Keep Thy Faith

Islamic Scripture - The Quran

The Quran (Literal meaning: Reading or Recitation) is the Holy Book of Islam and is regarded by believers as the true word of God as revealed to Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. Divided into 114 surahs (chapters) of unequal length, it is the fundamental source of Islamic teaching. The Quran was revealed to the Prophet in bits and pieces and as mentioned above, contains the exact words of Allah revealed to the Prophet and in this sense is different from other Holy books which have edited/abridged versions however, the Quran contains nothing but the revelations of Allah, not one word being added or changed by the Prophet. He was nothing more than the transmitter for these revelations.
He would learn the verses revealed to him or maybe jot them down on whatever was handy at the time. These were later compiled properly - but then that was not done in the chronological order - the ordering of these was again done in compliance with the wishes of God as revealed to the Prophet. The Prophet had to recite the whole collection revealed so far to the angel Gabriel every Ramadan and the entire text was checked twice with angel, shortly before the Prophet died.

Since Islam had surfaced at a time when books were considered to be a luxury, afforded only by the rich, people had mastered the art of learning most things by heart. So anyone who knew the full text of the Holy Quran was known as a Hafiz, however, since many of them were slain in battles, people began to worry as to how the accuracy of the text would be checked after the Prophet's death. They started reciting the verses trying to by heart them but this further became a cause for concern as it brought along the danger of personal interpretations, misinterpretations and alternative versions.

The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, thus requested the Prophet's companion Zaid ibn Thabit, to make a complete written version in one book. The messages were not altered or added to in forms of any translations/explanations or editorial comments. Any other versions were checked against this and the one's differing were destroyed. Numerous copies of this 'standard' text were made and circulated in all Muslim Centrex and all copies since then have been identical.

The earliest known Qurans that still exist are in Tashkent and Istanbul and the grammar of the Arabic language, its lexicon, its phonetic system and its phraseology, have remained intact for fourteen hundred years."

posted by Shanya @ 9:14 PM