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The Qur'an (Arabic: 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).
A Hafiz is one who has memorized the entire text of the Qur'an. There are believed to be millions of them from children to the elderly; many Muslims (children and adults) including many who do not otherwise understand Arabic, memorize the Qur'an partially or as a whole. A partial memorization is necessary in order to perform the salat (prayer).
Soon after Muhammad's death in 632 CE, Islam burst out of Arabia and expanded to or conquered much of what was then the “civilized” world. Arab rulers had millions of foreign subjects, with whom they had to communicate. Thus, the language rapidly changed in response to this new situation, losing complexities of case and obscure vocabulary. Several generations after the prophet's death, many words used in the Qur'an had become opaque to ordinary sedentary Arabic-speakers, as Arabic had changed so much, so rapidly. The Bedouin speech changed at a considerably slower rate, however, and early Arabic lexicographers came to seek out Bedouin to explain difficult words or elucidate points of grammar. Partly in response to the religious need to explain the Qur'an to poorer speakers, Arabic grammar and lexicography soon became important sciences, and the model for the literary language remains to this day the speech used in Qur'anic times, rather than the current spoken dialects.
Muslims contend that the Qur'an is remarkable for its poetry and grace, and that its very literary perfection is evidence of its divine origin. Since this perfection is apparent only to those who speak Arabic, this stands as one reason why only the original Arabic text is considered the real Qur’an. Translations are considered mere glosses, as interpretations - rather than the direct word - of God. The traditions governing the translation and publication of the Qur'an state that when the book is published, it should never simply be entitled "The Qur'an." The title should always include a defining adjective (avoiding conceivable confusion with other "recitations", in the Arabic sense), which is why most available editions of the Qur'an are titled The Glorious Qur'an, The Noble Qur'an, and other similar titles.
There are also many translations of the Qur'an into English and other languages by well-known Islamic scholars. Each translation is a little different, showing the ability of the scholar to translate the text into a version that is both easy to understand and maintains the original meaning. Thus, the wording styles are always changed in translations due to the different nature of the language that it is being translated into and Arabic.
Every reputable Islamic scholar is able, at the least, to read and understand the Qur'an in its original form, while most have it completely memorized.
There are many repeated epithets (e.g. "Lord of the heavens and the earth"), sentences ("And when We said unto the angels: Prostrate yourselves before Adam, they fell prostrate, all save Iblis"), and even stories (such as the story of Adam) in the Qur'an. Muslim scholars explain these repetitions as emphasizing and explaining different aspects of important themes. Also, scholars and academics point out that English translation requires large changes in the wording in order to maintain the specific meaning and explanation.
The Qur'an is partly rhymed, partly prose. Traditionally, the Arabic grammarians consider the Qur'an to be a genre unique unto itself, neither Poetry (defined as speech with Metre and Rhyme) nor Prose (defined as normal speech or rhymed but non-metrical speech, saj').
The Qur'an often, although by no means always, uses loose Rhyme between successive verses; for instance, at the beginning of surat Al-Fajr:
or, to give a less loose example, the whole of surat Al-Fil:
(Note that verse-final vowels are unpronounced when the verses are enunciated separately, a regular pausal phenomenon in Classical Arabic. In these cases, î and û often rhyme, and there is some scope for variation in syllable-final consonants.)
Some suras also include a Refrain repeated every few verses, for instance Ar-Rahman ("Then which of the favours of your Lord will ye deny?") and Al-Mursalat ("Woe unto the repudiators on that day!").
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Islamic scholars divide the verses of the Qur'an into those revealed at Mecca (Makka), and those revealed at Medina (Madina) after the Hijra. In general, the earlier Makkan suras tend to have shorter verses than the later Madinan suras, which deal with legal matters, and are quite long. Contrast the Makkan verses above with a verse such as Al-Baqara 229:
Similarly, the Madinan suras tend to be longer, including the longest sura of the Qur'an, Al-Baqara.
However, there are instances where some verses presuppose that a given practice is allowed, while others forbid it. These are interpreted by Muslims in the light of the relative chronology of the verses: since the Qur'an was revealed over a course of 23 years, many verses were clarified or abrogated (mansūkh) by later verses. Muslim commentators explain that this is because Muhammad was directed to gradually lead his small band of believers towards the straight path, rather than reveal the full rigor of the law at once. For example, the prohibition of alcohol was accomplished gradually rather than immediately. The earliest verse tells the believers to ..."Approach not prayers with a mind befogged, until ye can understand all that ye say,-..." (4:43), a prohibition of drunkenness but not alcohol. Later verses expanded prohibition to all alcohol consumption: "They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit. ..." (2:219) Yusuf Ali.
In addition, there are cases where most Muslim scholars accept the doctrine of "abrogation" (naskh), whereby verses revealed later sometimes supersede verses received earlier. Which verses abrogate which others, if any, is, however, a controversial matter.
According to 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Several manuscripts, including the Samarkand manuscript, are claimed to the original copies sent out by Uthman ; however, many scholars, Western and Islamic, doubt that any of the Uthmanic originals remain.
As for the 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.
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.)
There are several verses in the Qur'an regarding its divine origin, such as:
"We have not sent down the Qur'an to thee to be (an occasion) for thy distress, But only as an admonition to those who fear (Allah),-"(20:2-3)
These sceptical scholars account for the many similarities between the Qur'an and the Jewish and Hebrew scriptures by claiming 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. Certain 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 narration swears by various entities, including God. Some other secular scholars are less willing to attribute the entire Qur'an to Muhammad, arguing 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 .) They allege that Islam was formed slowly, over the centuries after the Muslim conquests, as the Islamic conquerors elaborated their beliefs in response to Jewish and Christian challenges. One influential proponent of this point of view was Dr. John Wansbrough, an English academic critic (since deceased). Wansbrough wrote in a dense, complex, almost hermetic style, and 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,
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 claim 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.
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 expansion and bloody incidents 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 is non-reflective of what is known of the earliest Muslim community. (Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing, Donner, Darwin Press, 1998, p. 60.)
Some claim that archaeological finds may 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 believed to be the oldest Quranic texts yet found. The European scholar Gerd-R. Puin has studied these fragments and published not only a corpus of texts, but some preliminary findings. The variations from the received text that he found seemed to match minor variations reported by some 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)
For all these reasons, it was extremely important for commentators to explain how the Qur'an was revealed -- when and under which circumstances. Much commentary, or Tafsir, was dedicated to history. The early tafsir are some of the best sources for Islamic history. Famous commentators include at-Tabari, az-Zamakhshari, at-Tirmidhi, and Ibn Kathir.
(These classic commentaries usually include all common and accepted interpretations; modern fundamentalist commentaries like that written by Sayyed Qutb tend to advance only one of the possible interpretations.)
Commentators feel fairly sure of the exact circumstances prompting some verses, such as surat Iqra, or many parts, including ayat 190-194, of surat al-Baqarah. In other cases (eg surat Al-Asr), the most that can be said is which city the Prophet was living in at the time (dividing between Makkan and Madinan suras.) In some cases, such as surat Al-Kawthar, the details of the circumstances are disputed, with different traditions giving different accounts.
The most important external aid used in interpreting the meanings of the Qur'an is the Hadith - the collection of traditions upon which Muslim scholars (the Ulema) based Islamic history and law. Scholars sifted the many thousands of hadith, trying to discover which were true and which were fabrications. One method, extensively used, was a study of the chain of narrators, the Isnad, by which the tradition had been passed.
Note that, while certain Hadith - the Hadith Qudsi - are claimed to record noncanonical words spoken by God to Muhammad, or the gist of them, Muslims do not consider these to form any part of the Qur'an.
However, some Liberal movements within Islam, and notably the small Mu'tazili and Ismaili sects, implicitly or explicitly question the doctrine of the uncreated Qur'an when they address certain questions related to the application of Islamic law. Some contemporary Muslim thinkers, such as Reza Aslan, have argued that such laws were created by God to meet the particular needs and circumstances of Muhammad's community. Others argue that such laws are no different from the Mosaic law.
Among the reasons offered for the critique of the doctrine of an eternal Qur'an has been its implications for the doctrine of tawhid, or unity of God. Holding that the Qur'an is the eternal uncreated speech of Allah, speech that has always existed alongside Him, seemed to some thinkers to be a step in the direction of a more plural concept of God's nature (which could lead to what Muslims consider the sin of shirk, the association of something with God). Concerned that this interpretation appeared to echo the Christian concept of God's eternal Word or logos, some Muslims (notably the Mu'tazilis) rejected the notion of the Qur'an's eternality.
To even be able to perform salat (prayer), a mandatory obligation in Islam, a Muslim is required to learn at least some suras of the Qur'an (typically starting with the first sura, Al-Fatiha, known as the "seven oft-repeated verses," and then moving on to the shorter ones at the end).
A person whose recital repertoire encompasses the whole Qur'an is called a Qari' (قَارٍئ) or Hafiz (which translate as "reciter" or "memorizer," respectively). Muhammad is regarded as the first hafiz. Cantillation (tilawa تلاوة) of the Qur'an is a fine art in the Muslim world.
Ibn Mujahid documented seven such recitations and Ibn Al-Jazri added three. They are:
These recitations differ in the vocalization (tashkil تشكيل) of a few words, which in turn gives a complementary meaning to the word in question according to the rules of Arabic grammar. For example, the vocalization of a verb can change its active and passive voice. It can also change its stem formation, implying intensity for example. Vowels may be elongated or shortened, and glottal stops (hamzas) may be added or dropped, according to the respective rules of the particular recitation. For example, the name of archangel Gabriel is pronounced differently in different recitations: Jibrīl, Jabrīl, Jibra'īl, and Jibra'il. The name "Qur'ān" is pronounced without the glottal stop (as "Qurān") in one recitation, and prophet Ibrāhīm's name is pronounced Ibrāhām in another.
The more widely used narrations are those of Hafs (حفص عن عاصم), Warsh (ورش عن نافع), Qaloon (قالون عن نافع) and Al-Duri through Abu `Amr (الدوري عن أبي عمرو). Muslims firmly believe that all canonical recitations were recited by the Prophet himself, citing the respective Isnad chain of narration, and accept them as valid for worshipping and as a reference for rules of Sharia. The uncanonical recitations are called "explanatory" for their role in giving a different perspective for a given verse or Ayah. Today several dozen persons hold the title "Memorizer of the Ten Recitations," considered to be the ultimate honour in the sciences of Qur'an.
Before touching a copy of the Qur'an, or mushaf, a Muslim performs Wudu (ablution or a ritual cleansing with water). This is based on tradition and a literal interpretation of sura 56:77-79: "That this is indeed a qur'an Most Honourable, In a Book well-guarded, Which none shall touch but those who are clean."
Qur'an desecration means insulting the Qur'an by defiling or dismembering it. Muslims must always treat the book with reverence, and are forbidden, for instance, to pulp, recycle, or simply discard worn-out copies of the text. (Such books must be respectfully burned or buried.)
Respect for the written text of the Qur'an is an important element of religious faith by many Muslims. They believe that intentionally insulting the Qur'an is a form of Blasphemy. According to the laws of some Muslim countries, blasphemy is punishable by lengthy imprisonment or even the death penalty.
Before printing was widely adopted, the Qur'an was transmitted by copyists and calligraphers. Since Muslim tradition felt that directly portraying sacred figures and events might lead to idolatry, it was forbidden to decorate the Qur'an with pictures (as was often done for Christian texts, for example). Muslims instead lavished love and care upon the sacred text itself. Arabic is written in many scripts, some of which are both complex and beautiful. Arabic calligraphy is a highly honored art, much like Chinese calligraphy. Muslims also decorated their Qur'ans with abstract figures (arabesques), colored inks, and gold leaf. Pages from some of these beautiful antique Qur'ans are displayed throughout this article.
The Qur'an has been translated into many languages, but translations of the Qur'an from Arabic to other languages are not considered by Muslims to be actual copies of the Qur'an, but rather are considered to be interpretive translations of the Qur'an; they are thus not given much weight in debates upon the Qur'an's meaning. In addition, as mere interpretive translations of the Qur'an, they are treated as ordinary books instead of being accorded the privileged status of Holy Books requiring special care.
Robert of Ketton was the first to translate the Qur'an into Latin, in the 1143 Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete.