophet - 'the
Seal of the Prophets."
In a very real sense the Quran is the mentor of
millions of Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike; it shapes their
everyday life, anchors them to a unique system of law, and
inspires them by its guiding principles. Written in noble
language, this Holy Text has done more than move multitudes to
tears and ecstasy; it has also, for almost fourteen hundred years,
illuminated the lives of Muslims with its eloquent message of
uncompromising monotheism, human dignity, righteous living,
individual responsibility, and social justice. For countless
millions, consequently, it has been the single most important
force in guiding their religious, social, and cultural lives.
Indeed, the Quran is the cornerstone on which the edifice of
Islamic civilization has been built.
The text of the Quran was delivered orally by
the Prophet Muhammad to his followers as it was revealed to him.
The first verses were revealed to him in or about 610, and the
last revelation dates from the last year of his life, 632. His
followers at first committed the Quran to memory and then, as
instructed by him, to writing. Although the entire contents of
the Quran, the placement of its verses, and the arrangement of
its chapters date back to the Prophet, as long as he lived he
continued to receive revelations. Consequently, the Holy Text
could only be collected as a single corpus - "between the
two covers" - after the death of Muhammad. This is exactly
what happened. After the battle of al-Yamamah in 633, 'Umar ibn
al-Khattab, later to become the second caliph, suggested to Abu
Bakr, the first caliph, that because of the grievous loss of life
in that battle, there was a very real danger of losing the Quran,
enshrined as it was in the memories of the faithful and in
uncollated fragments. Abu Bakr recognized the danger and
entrusted the task of gathering the revelations to Zayd ibn
Thabit, who as the chief scribe of the Prophet was the person to
whom Muhammad frequently dictated the revelations in his lifetime.
With great difficulty, the task was carried out and the first
complete manuscript compiled from "bits of parchment, thin
white stones - ostracae - leafless palm branches, and the
memories of men." Later, during the time of 'Uthman, the
third caliph, a final, authorized text was prepared and completed
in 651, and this has remained the text in use ever since.
The contents of the Quran differ in substance
and arrangement from the Old and New Testaments. Instead of
presenting a straight historical narrative, as do the Gospels and
the historical books of the Old Testament, the Quran treats, in
allusive style, spiritual and practical as well as historical
matters.
The Quran is divided into 114 surahs, or
chapters, and the surahs are conventionally assigned to two broad
categories: those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medina.
The surahs revealed at Mecca - at the beginning of Muhammad's
mission - tend to be short and to stress, in highly moving
language, the eternal themes of the unity of God, the necessity
of faith, the punishment of those who stray from the right path,
and the Last Judgment, when all man's actions and beliefs will be
judged. The surahs revealed at Medina are longer, often deal in
detail with specific legal, social, or political situations, and
sometimes can only be properly understood with a full knowledge
of the circumstances in which they were revealed. All the surahs
are divided into ayahs or verses and, for purposes of pedagogy
and recitation, the Quran as a whole is divided into thirty parts,
which in turn are divided into short divisions of nearly equal
length, to facilitate study and memorization.
The surahs themselves are of varying length,
ranging from the longest, Surah 2, with 282 verses, to the
shortest, Surahs 103, 108, and 110, each of which has only three.
With some exceptions the surahs are arranged in the Quran in
descending order of length, with the longest at the beginning and
the shortest at the end. The major exception to this arrangement
is the opening surah, "al-Fatihah," which contains
seven verses and which serves as an introduction to the entire
revelation:
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds;
The Merciful, the Compassionate;
Master of the Day of Judgment;
Thee only do we worship, and Thee alone we ask for help.
Guide us in the straight path,
The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the path of those
who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.
Non-Muslims are often struck by the range of
styles found in the Quran. Passages of impassioned beauty are no
less common than vigorous narratives. The sublime "Verse of
the Throne" is perhaps one of the most famous:
God - There is no god but He,
The Living. the Everlasting;
Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep;
To Him belongs all that is
In the heavens and the earth;
Who is there that can intercede with Him
Save by His leave?
He knows what lies before them
And what is after them,
Nor do they encompass anything of His knowledge
Except such as He wills;
His Throne extends over the heavens and earth;
The preserving of them wearies Him not;
He is the Most High, the All-Glorious.
Muslims regard the Quran as untranslatable; the
language in which it was revealed - Arabic - is inseparable from
its message and Muslims everywhere, no matter what their native
tongue, must learn Arabic to read the Sacred Book and to perform
their worship. The Quran of course is available in many languages,
but these versions are regarded as interpretations rather than
translations - partly because the Arabic language,
extraordinarily concise and allusive, is impossible to translate
in a mechanical, word-for-word way. The inimitability of the
Quran has crystallized in the Muslim view of i'jaz or "impossibility,"
which holds that the style of the Quran, being divine, cannot be
imitated: any attempt to do so is doomed to failure.
It must also be remembered that the Quran was
originally transmitted orally to the faithful and that the Holy
Text is not meant to be read only in silence. From the earliest
days it has always been recited aloud or, more accurately,
chanted. As a result, several traditional means of chanting, or
intoning, the Quran were found side by side. These methods
carefully preserved the elaborate science of reciting the Quran -
with all its intonations and its cadence and punctuation. As the
exact pronunciation was important - and learning it took years -
special schools were founded to be sure that no error would creep
in as the traditional chanting methods were handed down. It is
largely owing to the existence of these traditional methods of
recitation that the text of the Quran was preserved without error.
As the script in which the Quran was first written down indicated
only the consonantal skeleton of the words, oral recitation was
an essential element in the transmission of the text.
Because the circumstances of each revelation
were thought necessary to correct interpretation, the community,
early in the history of Islam, concluded that it was imperative
to gather as many traditions as possible about the life and
actions of the Prophet so that the Quran might be more fully
understood. These traditions not only provided the historical
context for many of the surahs - thus contributing to their more
exact explication - but also contained a wide variety of
subsidiary information on the practice, life, and legal rulings
of the Prophet and his companions.
This material became the basis for what is
called the sunnah, or "practice" of the Prophet - the
deeds, utterances, and taqrir (unspoken approval) of Muhammad.
Together with the Quran, the sunnah, as embodied in the canonical
collections of traditions, the hadith, became the basis for the
shari'ah, the sacred law of Islam.
Unlike Western legal systems, the shari'ah
makes no distinction between religious and civil matters; it is
the codification of God's Law, and it concerns itself with every
aspect of social, political, economic, and religious life.
Islamic law is thus different from any other legal system; it
differs from canon law in that it is not administered by a church
hierarchy; in Islam there is nothing that corresponds to a "church"
in the Christian sense. Instead, there is the ummah - the
community of the believers - whose cohesion is guaranteed by the
sacred law. Every action of the pious Muslim, therefore, is
determined by the Quran, by precedents set by the Prophet, and by
the practice of the early community of Islam as enshrined in the
shari'ah.
No description, however, can fully capture the
overwhelming importance of the Quran to Muslims. Objectively, it
is the central fact of the Islamic faith, the Word of God, the
final and complete revelation, the foundation and framework of
Islamic law, and the source of Islamic thought, language, and
action. It is the essence of Islam. Yet it is, in the deeply
personal terms of a Muslim, something more as well. In
innumerable, almost indescribable ways, it is also the central
fact of Muslim life. To a degree almost incomprehensible in the
West it shapes and colors broadly, specifically, and totally the
thoughts, emotions, and values of the devout Muslim's life from
birth to death.
Above article was reproduced with
permission of IslamiCity (http://www.islam.org).